If your mom's dead she won't care. Fredo had to die. Would you want Fredo to die if those dudes succeed in killing Michael or his kids/wife. Ain't no oops when you're dealing with gangsters. Fredo got a warning and fukked up again. Adios. Mike already lost one bad ass Italian bytch and had to settle for that goofy wasp.cause he had already fukked up. he knew michael would take it badly if he found out he went outside the family. so he was shook the whole time but then when he was drunk he let it slip. that goes to show how stupid fredo was and not a conniving schemer. he was just the family idiot. he only played the part because he was scared. even if he came out and told mike "hey mike i fukked up and told these nikkas where u live but i didnt know they were gonna kill u my bad b" mike woulda at the very least banish him from the family. thats what he should have done, not kill ur own fool of a brother. but we can disagree on thispersonally i woulda exiled the stupid fukk but i cant kill my mothers son.
was Michael a better Godfather then Vito?
- Thread starter SkillClash
- Start date
ZEB WALTON
ayo! - BEZ
vito, the movies are about michaels failures as a don...
I wish I caught this thread earlier..the movies are timeless though so it doesnt matter. I will have more to say when I have time..however:
- The way some are talking about Sonny and Vito handling Fredo differently than Michael doesnt make any sense. Yes, it is family above everything else...but Fredo had Michael set up to be killed. That happened before anything else other than Fredo being passed up. How do you think Sonny would have handled it if Fredo had gotten him set up? Fredo made the first move, hoping that he could take the reins of the family with Michael gone and bring in people Michael alienated but he was stupid as fukk and would have gotten murked and everything would have been lost. Fredo was the ultimate loose end..Sonny would have had him murked in a way that could have been chalked up as a rival family doing it and Vito probably woulda exiled him to Italy or elsewhere with close eyes on him.
- The way Michael's life developed and ended was probably how Vito envisioned it would be, and was why he didnt want him in the game..because he could have made a great life for himself in other ways. Sonny was built for the family and was irrational but Hagen and the rest of the support system was there and I think Vito was ultimately okay with Sonny taking the reins if it came to it..and that was the initial plan. Vito makes note of how he sees the game changing and had principles he didnt want to ever get involved in (drugs etc)...Michael was very principled as well but the principles and priorities on said principles changed. Michael's development and life was inevitable..and he had been through a lot of shyt too..just like Vito. The variables had just changed and I think the way Michael ran the family was pretty much the only way it could have been run outside of some social aspects. Michael knew that the face to face stuff and "principles" didnt matter as much to the rivals as they did with Vito's generation and that was even exemplified in Fredo trying to make the moves he did. Michael's only option was to rule with the iron fist that he did and take the losses that he did on the back end.
you'd rather him do it while his mom still alive?
Taadow
The StarchBishop™️
I think the bold part is a major takeaway from the Godfather films. But why did Michael end up in the game?
Mike (as he says in Part 3) thinks he keeps getting "pulled back" into the game. NO!
ONCE YOU'RE IN IT, YOU'RE IN IT FOR LIFE!
He never RESPECTED THE GAME!
Dig - from jump, Michael didn't want anything to do with his family because they were in the game. He goes to the Army.
He comes home and his pop gets shot. Now he wants in the game.
He pops The Turk and the Po-Po and the streets get hot. Now he wants out of the game, and he's in Italy.
They blow up his wife in Italy. He realizes he's in the game still.
He comes back home and his pop tells him you never shoulda got in the game, but you're in it for reals now.
Tells him the way to play the game is to be cool. Pop dies and Mike says "fucc all this cool chit - i'm gonna murk all the dons
of the other families". Of course, streets get hot. Now he wants out of the game again, and he's in Nevada.
It's fitting that Mike was a soldier, because he was acting like being a Don is a tour in The Army. lol...
he does a tour, then he can just go back to doing whatever. NOPE!
he did the "honorable thing" by doing what he did. he let fredo be around while his mom still was and didnt force his mother to see another child of hers die before she died. i cant really understand how people think any alternative killing of fredo would have been more honorable
I agree with almost all this post. The bolded though...Im pretty sure it was mutual about Michael going to Italy..everyone involved thought itd be the right thing to do for Michael to get out of dodge. Once Michael said he was down to pop them that was the plan all along...as far as I can recall anyway.
Also...I think that Michael did want to legitimize and get "out of the game" later on and was getting pulled back in because he didnt set up the proper infrastructure below him to let everyone flourish with him out of the picture. It would just get more volatile for people involved and I think he just didnt want more deaths and failure to come the way of the family but ultimately there was nothing he could do. He was always going to be a target, and for that, once he's in he's truly in. Information to protect, reputation to uphold, money to clean, bodies to drop.
Sidenote: Funniest thing Ive heard via mafioso is the term "cement blocks on [your] feet". 
I also wouldve loved to see a movie (instead of how they did 3) about what would have happened if Santino never got killed and became the head of the family. My mom said she liked him the most and thought he wouldve been a good Don. He told it how it was and she said he wouldve mellowed out eventually while aligning more closely with Vito's principles.
I also wouldve loved to see a movie (instead of how they did 3) about what would have happened if Santino never got killed and became the head of the family. My mom said she liked him the most and thought he wouldve been a good Don. He told it how it was and she said he wouldve mellowed out eventually while aligning more closely with Vito's principles.
I don't see it happening.. Even Vito knew Santino was not smart enough to be Don; he relied on muscle too much and by the time it was time for him to mellow down, he would have created too many enemies and the rest of the families would launch a war against the Corleones.Sidenote: Funniest thing Ive heard via mafioso is the term "cement blocks on [your] feet".
I also wouldve loved to see a movie (instead of how they did 3) about what would have happened if Santino never got killed and became the head of the family. My mom said she liked him the most and thought he wouldve been a good Don. He told it how it was and she said he wouldve mellowed out eventually while aligning more closely with Vito's principles.
Taadow
The StarchBishop™️
I agree with you...but understand:
Yes - it was mutual about Michael getting out. But before that, you wouldn't have thought he gave a damn about his father.
Him getting into the "family business" was a knee jerk reaction to getting snuffed by The Captain after somebody breached
his familys' pride...you get the sense that that is how Mike made all his decisions: somebody said something he didn't like,
next thing you know they're dead. He kept "pulling" himself back in!
I mean, think about it...if the roles were reversed and he was having problems with the Rosato Brothers, what do you think he
would have done? You think he would've humbled himself to fly across the country to see his Don like Frankie did?
Or would he have bombed their cars and worried about all of that later because he was behind on his 5-year plan he promised
Kay?
To your other point, Michael wanted to be legit because...he wanted to be legit. Because again - he didn't respect the game.
You can tell in that meeting he had with Senator Geary, as I mentioned earlier. The Senator didn't want "them" there,
even though he was just as "crooked" as their business. That's why, as you say, he "didn't set up the proper infrastructure
below him" - he didn't think anything he was doing was proper.
I dont either but I was surprised she said that..and I thought itd make for a good spinoff, better than what the 3rd movie was
Of course he wouldnt have flown across the country. I just dont think he was quite as selfish as how youre making it out to be though. I dont think its that he didnt necessarily respect that game in a vacuum..I think he didnt respect the game before he was in it and then saw it spiraling away from the values his father and his father's peers trumpeted and wanted to control the game and guide it away from the path it was going in at all costs..guide it to something he could at least pretend to respect. I think he grew to respect what the game used to be, especially in comparison to what it was becoming...slight nuance but meh. He wanted to be legit..and he knew he was so deep in the game that he wanted to essentially become the game personified.
I think he always respected his father just didnt respect what he did. Just how he did it and how he looked out for his family. I think him getting snuffed while just trying to look out for his pops was the straw that broke the camel's back and essentially drove him into a state of manic depression. I dont necessarily think it was ALL knee jerk reactions..that wouldve been more to Santino's line of thinking. I just think he started seeing more and more evidence of the moving variables around him forcing his hand into going into war mode. Being a soldier, that line of thought was natural to him..I just think it was a bit more calculated than just instinctual reactions.
The meeting with the Senator, IMO, validated the family's way of a business a bit to him because he was supposed to be a politician and he realized they were just as crooked, if not moreso, than they were. He may not have thought what they were doing was proper per se, but within the game itself in terms of power, I think he did feel somewhat justified in his actions in a Machiavellian type framework. The infrastructure wasnt there because I dont think he trusted anyone anymore so he never set up his own exit plan correctly.
Also..in regards to Hagen..he definitely did brush him aside a bit and was somewhat disrespectful..but I think them trying to go legit was a part of it. Even it wasnt directly expressed..I think Michael wanted Hagen to be involved almost exclusively in the legal aspects of things rather than be an adviser on all things because if Hagen was going to become more of a public figure..he wanted him to eventually hide his connections to his father who was less publicly legitimate. He may have kept him around primarily because he was one of the last people left who he deemed trustworthy and also maybe as a father figure of sorts..but I think it was also because Hagen was integral to the legitimization of the family and was more valuable in the fold than out of it.
Taadow
The StarchBishop™️
I agree with all this, we're saying the same thing.
I wasn't as much calling him "selfish", even though it might've come off like that...but you know what?
...and IMO, this is why both of these movies are the arguable GOAT...
Vito is every one of us.
and Michael is every one of us.
Knamtalmbat?
Theyre both in my top 5 all-time from a personal perspective and from a simple movie critique perspective. Just unbelievable depth and greatness all around. The fact that so many quality discussions can be had about hundreds of different aspects of the movies really is mind blowing..especially after all these years. Let alone the fukking casting of the movies
Total co-sign.