Why is no one talking about the fact Jack Dante is Phantom of The Opera-coded?
And I don’t mean the weird Dario Argento one (that actually came out four years after Death Machine) with the longhaired weirdo who’s otherwise normal-looking.
I mean Jack had some moments that, to me, look like deliberate shoutouts to Leroux!Erik.
So, we’ve got the obvious with basement-dwelling guy who tries to tempt the object of his obsession with a partnership that (he thinks) will make her happy. In this case, instead of a singing career, they can destroy everything together. Unfortunately for him, Hayden wasn’t as easily cowed as Christine nor did she want any of that. Bad read on his part.
Now that could just be from any version, true. And the contract was very Final Lair. But it goes beyond the musical and all the way back to the book with some of what Jack says throughout the movie. Not the exact dialogue, but definitely matching energy.
Much like the book version, he’s very childish and likes to show off how clever he is. Also very good at killing people and made a nearly lifelong career of it. Then there’s this from Erik:
“You are crying! You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself. If you loved me I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased."
But I am very tired of it!...I'm sick and tired of having a forest and a torture-chamber in my house and of living like a mountebank, in a house with a false bottom!...I'm tired of it! I want to have a nice, quiet flat, with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else! A wife whom I could love and take out on Sundays and keep amused on week-days...
That last comes after describing in great detail how cleverly designed and “funny” his torture chamber is. Much like Jack saying he’s having so much fun at CHAANK followed by complaining that no one will talk to him or even get near him except Hayden.
Plus, tell me all of that doesn’t have the same vibe as offering to be her baby after psychologically destroying her and later saying he thought they could have a nice time together and look after each other.
Finally, one tiny little thing that abso-fucking-lutely breaks my heart. In the book, Christine doesn’t win her freedom with a big, passionate kiss. Instead, she agrees to stay with Erik if he lets Raoul and The Persian go free. He does, and when he returns she says she’ll be his living bride. Up to that moment, Erik had been aware she’d rather die than be with him, so he’d been planning for them to marry and commit suicide together.
Now, Christine must be expecting at this point to be subjected to a wedding night (and it’s made clear from The Persian’s question he was expecting the same) but after making her promise she allows Erik to kiss her forehead. A very chaste gesture in spite of expectations, that breaks him completely and causes him to fall at her feet in tears.
Compare that to Hayden giving Jack what was probably the first hug of his life while telling him he can “interface with the motherboard.” Given the attempted rape and Jack’s whole…thing he’s got going on, the kink implications are obvious but the gesture and the way he goes in like a scared child are chaste.
Again, though, and unfortunately for Jack, Hayden and Christine are very different characters. Christine is preparing herself to endure in the name of saving not only the man she loves but an entire building full of people. And while Hayden lives by Spock’s philosophy that the needs of the many outweigh the good of the few, she is absolutely not going to sacrifice herself if there’s a way out of it.
Is it fair that Jack didn’t necessarily get a chance to redeem himself by letting her go? Not really. However pitiable he was at the end, he’d already made it clear she wasn’t walking out of there alive unless he got his way.
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