Tuesday, July 4, 2023

How many different ways can we say "revenge"?

It should be perfectly obvious that half the action movies out there -- and probably all the action movies featuring Liam Neeson -- deal in some way with the concept of revenge. Revenge for something that's already occurred, or pre-revenge for something that might hypothetically occur. 

Now, the task is just to communicate that in the title.

I find Neeson's most recent film, set to be released this August, a particularly humorous example of that.

The title Retribution has almost a clinical, scientific quality to it. While the words "revenge" and "vengeance" both have a raw, bloodthirsty quality to them -- you can almost taste the blood -- "retribution" is the version of the word you'd see appearing in a legal document. Someone's motive in a crime seems much more suitable for court when it is described as "retribution" rather than "revenge."

Therefore, I would argue it doesn't roll of the tongue very well, which is one of the more important elements to consider when coming up with a title.

It also really feels like they just went to a thesaurus to see what other synonyms they could find for "revenge."

If that's the case, in the future you can expect the following Neeson movies to come out:

Reprisal
Repayment

Avengment (really?)
Reciprocation 
Comeuppance
Requital 
Counterplay
Counterblow
Satisfaction


All of those don't work equally well ... but most of them are still available. 

Get them before Neeson does. 

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