Bloodshot has one of the best mid-movie twists of any superhero flick, but that big reveal
comes at a cost.
There simply isn't enough time in Bloodshot's short runtime to explain what's real, what's
not, and how everything fits together.
We'd really, really like some of these answers.
It's impossible to talk about Bloodshot without giving away the big twist: Nothing that Ray
Garrison remembers about his past is real.
His daring hostage rescue?
His luxurious Italian vacation with his beautiful wife, Gina?
Their murder at the hands of a crazed terrorist?
All fabrications of Rising Spirit Technologies, the military contractor that's been wiping
away Ray's memories and replacing them with fantasies designed to make him the ultimate
weapon.
So, then, who is Ray?
Bloodshot looks like it's going to tell us when Ray tracks down Gina, but doesn't actually
give us any answers.
From what Gina says, we can infer that Ray really was a member of the military, and really
did go on highly classified missions.
His name actually is Ray, and his relationship with Gina ended five years before the movie
takes place.
That's all we really know.
"You know nothing about men like me."
You said it, Ray.
Given how much of the movie seems to hinge on Bloodshot's mistaken identity, it's strange
that we didn't get any answers to this question at all.
RST's nanites are miraculous in many ways.
Not only do they give their owner superpowers, but if you believe RST founder and lead scientist
Emil Harting, they also bring people back from the dead.
But is that true?
As we've seen, it's hard to take Dr. Harting at his word, and Ray's death is a fake memory.
Not only is Ray's real cause of death left unexplained, but it's not even clear that
he actually died in the first place.
For example, Gina is surprised to see Ray when he shows up unannounced at her door,
but she's not that surprised.
It's the kind of shock that comes from running into a former lover unexpectedly, not from
seeing a dead ex-boyfriend suddenly risen from the grave.
If Ray had passed away, you'd expect that Gina would've at least heard about it ... they're
not together any more, but they clearly still care about each other ... unless RST covered
it up.
And if they did, then we're back to the original question: What happened that needed to be
kept under wraps?
Bloodshot isn't actually hunting terrorists.
He's tracking down and killing former RST employees, who Dr. Harting fears will spill
the company's secrets to competitors.
What we don't know, however, is why all of these people left their presumably high-paying
jobs doing cutting-edge research in the first place.
And for that matter, why did Harting let everyone go in the first place?
When KT tries to defect, Harting turns off her implant, making it impossible to leave.
Harting clearly isn't above using violence to keep his employees in line ... why didn't
he stop the problem before it started, rather than force a supersoldier to clean up his
mess later?
By the end of the film, RST's servers have been blown to pieces, its CEO and former executives
are all dead, and its corporate headquarters are in shambles.
For all intents and purposes, it's done and gone.
It also collapsed in a fairly public fashion, too.
A superhero brawl doesn't happen on a busy city street without anyone noticing.
There's bound to be some cellphone footage of the fight out there.
Even Justice League got that right.
In the past, this is the sort of thing that RST would've covered up.
Now, though?
There's nothing stopping an in-depth investigation from happening, or keeping a lid on the fact
that a military contractor has created superheroes, who now walk among us.
Repercussions seem inevitable, but Bloodshot doesn't offer any clues as to how they'll
play out.
Gina DeCarlo still cares about Ray Garrison, but she's no longer in love with him.
Gina makes that very, very clear when Ray shows up on her doorstep, looking for answers,
and she dismisses him with a simple but telling phrase: "I have a family."
That being said, Gina seems to have gotten that family awfully quickly.
She broke up with Ray five years ago, but that's a very quick time to get over a major
relationship, start a new one, get married, and have at least two children, one of whom
looks like she's at least four years old.
Besides that, Ray shares one long, meaningful look with Gina's daughter that implies there's
a little more to this story than Gina is letting on.
That glance stands out because it's such a weird, awkward moment.
And besides, why don't we see Gina's other kid, or meet her husband?
Everything in the way the scene is shot seems to imply that one, if not both, of the kids
are Ray's.
At the same time, there's no real evidence in either the dialogue or the story to support
the theory that Ray is secretly the child's father.
Is that just the product of some odd editing choices, or is there something more going
on?
Emil Harting lies about everything.
He just can't stop himself.
Obviously, for his scheme to work, some fibs are necessary.
Ray needs to believe that his wife was murdered, and that a former RST employee pulled the
trigger.
However, that doesn't explain everything.
When rebooting Bloodshot, it sounds like Emil changes small details in Bloodshot's origin
story just for fun.
"And we're gonna put this memory in your head and we're going to weaponize you.
We're gonna get you to do what we want you to do, because we can."
Take Harting's backstory, for example.
When we first meet Harting, the not-so-good doctor says that he was a childhood tennis
prodigy who then lost his arm to cancer.
The second time, however, Harting decides to tell Ray he played cricket.
Not only is that strange but it raises another question: Is any part of Harting's story true,
and if not, what really happened to his arm?
"Did you ever figure out what happened to your arm?
Nope."
In fact, if Harting is lying about his own injury, who's to say that Tibbs and Dalton's
histories are any more accurate?
Were they even soldiers?
Not that it matters too much ... they're all dead either way ... but it's certainly something
to think about.
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