I first saw this at age 11, and I had to watch it three times before I was sure I wasn't hallucinating. This movie scared me away from ever trying drugs.
My dad had me watch this movie when I was around 6 or 7. Tip for parents: don't do that. I was scared the whole time. Did that stop me from listening to and singing the songs all throughout elementary school? No. Did it give me nightmares and make me cry repeatedly? Yes. Looking back and watching the movie again, I really love the style and I definitely have fond memories of bonding with my dad. However, I wished he had waited until I was a tiny bit older to show me this.
Thank you, I am so glad somebody else has expressed this. I am named after Tommy (Tom), my parents showed it me as a kid (around 6 or 7). It both simultaneously scared me for life and gave me a deep and profound love of the film and music. But like you, I just wish they had waited a bit. I have a son now. I am gonna wait till he's at least 10.
I can certainly see why. I think it's due to the fact that everything happens so sporadically throughout the film, without much explanation, such as when Tommy goes blind, mute, and I think deaf as well, all because he saw his mother kill her ex-husband. I'm still confused over that.
@jacksonfan4life I was completely freaked out by it, too. I saw it when I was 11 and I definitely should not have. I was way too young, It was not until a few weeks ago when I was watching Elton's "Pinball Wizard" clip (the only part of the film I really enjoyed) that YT recommended Eric Clapton's clip as The Preacher. I do not even remember him being in it at all. For me to block out Clapton proves to me how rattled I was by this film.
Every time I watch this movie I think why am I watching this, but I can't stop because it is so wierd I enjoy it especially Elton John and Jack Nicholson are singing.
I remember seeing all the adverts and hype for this film when I was a child. On a trip to London there were so many huge posters advertising Tommy. I really wanted to see it and never did. I still haven't seen it.
You should find a way to see it I started watching it the other day I like it so far at first it is a bit weird I thought it would be like the pink floyd movie where they kept the songs the same but after you get used to the actors singing instead of Pete or Roger it's all good
I watched it last night on You tube. The beginning was wild but it then kind of went down hill. So glad I've finally seen it. Using the word wild... so 70s.
I saw Tommy on August 1975 in Bristol, England, during my stay there. It was an amazing shock, wonderful shock; never seen a film like this one before.
I think Sony should do a special 40th anniversary edition Blu-ray and DVD, with interviews with Pete, Roger,Ann-Margaret, Elton and archival interviews with those deceased(John,Keith,Oliver Reed, Ken Russell).
David Wiseman YEAH! That would be really awesome if they did that but if they did, they shouldn't just include interviews, it should include featurettes,etc.
Yeah!! That is SOOO true! Tommy and Phantom of the Paradise along with Pink Floyd's The Wall are probably some of the most underrated masterpieces of all time.
This really is a gorgeous film! I recommend watching it twice! I recommend watching it twice; it’s a bit too much to take in at once, I kept having to pause it on the first time watching, I was enjoying it but it was just too much, I had to just pause it to let parts sink in; the film really doesn’t give you a break, second time watching was a lot more chilled as I knew what to expect and I could appreciate the beauty in a lot of parts a lot more :) :)
I remember seeing this movies as a kid and it terrified me and I thought the movie was weird it was shown on TV and I wanted to change the channel (no telly's in other rooms or internet then lol) and was told off by mu mum who was a massive WHO fan.
FUCK finally found it i been looking searching for the name of this film i saw it at age of 7 and i have moments when i can remember scenes but whenever i ask people no one can tell me the name and i feel ultra stupid because tina tuner in the movie shit now i can rest my brain.
I saw this at the theater when I was 3. I begged my parents to take me because I liked pinball. The soap scene gave me nightmares for years. I now still play pinball and have a twilight zone machine.
I thought the film was what Tommy saw in his head, as he has no real contact with the outside world, so the things he saw as a kid enlarged and got crazier and crazier. That was until he was healed, and everything stayed the same. I really enjoyed the first 2/3, but when he woke up, the novelty dwindled away. Also, it's on bbc iplayer now, until the 2nd November...
I saw the beautifully restored version of Tommy on 29th Nov 2019. What a trip, in all senses of the word. The religious scenes reminded me of Ken Russell's Catholic phase, when he made a film on Lourdes for the Catholic Film Institute. That fact is at least as bizarre as anything in Tommy. Sure enough, Tommy includes a procession of people in wheelchairs. And religious imagery galore. Seeing Tommy after the emergence of the Extinction Rebellion movement adds another dimension. There is the Swedish Ann Margaret putting on a gloriously bonkers performance. But probably not as deranged as Greta Thunberg's mum, who claims that Greta can see carbon dioxide. Tommy has a disabled young man becoming the focus of an intense religious cult....rather like St Greta.
oh wow, i saw like very small bits of this as a kid but never really retained any of the info, but this trailer and the song from elton john im now making a connection to the reference in spongebob- thats so funny
@@tommytoploader Meh. Personally I was underwhelmed by The Devils. Oliver Reed's performance was incredible as always but Vanessa Redgrave's grotesque caricature of a disabled person was laughable and after a strong start the film soon devolves into a goofy, histrionic mess. I'm sure it was very provocative in the 70's but by modern standards it just comes across as preachy and overly edgy. You could see more genuinely shocking material on an episode of South Park these days. Russell's visual style is intoxicating but narrative clearly wasn't his strength, and he was a lot more talented when it came to grandiose surrealism than genuine social commentary. Whatever point he was trying to make about religious intolerance and sexual repression was lost in a sea of hysterical overacting and stylized madness.
Personally I think the films is anything but preachy or 'edgy', which implies its horrors are for shock and titillation, when they're clearly meant to repulse. The 'grand surrealism' of the second half IS the social commentary, it highlights the gross absurdity of the Church's corruption, cruelty and hypocrisy. The film as whole is brimming with righteous anger at the atrocities that were historically committed in the name of faith as well as the sadistic corruption of the aristocracy represented by Louis XIII. It is Father Grandier who is the character who goes from flawed and hypocritical, to spiritually pure and true, and suffers the worst as result, where as the church is the decadent and perverted source of all the films pain and repression. I think it's a scathing criticism of the abuse of power that is still highly relevant today. It also depends on which version you have seen, as it has along history of censorship and unavailability of the longer cut. - You might find Redgrave's performance a grotesque caricature, but it is an excellent one and you could make the counter point that it's intentionally using caricature to highlight the characters own twisted inner conflict and would further add that people with disabilities weren't exactly treated with equal rights back then. So it's a performance that needs to be taken in context of both the time of the films setting, the time of the films productions and then contemporary sensibilities, as well as why it was stylised that way. @@silversnail1413
Saw it as a kid, prior to having the (real) album. It ruined it for me, even though I became a huge Who fan. Decades later I saw a small, trial stage version which was truly incredible. I finally get Tommy (the rock opera).
went to world premier ! date with a beautiful man Marc... first time ever did any type of drugs... what an experience!!! Boston when was best for sure love to find him 45 years later.....
I remember my elementary school took us on a fieldtrip to see this movie and it scared the crap out of me! I still remember thinking as a child when we were getting on the bus's how horrible I felt and thinking this was evil and not right. They were indoctrinating kids back then just like they are now! I actually think this movie is why so many kids got so messed up from drugs! Hollyweird did this and is still doing this.
The film is a bit messy for my liking. I saw a no frills concise stage production in Cardiff starring Jonathan Wilkes in about 2005 and with all of the psychedelic bollocks stripped away it was a brilliant story.
The psychedelic bollocks is what makes it. Tommy was never a story, it was a half-baked concept at best, none of the characters are developed and the events of the story are nebulous and vague. Even on the album the story doesn't come across very well and the music was always stronger than the actual concept. It lacks the narrative cohesion of The Who's later rock opera Quadrophenia and is more of an insane kaleidoscopic metaphor for fame. Watching a no frills version of Tommy is like watching a porno where nobody takes their clothes off, what the hell is the point?
All these old farts in the comments whining about how the movie traumatized them when they were kids. Pearls before swine. Today's generations grow up watching Netflix shit and Tik Tok and real art is harder to find in the mainstream than an honest politician. You don't know how good you had it back then.
I likeThe Who and and any negative replies against me are fine - but the fact is, that, as much as I like the music from Tommy, the storyline sucks. So a veteran survives from an awful plane crash and comes to, I guess what he thinks is home, and the lover of the mother kills him? What did they do with Captain Walker"s body, who knows? But the mother and lover proceed to mentally abuse the the child, who witnessed the murder, and made him deaf, blind, and dumb - wow, amazing - these 2 people should be in prison. They leave Tommy off with the even more abusive Uncle Ernie, but, ho hum, I guess this that it's okay that an abusive mother and abusive lover should leave their child off with an even more abusive uncle - I guess the mother and and lover needed a night out to go and party down So they try to get Tommy cures with the Doctor (I can't remember who played that part), and the acid queen (Tina Turner), the preacher (Eric Clapton). and the pinball wizard (Elton John) and I guess Tommy was cured by being a pinball wizard. Then Tommy becomes cured and he turns into an asshole with the whole Tommy's Holiday Camp scenario - then things went wrong with that and he decides he shouldn't be an asshole - and I guess, ho hum, the rest of us are supposed to get some meaning from this? Mr. Townsend, were you drunk or high when you wrote this??
Yes Tommy is an asshole pretty much through the whole movie. He just become much more of an asshole once he’s cured. Wrecked a lot of pinball machines, burned down an old building. Climbed a mountain in his blue jeans. High as fuck.
I'm pretty sure the movie's about how people sometimes treat famous people like gods, and how those same famous people can sometimes take advantage of their fame like Tommy does in the movie. Yeah, it doesn't make much sense that somehow Tommy goes dumb, deaf, and blind from being so traumatized or Tommy somehow becoming famous from playing pinball, but I think that's kind of what makes the movie more fun and better for me. It's a very "metaphorical" film, like it kind of exists in its own universe and stuff isn't meant to be taken 100% literally, like Tommy running through a volcano or a war zone or anything. Tommy sees his dad as a god, and when his dad dies, Tommy kind of sees himself as replacing his dad as this godly figure, and i think the pinballs are supposed to kind of represent the world in a way, so when Tommy is a master at pinball, its kind of Tommy's delusion of seeing himself as this godly figure who can bring world peace and can cure other people of being dumb, deaf, and blind. I saw the pinballs represent the world because there's alot of pinball imagery strewn in the environment, or circular imagery, like circular mirrors, chairs that look like pinballs, ect. It's definently not a film for everyone, cause it's weird as all hell, but I love it, and I've spent way too much time looking into it.
It's not meant to be taken literally; it's allegorical. Similar to The Wall, it describes a person shutting out the world and then finally overcoming his fears.
You forgot one thing: after Tommy realizes he shouldn't be an asshole, he swims all the way to a random mountain somewhere, and without resting, proceeds to climb it in his BARE FEET! ...Why?
I was a long-haired hippie in the 70s. Wore bell bottom pants and those wide collar shirts. Hitchhiked across the US to Philadelphia where I joined the Navy. Never watched this movie. For some reason it didn't appeal to me. Still doesn't. Saw Jesus Christ Superstar at a play at the California Theater(?) years ago here in "Berdoo" San Bernardino CA. Want to knock my head against solid objects thinking about what the 60s did to this country. Everything bad and evil happening with these Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots are the result of this country's rapid moral decline from the so-called "great" 1960s. Including the infiltration and subversion of communism. Read Manning Johnson's epic essay Color, Communism and Common Sense.
" Your senses will never be the same" at the end ... My life have never been the same ...The whole "Tommy"'s saga is a masterpiece .
I first saw this at age 11, and I had to watch it three times before I was sure I wasn't hallucinating. This movie scared me away from ever trying drugs.
Ha ha ha shit I thought of this movie the first time I did LSD!
I saw it when I was 10 some 25 years ago and it was so different and unique from the 90s, I just simply loved it.
@@shellierodarmel7282 I think I was on acid too! 😀
saw this for the first time at 10 i think? it was on tv and i watched it with my dad who’s been a fan since he was 12 it’s such a crazy good movie
Baaaaaaaaabyyyyyyyy
My dad had me watch this movie when I was around 6 or 7. Tip for parents: don't do that. I was scared the whole time. Did that stop me from listening to and singing the songs all throughout elementary school? No. Did it give me nightmares and make me cry repeatedly? Yes. Looking back and watching the movie again, I really love the style and I definitely have fond memories of bonding with my dad. However, I wished he had waited until I was a tiny bit older to show me this.
Thank you, I am so glad somebody else has expressed this. I am named after Tommy (Tom), my parents showed it me as a kid (around 6 or 7). It both simultaneously scared me for life and gave me a deep and profound love of the film and music. But like you, I just wish they had waited a bit. I have a son now. I am gonna wait till he's at least 10.
This movie used to scare me as a kid. I don't really know why. But I still feel eerie even as I watch this now
I can certainly see why. I think it's due to the fact that everything happens so sporadically throughout the film, without much explanation, such as when Tommy goes blind, mute, and I think deaf as well, all because he saw his mother kill her ex-husband. I'm still confused over that.
I was just telling a friend this same thing. Was too disturbing to watch as a kid! Little freaked out about it to this day.
They were probably all drugged up when they made it!
No I can completely see it!!
@jacksonfan4life I was completely freaked out by it, too. I saw it when I was 11 and I definitely should not have. I was way too young, It was not until a few weeks ago when I was watching Elton's "Pinball Wizard" clip (the only part of the film I really enjoyed) that YT recommended Eric Clapton's clip as The Preacher. I do not even remember him being in it at all. For me to block out Clapton proves to me how rattled I was by this film.
I was 14 when i saw this it blew me away. I was alone in the theater. I wept.
Wow the way they made trailers in the 70s...
Fascinating
Every time I watch this movie I think why am I watching this, but I can't stop because it is so wierd I enjoy it especially Elton John and Jack Nicholson are singing.
I remember seeing this movie at a drive-in theater in the 1970s. I still don’t get it.
Elton John is still a custom character.
I remember seeing all the adverts and hype for this film when I was a child. On a trip to London there were so many huge posters advertising Tommy. I really wanted to see it and never did. I still haven't seen it.
You should find a way to see it I started watching it the other day I like it so far at first it is a bit weird I thought it would be like the pink floyd movie where they kept the songs the same but after you get used to the actors singing instead of Pete or Roger it's all good
I watched it last night on You tube. The beginning was wild but it then kind of went down hill. So glad I've finally seen it.
Using the word wild... so 70s.
My sister was working so her visiting bf took me & I was only 13. Lol
For Anyone who does not love Tommy You are dead inside.still watching and Listening to You. 2020.
This entire movie, at 3am when you're 8 years old. Talk about scarred...
u should have been in bed...
@@ketchup143 I 100% agree
Best scare ever
i came here to say the same thing.
Same here. I was so confused and weirded out, but kept watching anyway. I was 7 years old.
This film was off it's head, gave me nightmares as a kid !
I saw Tommy on August 1975 in Bristol, England, during my stay there.
It was an amazing shock, wonderful shock; never seen a film like this one before.
I love this film ! The best cast in a music film in history. I learn english with this album. Long Live Rock !
I saw this as a young teen, awesome.
I think Sony should do a special 40th anniversary edition Blu-ray and DVD, with interviews with Pete, Roger,Ann-Margaret, Elton and archival interviews with those deceased(John,Keith,Oliver Reed, Ken Russell).
David Wiseman YEAH! That would be really awesome if they did that but if they did, they shouldn't just include interviews, it should include featurettes,etc.
+David Wiseman the special features you suggest would be nice, but if you look up Project Pop Art Tommy Steelbook, you might find that it fits.
My mother put this in vhs in 1991,i haved 5 yrs on time,now i know my self better after remember this lost memory.
This movie is amazing but it is SO underrated!
+TheVarietyBros So is 'Phantom of the Paradise' from 1974.
Yeah!! That is SOOO true! Tommy and Phantom of the Paradise along with Pink Floyd's The Wall are probably some of the most underrated masterpieces of all time.
Umbelivable.....as movie, as picture, as actors, as music, never could be the same after this masterpiece..
Happy 40th Anniversary in MMXV, Tommy!
This really is a gorgeous film! I recommend watching it twice! I recommend watching it twice; it’s a bit too much to take in at once, I kept having to pause it on the first time watching, I was enjoying it but it was just too much, I had to just pause it to let parts sink in; the film really doesn’t give you a break, second time watching was a lot more chilled as I knew what to expect and I could appreciate the beauty in a lot of parts a lot more :) :)
Love the WHO !
Pete Townshend is a musical genius.
I love this movie, man.
You're sick Man 👹
I was an Elton John fanatic and my mom forbid me to see this movie when I was 13. I never quite got over it.
A total blast from the past, given I grew up around where a lot of it was filmed, in or around Portsmouth (UK).
WHAT…. how has no one ever told me about this?!?
It’s great-
Memories📽🎞
Great!
I need this..
Acid isn't optional when watching this film.
I remember seeing this movies as a kid and it terrified me and I thought the movie was weird it was shown on TV and I wanted to change the channel (no telly's in other rooms or internet then lol) and was told off by mu mum who was a massive WHO fan.
FUCK finally found it i been looking searching for the name of this film i saw it at age of 7 and i have moments when i can remember scenes but whenever i ask people no one can tell me the name and i feel ultra stupid because tina tuner in the movie shit now i can rest my brain.
how can you 4get a fucking who movie
I would love to see this movie. So many answers
I saw this at the theater when I was 3. I begged my parents to take me because I liked pinball. The soap scene gave me nightmares for years. I now still play pinball and have a twilight zone machine.
This is my one of favorite movie and Jesus Christ superstar
I thought the film was what Tommy saw in his head, as he has no real contact with the outside world, so the things he saw as a kid enlarged and got crazier and crazier. That was until he was healed, and everything stayed the same. I really enjoyed the first 2/3, but when he woke up, the novelty dwindled away. Also, it's on bbc iplayer now, until the 2nd November...
I would love to find the video of TINA TURNER song! Daughter is to play part on a stage production and I guess I will have to sit thru the whole DVD.
I don't miss this film.
I saw the beautifully restored version of Tommy on 29th Nov 2019. What a trip, in all senses of the word. The religious scenes reminded me of Ken Russell's Catholic phase, when he made a film on Lourdes for the Catholic Film Institute. That fact is at least as bizarre as anything in Tommy. Sure enough, Tommy includes a procession of people in wheelchairs. And religious imagery galore.
Seeing Tommy after the emergence of the Extinction Rebellion movement adds another dimension. There is the Swedish Ann Margaret putting on a gloriously bonkers performance. But probably not as deranged as Greta Thunberg's mum, who claims that Greta can see carbon dioxide. Tommy has a disabled young man becoming the focus of an intense religious cult....rather like St Greta.
oh wow, i saw like very small bits of this as a kid but never really retained any of the info, but this trailer and the song from elton john im now making a connection to the reference in spongebob- thats so funny
very awesome movie ,..about all of us
This is absolutely one of Ken Russell’s best motion pictures in cinema history
The Devils might have something to say about that.
@@tommytoploader Meh. Personally I was underwhelmed by The Devils. Oliver Reed's performance was incredible as always but Vanessa Redgrave's grotesque caricature of a disabled person was laughable and after a strong start the film soon devolves into a goofy, histrionic mess. I'm sure it was very provocative in the 70's but by modern standards it just comes across as preachy and overly edgy. You could see more genuinely shocking material on an episode of South Park these days. Russell's visual style is intoxicating but narrative clearly wasn't his strength, and he was a lot more talented when it came to grandiose surrealism than genuine social commentary. Whatever point he was trying to make about religious intolerance and sexual repression was lost in a sea of hysterical overacting and stylized madness.
Personally I think the films is anything but preachy or 'edgy', which implies its horrors are for shock and titillation, when they're clearly meant to repulse. The 'grand surrealism' of the second half IS the social commentary, it highlights the gross absurdity of the Church's corruption, cruelty and hypocrisy. The film as whole is brimming with righteous anger at the atrocities that were historically committed in the name of faith as well as the sadistic corruption of the aristocracy represented by Louis XIII. It is Father Grandier who is the character who goes from flawed and hypocritical, to spiritually pure and true, and suffers the worst as result, where as the church is the decadent and perverted source of all the films pain and repression. I think it's a scathing criticism of the abuse of power that is still highly relevant today. It also depends on which version you have seen, as it has along history of censorship and unavailability of the longer cut. - You might find Redgrave's performance a grotesque caricature, but it is an excellent one and you could make the counter point that it's intentionally using caricature to highlight the characters own twisted inner conflict and would further add that people with disabilities weren't exactly treated with equal rights back then. So it's a performance that needs to be taken in context of both the time of the films setting, the time of the films productions and then contemporary sensibilities, as well as why it was stylised that way. @@silversnail1413
great
Saw it as a kid, prior to having the (real) album. It ruined it for me, even though I became a huge Who fan. Decades later I saw a small, trial stage version which was truly incredible. I finally get Tommy (the rock opera).
I still have traumas from that film, sick psychodelia
thanks to this movie I knew 2 things
1. Pinball is older than I thought
2. That Elton Jhon acted in a movie
I don't think this movie had had more than 3 lines of actual dialogue xD
~ Sakura Stardust ~ Oh girlfriend, it's an OPERA!
sakura stardust is right it was pathetic . as most operas are . .
It didn't need "actual dialogue." It's perfect just the way it is.
went to world premier ! date with a beautiful man Marc... first time ever did any type of drugs... what an experience!!! Boston when was best for sure love to find him 45 years later.....
Tem algum BR aí ?
Se tiver tem algum app onde possa ver esse filme legendado?
Herr Speckner wo sind Sie
Hauptschule Levis 1986
I remember my elementary school took us on a fieldtrip to see this movie and it scared the crap out of me! I still remember thinking as a child when we were getting on the bus's how horrible I felt and thinking this was evil and not right. They were indoctrinating kids back then just like they are now! I actually think this movie is why so many kids got so messed up from drugs! Hollyweird did this and is still doing this.
ROCK OPERA TOMMY
THE WHO
Please explain this film to me I just saw it and don’t understand any of it
Tommy is cool sicko
I saw the movie only just to see Elton John
Yeah, because Pete Townsend the writer and everyone in this movie was on LSD when it was made. Doing drugs in the 1970's was very common back then.
is doing drugs in the 70s not common anymore?
@@Yaroslavkl no cuz it’s no longer the 70’s
The movie is hilarious but also so weird.
What's the song at 1:34 called?
Champagne.
Listen to the album.
Crazy too much to me.
This is like Pink Floyd The Wall
So bad....
It’s good
all star cast, so fuckin' cult! oh yeah I liked it...!!!
as good as the music is, it's an upsetting movie
Tommy Charbo
FUCKING GREAT TRAILER FOR ONE OF THE FUCKING GREATEST MOVIES EVER!!
The film is a bit messy for my liking. I saw a no frills concise stage production in Cardiff starring Jonathan Wilkes in about 2005 and with all of the psychedelic bollocks stripped away it was a brilliant story.
The psychedelic bollocks is what makes it. Tommy was never a story, it was a half-baked concept at best, none of the characters are developed and the events of the story are nebulous and vague. Even on the album the story doesn't come across very well and the music was always stronger than the actual concept. It lacks the narrative cohesion of The Who's later rock opera Quadrophenia and is more of an insane kaleidoscopic metaphor for fame. Watching a no frills version of Tommy is like watching a porno where nobody takes their clothes off, what the hell is the point?
Whatever
All these old farts in the comments whining about how the movie traumatized them when they were kids. Pearls before swine. Today's generations grow up watching Netflix shit and Tik Tok and real art is harder to find in the mainstream than an honest politician. You don't know how good you had it back then.
I likeThe Who and and any negative replies against me are fine - but the fact is, that, as much as I like the music from Tommy, the storyline sucks. So a veteran survives from an awful plane crash and comes to, I guess what he thinks is home, and the lover of the mother kills him? What did they do with Captain Walker"s body, who knows? But the mother and lover proceed to mentally abuse the the child, who witnessed the murder, and made him deaf, blind, and dumb - wow, amazing - these 2 people should be in prison. They leave Tommy off with the even more abusive Uncle Ernie, but, ho hum, I guess this that it's okay that an abusive mother and abusive lover should leave their child off with an even more abusive uncle - I guess the mother and and lover needed a night out to go and party down So they try to get Tommy cures with the Doctor (I can't remember who played that part), and the acid queen (Tina Turner), the preacher (Eric Clapton). and the pinball wizard (Elton John) and I guess Tommy was cured by being a pinball wizard. Then Tommy becomes cured and he turns into an asshole with the whole Tommy's Holiday Camp scenario - then things went wrong with that and he decides he shouldn't be an asshole - and I guess, ho hum, the rest of us are supposed to get some meaning from this? Mr. Townsend, were you drunk or high when you wrote this??
dave Skerritt both
Yes Tommy is an asshole pretty much through the whole movie. He just become much more of an asshole once he’s cured. Wrecked a lot of pinball machines, burned down an old building. Climbed a mountain in his blue jeans. High as fuck.
I'm pretty sure the movie's about how people sometimes treat famous people like gods, and how those same famous people can sometimes take advantage of their fame like Tommy does in the movie. Yeah, it doesn't make much sense that somehow Tommy goes dumb, deaf, and blind from being so traumatized or Tommy somehow becoming famous from playing pinball, but I think that's kind of what makes the movie more fun and better for me. It's a very "metaphorical" film, like it kind of exists in its own universe and stuff isn't meant to be taken 100% literally, like Tommy running through a volcano or a war zone or anything. Tommy sees his dad as a god, and when his dad dies, Tommy kind of sees himself as replacing his dad as this godly figure, and i think the pinballs are supposed to kind of represent the world in a way, so when Tommy is a master at pinball, its kind of Tommy's delusion of seeing himself as this godly figure who can bring world peace and can cure other people of being dumb, deaf, and blind. I saw the pinballs represent the world because there's alot of pinball imagery strewn in the environment, or circular imagery, like circular mirrors, chairs that look like pinballs, ect. It's definently not a film for everyone, cause it's weird as all hell, but I love it, and I've spent way too much time looking into it.
It's not meant to be taken literally; it's allegorical. Similar to The Wall, it describes a person shutting out the world and then finally overcoming his fears.
You forgot one thing: after Tommy realizes he shouldn't be an asshole, he swims all the way to a random mountain somewhere, and without resting, proceeds to climb it in his BARE FEET!
...Why?
that movie is fucked up as shit
I was a long-haired hippie in the 70s. Wore bell bottom pants and those wide collar shirts. Hitchhiked across the US to Philadelphia where I joined the Navy. Never watched this movie. For some reason it didn't appeal to me. Still doesn't. Saw Jesus Christ Superstar at a play at the California Theater(?) years ago here in "Berdoo" San Bernardino CA. Want to knock my head against solid objects thinking about what the 60s did to this country. Everything bad and evil happening with these Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots are the result of this country's rapid moral decline from the so-called "great" 1960s. Including the infiltration and subversion of communism. Read Manning Johnson's epic essay Color, Communism and Common Sense.
Cringe movie
Still holds its own as one of the stupidest movies ever made.
I think you mean of the the most gloriously weird and wonderful movies ever made
terrible cheesy film"
This movie is an aesthetic and cinematic garbage. The Wall, Hair, Singing in the rain, Fiddler on the roof, Footloose ladies and gentlemen.