By Lou Alpizar
In an appearance on Jimmy Fallon, Bryan Cranston confirmed there is a film in production that will give continuity and provide closure to the whole universe of Breaking Bad, the series where he co-starred along with Aaron Paul and that follows the dramatic rise and fall of Walter White, a chemistry professor who discovered his true calling by starting a lab to produce and traffic methamphetamines, according to his own recipe. Although the actor didn’t give many details -which made some people think he was joking-, in November 2018, AMC confirmed the film indeed exists and gave us a small synopsis, which indicated it is about a man who is kidnapped. Although details are still scarce, here are 5 theories about the plot of this film version of Vince Gilligan’s hit creation:
Breaking Good
First, the most logical theory: the movie should follow the series’ plot line. Walter died in the final episode, so his appearance would only be through flashbacks. Although it would be interesting to see this plot evolve, we do know that the film’s main character will be Jesse Pinkman whose future story was left unaccounted for: the last we see of him is when he walks away from White.
The synopsis provided by AMC is perfect for the story of Jesse at the end of the series. Breaking Bad is the story of a family man with an honorable job who turns into the chaotic, ruthless, and Machiavellian Heisenberg; Jesse, on his part, begins by being the bad apple of his whole ecosystem… It would be interesting to see, for example, how, in a cross-narrative experiment, Pinkman finds his own redemption and goes from being on the run from justice to maybe becoming a family man with an honorable job.
The Walking Bad
We know this will not happen, but it’s still worth mentioning. AMC currently produces another series that caused quite a stir for exploring the possibility of a zombie holocaust. Of course, we are talking about the TV adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s graphic novel The Walking Dead, which, in the same way that Breaking Bad spurred the creation of Better Call Saul, has its own spinoff titled simply Fear The Walking Dead, and its universe has expanded greatly -among other things, thanks to video games.
A theory has been circulated about the two series intersecting. In this theory, the two stories occur in the same universe, and the one to blame for the end of the world after the zombie holocaust is none other than “Blue Sky,” the blue narcotic White and Pinkman produce. The theory is so extensive that it deserves its own article, but we can say that even Kirkman has toyed with the idea in interviews and panels, even going as far as saying (it is not clear if it was a joke or not) that this idea indeed is canonical to the universe.
In addition to multiple easter eggs in TWD, we know that, according to Daryl Dixon, the antihero zombie fighter, his brother Merle bought drugs from “a weird little white guy who used to say ‘I’m going to kill you, bitch! ‘”, and that those drugs included the same Blue Sky product. Would you like to see a film that explores this event, the tragic collapse of humankind?
Writing Bad
Some rumors on the internet suggested that Walter’s death was a decoy, mainly because the last picture we saw of him was simply him bleeding in the lab, and everybody thought the obvious. However, the rumor suggests that the bullet wound he suffered was too small for him to bleed out in such a short time, and if we add the possibility that the paramedics could act quickly, it definitely makes us think that Walter lived another day to tell the tale.
This storyline could be seen as a stretch, trying to get something more out of a character already spent, but what if Walter White starred in the film, and he was more than just a memory? And what if he had a trial, or new drug lords decided to get their hands on the production of Blue Sky? We know very well that Heisenberg would never bow to any authority… at least not without trying to overthrow it first.
Breaking Free
Do you remember Jesse Pinkman’s epic rescue, with a machine gun mounted in the trunk of a car parked strategically outside the Nazis’ trailer, which would eliminate everyone but Jesse and Walter? Well, this ending was harshly criticized for being overly dramatic and elaborate.
Among the top critics of the series finale was Oliver Stone, director of films like Natural Born Killers, who added that the use of this type of violence in today’s entertainment was simply too much. Thanks to this, there’s a theory that “Feline,” the last episode was actually just Walter White’s dream: he never managed to start the car because the engine was frozen, so he got stuck, and he tried to start it with a screwdriver to escape from his shelter but simply froze to death, resulting in the infamous machine gun sequence, and him going to the local bar without being recognized, and his last conversation with Skyler and Walt Jr. The whole episode would then be simply the hallucinations of a man escaping from the raw -and literally cold- reality of his last moments. In short, we have an instant plot for the film, because if this theory is true, Jesse Pinkman never escaped from captivity, and the AMC synopsis becomes more literal than ever.
Whichever path the creators choose to take already has very high stakes, and it doesn’t look like the movie will be made just to be a cash grab. This could very well be the last piece of an already great story. Time will tell.
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