Jan. 25th, 2020 09:53 pm
More Boyd Swan meta.
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thrillingdetectivetalesI’ve seen Fury—and hate!read David Ayers’s original script—enough times by now to have the whole canon narrative pretty well pinned to memory. As with all narratives, I know we’re only seeing into a limited window of the characters’ overall chronology, but every time I watch this flick I walk away with more questions.
Today, while watching Boyd Swan peruse his well-loved, Army issue Bible, I got to wondering: why does Boyd have an Army issue Bible at all?
This is a character defined by his faith, a character who is, in Ayers’s original script, “a pastor’s kid from Des Moines” who was in divinity college prior to enlisting. While the childhood in Iowa didn’t necessarily stick around, given LaBeouf’s accent, and neither did the dig about divinity college, the devout belief in a greater power certainly did, and the kind of faith Boyd has is the kind of faith that suggests my boy probably has his own copy of the Bible sitting around somewhere. Men carted all manner of impractical keepsakes along with them to war, and I cannot fathom why a character who is so unerringly devoted to his beliefs that his wartime nickname is Bible would leave his own personal copy of the good book at home.
There are several answers to this question one could explore, the first and probably least likely of which being that it was an accident. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a man like Boyd would leave behind unless he was fleeing at speed without the opportunity to go home. Like, if Boyd woke up and his house was on fire, dollars to doughnuts he would nab his Bible off the nightstand before elbow-crawling his way to safety. At least, that’s the kind of relationship Ayers portrays Bible as having with his faith. But I confess that it is an interesting thought experiment to consider what could have had Boyd abandoning his home at such a breakneck pace.
He could also have purposely left it at home but that begs the question of why, and who with? He wears one wedding ring on his right hand and another on a chain with his dog tags, so either we’re supposed to take it that he was married at one point and something happened to his wife, or else the rings belonged to his parents. Either way it pretty handily knocks out the most immediate candidates he might have trusted to hang onto his copy of the Bible while he was away doing the Lord’s work on the battlefield. If, as is probably the case, we assume that the rings are, in fact, Boyd’s and his wife’s, we can pretty easily extrapolate that she’s no longer among the living, and it wouldn’t make sense for him to leave his Bible behind with his parents if his father’s a pastor. He could, of course, have a sibling or siblings he left it with but it’s not something Ayers saw fit to mention either in the final cut of the film or the (heinously awful) original script, so it isn’t necessarily the most promising avenue of exploration.
Answer number two feels likelier but also a mite less interesting: Boyd did bring his Bible with him when he went off to the Army but something happened to it during his tenure before the timeline of the movie starts. Maybe Don got sick of his preaching one day and pitched it into the ocean, maybe Boyd left it with a group of liberated citizens who seemed lost in the face of having to put their shattered lives back together, maybe—if his movie-timeline Bible is anything to go by—it fell apart under frequent indelicate handling. Regardless of his original Bible’s fate, Boyd would have to either 1) have had his new, Army issue copy for awhile, or 2) be in the habit of severely abusing his religious literature for his Bible to be in the state it is when we finally see it. Both are possible and could be convincing given the right argument but again, neither feels right at a glance.
Answer three is an interesting one though it doesn’t really track based on the previously mentioned character background: Boyd wasn’t a man of faith when he entered his service in the Army but became one somewhere along the way. It would probably have to have been pretty early, again given by how battered his Bible is by the time we catch up with the crew in April of 1945. I don’t think this is an especially strong contender to explain the Army issue Bible conundrum but it does add an interesting piece of context to Don, Grady, and Gordo’s general eye-rolling and impatience with Boyd’s piety.
Realistically, I know that the likelihood is that Ayers et. al. just didn’t think through the prop choice when they were outfitting the character, but the approach one takes on that detail has the capacity to inform Boyd’s backstory in a really tremendous way. I feel like it’s worth really thinking through an answer to the question before committing it to the realm of headcanon.
Anyway, these are the kinds of stupid things I mull over in bed while trying to fall asleep. If you’ve got a theory or some thoughts on my most recent bit of Boyd-based mouth-frothing, I’d love to hear them.
Today, while watching Boyd Swan peruse his well-loved, Army issue Bible, I got to wondering: why does Boyd have an Army issue Bible at all?
This is a character defined by his faith, a character who is, in Ayers’s original script, “a pastor’s kid from Des Moines” who was in divinity college prior to enlisting. While the childhood in Iowa didn’t necessarily stick around, given LaBeouf’s accent, and neither did the dig about divinity college, the devout belief in a greater power certainly did, and the kind of faith Boyd has is the kind of faith that suggests my boy probably has his own copy of the Bible sitting around somewhere. Men carted all manner of impractical keepsakes along with them to war, and I cannot fathom why a character who is so unerringly devoted to his beliefs that his wartime nickname is Bible would leave his own personal copy of the good book at home.
There are several answers to this question one could explore, the first and probably least likely of which being that it was an accident. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a man like Boyd would leave behind unless he was fleeing at speed without the opportunity to go home. Like, if Boyd woke up and his house was on fire, dollars to doughnuts he would nab his Bible off the nightstand before elbow-crawling his way to safety. At least, that’s the kind of relationship Ayers portrays Bible as having with his faith. But I confess that it is an interesting thought experiment to consider what could have had Boyd abandoning his home at such a breakneck pace.
He could also have purposely left it at home but that begs the question of why, and who with? He wears one wedding ring on his right hand and another on a chain with his dog tags, so either we’re supposed to take it that he was married at one point and something happened to his wife, or else the rings belonged to his parents. Either way it pretty handily knocks out the most immediate candidates he might have trusted to hang onto his copy of the Bible while he was away doing the Lord’s work on the battlefield. If, as is probably the case, we assume that the rings are, in fact, Boyd’s and his wife’s, we can pretty easily extrapolate that she’s no longer among the living, and it wouldn’t make sense for him to leave his Bible behind with his parents if his father’s a pastor. He could, of course, have a sibling or siblings he left it with but it’s not something Ayers saw fit to mention either in the final cut of the film or the (heinously awful) original script, so it isn’t necessarily the most promising avenue of exploration.
Answer number two feels likelier but also a mite less interesting: Boyd did bring his Bible with him when he went off to the Army but something happened to it during his tenure before the timeline of the movie starts. Maybe Don got sick of his preaching one day and pitched it into the ocean, maybe Boyd left it with a group of liberated citizens who seemed lost in the face of having to put their shattered lives back together, maybe—if his movie-timeline Bible is anything to go by—it fell apart under frequent indelicate handling. Regardless of his original Bible’s fate, Boyd would have to either 1) have had his new, Army issue copy for awhile, or 2) be in the habit of severely abusing his religious literature for his Bible to be in the state it is when we finally see it. Both are possible and could be convincing given the right argument but again, neither feels right at a glance.
Answer three is an interesting one though it doesn’t really track based on the previously mentioned character background: Boyd wasn’t a man of faith when he entered his service in the Army but became one somewhere along the way. It would probably have to have been pretty early, again given by how battered his Bible is by the time we catch up with the crew in April of 1945. I don’t think this is an especially strong contender to explain the Army issue Bible conundrum but it does add an interesting piece of context to Don, Grady, and Gordo’s general eye-rolling and impatience with Boyd’s piety.
Realistically, I know that the likelihood is that Ayers et. al. just didn’t think through the prop choice when they were outfitting the character, but the approach one takes on that detail has the capacity to inform Boyd’s backstory in a really tremendous way. I feel like it’s worth really thinking through an answer to the question before committing it to the realm of headcanon.
Anyway, these are the kinds of stupid things I mull over in bed while trying to fall asleep. If you’ve got a theory or some thoughts on my most recent bit of Boyd-based mouth-frothing, I’d love to hear them.
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Or maybe it's newer and Don keeps taking it away and hitting people with it.
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