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Movies are a heightened sense of reality. Mix that medium with Vegas and even bad movies are somehow made better, because at least it’s in Vegas. 360 Vegas POV, or Vegas Point of View, is our opportunity to look beyond the narrative of a film and see the filmmakers vision for the city of Las Vegas.
In this installment of 360 Vegas POV, we continue our analysis of Martin Scorsese's movie Casino by breaking down two scenes that will help to establish the geographic layout for the movie's version of the city of Las Vegas. While we do that, we'll compare the films version of Vegas to the one that actually existed at the time as well as today. But before we do that, lets reestablish the rules.
We want to see how close the movie storyline matches what really happened. We'll start by assuming both are exactly the same and analyze the movie to either confirm this or establish that they're different. As we encounter moments that conflict with the chronological events, we'll acknowledge them, then remove them from the equation so we can move on connecting the moments in time that still match up. We'll continue doing this until we're finally shown something that breaks the last connection we have, to the continuity of the real events.
Regarding the landscape, we will allow it to help us progress in the timeline but not to establish a break in it. Conflicts will simply be documented differences between the movie landscape and the real one. That being said, one rule we will make is you can only reconfigure, either in location or in its evolution. The moment something can't simply be reconfigured to explain what you are seeing, the game is over. That includes making changes to the infrastructure. IE, things like roads and landmarks exist exactly as they are, or were, in the Las Vegas until something is shown to force us to relocate them. So if we are driving along the strip and after the Flamingo we see the Golden Nugget, then that's where the Golden Nugget exists in films version of Las Vegas. It doesn't become a problem until we see the Golden Nugget shown again but located in a different geographical location
