I continue to be confused about the politics of this universe. Do the white super elite ruling class who put the NFFA into power actually believe purging works? There seem to be two distinct and different answers to this question. On the one hand, there's an undertone of the purge being used by the super elite as a cynical form of population control against the poor--we'll sit safe in our homes and watch as the lower class eats itself alive, and if it looks like they're not playing along we'll send a few trucks with chainguns through the neighborhoods to move things along. On the other hand, those same super elites seem to also enjoy watching and applauding with zombie-like aplomb as people are brutally murdered in front of them (or in some cases participating wholeheartedly in said murdering). So which is it? Is the purge a lie intended to keep the underprivileged in check, or is it a real thing where witnessing or participating in brutality once a year gives some kind of actual benefit? Or are those two distinct groups of people within the super elite who have formed some weird mutually-beneficial partnership? So far the movies just kind of limply flip-flop between the two ideas however it suits them at the moment.

And that's not even mentioning the logistics of the purge itself. Are you really telling me that having the entire country destroy itself--cities burned to the ground, every store looted and destroyed, some percentage of the population wiped out--every single year is actually somehow financially beneficial to the super elite? And, given the state of the cities at the beginning of each movie, that people mindlessly rebuild and restock and go on with their lives knowing that it will all be torn down again anyway in another year? Please. The idea of "purge insurance" in this entry was particularly funny (probably intentionally). Who in their right mind would insure anyone against the purge? We can't even get companies in the USA to reliably insure against unpredictable problems, let alone a problem that's all but guaranteed to cost them an arm and a leg every single year.

Anyway, still kinda loved it.