Purpose: JOI made it to reach Hal — the weapon use is downstream hijack
the best explanation of the cited pages, barred from strongly-supported by the POV cap and the composition rule.
Where readers stand
majority
majority (communication-first), uncontested where discussed; the corpus treats the weapon reading as frame, not motive.
In plain terms: JOI made the film to reach his son Hal; its use as a weapon is a later hijack by others.
Where the text lands: communication-first is the best-supported reading, with the narrower point that weapon deployment (by the separatists) is the downstream hijack. Among readers: the dominant reading, uncontested where discussed -- the corpus treats the weapon angle as frame, not motive.
The lethality and danger were present from the film's conception, but the motive the text and author records point to is contact with Hal, failing by over-soothing him. The love-letter and the weapon are, in the essay's framing, the same object. See Entertainment and the Self.
The question
This reading answers the crux what JOI made it *for* (communication vs. weapon).
The ruling
Weighed in the adversarial ledger James O. Incandenza's Death.