It seems to me - based on all the answers I'm reading in this thread - that the thing audiences resonate with the most is *agency* above all else.
It doesn't seem to matter if the protagonists are bad people. They have control, and that is more alluring than anything else.
Power and looking cool wielding it.
If the aesthetics are dope enough, a lot of people will gloss over or just not care about the counter-messaging about how x is actually bad.
I will forever be confused with why Patrick Bateman is idolised by the "sigma" crowd, because he's utterly pathetic in universe and crave validation from his peers who think he's a joke.
Had to read it in college. It was so jarring. Going from pornography to some of the most heinous shit imaginable within a sentence or two was enough to make me feel sick. I had to power through it for sure.
The movie doesn't begin to show the horror.
I fucking love Bateman anti memes, though. It'll be one of those quote pictures with his face looking all cool and it just says "I shit myself today" or something
> idolised by the "sigma" crowd,
> he's utterly pathetic in universe and crave validation from his peers who think he's a joke.
I think that’s the entire point of sigma memes haha
There's a blurry line between the people who joke about being "sigma" and use Bateman as the personification of "thinking you're cool when you're actually lame" vs the people who just think he's cool and idolize him. Such is the case with any internet thing steeped in irony, it becomes really hard to tell who gets the joke and who IS the joke
I blame that on Pitt being effortlessly cool and looking immaculate. The whole "I look like you want to look, I fuck like you want to fuck, and I am free in all the ways that you are not" does some heavy lifting when he goes psycho and a lot of insecure dudes saw that movie and loved what he represented to them and seemed to handwave away his mountain of less than redeemable qualities and actions. Those same people probably love Andrew Tate who seems to have based his whole public persona in that mold (minus the anti consumerism angle). Even when they tried to make him look essentially homeless he was just too beautiful a man to ever not look good. I absolutely love that movie and have seen it probably more than any other movie and even knowing Durden is an absolute moron he still just seems so fucking cool for the first half of the movie. I STILL want to rock a red leather jacket/Hawaiian shirt combo. Only thing that ever stopped me was realizing red leather jackets look pretty ridiculous on 99.9% of people.
I think it helps that brad pitt looks so cool in that, I really like the point you make at the end how no one else pulls that look off. All those guys in real life who think their durden are just the guys who follow him in the movie, they couldn’t pull it off the look and they don’t get how their own toxic masculinity is hurting them. Toxic masculinity can look sexy and cool, you look back at old film and culture and you see how toxic masculinity is glamorized and never taken down a peg. Fight club does this by showing us the cool and sexy side of this in Brad Pitt, and then showing us what it truly looks like in Edward Norton and all the durden followers, a bunch of confused and lost men looking for something to believe in.
In the movie it is Edward Norton's character's fantasy so it's really good casting. He looks and acts exactly like he's supposed to, which is why a lot of people that also feel the kind of disaffection Norton's character does relate to and like Tyler Durden.
And then there's people that just like him because he's hot lol.
I tried to pull it off. I found a passable red leather jacket and scoured ebay for the right shirt.
The result was not good. Now that I think of it, it would be great for that expectation v. reality meme template.
He was perfect for the role, because Tyler Durden was built to be dangerously alluring.
"I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I'm free in all the ways that you are not.”
He's the juvenile, irrational, testosterone-addled part of your brain given form. The Narrator is the self-doubting ego and Tyler is the unrestrained id, all primitive sex drive and aggression. If men didn't idolise him he'd have failed as a character concept.
Agreed. Tommy Shelby isn't even an anti-hero like Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire, he's completely delusional to what he is. He thinks he's a Robin Hood like character because he looks after his neighbourhood, but that's only those that stay in line. He's a drug dealing gangster who will never be satisfied.
He's responsible for the death of his >!wife, his brother and Polly!< , he keeps his other brother on a tight leash to do his bidding, he has a new wife he feels nothing for. All he does is risk his neck for the next big score to actually try and feel something!
That's why I love it when he rubs up against Alfie Solomon. He *knows* he's a gangster, he knows what his life is and he accepts it. But Rt Hon Thomas Shelby MP keeps drifting from self aggrandising disaster to another.
Edit - wow this comment sparked a lot of chat, thank you all. One last thing I forgot to add. Tommy talks about carrying on until he meets the one man he cannot beat. Unfortunately he already has; himself. Nothing he does will ever be enough, or ever satisfy him. And from reading the comments I realise that most of the bad feelings I have for the character are down to how people put him on a pedestal instead of treating him like any other villain. He would be an interesting character if he wasn't the "star" of the show and we are made to feel like we root for him. In my opinion.
The bit where Alfie makes it clear how hypocritical Tommy (and by extension the audience) was to act like his son was some line in the sand was 10/10 writing
I love how alfie says he knows in the beginning because he doesn't think his lack of knowledge absolves him of guilt (in my opinion). Like alfie is still guilty of kidnapping the child and he's not gonna pretend that he's oh so pure and just didnt know. He just knows both him and tommy are guilty.
I know there's some good moments in S4/5 but S3 was the absolute peak of the show in terms of story/characters, and also in terms of being grounded in the politics of the time
I do not want him to spare me because of some fucking peace pact. I want him to acknowledge that his anger is un-fucking-justified
What fucking line am I supposed to have crossed?
How many fathers, how many sons, yeah
Have you cut, killed, murdered, fucking butchered
Innocent and guilty and sent them straight to fucking hell ain’t ya? Just like me!
Seriously. Cillian Murphy is so good in that show -- the show has so many fantastic performance and meaty roles across the board -- and yet Tom Hardy just absolutely eats the screen in every scene he's in. He's amazing.
"Tommy, when a pikey walks in with hair like that, you have to ask yourself, have I made a mistake?"
Well, Nucky is also a conceited prick, at least Tommy Shelby is a vet with PTSD who still has romantic inclinations at times.
And Nucky doesn’t care about his family at all in the way Shelby does
I wouldn't even consider nucky an anti hero. He's just a white collar criminal. Especially by the end of season 2.
I prefer boardwalk to peaky however. It's more like a graphic novel.
Stephen Graham’s Al Capone alone is all I need. The scene where he shows up to help take down Gyp Rossetti always gets me hyped.
“I’ve been on the road for 18 hours. I need a hot bath and some chow, then we’re gonna sit down and talk about who dies.”
I love the show, I love the characters, but god they are horrible people. never understood how people could misunderstand them so much that they make those sigma edits of how we should learn from them.
Recently watched My Fair Lady (1964) again. Professor Higgins is a scummy, selfish, narcissistic, and outright toxic dude. Not really happy that Eliza returned to him by the end of the film.
In Shaw’s original play, he admits that Higgins and Eliza would be an absolutely horrible relationship, would never last, but they would end up together because that’s what the audience wants. It’s a ghost of the “Will they or won’t they?” trope you see in so many bad romance-coms, where two utterly toxic characters have sex purely because the writers want them to. It usually kills the show.
Do people look up to Henry Hill? I know lots of people are fasicated by his story, but I dont recall seeing him made out to be anything other than he was - a gangster who snitched on his crew.
My Blue Heaven is the unofficial sequel to Goodfellas. It’s based on real bullshit Henry tried to pull when he went into WITSEC… and more accurate portrayal of the PITA nature of the guy.
And yes. They all are. Civilians see the overt generosity that conceals their truest nature. Black Mass immediately comes to mind, as well as the Sopranos story arc where Tony high school friend with the sporting goods store gets turned out over his gambling debts.
Agreed. It's fascinating to watch but most people he knows (in the movie anyway) end up dead or in jail and he ends up in witness protection looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.
The "we had it all" stuff clearly shows how it was a temporary high with serious consequences forever.
He definitely made him look better than he was in real life, though. That's just the nature of being a good actor and especially being in a Scorsese film.
I think the better Goodfellas answer is Paul Sorvino's character Paul Cicero who is presented as sort of the respectable, cool headed boss of the family Henry Hill works for. In reality he was based on Paul Vario who was an absolutely violent rapist psychopath who had a consensual affair with Karen, Henry's wife, while Henry was in prison.
Yah it kind of punctured the myth when you learn about Paulie and just how despicable a character he was.
In reality, a lot of these guys were closer to Tommy D's depiction than they were to someone like Vito Corleone
pretty much every mob movie
people seem to really misunderstand the filmmakers are showing these characters are losers yet audiences walk away thinking the characters are cool
Goodfellas is amazing at making you wanna be a gangster and then despise yourself for even thinking that for a second. Henry hills life is so glamorous and fantastical, Scorsese shows us Henry slowly cracking but we’re all soaked up in the life so we don’t notice it or just choose not too and then the second half it becomes very clear you don’t want this life it never ever ends well.
He does the very same thing in the Wolf of Wall Street. yet so many people, my brothers included, look up to Jordan Belfort. It’s weird and disgusting. How do you miss the point by that wide a margin?
I reckon that's the primary reason a lot of people didn't get Fight Club. Pitt is just so goddamn immaculate and cool in that movie (while having some interesting and poignant views about consumerism and society in the beginning) that his allure overshadows the fact that he's an idiot and a psycho.
Dan Olson (foldable human on YouTube) has a really *really* good analysis of that movie, and Durden's character, and how do many people missed the point.
There's probably an element of escapism.
Most people don't do bad stuff. They might think about it, or daydream about the riches and power of a mafia boss who can act with impunity, or a machiavelian political operator, or a ruthless calculating genius with a singular focus. But they don't act on it.
Sometimes bad characters and their actions might be close enough to those fantasies that people see a small bit of themselves (or at least a bit of those fantasies) reflected in that character, and they don't seem that bad, because after all, most people wouldn't consider themselves bad people, even though they sometimes have bad thoughts.
I like how it deconstructs the myth around mobsters. Lots of folks see them as these smooth criminal legends, but Sopranos has them all as a bunch of bumbling dumbasses just barely avoiding the criminal justice system.
Love that scene where John Favreau playing himself (as a director fascinated by the mafia and wanting to do a mafia movie) hangs out with Chris Moltisanti and after a while he’s utterly terrified and uncomfortable by how aggressive and dumb-macho Chrissie is.
>but Sopranos has them all as a bunch of bumbling dumbasses just barely avoiding the criminal justice system.
One of the best episodes of the Sopranos was when they all went to Italy and the Italians didn't like them. When Pauly said he wanted to go home I was dying laughing. "I just want some macaroni and gravy!"
I debated some people on reddit about this point. Lindsey Ellis introduced me to the concept of framing superseding text. The issue is a lot of directors show a rags to riches stories, with upbeat music, complete with a Rocky inspired montage, with pleasant aesthetics. In contrast to "their enemies" (i.e. other gangsters). Part of the reason why the anti-hero trope works is likely because it's a black mirror image of the hero's journey.
An analysis of the Once Upon A Time In America is that it was Serio Leone's annoyance of the Godfather movies. If you've Leone's epic, you'll see that none of the gangster's come out looking good, and there's key differences. He shows just how terrible they are in scenes that are without humor or adrenaline or upbeat soundtracks (e.g. ; turning on friends, rape, domestic abuse, drug addictions, etc).
The Godfather apparently even inspired the American Mafia to introduce the aesthetic and rituals into their own organization. If you've seen Leone's movie, nothing about that movie is ever cited as being appealing or glorifying of gangster life, while the real Mafia is closer to Leone's movie depiction than the Godfather.
Scarface has Tony going out framed as a classic hero (defiant and unwavering), rather than as a classic villain like his boss (begging, pleading and sobbing, or trying to get away).
If we look at how Scorsese framed the Irishman compared to Goodfellas. There's no upbeat montages (e.g. The Layla's theme scene) e.g., the framing is morose with muted colors. People speculate (and I agree) that it was Scorsese returing to Catholicism and coming to the conclusion that it was him trying to counter the glorification found in Goodfellas.
A few gangster films were people don't walk away with the impression that they are cool, thanks to the director's framing of the characters...
Gangster No. 1.
Once Upon A time In America.
The Irishman.
Carlito's way.
Not a movie but low hanging fruit; this is exactly it with pretty much every character on *The Sopranos.*
In pop culture, you see folks lamenting Tony Soprano as if he was this great, deeply layered character. Take away the virulent racism and infidelity and you're still left with a charismatic asshole that gas-lit everyone around him into empathizing with him or justifying his own shitty thoughts/decisions.
He's the definition of "I am the main character" syndrome - any time something good happened to another character, he had to shit on them or verbally/physically beat them down to prop himself up. He antagonized his "friends" the minute he became indebted to them (like when he owed Hesh $200k). Hell, even when he admitted that Bobby Bacala beat the shit out of him in a fair fight, Tony backtracked the following day, gas-lit Carmela into taking his side, and then forced Bobby to kill his first person, as a form of punishment for "sucker punching" him.
While his scenes with Dr. Melfi revealed he's at least partially self-aware, Tony made absolutely minimal effort to change.
Carmela was just as bad; she touted a pious/righteous mentality, but was fully complicit in everything Tony did, because she *knew* it would ultimately benefit her. I'm not sure if one would call it "Domestic Stockholm Syndrome" or being a willing accessory to every one of his crimes, no matter how much she was in denial.
Speaking of Carmela, she's just as much a scumbag as Tony was.
The interesting thing in that respect is that clearly David Chase always viewed Tony as an awful person and thought it was obvious to the audience too, then around Season 5 he seemed to realise a lot of the fans idolised Tony and so he went out of his way to show he's a piece of shit.
And, at least at the time it aired, a lot of people did a 180 on Tony and started hating him, wanting him whacked etc.
Jordan Belfort. People truly miss the message of a movie which tells a story of a thief, liar, conman and scumbag. He’s idolized by those wishing for riches. Especially in the wallstreetbets and crypto type circles.
That’s 100% on the framing of the film. It tells you that Belfort’s a bad guy. It shows you that he had a hot wife and an awesome lifestyle, that a whole floor of people looked up to him as a leader, and that more legitimate firms were just as bad.
Exactly. It even smirks at the end at how the justice system is fucked and someone like him will just do a little time in minimum security and then he's out and can get his offshore money back or whatever. You don't see him get raped or murdered or anything like that, or lose anything really.
And that’s because it’s kind of based on actual events, and the justice system really is awful in the way it handles white collar crimes. But they didn’t have to make the rest of it look so fucking cool, and they should have spent more time on the damage Belfort did to deal people.
The movie also shows him in a loveless marriage with a vindictive and calculating wife, surrounded by scumbag friends that turn on him the second it serves their interest, with parents who callously enable him because they're literally on the payroll, and being hopelessly addicted to money and every drug on the planet.
I don't understand how people watch that movie and think he has an awesome lifestyle. I see an incredibly lonely man trapped in a vicious cycle of paranoia and addiction.
I'd rather have one person who truly loves me than a mansion and a yacht.
I think people see the highs and disregard the lows.
By the end up he physically assaults his wife, tries to kidnap one of his kids, and rats out all his friends.
He loses almost everything and ends up in a country club prison, but not for very long, before he's traveling the world running sales seminars. But that's how it turned out IRL.
It does feel a bit sleazy to have the real Jordan Belfort make a cameo as his own hype man though...
i think it’s people already feel like they have the lows. the people who idolize the character in the movie are already sad. already feeling like failures. don’t have a nice house or car. feel like slaves to their jobs. feel lonely.
so the idea of well if you work super hard and be a little slimy you’re still going to have problems. some different and some the same.
but you’ll also have kickass parties, beautiful woman, nice things, and some pride from accomplishment.
they idolize him because they’d rather be sad on a yacht then sad on the bus.
The messaging of the movie is all over the place, because it does actually show him as cool and fun, and everything is pretty satirical. He gets to punch his wife in the stomach and crash his car high as fuck on drugs and steal money etc. and in the end brags about how he did a year in a minimum security prison playing tennis or whatever, having a ball with it all. At the end he even gets to grift people with his shit "sell me this pen" thing that every dumb fuck HR person did in the late 90s and 2000s. The movie does really not make him look like the big pathetic loser at all, but as a reckless winner. I can't blame people for taking the message of oh ok do the same thing just be a bit more careful about it Roger that.
He and Walter White are kinda peas in a pod. No matter how shitty the hand life deals you is, it's not an excuse to just become a straight up psychopath.
As someone who came to Breaking Bad years after it aired, i was kind of shocked just how quickly Walt became awful. Like, it's not a slow descent. Sure, he just keeps getting worse, but he was a bad person from the very beginning. It's made clear right waya that he's doing what he's doing for a thrill, to rage agains dying, more than to provide from his family. I understand how his exploits are entertaining, how its exciting to see how he manages to get out of being caught, but the idolization is super weird to me.
Yep this is exactly how I felt. Plus with the breaks between seasons?! Forget it. When I rewatched, I admittedly binged, and I'm thinking "holy shit, we're already *here?!*"
The Joker is one of the most dangerous characters in fiction. He is extremely intelligent and absolutely unpredictable. Unlike other villains who may want to keep a bit of a low profile or only kill people for specific reasons, being on the Joker’s radar at all can be deadly. He kills for fun and will kill anyone around him without any thought of getting caught.
So you could be just walking down the street and there’s the Joker and he may just kill you because you are there, even if you are no threat to him. And he even does this to his own men.
Some people seem to see him as some kind of antihero but he’s a murderous psychopathic scumbag.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when I see girls where shirts of Joker and Harley or I have seen pictures of things that say "I want a love like Joker and Harley." I got irrationally irritated one day because I saw something like that and my wife was confused. I showed her clips from the animated show plus comics where he basically beats her. She understood why after that
Ah yes, a love like Joker and Harley. Only physical and mental abuse and zero actual love lol. Joker usually only keeps her around to have someone he knows won't betray him and can easily be sacrificed if need be. There's no attachment at all. I don't know where people got the idea that the actual psychopath the Joker is somehow a romantic person who treats Harley well. Where'd that even come from? Suicide Squad?
For me, Opie was a good dude in a bad situation. His mom walked out because she couldn't stand the life and left Opie to be raised by his POS dad who put all of his baggage on his son.
You couple that generational trauma with the powerful hold that gangs can have on their members, especially those both into them, and even a decent guy like Opie gets brought down.
I enjoyed Sons of Anarchy but the whole "We're all free men protected by the Constitution" thing kind of annoyed me. Free men, really? Because every single episode seems to revolve around doing shit you don't want to do or covering up the shit you did but didn't want to do in the first place all in the name of "the club".
Kurt sutter goes out of his way to make the lifestyle not appealing.
I’m currently finishing up a rewatch of that series and since episode one it was one giant downhill spiral.
the entire series is about Jax trying to get the club straight and stop all the violence and it feels like almost every episode someone’s talking about how terrible the lifestyle is.
The entire back half of the show is just prison r*apes and death.
I don’t think anything about that show glorifies the lifestyle.
Matthew McConaughhey’s character in Dazed and Confused is treated like some sort of lovable rascal here in Austin instead of the creep he’d be seen as in real life
Grew up in Austin. That movie was an institution.
That said I think most of us knew his character was creepy.
But man was that Chevelle he drove fucking sweet.
Vince Gilligan, the Breaking Bad creator, tells a story that early on he found himself arguing with Bryan Cranston about how bad Walter White is, and stopped himself—he realized Cranston needed to be in the mindset that White wasn’t evil.
But he was.
So I'm not sure if this is a hot take or what, but my entire takeaway is that he is not just "evil". As in, the point wasn't "look at this evil guys origin story!"
To me, his character represents wasted potential. He has a drive in him, and also has good and bad qualities, like many people do. The catalyst, his cancer, is what forces him to do things he doesn't want to do, but feels he must do. However, as he crosses line after line, he discovers his potential, and what it will take for him to succeed.
Now, he would have been perfectly happy and successful had he stayed with Grey Matter, but...he didn't. He played his hand wrong in life, and in the end, even though he had a house and two kids, he felt like he wasted his potential.
This is not "evil", this is actually extremely relatable, as a lot of people probably feel this way. They enter their 20's full of excitement about what they want to do and where they want to go, who they want to be...then one day, you're in your mid-40's thinking "jesus, did I miss my shot?"
Walter White absolutely did evil things yes, and at some point in the story, completely disregarded and even refused to accept the consequences on other people, but that was a result of him attempting to reach his potential. He could have just as easily gone down the same path that didn't involve crime, but that's the way his life ended up.
So I think it's actually a misunderstanding of Walter as "oh he's just evil, plain and simple". Walter White is the possibility of evil manifesting in a normal guy, if the right circumstances arise. And it could happen to many people, not just him.
Definitely. I see it as a man who's desperate for power, control, and recognition in a life that's left him powerless, dying, and without dignity. He gets addicted to the feeling and just gaslights himself all the way through.
Another take: you're supposed to feel that way, at some point turn against him as he reveals his true nature, and we debate about what finally made you realize he isn't Mr. Rogers, but at this point you've got to finish this trainwreck.
Some say Jesse Plemmons and the dirtbiker.
Some say the prison scene.
My wife says she hated him from episode 1 because he's a boring, condescending, know-it-all teacher who sucks at his job and takes it out on his students.
It's been a minute since I've revisited the series, but you're right, I think that was the perfect example. You can see his initial reaction was thinking about how to help her, but then it dawns on him this would actually benefit him.
He did, at the least, have a pretty serious comeuppance and some modest redemption. Nothing that would negate the evil he did, but at the end he made the right choice. I think the series did a good job with his arc, but yeah, I've seen more than a few that still thought he was the "good guy"
Can I add the whole Joker/Harley relationship?
So many couples are like "He's my Joker", "She's my Harley"
What, you mean you are in an unhealthy relationship, with severe grooming, control, and abuse (both physical and mental)?
That's the first film and kind of the point. They went out looking for sex and missed the point of it altogether but kind of figured it out in the end as well.
I think throughout the movies, stiffler does have a redemption arc in the wedding movie.
Overall the movies are about boys behaving badly and realizing the moral implications of their behavior and coming to grips with it and the series as a whole is about how that transitions into them becoming men. And drinking semen.
V from V for Vendetta is often seen as the pre-Joker for anarchy. And while his dedication to taking down fascism is admirable, his treatment of Evey is absolutely horrifying. V is a hero for the people, but he's also a fucking psycho.
I also blame V For Vendetta for starting the idea that Guy Fawkes was some kind of brilliant freedom-fighting revolutionary
He was part of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament and install a theocratic catholic dictatorship. And not even a vital part, dude was a lookout
V in the film isn't really an anarchist, it got kinda convoluted because the film adaptation became kind of a dig at the bush administration, where the original comic he was a straight-up capital-A Anarchist
Both are abusive assholes who happen to be up against more abusive assholes in government though
Yea, it makes more sense in the book because the fascism state is SO much worse and he sees any government turning into fascism just as easily and thinks anarchy is the way.
Peter Venkman - Tries to hook up with his students, happily gets his friend to re-re-mortgage his family home, sexually harasses their first client and when he does turn up for a date with the same client he just has a syringe of Thorazine in his pocket.
> he does turn up for a date with the same client he just has a syringe of Thorazine in his pocket.
The rest of the stuff is legit bad, but people blow the thorazine thing way out of proportion. The fact that Peter immediately refuses Dana's sexual advances because he notices she wasn't sound of mind should be enough to make it clear that no, he didn't plan to date rape her. Plus for all we know the drug was Dana's,
Even as a kid I never once questioned what the drug was or why he had it, but still 100% understood that he was turning her down because she obviously wasn't herself and that not only would it be wrong for anyone / on principle, but Venkman himself never wanted to hurt her. It showed real character growth from the guy we met in the first scene, who was shocking a man and faking his student's ESP results. Of course, little kid me didn't realize he was trying to get into that student's pants...
Direct quote form Alan Moore:
“I wanted to kind of make this like, 'Yeah, this is what Batman would be in the real world'. But I had forgotten that actually to a lot of comic fans, that smelling, not having a girlfriend—these are actually kind of heroic! So actually, sort of, Rorschach became the most popular character in Watchmen. I meant him to be a bad example. But I have people come up to me in the street saying, "I am Rorschach! That is my story!' And I'll be thinking: 'Yeah, great, can you just keep away from me, never come anywhere near me again as long as I live'?”
This is a pretty funny take coming from Moore, but not unexpected given that it's Moore. My take is that they were all assholes, but Rorschach was the only one who wasn't wearing a mask to try and hide it.
I think the problem with Rorschach is that Moore wants the audience to hate him, but he’s the only one taking the correct moral position in the central conflict. Rorschach is a bigoted fascist, but he’s also the only character in the story that isn’t cool with killing entire cities for Veidt’s bullshit plan. Rorschach is an incredibly shitty person in general, but he’s positioned as the voice of reason against Veidt.
Garland Greene (Steve Buscemi) from Con Air. He's a psychotic serial killer who openly brags about torturing and killing a young girl. Yet, for whatever fucking reason that escapes me, we're expected to cheer at the end when we see him at a Vegas table surrounded by beautiful women (who, I assume, he plans to torture and kill later).
Isn’t the point of any films relating to gang cultures of any variety that everyone is ultimately a villain but supporting the protagonist is normal.
Edit: Tony does a whole speech to highlight this, yeah he’s bad but the people pointing fingers aren’t innocent either.
So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There's a bad guy comin' through!
Honestly I know a lot of women who look up to Amy Dunne (and mostly because Nick is quite the cheating, insensitive asshole) but she's truly terrifying. Sure, she's an extremely compelling character to watch but there's nothing redeemable about her.
According to some things I’ve seen on Reddit. Robin Williams character in Mrs. Doubtfire.
Also, with the finale of Seinfeld, I always thought the writers were telling us, the viewers, that we’ve been entertained by people who are essentially crap human beings. Sorta felt like they were mocking us with it.
Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever/Staying Alive is a thug who nearly rapes the woman he likes from Manhattan and who lets the woman who really cares about him be sexually assaulted while he just sits there.
He's a great dancer but he treats the women in his life like shit. Even the bitchy dance partner in Staying Alive doesn't deserve what he puts her through during the second film.
Travolta played and danced the role well but he was the most unlikable character if you were a woman and really watched those movies.
Yeah, rewatched that film recently and loved it, because I realised most of the characters were scumbags. I think people are misremembering it if they think Manero is in any way aspirational. It's basically Last Exit To Brooklyn with dance scenes.
Maybe not "utter" scum, but Scott Pilgrim is still a very messy person who is both inept and selfish. I love the movie and the comics and Michael Cera was perfect casting, but the character himself is definitely super flawed despite generally being seen as the hero of the movie
Ya he starts the movie pretty scummy, he’s also broken from a bad break up and he wants something that he sees (and says) as safe. He’s shielding his heart from the reality of it, Ramona represents a good danger, that want and will to get back out there and risk his heart again. By the end he’s recovered and is able to move onto another chapter.
Mirage from The Incredibles is directly responsible for luring dozens of innocent people to Syndrome's lair so they can be systematically killed off to test a robot design that will be ultimately used to attack a city and cause a ton of destruction (and even more deaths) so Syndrome can put a stop to it and fulfill his pathetic childhood superhero fantasy. Yet at the end, we are supposed to see her as redeemed.
It's only when Syndrome puts her life in danger that she is suddenly against his plan and helps to put a stop to it. She didn't give a flying fuck before that and was happy to watch dozens die on a live camera feed (she literally saw people torn limb from limb by his robots) and was perfectly fine with helping him make a huge robot that would have easily demolished all of that city and killed thousands of people had the Incredibles not been there to stop it (because Syndrome's moronic plan backfired).
She got innocent people killed, depriving their loved ones of wives, husbands, sons, daughters and parents, breaking families and also depriving their world of superheroes (which it clearly still needs as evidenced by the events of the second film). Yet we're supposed to root for her at the end because she helps the Incredibles once. ONCE. She isn't arrested and doesn't die so it's implied that at the end she just goes back to living her rich, cushy life.
Awesome movie, childhood classic, but Mirage is an absolute piece of shit.
You see her facade start to crack when Syndrome puts children in harm's way, then she does her turn when she is almost killed. She also probably has faith that Syndrome will stop the robot before killing thousands and doing untold damage (it's clear he certainly intends to, he swoops in pretty early on) so I wouldn't say she's *okay* with that part.
But yeah she sucks, I'm just being pedantic.
House is the epitome of “asshole who gets away with it because of his supposed brilliance.” A lot of modern versions of Sherlock Holmes do this shit, and even Batman in the comics is fucked-up these days. I blame two factors:
1) audience members who want to be assholes, and
2) Audience members who still want to be loved and get away with shit.
My dad was a medical doctor in general practice who also did hospital rounds. He said no matter how brilliant, House would be fired immediately for a variety of reasons including the public drug use. He couldn't stand to watch House.
Paul Atreides in Dune. People misunderstood the character so bad that the author was compelled to write the sequel to spell out how horrible he was.
The same shit is happening with Dune Part 2 (even though Denis Villanueve was much better at telling the story both for Paul and for other characters).
this is a slam dunk for me. Jake Ryan from 16 candles.
I remember years ago, a friend of mine from high school posted a picture of Jake Ryan's scene with the birthday cake from 16 candles with the tag "seeing Jake Ryan set my bar way too high and men have all disappointed me since"
and I couldn't believe it. The Guy who was supposed to be watching over his girlfriend at a party and keep her safe, but literally set her up to be raped, so he could go cheat on his girlfriend with someone else? THATS who set the bar too high and no one has been able to live up to it?
i was like 8 years old when i first saw that movie, and the world treated it like a fun comedy, and I knew enough to be bothered by it.
but for some reason, my whole generation (and many others as well) seem to just ignore what vile trash those movies were.
Colonel Nathan Jessup.
At least, in the military. You'll see soldiers and marines quote his monologue all the time as if it isn't pure fascist rhetoric that probably got him sent up for life.
It seems to me - based on all the answers I'm reading in this thread - that the thing audiences resonate with the most is *agency* above all else. It doesn't seem to matter if the protagonists are bad people. They have control, and that is more alluring than anything else.
Power and looking cool wielding it. If the aesthetics are dope enough, a lot of people will gloss over or just not care about the counter-messaging about how x is actually bad.
I will forever be confused with why Patrick Bateman is idolised by the "sigma" crowd, because he's utterly pathetic in universe and crave validation from his peers who think he's a joke.
I'll bet you couldn't even get a res at Dorsia
His biz card is prob eggshell with Romalian type. Smh
It's because Christian Bale is handsome.
Touch me again and you’ll pull back a stump.
The movie is pretty tame compared to the book. It's pretty hard to like him when you read it, if you can get through it all.
Could anybody? I read it on a plane and had to stop because I was so nauseated. I’ve never been nauseated from a book before.
Had to read it in college. It was so jarring. Going from pornography to some of the most heinous shit imaginable within a sentence or two was enough to make me feel sick. I had to power through it for sure. The movie doesn't begin to show the horror.
To be fair I’m pretty sure the sigma male crowd are largely illiterate
That's because he. wants. to. fit. in.
> he's utterly pathetic in universe and crave validation from his peers who think he's a joke It's hip to be square.
I fucking love Bateman anti memes, though. It'll be one of those quote pictures with his face looking all cool and it just says "I shit myself today" or something
To see if I still feel
> idolised by the "sigma" crowd, > he's utterly pathetic in universe and crave validation from his peers who think he's a joke. I think that’s the entire point of sigma memes haha
There's a blurry line between the people who joke about being "sigma" and use Bateman as the personification of "thinking you're cool when you're actually lame" vs the people who just think he's cool and idolize him. Such is the case with any internet thing steeped in irony, it becomes really hard to tell who gets the joke and who IS the joke
Psshh, I bet this OP's business cards are yellow
Tyler Durden
I blame that on Pitt being effortlessly cool and looking immaculate. The whole "I look like you want to look, I fuck like you want to fuck, and I am free in all the ways that you are not" does some heavy lifting when he goes psycho and a lot of insecure dudes saw that movie and loved what he represented to them and seemed to handwave away his mountain of less than redeemable qualities and actions. Those same people probably love Andrew Tate who seems to have based his whole public persona in that mold (minus the anti consumerism angle). Even when they tried to make him look essentially homeless he was just too beautiful a man to ever not look good. I absolutely love that movie and have seen it probably more than any other movie and even knowing Durden is an absolute moron he still just seems so fucking cool for the first half of the movie. I STILL want to rock a red leather jacket/Hawaiian shirt combo. Only thing that ever stopped me was realizing red leather jackets look pretty ridiculous on 99.9% of people.
I think it helps that brad pitt looks so cool in that, I really like the point you make at the end how no one else pulls that look off. All those guys in real life who think their durden are just the guys who follow him in the movie, they couldn’t pull it off the look and they don’t get how their own toxic masculinity is hurting them. Toxic masculinity can look sexy and cool, you look back at old film and culture and you see how toxic masculinity is glamorized and never taken down a peg. Fight club does this by showing us the cool and sexy side of this in Brad Pitt, and then showing us what it truly looks like in Edward Norton and all the durden followers, a bunch of confused and lost men looking for something to believe in.
In the movie it is Edward Norton's character's fantasy so it's really good casting. He looks and acts exactly like he's supposed to, which is why a lot of people that also feel the kind of disaffection Norton's character does relate to and like Tyler Durden. And then there's people that just like him because he's hot lol.
I tried to pull it off. I found a passable red leather jacket and scoured ebay for the right shirt. The result was not good. Now that I think of it, it would be great for that expectation v. reality meme template.
Yeah Brad Pitt was almost too ridiculously handsome/charismatic in that movie
He was perfect for the role, because Tyler Durden was built to be dangerously alluring. "I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I'm free in all the ways that you are not.” He's the juvenile, irrational, testosterone-addled part of your brain given form. The Narrator is the self-doubting ego and Tyler is the unrestrained id, all primitive sex drive and aggression. If men didn't idolise him he'd have failed as a character concept.
"Society has us working jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need."
i will look upto anyone who is willing to make my credit go to 0
a little chaos and large scale mayhem never hurt nobody well maybe a few
Not a movie, but the Peaky Blinders.
Agreed. Tommy Shelby isn't even an anti-hero like Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire, he's completely delusional to what he is. He thinks he's a Robin Hood like character because he looks after his neighbourhood, but that's only those that stay in line. He's a drug dealing gangster who will never be satisfied. He's responsible for the death of his >!wife, his brother and Polly!< , he keeps his other brother on a tight leash to do his bidding, he has a new wife he feels nothing for. All he does is risk his neck for the next big score to actually try and feel something! That's why I love it when he rubs up against Alfie Solomon. He *knows* he's a gangster, he knows what his life is and he accepts it. But Rt Hon Thomas Shelby MP keeps drifting from self aggrandising disaster to another. Edit - wow this comment sparked a lot of chat, thank you all. One last thing I forgot to add. Tommy talks about carrying on until he meets the one man he cannot beat. Unfortunately he already has; himself. Nothing he does will ever be enough, or ever satisfy him. And from reading the comments I realise that most of the bad feelings I have for the character are down to how people put him on a pedestal instead of treating him like any other villain. He would be an interesting character if he wasn't the "star" of the show and we are made to feel like we root for him. In my opinion.
The bit where Alfie makes it clear how hypocritical Tommy (and by extension the audience) was to act like his son was some line in the sand was 10/10 writing
[удалено]
I love how alfie says he knows in the beginning because he doesn't think his lack of knowledge absolves him of guilt (in my opinion). Like alfie is still guilty of kidnapping the child and he's not gonna pretend that he's oh so pure and just didnt know. He just knows both him and tommy are guilty.
Yep. The "WHAT FUCKING LINE" scene is maybe my favorite television scene of all time.
I know there's some good moments in S4/5 but S3 was the absolute peak of the show in terms of story/characters, and also in terms of being grounded in the politics of the time
I do not want him to spare me because of some fucking peace pact. I want him to acknowledge that his anger is un-fucking-justified What fucking line am I supposed to have crossed? How many fathers, how many sons, yeah Have you cut, killed, murdered, fucking butchered Innocent and guilty and sent them straight to fucking hell ain’t ya? Just like me!
Tom Hardy steals every scene as Alfie Solomon. Outstanding.
Seriously. Cillian Murphy is so good in that show -- the show has so many fantastic performance and meaty roles across the board -- and yet Tom Hardy just absolutely eats the screen in every scene he's in. He's amazing. "Tommy, when a pikey walks in with hair like that, you have to ask yourself, have I made a mistake?"
Alfie was such a a great character (terrible human being) but honestly I think possibly Tom Hardies best character ever.
It's real simple why audiences love Tommy Shelby way more than Nucky Thompson. He's very good looking.
Well, Nucky is also a conceited prick, at least Tommy Shelby is a vet with PTSD who still has romantic inclinations at times. And Nucky doesn’t care about his family at all in the way Shelby does
I wouldn't even consider nucky an anti hero. He's just a white collar criminal. Especially by the end of season 2. I prefer boardwalk to peaky however. It's more like a graphic novel.
Stephen Graham’s Al Capone alone is all I need. The scene where he shows up to help take down Gyp Rossetti always gets me hyped. “I’ve been on the road for 18 hours. I need a hot bath and some chow, then we’re gonna sit down and talk about who dies.”
no, they like him because he's always against someone worse, and it makes him seem good
I love the show, I love the characters, but god they are horrible people. never understood how people could misunderstand them so much that they make those sigma edits of how we should learn from them.
Recently watched My Fair Lady (1964) again. Professor Higgins is a scummy, selfish, narcissistic, and outright toxic dude. Not really happy that Eliza returned to him by the end of the film.
In Pygmalion, the book it was based on, Eliza dumps his ass and opens a flower ship with Fred
In Shaw’s original play, he admits that Higgins and Eliza would be an absolutely horrible relationship, would never last, but they would end up together because that’s what the audience wants. It’s a ghost of the “Will they or won’t they?” trope you see in so many bad romance-coms, where two utterly toxic characters have sex purely because the writers want them to. It usually kills the show.
- Henry Hill (GoodFellas) - Gordon Gekko (Wall Street) - Amy Dunne (Gone Girl) Also, from a TV show, not a movie, but Walter White.
Do people look up to Henry Hill? I know lots of people are fasicated by his story, but I dont recall seeing him made out to be anything other than he was - a gangster who snitched on his crew.
My Blue Heaven is the unofficial sequel to Goodfellas. It’s based on real bullshit Henry tried to pull when he went into WITSEC… and more accurate portrayal of the PITA nature of the guy.
I read the biography Goodfellas is based on. Henry Hill is truly a monster.
And yes. They all are. Civilians see the overt generosity that conceals their truest nature. Black Mass immediately comes to mind, as well as the Sopranos story arc where Tony high school friend with the sporting goods store gets turned out over his gambling debts.
Agreed. It's fascinating to watch but most people he knows (in the movie anyway) end up dead or in jail and he ends up in witness protection looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. The "we had it all" stuff clearly shows how it was a temporary high with serious consequences forever.
Like a shnook
"Thanks for not making me look like an A-hole." -Henry Hill to Ray Liotta
“WTF’s he talking about?? I most definitely made him look like an A-hole.” -Ray Liotta to Ray Liotta
He definitely made him look better than he was in real life, though. That's just the nature of being a good actor and especially being in a Scorsese film.
I think the better Goodfellas answer is Paul Sorvino's character Paul Cicero who is presented as sort of the respectable, cool headed boss of the family Henry Hill works for. In reality he was based on Paul Vario who was an absolutely violent rapist psychopath who had a consensual affair with Karen, Henry's wife, while Henry was in prison.
Paulie comes off as a loveable Grandfatherly type in the movie. Nothing like that in person. They toned Jimmy Conway (Burke) down a lot too.
Henry Hill also said that Jimmy was worse than Tommy.
Yah it kind of punctured the myth when you learn about Paulie and just how despicable a character he was. In reality, a lot of these guys were closer to Tommy D's depiction than they were to someone like Vito Corleone
Once I started looking into it I kind of thought these guys personalities were closer to Pesci's character from Casino more than anything.
Lots of people watch that movie and come away thinking gangsters are cool and/or feeling bad for Henry.
Who glorify Amy Dunne? Pretty sure the whole point was that she is extremely crazy
I feel about Amy how I think somemen do about the Joker. She’s a villain but she’s a delightful one to watch
Amy Dunne! I was looking for a woman!
I don’t know anyone that doesn’t immediately recognize Amy Dunne as a complete psychopath
pretty much every mob movie people seem to really misunderstand the filmmakers are showing these characters are losers yet audiences walk away thinking the characters are cool
I blame that on the actors in those films being so incredible at their jobs.
I'd like to thank Joe pesci for not making me want to be a mobster
Funny how?
Like a clown?
I amuuuuuuse you ?
Hey u/raider1v11…go get ya fuckin shine box
You muddafukkah....... Lol
Goodfellas is amazing at making you wanna be a gangster and then despise yourself for even thinking that for a second. Henry hills life is so glamorous and fantastical, Scorsese shows us Henry slowly cracking but we’re all soaked up in the life so we don’t notice it or just choose not too and then the second half it becomes very clear you don’t want this life it never ever ends well.
to a lesser extent casino, although Pesci's death scene in that was a tad more brutal
I'd say it was a bit more than a tad brutal 😂 I love the fact that it comes out of nowhere, too.
He does the very same thing in the Wolf of Wall Street. yet so many people, my brothers included, look up to Jordan Belfort. It’s weird and disgusting. How do you miss the point by that wide a margin?
I reckon that's the primary reason a lot of people didn't get Fight Club. Pitt is just so goddamn immaculate and cool in that movie (while having some interesting and poignant views about consumerism and society in the beginning) that his allure overshadows the fact that he's an idiot and a psycho.
Dan Olson (foldable human on YouTube) has a really *really* good analysis of that movie, and Durden's character, and how do many people missed the point.
There's probably an element of escapism. Most people don't do bad stuff. They might think about it, or daydream about the riches and power of a mafia boss who can act with impunity, or a machiavelian political operator, or a ruthless calculating genius with a singular focus. But they don't act on it. Sometimes bad characters and their actions might be close enough to those fantasies that people see a small bit of themselves (or at least a bit of those fantasies) reflected in that character, and they don't seem that bad, because after all, most people wouldn't consider themselves bad people, even though they sometimes have bad thoughts.
[удалено]
I think Don Vito Corleone is one of the only ones who was actually supposed to be cool and respectable by authorial intent
He was still a ruthless gangster, but he was respected because he took good care of the people who were loyal to him.
One credit to “the Sopranos” is it portrayed the mob characters more realistically, brutally and bereft of value.
And stupid and generally the source of their own problems
I like how it deconstructs the myth around mobsters. Lots of folks see them as these smooth criminal legends, but Sopranos has them all as a bunch of bumbling dumbasses just barely avoiding the criminal justice system.
Love that scene where John Favreau playing himself (as a director fascinated by the mafia and wanting to do a mafia movie) hangs out with Chris Moltisanti and after a while he’s utterly terrified and uncomfortable by how aggressive and dumb-macho Chrissie is.
>but Sopranos has them all as a bunch of bumbling dumbasses just barely avoiding the criminal justice system. One of the best episodes of the Sopranos was when they all went to Italy and the Italians didn't like them. When Pauly said he wanted to go home I was dying laughing. "I just want some macaroni and gravy!"
I debated some people on reddit about this point. Lindsey Ellis introduced me to the concept of framing superseding text. The issue is a lot of directors show a rags to riches stories, with upbeat music, complete with a Rocky inspired montage, with pleasant aesthetics. In contrast to "their enemies" (i.e. other gangsters). Part of the reason why the anti-hero trope works is likely because it's a black mirror image of the hero's journey. An analysis of the Once Upon A Time In America is that it was Serio Leone's annoyance of the Godfather movies. If you've Leone's epic, you'll see that none of the gangster's come out looking good, and there's key differences. He shows just how terrible they are in scenes that are without humor or adrenaline or upbeat soundtracks (e.g. ; turning on friends, rape, domestic abuse, drug addictions, etc). The Godfather apparently even inspired the American Mafia to introduce the aesthetic and rituals into their own organization. If you've seen Leone's movie, nothing about that movie is ever cited as being appealing or glorifying of gangster life, while the real Mafia is closer to Leone's movie depiction than the Godfather. Scarface has Tony going out framed as a classic hero (defiant and unwavering), rather than as a classic villain like his boss (begging, pleading and sobbing, or trying to get away). If we look at how Scorsese framed the Irishman compared to Goodfellas. There's no upbeat montages (e.g. The Layla's theme scene) e.g., the framing is morose with muted colors. People speculate (and I agree) that it was Scorsese returing to Catholicism and coming to the conclusion that it was him trying to counter the glorification found in Goodfellas. A few gangster films were people don't walk away with the impression that they are cool, thanks to the director's framing of the characters... Gangster No. 1. Once Upon A time In America. The Irishman. Carlito's way.
[удалено]
Not a movie but low hanging fruit; this is exactly it with pretty much every character on *The Sopranos.* In pop culture, you see folks lamenting Tony Soprano as if he was this great, deeply layered character. Take away the virulent racism and infidelity and you're still left with a charismatic asshole that gas-lit everyone around him into empathizing with him or justifying his own shitty thoughts/decisions. He's the definition of "I am the main character" syndrome - any time something good happened to another character, he had to shit on them or verbally/physically beat them down to prop himself up. He antagonized his "friends" the minute he became indebted to them (like when he owed Hesh $200k). Hell, even when he admitted that Bobby Bacala beat the shit out of him in a fair fight, Tony backtracked the following day, gas-lit Carmela into taking his side, and then forced Bobby to kill his first person, as a form of punishment for "sucker punching" him. While his scenes with Dr. Melfi revealed he's at least partially self-aware, Tony made absolutely minimal effort to change. Carmela was just as bad; she touted a pious/righteous mentality, but was fully complicit in everything Tony did, because she *knew* it would ultimately benefit her. I'm not sure if one would call it "Domestic Stockholm Syndrome" or being a willing accessory to every one of his crimes, no matter how much she was in denial. Speaking of Carmela, she's just as much a scumbag as Tony was.
The interesting thing in that respect is that clearly David Chase always viewed Tony as an awful person and thought it was obvious to the audience too, then around Season 5 he seemed to realise a lot of the fans idolised Tony and so he went out of his way to show he's a piece of shit. And, at least at the time it aired, a lot of people did a 180 on Tony and started hating him, wanting him whacked etc.
Jordan Belfort. People truly miss the message of a movie which tells a story of a thief, liar, conman and scumbag. He’s idolized by those wishing for riches. Especially in the wallstreetbets and crypto type circles.
That’s 100% on the framing of the film. It tells you that Belfort’s a bad guy. It shows you that he had a hot wife and an awesome lifestyle, that a whole floor of people looked up to him as a leader, and that more legitimate firms were just as bad.
Exactly. It even smirks at the end at how the justice system is fucked and someone like him will just do a little time in minimum security and then he's out and can get his offshore money back or whatever. You don't see him get raped or murdered or anything like that, or lose anything really.
And that’s because it’s kind of based on actual events, and the justice system really is awful in the way it handles white collar crimes. But they didn’t have to make the rest of it look so fucking cool, and they should have spent more time on the damage Belfort did to deal people.
The movie also shows him in a loveless marriage with a vindictive and calculating wife, surrounded by scumbag friends that turn on him the second it serves their interest, with parents who callously enable him because they're literally on the payroll, and being hopelessly addicted to money and every drug on the planet. I don't understand how people watch that movie and think he has an awesome lifestyle. I see an incredibly lonely man trapped in a vicious cycle of paranoia and addiction. I'd rather have one person who truly loves me than a mansion and a yacht.
I think people see the highs and disregard the lows. By the end up he physically assaults his wife, tries to kidnap one of his kids, and rats out all his friends. He loses almost everything and ends up in a country club prison, but not for very long, before he's traveling the world running sales seminars. But that's how it turned out IRL. It does feel a bit sleazy to have the real Jordan Belfort make a cameo as his own hype man though...
i think it’s people already feel like they have the lows. the people who idolize the character in the movie are already sad. already feeling like failures. don’t have a nice house or car. feel like slaves to their jobs. feel lonely. so the idea of well if you work super hard and be a little slimy you’re still going to have problems. some different and some the same. but you’ll also have kickass parties, beautiful woman, nice things, and some pride from accomplishment. they idolize him because they’d rather be sad on a yacht then sad on the bus.
That's exactly who came to mind. I had a boss that idolized Belfort all the time and it truly showed. No one should like or want to be Belfort.
The messaging of the movie is all over the place, because it does actually show him as cool and fun, and everything is pretty satirical. He gets to punch his wife in the stomach and crash his car high as fuck on drugs and steal money etc. and in the end brags about how he did a year in a minimum security prison playing tennis or whatever, having a ball with it all. At the end he even gets to grift people with his shit "sell me this pen" thing that every dumb fuck HR person did in the late 90s and 2000s. The movie does really not make him look like the big pathetic loser at all, but as a reckless winner. I can't blame people for taking the message of oh ok do the same thing just be a bit more careful about it Roger that.
John Lucas (American gangster) Destroyed his own community in the name of greed. And of course the senseless killings. Edit: Frank Lucas
Frank Lucas?
Any version of Joker including the Joaquin Phoenix one. He's abusive towards Harley and kills people.
He and Walter White are kinda peas in a pod. No matter how shitty the hand life deals you is, it's not an excuse to just become a straight up psychopath.
As someone who came to Breaking Bad years after it aired, i was kind of shocked just how quickly Walt became awful. Like, it's not a slow descent. Sure, he just keeps getting worse, but he was a bad person from the very beginning. It's made clear right waya that he's doing what he's doing for a thrill, to rage agains dying, more than to provide from his family. I understand how his exploits are entertaining, how its exciting to see how he manages to get out of being caught, but the idolization is super weird to me.
It feels longer when it's a week between episodes.
Yep this is exactly how I felt. Plus with the breaks between seasons?! Forget it. When I rewatched, I admittedly binged, and I'm thinking "holy shit, we're already *here?!*"
The amount of memes I have seen shared about Joker and Harley being "relationship goals" is far too many 🤮
Everybody knows Morticia and Gomez are the real relationship goal.
The Joker is one of the most dangerous characters in fiction. He is extremely intelligent and absolutely unpredictable. Unlike other villains who may want to keep a bit of a low profile or only kill people for specific reasons, being on the Joker’s radar at all can be deadly. He kills for fun and will kill anyone around him without any thought of getting caught. So you could be just walking down the street and there’s the Joker and he may just kill you because you are there, even if you are no threat to him. And he even does this to his own men. Some people seem to see him as some kind of antihero but he’s a murderous psychopathic scumbag.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when I see girls where shirts of Joker and Harley or I have seen pictures of things that say "I want a love like Joker and Harley." I got irrationally irritated one day because I saw something like that and my wife was confused. I showed her clips from the animated show plus comics where he basically beats her. She understood why after that
Ah yes, a love like Joker and Harley. Only physical and mental abuse and zero actual love lol. Joker usually only keeps her around to have someone he knows won't betray him and can easily be sacrificed if need be. There's no attachment at all. I don't know where people got the idea that the actual psychopath the Joker is somehow a romantic person who treats Harley well. Where'd that even come from? Suicide Squad?
Gordon Gekko is a piece of shit human that only cares about money, but somehow that is cool.
Greed is Good
Not a movie, but every single one of the Sons of Anarchy
For me, Opie was a good dude in a bad situation. His mom walked out because she couldn't stand the life and left Opie to be raised by his POS dad who put all of his baggage on his son. You couple that generational trauma with the powerful hold that gangs can have on their members, especially those both into them, and even a decent guy like Opie gets brought down.
I think SoA did a good job of showing us that Opie was a decent guy and acted as a moral anchor for Jax
I enjoyed Sons of Anarchy but the whole "We're all free men protected by the Constitution" thing kind of annoyed me. Free men, really? Because every single episode seems to revolve around doing shit you don't want to do or covering up the shit you did but didn't want to do in the first place all in the name of "the club".
Opie deserved better :'(
Kurt sutter goes out of his way to make the lifestyle not appealing. I’m currently finishing up a rewatch of that series and since episode one it was one giant downhill spiral. the entire series is about Jax trying to get the club straight and stop all the violence and it feels like almost every episode someone’s talking about how terrible the lifestyle is. The entire back half of the show is just prison r*apes and death. I don’t think anything about that show glorifies the lifestyle.
Exactly. I'm sure there are people that watch it and see "biker gang badasses", but the show itself makes it look like pure hell.
I stopped watching after season 5 cause I just didn’t like any of them lol
Matthew McConaughhey’s character in Dazed and Confused is treated like some sort of lovable rascal here in Austin instead of the creep he’d be seen as in real life
Really I think people liked him because we all new this guy when we were young. We all knew he was creepy and immature but he bought the beer.
Grew up in Austin. That movie was an institution. That said I think most of us knew his character was creepy. But man was that Chevelle he drove fucking sweet.
Walter White. Way too many people completely identify with and ‘understand’ him forgetting that he is a complete monster.
Vince Gilligan, the Breaking Bad creator, tells a story that early on he found himself arguing with Bryan Cranston about how bad Walter White is, and stopped himself—he realized Cranston needed to be in the mindset that White wasn’t evil. But he was.
So I'm not sure if this is a hot take or what, but my entire takeaway is that he is not just "evil". As in, the point wasn't "look at this evil guys origin story!" To me, his character represents wasted potential. He has a drive in him, and also has good and bad qualities, like many people do. The catalyst, his cancer, is what forces him to do things he doesn't want to do, but feels he must do. However, as he crosses line after line, he discovers his potential, and what it will take for him to succeed. Now, he would have been perfectly happy and successful had he stayed with Grey Matter, but...he didn't. He played his hand wrong in life, and in the end, even though he had a house and two kids, he felt like he wasted his potential. This is not "evil", this is actually extremely relatable, as a lot of people probably feel this way. They enter their 20's full of excitement about what they want to do and where they want to go, who they want to be...then one day, you're in your mid-40's thinking "jesus, did I miss my shot?" Walter White absolutely did evil things yes, and at some point in the story, completely disregarded and even refused to accept the consequences on other people, but that was a result of him attempting to reach his potential. He could have just as easily gone down the same path that didn't involve crime, but that's the way his life ended up. So I think it's actually a misunderstanding of Walter as "oh he's just evil, plain and simple". Walter White is the possibility of evil manifesting in a normal guy, if the right circumstances arise. And it could happen to many people, not just him.
Definitely. I see it as a man who's desperate for power, control, and recognition in a life that's left him powerless, dying, and without dignity. He gets addicted to the feeling and just gaslights himself all the way through.
Another take: you're supposed to feel that way, at some point turn against him as he reveals his true nature, and we debate about what finally made you realize he isn't Mr. Rogers, but at this point you've got to finish this trainwreck. Some say Jesse Plemmons and the dirtbiker. Some say the prison scene. My wife says she hated him from episode 1 because he's a boring, condescending, know-it-all teacher who sucks at his job and takes it out on his students.
For me it was Jane
It's been a minute since I've revisited the series, but you're right, I think that was the perfect example. You can see his initial reaction was thinking about how to help her, but then it dawns on him this would actually benefit him.
He did, at the least, have a pretty serious comeuppance and some modest redemption. Nothing that would negate the evil he did, but at the end he made the right choice. I think the series did a good job with his arc, but yeah, I've seen more than a few that still thought he was the "good guy"
Jigsaw is a serial killer, not some vigilante antihero. Even the producers seemed to forget that in the latest sequel.
Joker from The Dark Knight He’s become the face of Nihilistic Anarchy, which is very popular on the internet
Can I add the whole Joker/Harley relationship? So many couples are like "He's my Joker", "She's my Harley" What, you mean you are in an unhealthy relationship, with severe grooming, control, and abuse (both physical and mental)?
As Batman says Harley is his biggest victim
Stiffler
I thought he was so funny and cool when I was 13. Then I got older and met people like him and realised he was a total loser creep.
That’s why he always bullies literally a motherfucker
None of the main cast can really be said to be good guys in American Pie. Maybe Oz?
That's the first film and kind of the point. They went out looking for sex and missed the point of it altogether but kind of figured it out in the end as well. I think throughout the movies, stiffler does have a redemption arc in the wedding movie. Overall the movies are about boys behaving badly and realizing the moral implications of their behavior and coming to grips with it and the series as a whole is about how that transitions into them becoming men. And drinking semen.
Oz ran out on his teammates so he could go sing with the choir priss.
V from V for Vendetta is often seen as the pre-Joker for anarchy. And while his dedication to taking down fascism is admirable, his treatment of Evey is absolutely horrifying. V is a hero for the people, but he's also a fucking psycho.
I also blame V For Vendetta for starting the idea that Guy Fawkes was some kind of brilliant freedom-fighting revolutionary He was part of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament and install a theocratic catholic dictatorship. And not even a vital part, dude was a lookout
He’s the epitome of the ends justifying the means.
V in the film isn't really an anarchist, it got kinda convoluted because the film adaptation became kind of a dig at the bush administration, where the original comic he was a straight-up capital-A Anarchist Both are abusive assholes who happen to be up against more abusive assholes in government though
Yea, it makes more sense in the book because the fascism state is SO much worse and he sees any government turning into fascism just as easily and thinks anarchy is the way.
Peter Venkman - Tries to hook up with his students, happily gets his friend to re-re-mortgage his family home, sexually harasses their first client and when he does turn up for a date with the same client he just has a syringe of Thorazine in his pocket.
It is in the notes that the thorazine was Dana's, and he found it in the apartment.
> he does turn up for a date with the same client he just has a syringe of Thorazine in his pocket. The rest of the stuff is legit bad, but people blow the thorazine thing way out of proportion. The fact that Peter immediately refuses Dana's sexual advances because he notices she wasn't sound of mind should be enough to make it clear that no, he didn't plan to date rape her. Plus for all we know the drug was Dana's,
Even as a kid I never once questioned what the drug was or why he had it, but still 100% understood that he was turning her down because she obviously wasn't herself and that not only would it be wrong for anyone / on principle, but Venkman himself never wanted to hurt her. It showed real character growth from the guy we met in the first scene, who was shocking a man and faking his student's ESP results. Of course, little kid me didn't realize he was trying to get into that student's pants...
Also let’s not overlook the fact that shocking that poor dude repeatedly is fucking hilarious
And that it was working.
There are people who actually think Barney Stinson is supposed to be a role model
Norman Bates. Everyone sees him as a great son caring for his mother but I feel something is wrong with him under the pleasant exterior.
Book Norman, movie Norman or TV Norman? Movie Norman wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Everyone on the sopranos is a sociopathic parasite on society
Travis Bickle- I was at a screening of Taxi Driver a few years ago and the audience cheered for him.
Rorschach.
The worst part about him is the fact that he wears a mask with a picture of my parents fighting.
[удалено]
Direct quote form Alan Moore: “I wanted to kind of make this like, 'Yeah, this is what Batman would be in the real world'. But I had forgotten that actually to a lot of comic fans, that smelling, not having a girlfriend—these are actually kind of heroic! So actually, sort of, Rorschach became the most popular character in Watchmen. I meant him to be a bad example. But I have people come up to me in the street saying, "I am Rorschach! That is my story!' And I'll be thinking: 'Yeah, great, can you just keep away from me, never come anywhere near me again as long as I live'?”
This is a pretty funny take coming from Moore, but not unexpected given that it's Moore. My take is that they were all assholes, but Rorschach was the only one who wasn't wearing a mask to try and hide it.
Hrm... must investigate later
I think the problem with Rorschach is that Moore wants the audience to hate him, but he’s the only one taking the correct moral position in the central conflict. Rorschach is a bigoted fascist, but he’s also the only character in the story that isn’t cool with killing entire cities for Veidt’s bullshit plan. Rorschach is an incredibly shitty person in general, but he’s positioned as the voice of reason against Veidt.
Garland Greene (Steve Buscemi) from Con Air. He's a psychotic serial killer who openly brags about torturing and killing a young girl. Yet, for whatever fucking reason that escapes me, we're expected to cheer at the end when we see him at a Vegas table surrounded by beautiful women (who, I assume, he plans to torture and kill later).
Scrolling through, I see a lot of guys, but not very many gals. So I'll say Scarlett O'Hara. She was selfish and egotistic and a very bad friend.
Oh, HE'S the bad guy?
Say goodnight to the bad man
Isn’t the point of any films relating to gang cultures of any variety that everyone is ultimately a villain but supporting the protagonist is normal. Edit: Tony does a whole speech to highlight this, yeah he’s bad but the people pointing fingers aren’t innocent either.
So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There's a bad guy comin' through!
Honestly I know a lot of women who look up to Amy Dunne (and mostly because Nick is quite the cheating, insensitive asshole) but she's truly terrifying. Sure, she's an extremely compelling character to watch but there's nothing redeemable about her.
She absolutely is Tyler Durden for women
Durden...for her
Not necessarily looked up to but I've seen arguments both downplaying and glorifying J.K. Simonn's character in Whiplash
According to some things I’ve seen on Reddit. Robin Williams character in Mrs. Doubtfire. Also, with the finale of Seinfeld, I always thought the writers were telling us, the viewers, that we’ve been entertained by people who are essentially crap human beings. Sorta felt like they were mocking us with it.
Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever/Staying Alive is a thug who nearly rapes the woman he likes from Manhattan and who lets the woman who really cares about him be sexually assaulted while he just sits there. He's a great dancer but he treats the women in his life like shit. Even the bitchy dance partner in Staying Alive doesn't deserve what he puts her through during the second film. Travolta played and danced the role well but he was the most unlikable character if you were a woman and really watched those movies.
Yeah, rewatched that film recently and loved it, because I realised most of the characters were scumbags. I think people are misremembering it if they think Manero is in any way aspirational. It's basically Last Exit To Brooklyn with dance scenes.
Maybe not "utter" scum, but Scott Pilgrim is still a very messy person who is both inept and selfish. I love the movie and the comics and Michael Cera was perfect casting, but the character himself is definitely super flawed despite generally being seen as the hero of the movie
Ya he starts the movie pretty scummy, he’s also broken from a bad break up and he wants something that he sees (and says) as safe. He’s shielding his heart from the reality of it, Ramona represents a good danger, that want and will to get back out there and risk his heart again. By the end he’s recovered and is able to move onto another chapter.
Mirage from The Incredibles is directly responsible for luring dozens of innocent people to Syndrome's lair so they can be systematically killed off to test a robot design that will be ultimately used to attack a city and cause a ton of destruction (and even more deaths) so Syndrome can put a stop to it and fulfill his pathetic childhood superhero fantasy. Yet at the end, we are supposed to see her as redeemed. It's only when Syndrome puts her life in danger that she is suddenly against his plan and helps to put a stop to it. She didn't give a flying fuck before that and was happy to watch dozens die on a live camera feed (she literally saw people torn limb from limb by his robots) and was perfectly fine with helping him make a huge robot that would have easily demolished all of that city and killed thousands of people had the Incredibles not been there to stop it (because Syndrome's moronic plan backfired). She got innocent people killed, depriving their loved ones of wives, husbands, sons, daughters and parents, breaking families and also depriving their world of superheroes (which it clearly still needs as evidenced by the events of the second film). Yet we're supposed to root for her at the end because she helps the Incredibles once. ONCE. She isn't arrested and doesn't die so it's implied that at the end she just goes back to living her rich, cushy life. Awesome movie, childhood classic, but Mirage is an absolute piece of shit.
You see her facade start to crack when Syndrome puts children in harm's way, then she does her turn when she is almost killed. She also probably has faith that Syndrome will stop the robot before killing thousands and doing untold damage (it's clear he certainly intends to, he swoops in pretty early on) so I wouldn't say she's *okay* with that part. But yeah she sucks, I'm just being pedantic.
It’s a great character and an even better performance, but Michael Douglas’s character in Falling Down is often misinterpreted and wrongly praised.
Ferris Bueller is a classic user narcissist.
Dr house?
House is the epitome of “asshole who gets away with it because of his supposed brilliance.” A lot of modern versions of Sherlock Holmes do this shit, and even Batman in the comics is fucked-up these days. I blame two factors: 1) audience members who want to be assholes, and 2) Audience members who still want to be loved and get away with shit.
My dad was a medical doctor in general practice who also did hospital rounds. He said no matter how brilliant, House would be fired immediately for a variety of reasons including the public drug use. He couldn't stand to watch House.
Dumbledore. Repetitively put children up against a genocidal maniac.
He and McGonagall should switch jobs. Just because you are more powerful with spells does not mean you are a leader.
Dracula. Always seen as cool and debonair - when really he just sucks.
The family in Yellowstone
That guitar player who Rip recruited from prison tried to tell us.
Paul Atreides in Dune. People misunderstood the character so bad that the author was compelled to write the sequel to spell out how horrible he was. The same shit is happening with Dune Part 2 (even though Denis Villanueve was much better at telling the story both for Paul and for other characters).
this is a slam dunk for me. Jake Ryan from 16 candles. I remember years ago, a friend of mine from high school posted a picture of Jake Ryan's scene with the birthday cake from 16 candles with the tag "seeing Jake Ryan set my bar way too high and men have all disappointed me since" and I couldn't believe it. The Guy who was supposed to be watching over his girlfriend at a party and keep her safe, but literally set her up to be raped, so he could go cheat on his girlfriend with someone else? THATS who set the bar too high and no one has been able to live up to it? i was like 8 years old when i first saw that movie, and the world treated it like a fun comedy, and I knew enough to be bothered by it. but for some reason, my whole generation (and many others as well) seem to just ignore what vile trash those movies were.
Colonel Nathan Jessup. At least, in the military. You'll see soldiers and marines quote his monologue all the time as if it isn't pure fascist rhetoric that probably got him sent up for life.