movies where you disagree w/ the screenwriters on who the 'good guys' are

Saruman offered the only credible opposition to Sauron and the Fellowship dudes just got lucky

― a Rambo in curved air (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 31 December 2017 14:06 (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Something something new labour

Most heroes in movies are awful people tbf is that the premise

Valerian was one of these, for me.

Robin Hood trustafarian rabblerousing slacking wanker

arguably the protagonist of ACC is "the spirit of Christmas" and Scrooge is the antagonist

Se7en is the story of how Morgan Freeman's character overcomes his loss of faith in the world thru the cautionary tale of his chucklehead partner

the Alien saga is the ongoing story of a noble race trying to undo the mistake they made by creating the stupidest sentient creatures that ever existed

I've said this before, but I'm convinced all Trump voters would agree Biff is the hero of the Back to the Future series. Is that the kind of thing the thread is getting at? Perhaps not thoughtful enough.

what I really meant (and didn't word well) was movies where you disagree w/ who the good guys are. ie, the movie frames someone as the person to root for and it's like they're depicted as a pretty terrible person

so yours fits

I've seen people say Daniel is the bad guy in Karate Kid but I don't see it

this thread would work better imo as actual serious disagreements w the screenwriters about the moral scales of the script, rather than "lol what if the villains are the heroes" gags. (tho i have loved those, as in "Must Love Jaws." ). but yeah sort of the film equivalent of Songs where the singer/protagonist comes off as a serious dick without meaning to

death of the author etc etc this thread can be taken there if participants desire....:)

Where is banaka I'm sure it will have thoughts on manys the sf tale

ferris bueller's day off. cameron is just a depressed kid trying to stay home sick and his sociopath friend bullies him into taking his dad's extremely expensive car to joyride and otherwise commit crimez around chicago.

yep

a lot of SF movies involve incurious fascist humans trying to wipe out "alien" creatures that are simply trying to survive, or apex preds that are just apex predding. a lot of Fantasy stuff is just straight racist obv.

gilmore girls is a harrowing journey into the inextricable psychological hold one hateful young woman has over an entire town

Jerry maguire is a total cunt, just this childish whiny self-pitting midlife crisis dude who shows up drunk at his only employee's house to sexually harass her and swear at her kid

Kind of an odd case because the film acknowledges this & has several characters call him on it, but it also seems to want us to see the sister who warns Renee Zellweger away from the guy as some kind of evil man-hating bitch, even tho she's clearly right

A friend of mine has always claimed Eddie Dane is the hero (or at least the moral center) of Miller's Crossing, and watching it the other night I kinda agree. He's the only character who never lies to anybody or does anything he said he wouldn't do; everyone turns on him and betrays him, from Mink to Caspar.

Pilate is the hero of Passion of the Christ

Ferris Bueller needs to be called out as a wrong entry

There is simply no way the screenwriters didn't know he was a cunt

It's the born in the USA of movies

broseph, john hughes wrote that shit. it's a wish fulfillment for him.

Otm I've never watched fb & thought we were "meant" to find him likeable xp

movie sells him HARD as a quirky charmer with good life lessons to distribute. only thing that even sort of saves it is him realizing his actual role here is to try and help out his sad sack friend, even if the way he goes about this is pretty much unthinking and dopey.

feel like a ton of romance movies, esp. about guys that "charmingly" don't give up after that first "no" would fit the bill here.

also in burton's batman, my friend david uzumeri has made the case that the reporter dude friend of vicki vale's is treated as a comic relief/plot complication side story despite being a far more sympathetic protagonist than michael keaton - he's a regular joe putting together the clues of a theory nobody believes in!

I've always given John Hughes the benefit of the doubt that he hated every single one of his characters and felt nothing but contempt for the audience his movies found

that is v charitable of you

I've always given John Hughes the benefit of the doubt that he hated every single one of his characters and felt nothing but contempt for the audience his movies found

A reasonable theory - he did get his start at National Lampoon after all.

Bilbo Baggins is a fat comfortable home counties middle englander who made his money as a hired mercenary in a war of conquest and if his wet nephew felt vaguely guilty about any of it I hardly think a token faux-native jewel sacrifice ceremony covers it

xps I don't really but Bueller seems so extreme that I have to think somebody somewhere used it an experiment in how far they could push things

I don't understand the thread premise. Is it that Scrooge isn't the protagonist of acc (he is, that's just a fact) or that you disagree with the film about "who Scrooge is" ie what sort of person he is (he's a Scrooge)
― Bitcoin Baja (wins)

thread title s/b movies where you disagree with the moral of the story maybe
― Bitcoin Baja (wins)

Yeah, this also confused me. I thought it meant "the protagonist is another character" not "the protagonist is meant to be great but is actually a dick".

Both decent thread ideas

But I think that we probably already do the latter in individual threads for most movies ever tbf

I just rewatched Fight Club for the first time in ages. Ugh, no wonder this movie is huge in Russia and with the alt-right.

I'm trying to work out this Scrooge thing. (I'm most of the way through the original Dickens atm.) If you can accept the premise that ghosts and spirits exist in the way that they do in this book/film, I'm not sure it's fair to say that what they do to Scrooge is bullying. All that the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present really do is i) remind him of his own memories and ii) expose him to other people's experiences. There might be a point about the Christmas Future ghost idk? (And if Scrooge is an allegory for the Victorian upper class, pleading to his conscience is probably nicer than a lot of other approaches to social change, which the Ghost of Christmas Present reminds him of.)

A golden retriever can't be allowed in a basketball league, that's absurd.

It's definitely bullying in the scrooged version of acc

The hero of Goodfellas is Henry’s father, who beats the shit out of him for dealing with the Mafia. If only Henry had just listened to his dad he would’ve turned out fine.

yeah I'm not going to call someone a hero for beating their kid

and he reacted by getting deeper into it, BIG SHOCKAH

Jerry Maguire one of the most awful inexplicably popular films I ever saw tbh. Boring as shit and hated everyone in it

still never seen it and something tells me I'm better off.

It's a real slog tbh, you think at first it's gonna be dumb fun (show me the money!) but it's really tedious & like 6hr long

The bit where he beats zellwegers kid is pretty good tbf

It's definitely bullying in the scrooged version of acc

Carol Kane kicking him in the balls would count, I agree.

This took a bit of thinking bc main characters (excluding minor/side/supporting characters here) tend to be more complex than purely good or bad

But maybe conrad from ordinary people. We’re to assume he is the good guy and mary tyler moore’s character is purely evil, which she is, but conrad comes off as very self centred? Still sounds a bit off though

Not a movie but maybe timothy treadwell in grizzly bear only bc herzog seems dumb enough to think he is actually a good guy?

I guess I’m not ready to assume the screenwriters’ and/or directors’ intention of creating one-sided main characters

Sixth sense is about a cursed kid whose house is invaded by a dumb white man needing redemption.

How did we get this far without anyone bringing up Reality Bites?

never seent it, though I remember the soundtrack well

The lead in the Trolls movie is a major asshole

was it Momus

CHRISTMAS CAROL WAS A BOOK.

I can’t think of specific titles at the moment, but it feels like there’s an entire genre of 1970s films wherein the male lead is a smug asshole to everyone (especially women), yet the film wants us to view him as a righteous countercultural dude thumbing his nose at the polite conventions of straight society, rather than a prick.

cuckoo's nest, five easy pieces
CROSSPOST

watched rear window again recently and Jimmy Stewart's character is such a condescending jackass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpSEv2r6hY

Haven’t revisited since the initial viewing but I remember not rooting for the Run Lola Run characters.

killmonger was right

Rewatched the Matrix recently and was totally grossed out by the gun porn and the Enlightened whites with guns shooting everyone because they know the Truth.

Columbine was only a few months after it was released. I don’t know that there’s any correlation, but that movie reads very different now.

dont forget that the enlightened whites also save the day by learning the very ancient, very mysterious, very mystical secrets of KUNG FU. (which ofc is mostly useful for helping them shoot their guns better.)

I've seen pushback on that along the lines of "keanu isn't white" but even if he isn't I think it's safe to say neo/thomas anderson is(?). The most interesting parts of the franchise are the parts that undercut the more cliched heroes & villains narrative (so I'll defend the sequels even though they're a mess by any reasonable standard)

i liked the 4th movie more than most but the train scene was horrifying & I'm shocked no one in production flagged it given both anti-asian violence irl & the entire franchise's appropriation problem which had been called out for 20+ years at that point

I can’t think of specific titles at the moment, but it feels like there’s an entire genre of 1970s films wherein the male lead is a smug asshole to everyone (especially women), yet the film wants us to view him as a righteous countercultural dude thumbing his nose at the polite conventions of straight society, rather than a prick.

― blatherskite, Tuesday, July 19, 2022 10:59 PM (yesterday)

I found M*A*S*H (the film, not the TV show) almost unwatchable for this reason.

ooh good one, yeah thats a pretty tough watch for me these days

re:the matrix, tbh i never gave much thought to appropriation issues but Cow_Art otm abt the gun porn, at least in 1 which is the only one i remember anything about. i just remember being so grossed out by how it was sold as this deeply complex mindbending philosophical sci fi opus, and then whaddya know at the end all of those fascinating existential conflicts are resolved by our brave heroes slipping on sweet Oakley shades and mowing down bunch of people with machine guns.

if "dickhead male protagonist who we're supposed to like for some reason" qualifies that's 90% of action movies and at least half of the wider canon. like connery's bond is an actual monster and not in a self-aware craig sort of way

I think goodfellas type stuff tries to have it both ways in a way that feels a little disingenuous (that film is one of the better versions of this sort of thing)

matrix is the one film in my top whatever which I have the most issues with, it is a ridiculous blend of brilliance and hackery which really shouldn't work as well as it does

matrix sequels significantly tone down the gunplay

not sure i agree with the enlightened whites stuff at all given how diverse the cast is but ok

The part in the Matrix that sticks in my craw is when Neo and Trinity blow away a bunch of ordinary security guards (right before the hallway shootout). It's one thing to have gunfights in a movie like this, but straight-up murder, eh

there was some point during the Trump presidency that I realized that there is an entire section of the male population that completely missed the point that Walter White and Tony Soprano were bad guys.

With Koyaanisqatsi it's obvious that Godfrey Reggio wanted to portray clouds as the good guys and humanity as the bad guys. But because it's made of stock footage from a particularly interesting time and place, it comes across as a combination of nostalgic shots of life in New York circa the late 1970s plus awesome timelapse shots of cool glass skyscrapers. I kept thinking "what happened to those people" and not "look at those ants ruining nature". It's a good example of a film that's excellent by mistake.

my copy of the DVD has interview with reggio, he claims some people thought he was glorifying technology. disingenuous, the film's thesis is pretty clear. he's trying to make it seem like he isn't clobbering you over the head with the message, hard to believe esp w/ the title reveal at the end. i think there is a more interesting interpretation about the environment and society being almost deterministic processes that are simply unfolding

and yes the 70s vibes rock a lot

I had a poster of Alex and his droogs from A Clockwork Orange on my dorm room's wall my freshman year of college and, now that I've gone through the adult arc of cringing at the unconscious motivations that make kids put things like that on their walls, especially in that moment, I think it's just really funny

there's something in dude's brains where they either figure shit out or they're adults with Scarface posters in their man cave who think Walt and Tony Soprano are cool and the protagonist is always good and cool

obviously by a couple years into college I was very enlightened and watching Koyaanisqatsi with my friends and thinking it was deep and good and cool

which is also assigning deeper meaning in a kind of cringe way, but I can look back and laugh at that, too

tbh they kind of wanted you to think "heisenberg" was cool for part of breaking bad (he wasn't) even if they make it clear walter white is a bad man (it is like the ultimate nerd power fantasy at times). they also put you on tony soprano's side for a while by giving him relatable problems and surrounding him with even worse people. both shows turned on the characters eventually but I'm not sure the hero worship is a *total* misreading

What about Sam Spade? I would've included him in the poll of Maltese Falcon villains now.

Sam Spade is literally described by Hammett as "a blond Satan" in the book.

there was some point during the Trump presidency that I realized that there is an entire section of the male population that completely missed the point that Walter White and Tony Soprano were bad guys.

― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Wednesday, July 20, 2022 11:00 AM bookmarkflaglink

there are entire Reddit threads about how Walter did nothing wrong, I thin kwe were clowning on a few bad hot takes in the BB thread after the Ozymandias episode. it blows my mind that anybody bought his heroic father story, even in Season 1.

there ain't no good guys. there ain't no bad guys.
there's just you and me and we just disagree.

i'm gonna hurt you for making me think of that song

obviously by a couple years into college I was very enlightened and watching Koyaanisqatsi with my friends and thinking it was deep and good and cool

of course, this is a dorm room stoner staple. i wouldn't say the movie is terribly deep anymore, but i think it's still good and cool. pointed me towards a lot of woo-woo mindfulness/eastern philosophy stuff that i take some comfort in and ponder still today

i haven't seen either sequel, they don't look very good. i was really disappointed by samsara, it was gorgeously shot, but pretty incoherent overall

Even at the time I enjoyed it as basically a lava lamp for the glass jams

Breaking bad et al belong itt in as far as those Redditors disagree w/ the screenwriters on who the good guys are I guess

Dan Fielding was obviously the hero on Night Court

seems like a good thread to drop this conversation starter

These are mostly all good movies, c'mon pic.twitter.com/5JmlACsVhr

— Shoegaze Dad 🇵🇭 (@yeoldedad) July 20, 2022

Dan Fielding was obviously the hero on Night Court

― F'kin Magnetometers, how do they work? (President Keyes), Wednesday, July 20, 2022 2:27 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

xp huh, I've seen people make graphics like that for years and that's a new variation

Thinking back to breaking bad even in the first couple of seasons for every moment of “Heisenberg” being ~badass~ there were a dozen moments of Walt and Jesse being incompetent, ppl who actually were competent berating/clowning them for being fools

The moral case against them was made p comprehensibly as well but the things they do are “filmed” to appear “cool” or “dramatically compelling” which can disconcert those who have never encountered fiction before

xp there is maybe a good point in there somewhere, but 0/10 on the execution. it is making people furious on twitter and maybe that was the point.

Needs more John Ford tbh

A+ trolling effort by whoever put that "aggressively bland" infographic together.

A recent movie that struck me as firmly belonging in this thread is The Northman.

I shouldn't bother but

1. The Eastwood characters in the spaghetti westerns are not trying to "bring order to communities," they are trying to enrich themselves personally

2. Those characters with "well-paying office jobs" are not "upper class"

‘Aggressively bland” immediately refuted by pic of Rowdy Roddy Piper in shades. Try better.

If not already mentioned, Dustin Hoffman's character in Straw Dogs

otm, the house is the villain

If we're doing TV shows, I always thought Philip & Elizabeth in The Americans were the bad guys and spent six seasons waiting for them to get their comeuppance.

A recent movie that struck me as firmly belonging in this thread is The Northman.

― beard papa, Wednesday, July 20, 2022 6:16 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol what? this movie went out of its way to make it REALLY obvious that the main character's motives were overly simplistic and did not map to reality