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

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 mean, I know most movies were books first, but some movies are STILL BOOKS FIRST.

Reminds me that one of my terrible thread ideas was a poll of tv shows adapting A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life for their own purposes.

I feel like the Simon & Simon episode where one Simon imagines what would have happened if he'd never been born and the other Simon drowns in a river because he wasn't there to save him is still peak pre-golden era TV, vv dramatic.

Always liked the Married...With Children where Al learns that his family would have been much happier if he'd never been born, so he comes back out of spite

in the disney continuity, scrooge mcduck is still a stingy guy -- i thought he was supposed to be reformed?

HIGH FIDELITY

Ah cmon he's totally an asshole

Pretty much after this year, most past movies have terrible good guy protagonists. Every 80s movie ever.

xxp

file under americans dabble in british humour

not sure Nick Hornby is intentionally humorous

Indiana Jones is basically everything the bad guys describe him as, and a cantankerous git to boot

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

High Fidelity the movie is very aware that the protagonist is a cock. The book far less so.

The movie takes its time during moments where he's brushing women off or treating them callously to linger on their reaction for an extra beat. Key shot is probably when he says goodbye to Lili Taylor and merrily monologues away while she stands by the door clearly breaking down a bit but he completely ignores it.

Mrs. Robinson is the hero of The Graduate

^^Reminds me of this bit from Barcelona:

Fred: You think wedding vows are going to change everything? God, your naivete is astounding! Didn't you see "The Graduate"?

Ted: You can remember "The Graduate"?

Fred: Yeah, I can remember a few things. Apparently you don't. The end? Katharine Ross has just married this really cool guy - tall, blond, incredibly popular, the make-out king of his fraternity in Berkeley - when this obnoxious Dustin Hoffman character shows up at the back of the church, acting like a total asshole. "Elaine! Elaine!" Does Katharine Ross tell Dustin Hoffman, "Get lost, creep. I'm a married woman"? No. She runs off with him - on a bus. That is the reality.

I think it's a rite of passage when you're rescreening Fast Times At Ridgemont High, and you go from identifying with one of the kids to identifying with Mr. Hand.

Lots of 80s movies want you to root for someone who totally doesn't deserve rooting for, obv. Ferris only one of a thousand.

I've always felt this way about Reality Bites - not so much that it needed to be told from a different (Stillerian) perspective, just that it worked hard to lionize bad people.

True challops is: I felt the exact same way about Frances Ha.

Also about Harold and Maude. Gah.

Some terrible movie people are not terrible in the ostensibly-cute-terrible-people way like Rushmore or N. Dynamite or whatever.

Colossus is the hero of The Forbin Project

OK, Paddington Bear's turn...

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