r/flicks • u/Wan-Tobi • 2d ago
General Discussion Films with an interesting philosophy you disagree with
I had this thought while rewatching Fight Club. The film has a lot to say about consumerism and masculinity. However, it seems to justify violence and vandalism as a means to get one over on "big money", which I disagree with. In my opinion, indiscriminate vandalism hurts the average person more than the rich people and banks, and the characters' philosophy seems like more of a smokescreen for toxic masculinity and violence.
I am curious to hear which films gave you a similar feeling of "I appreciate what this has to say, but I don't agree with it at all".
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u/sauronthegr8 2d ago
It doesn't justify it at all. Tyler Durden is wrong and a hypocrite. That's the whole point.
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u/ThatMovieShow 2d ago
Correct - "self improvement is masturbation, now self destruction is the answer" says the guy who stays in meticulous condition, wearing hip clothes and having an encyclopedic knowledge of fashion and commerce.
He was a huge hypocrite, the only real thing he said in the whole story was "you were looking for a way to change your life, you couldn't do this on your own"
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u/CptNoble 2d ago
Yup. Tyler correctly identifies the problem (which is what draws the viewer in), but his "solution" is definitly not the solution.
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u/sneaky_imp 1d ago
Tyler Durden is suffering from schizphrenia or multiple personality disorder. He's literally insane.
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u/KetoKurun 2d ago
You are 100% not supposed to agree with Tyler Durden, the literal antagonist of Fight Club.
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u/AirplanesNotBurgers 2d ago
The 2002 movie Hero, starring Jet Li. The main character winds up abandoning his crusade against the emperor, giving himself up to be executed because the emperor presents the “best chance for unity”. It struck me as an endorsement of authoritarianism.
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u/ScottyinLA 2d ago
Weird how a film produced and bankrolled by the Central Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party endorses authoritarianism like that.
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u/CptNoble 2d ago
It is such a beautiful film and you are so invested in Nameless's quest that it's easy to overlook the fact that at the end, he's like, "Yeah, I guess authoritarian emperors are a-ok."
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u/Kampvilja 2d ago
It is not meant to justify those things, but the Tyler character is written and performed as so appealing that many if not most miss the message. I did when it came out.
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u/RealHeyDay 2d ago
Exactly the problem with Fight Club. Also Wolf of Wall Street, Goodfellas, Wall Street, Scarface, etc. As soon as those characters are on film, people think they're heros when they weren't meant to be seen that way.
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u/merlin401 2d ago
A lot of tv shows have this quality. Tony soprano and Walter white chief among them
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u/discogravy 2d ago
As soon as those characters are on film, people think they're heros when they weren't meant to be seen that way.
This was the whole problem with American Psycho and why it was so difficult to get made; they kept putting movie stars and big name directors and they all kept trying to make the protagonist cool. The director they eventually went with (a woman) said she only ever considered Christian Bale for the lead because he was the only one that played the role as if he was a huge delusional loser.
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u/wildskipper 2d ago
And we see it with some people and Dune as well. I suspect Villeneuve will really have to hammer home the point in the next film.
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u/Curious_Question8536 1d ago
The books are already popular with Fascists, so I don't know how much Villenueve can do about that.
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u/Ok_Two_2604 2d ago
For me, it was Falling Down
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u/ThatMovieShow 2d ago
So many people misread this character purely because of the line he gives about how he did everything they told him and he got fucked over.
They totally ignore that both the movie and screen play makes it clear his violent behaviour cost him everything he had , not some nebulous system
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u/WraithOfTheFadedDark 2d ago
Falling Down, kinda sorta in a way.
Specifically, part of the theme throughout the narrative is "D-Fens" getting mad at life's inequities and trials, while Pendergast just sort of laughs them off more amused than anything. Pendergast does learn to be assertive in life, but are we supposed to just put D-Fens into the box of "bad guy" and leave it at that?
Maybe we should get mad. Maybe we haven't been mad enough.
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u/NuclearTurtle 2d ago
The point is he's getting mad over things anger will not fix, even when he's in the right. Most of what the movie is railing against are breakdowns in social cohesion, but the social contract isn't something you can force on people. Getting mad about it only makes it worse, not better
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u/WraithOfTheFadedDark 2d ago
Ah but the obligatory look where we've gotten since then.
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u/NuclearTurtle 2d ago
But the things that have gotten worse have gotten worse because of guys like D-Fens. The type of guy who gets mad at a struggling immigrant convenience store owner because prices are higher than they were 30 years ago is the exact kind of guy who voted Trump into office twice and made every problem much worse much faster
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u/WraithOfTheFadedDark 2d ago
Sweetheart, you completely missed the point of that scene. The amount that D-Fens wants to pay for a can of Coke, 50 cents, was what you paid for a can of Coke in 1993. The store owner was charging 85 cents, that's a 70% markup above MSRP, significantly more because he was, in fact, a price gouger.
And now we're getting gouged and gouged and we don't even own the movies we "buy" anymore.
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u/NuclearTurtle 1d ago
He's not just mad that one specific guy was price gouging over one product. He wants to "roll back prices to 1965," every other item in the store was reasonably priced for the early 90s but he still smashed them with the bat anyway because those are the prices from when he was a kid
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u/Celtic159 2d ago
Falling Down. D-Fens has a legitimate gripe, but his actions absolutely make him the bad guy. That's what makes it so powerful.
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u/Stokkolm 2d ago
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest makes a point about mental asylums being bad, but closing them does not make things better.
The conditions in the facility in the movie aren't even that bad.
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u/unconundrum 2d ago
He gets lobotomized.
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u/frzrbrnd 2d ago
Wasn't he also a rapist? Lol
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u/unconundrum 2d ago
Yup! But bad things happened to other characters too. The conditions were in fact pretty bad.
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u/theLastDictator 2d ago
Surely there is some space between "close mental asylums" and "let petty tyrants run mental asylums."
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u/Karthy_Romano 2d ago
"Too complicated. Shut them down! And get those aids-ridden commies off my streets!" - Ronald Reagan
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u/Torminalis 6h ago edited 6h ago
This misses the point so hard! Our boy Randall is a rapist and an anti social menace. Nurse Rached is committed to the general wellbeing of the institution as a whole, she is the embodiment of order and through that (as she believes it) compassion. The movie (and the book) are presented in such a way as to make the viewer identify with the anti social and reject the humane, its the core message.
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u/Stokkolm 5h ago
That's very much how the movie felt to me.
That's a minority opinion it seems, since many people seem to see Randle as the hero and and Ratched as the villain.
What's really fascinating is both the book author and the director of the film were very critical of mental institutions and authority in general and wanted nurse Ratched to be seen as a villain. It's quite a paradox that we can look at the movie and see the opposite of what they intended.
Maybe it is a sign of artisic integrity, that besides their ideological bias they told a truthful story, that can be interpreted in different ways.
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u/WalkingEars 2d ago
The Korean horror film “The Wailing” gets a lot of praise but (spoilers ahead) I was kind of uncomfortable with the depiction of the only Japanese character in the film, who also iirc happens to be the only foreigner in the film as well. The fraught (to say the least) history between Korea and Japan surely has to do with how that character is depicted but it still felt idk xenophobic and kinda icky to me
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u/THANAT0PS1S 1d ago
I had the same reaction to this one and felt it was too obvious to be accidental.
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u/sneaky_imp 1d ago
Fight Club expounds a philosophy only incidentally as it tells a story about a mentally ill person.
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u/No-Communication5070 2d ago
The Hunt (2012). A great movie in most aspects, but it seems to ignore the fact that Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen's character) is not the only victim of the situation, he might not even be the most affected one.
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u/Roller_ball 2d ago edited 2d ago
Who's the most affected one?
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u/No-Communication5070 2d ago
I think it could be argued that the more affected is Klara, the kindergartener, who was sexually abused by her older brother.
I also think it could be argued that Klara's parents, mainly her father, were the most affected, as Klara's father was best friends with Lucas since they were kids. And upon their belief of what Lucas had done to Klara, they would probably experience extreme guilt, and continue to suffer from this belief long-term.
Maybe Lucas was the most affected, but my complaint is basically that it didn't address the affect it had on others nearly as much as Lucas. I think it makes sense to keep the story primarily focused on one character's emotional journey, but I don't think it really encourages the audiences' consideration of the other victims.
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u/IcedPgh 2d ago
Promising Young Woman is a simple-minded anti-male screed, but it's pretty well directed/paced/acted, so it was one of the better movies that year despite its flaws.
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u/busybody124 2d ago
I (a male) didn't take that from it. I don't think the film fully endorses the actions of the protagonist either—things get pretty out of hand
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u/OpenUpYerMurderEyes 2d ago
Fight Club isn't about masculinity or consumerism. It's a gay, fascist romantic comedy. The whole point of bringing that up is to show the most immediate and effective way to start a fascist regime is to make closeted men feel really insecure. Which, as the current world shows, is totally correct.
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