movies

Princess Bride. Every single person I talk to says it's about true love but it's really the most important lesson is to never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

Dune 1 and 2.

Moral of story: beware blind loyalty to messianic figures

Audience reaction: Paul is so cool and admirable, I hope he wins!

The obvious one for me would be Wolf of Wall Street. Clearly tried to exaggerate excess and hedonism, but people praised the lifestyle and tried to think "that is what I want to be one day"

Starship Troopers I think, though that's a bit of a weird one since I remember that the movie is a lot more antifascist than the book it's based on.

It’s got to be The Matrix.

These red pill people view “liberals” as the Matrix they’re escaping…when the film explicitly says the opposite.

Do red people know that both of the writers are trans…?

I know some people that had the sarcasm and satirical nature of Starship Troopers fly right over their heads.

500 Days of Summer.

Everyone thinks it's another one of those "manic pixie girl" rom com movies that were all the rage in the mid 00s but it's not. It's more of a story about Tom's inability to have a healthy relationship with just about anyone. He builds this ideal girl in his head for Summer, falls for her, but she's just not into him. For her Tom is just a fling, that's it. People wanted the two to be together but she just never had feelings for him. And he doesn't learn his lesson at all because at the end he does the same thing again with another woman named Autumn thus further proving it's all going to happen again. they meet because they have a similar interest in ONE topic and she even initially declines his offer for coffee. He builds these women in his head without actually taking them for who they are. He constantly falls for the wrong women. like the changing of the seasons.

Fight Club

steve jobs| (listed as "Steve Jobs" but stylised as the former)

A lot of people assumed it was a fluff piece about the late Apple co-founder and dismissed it. Then it came out that it wasn't very historically accurate (the people who lived many of those moments came out and said "hey, that's not the way that happened!" and more people looked away.

The point was how much of an asshole Steve Jobs actually was and how he basically got lucky and exploited circumstances. It was also built like a stage play, with three acts, each consisting of a series of skits where Steve interacts with various people — the same people, in each of three eras. The launch of the Macintosh, the launch of the NeXT Cube, and the launch of the iMac.

The only punch Aaron Sorkin really pulled was the Lisa stuff. According to her, he was kind of a creep. Not quite #MeToo level, but like, he'd ask her if she touched herself in bed, and she'd say "ew, no," and that would end it for the day. One day she said yes to shut him up, and he started talking about how she was gonna be popular with the boys... or something like that. In the movie, he was only really mean to her in the first segment, and then only at first.

One thing the movie did get right is why every time they show a digital clock, it's always 9:41. (With analogue, 10:10 or 2:50 are common because it looks like a smile.) It's 9:41 because that is the exact moment the Mac was announced. Jobs came up with a lot of stupid reasons for why it had to be that time — the timing was planned in advance — but those numbers were cemented in his brain and his subconscious wouldn't let his conscious mind see it. He may have been on the ASD spectrum as well. Anyway, the numbers came from a paternity test that said there was a 94.1% chance he was the father of Lisa, which he was in denial of, and famously stated that some 20,000 men could have been the father. And yet, he took that number and, no one knows what mental gymnastics he went through to get to 9:41 without making the connection, but that's the time he announced the Mac and it's why every Mac, iPhone or other Apple device shows 9:41.

Anyway, the whole movie is good, and watching it reminds me why I like not just movies, but the craft of acting and building scenes and stringing them together. The rocket scene was pretty solid (Jobs explaining the logistics of a NASA mission and it tying into his plans), but the best scene is Michael Fassbender (Jobs) and Jeff Daniels (former Apple and Pepsi CEO, John Sculley) hashing out their differences around the middle of the movie ("Why do people think I fired you?"). Takes place across two timelines (present and flashback) and these guys are talking about 2-3 things at once while advancing one conversation. Had I been 30 years younger, it might have made me get into filmmaking. But as it stands, it just made me appreciate the actors and the writer more.

It's entirely possible I missed the point, because it's not exactly a hit piece on Steve Jobs like I initially suggested. They left a lot of things on the table in that regard. It's just not the fluff piece people make it out to be, though I can understand, there's a lot of Apple glazing going on. Either way, it was an enjoyable film for dialogue in much the same way The Man From Earth was.

V for Vendetta. Even the director missed the point of an anarchist revolution story.

American Psycho

apparently there's communities that take Patrick Bateman as some kind of role model

Fight club. Haaands down

Fight Club? Animal Farm?

Nah, must be Scott Pilgrim VS the World

Fight Club, but to be fair there's a lot going on in the film. The book makes the many themes more apparent.

I can speak from personal experience on this one: Taxi Driver (1976)

When I first watched it (admittedly I was only 13 or so at the time) I pretty much took it as a story about

Watching it a few years later, the true horror of it became clear to me, and the contemptible piece of shit Travis Bickle is was made obvious. I think I was just too young to get it, but I was also a huge De Niro fan and so, whatever his character was, I was ride or die with him.

Travis Bickle predicted incel mass shooters. People seem to think he was the cool antihero he thought himself to be, I often see his face in people's profile pics and on cringy self-aggrandising quote memes. He was a disgusting pig of a man and the film is not a celebration of anything he did. On the contrary.

Breakfast at Tiffany's did not paint Holly Golightly as a character to aspire to, yet generations of young women have emulated her since.

Whiplash

Some people think it's an inspiring story about resilience and persistence towards one's dreams. But it's basically a story about textbook abuse and how pandering to the abuser ends up consuming you, erase your personality and turn you into his puppet.

The solo in the end is tragic, it is not a climax. Andrew started it to stick it to Fletcher but ended up pandering to him. Fletcher won. He now was his little trophy. Andrew is now a great drummer, for Fletcher to brag about, but sacrificed everything for it and he will die young, sad and alone. All for Fletcher's ego. And when Andrew is gone, Fletcher will find another toy to mold.

All movies with a manic pixie dream girl seem to have the point missed. 500 days of summer, eternal Sunshine of a spotless mind, garden state, Scott Pilgrim etc.

American History X

Scarface.

Eagle Eye

The US cabinet deserves to die if it acts impulsively and kills innocents without culpability. Everyone brushes this movie as a silly AI movie (which it is for some of its runtime) but it's mainly about an AI being pissed at humans for not wanting to think critically