Unsympathetic main character / protagonist in movies.

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Andrew J, Nov 29, 2018.

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  1. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

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    Alexandria VA
    Disagree.
    Lee always cares what people think - she just keeps them at arm's length.

    By the movie's end, it's clear she wants to make amends with Jack, and she also steps toward reconciliation with Anna when she finally reads her story.

    Even earlier, we can see her concerns about how others view her, mainly via her calls to her ex-girlfriend.[/quote]
     
  2. SurrealCereal

    SurrealCereal Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    These actually had the opposite effect on me. Reservoir Dogs and American Psycho are movies where the main characters are terrible people who deserve hatred, but they’re so charismatic that I can’t help but love them.

    In Mr. White’s case, he even seems like the good guy in all of it with the way he tries to protect Mr. Orange and is totally disgusted by Mr. Blond’s massacre. It almost gives him some kind of redemption for being a criminal.
     
  3. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    The 1st two weren't protagonists - and in the case of Cromwell, he was likable. He just turned out to be bad.

    Don't remember Sinise or Bening well enough to comment...
     
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  4. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Agree about White.

    Though he doesn't belong in this thread because he's not the main character - there is no main character in "RD", as it's an ensemble piece...
     
  5. Scooterpiety

    Scooterpiety Ars Gratia Artis

    Location:
    Oregon
    Yesss, I guess you are right about the first two. Cromwell felt more like a major role in the film to me, very strong performance.
    Go watch "The Grifters" again, Bening as Myra was pretty slimy.
     
  6. George Co-Stanza

    George Co-Stanza Forum Resident

    Location:
    America
    Neither Shaker nor Dudley were the protagonists in their films, much less the main character.

    Keep in mind that Mr. White was the one who fired on and killed several cops during the getaway, and he also participated in the beatdown of the cop from Blond's trunk before Nice Guy Eddie showed up and put a stop to it. Of course, not all bad guys are created equal, and Mr. Blond was definitely the worst of the bunch, but I have a hard time viewing Mr. White as any kind of good guy.
     
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  7. Andrew J

    Andrew J Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    South East England
    Good call. Jim Thompson's characters tend to be unlikable. I can't think of one that is in any of his books. The Killer Inside of Me was kind of American Psycho before its time.
     
  8. SurrealCereal

    SurrealCereal Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    I agree that Mr. White is by no means a good guy. My point was that he’s likable both for his charisma and because he seems to have some morals when compared to Mr. Blond and Mr. Pink.
     
  9. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Cromwell's part isn't even in the top 5 of "main characters", I wouldn't think. The movie focuses mainly on the Crowe/Pearce roles, with Spacey 3rd and Basinger 4th.

    I'd probably put DeVito 5th but maybe Cromwell sneaks into that spot...

    Haven't seen it since it was in theaters! I'll add it to my Netflix list! :righton:

    All I remember is that Bening goes nekkid! :D
     
  10. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    [/QUOTE]
    Agree, but I think as a character established as we meet her, she has none of these traits; and these are traits gained through contrition of the acts she commits in the film; I think the only thing you can sum up from this is, she has learned tenative compassion, but not started out with it. I said/you said. :shrug:
     
  11. metal134

    metal134 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canton, OH, USA
    Mitch doesn’t come off very well either.
     
  12. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Agree, but I think as a character established as we meet her, she has none of these traits; and these are traits gained through contrition of the acts she commits in the film; I think the only thing you can sum up from this is, she has learned tenative compassion, but not started out with it. I said/you said. :shrug:[/QUOTE]

    Compassion is different from what you mentioned earlier. You said Lee didn't care about what anyone else thought of her, and that's where I disagreed. Compassion is something else...
     
  13. Vahan

    Vahan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Glendale, CA, USA
    Ahnold in Sabotage.
     
  14. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Howabout we save the discourse of whether "caring=compassion" for the 'Please Delete" thread...could this really be dependent on what your definition of "is" is...?
     
  15. Guy Smiley

    Guy Smiley America’s Favorite Game Show Host

    Location:
    Sesame Street
    I actually like “Ferris”... I was the right age for it when it came out. It’s something of a rite of passage for viewers of a certain age. But, yeah, 30+ years later it’s easy to see he was a smarmy little prick.

    Anyhow, sorry, but I think Sideways is a terrible, terrible movie. Everything I said about it earlier holds true. I remember thinking both of two leads were just awful, awful people who didn’t deserve the women they were pursuing. That movie honestly colored my opinion of Paul Giamatti, unfairly or not, ever since. I’m sure he’s a good guy, but I find him unlikable in everything he does.

    And I remember this lady sitting behind me, when I saw the movie, who’d apparently never seen a movie or read a book in her life. She would say things throughout the film like “Ohh... He’s not talking about the wine. He’s really talking about himself,” after some pretentious Giamatti speech.

    I would never, ever strike a woman, but part of me wanted to slap this particular one. Ugh.

    Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you how I felt about movie “Her” either. I found it just as insufferable, no sympathetic characters in that one either. By the end, I wanted the computers to take over and for Joaquin Phoenix’s character to either jump or be thrown off the roof of the apartment.
     
  16. Django

    Django Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dublin, Ireland
    The first one I thought of. And yet he doesn't kill anyone. It's hard to watch as his obsessively jealous & paranoid mind destroys everything in his life.
     
  17. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I was close enough to "the right age" in 1986 - I was 19 - and the movie always rubbed me the wrong way. Always thought Ferris was a dick!

    Were you my date to "Sideways" in 2005???

    Sideways [Blu-Ray] (2004)

    Totally agree on "Her" - that was a crummy movie...
     
  18. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    If you think "'caring what people think of you" is the same as "compassion for people"... I don't know what to say... :shrug:
     
  19. GregM

    GregM The expanding man

    Location:
    Bay Area, CA
    You never knocked me down, Ray.
     
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  20. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I've often said that everybody is bad in the Godfather movies, but you have the "good" bad guys (the Corleone family, who have a code of honor and a list of rules) vs. the "bad" bad guys. It's remarkable that Coppola managed to make them such sympathetic characters.

    The idea of forcing an audience to empathize with the lead character, even when they're despicable people, is not a new one. I would point to Hitchcock's Psycho as a big example, like the scene where Norman Bates is sinking the car with Marion Crane's body in the trunk. For a moment, the car gets "stuck" and doesn't look like it's going to sink, and the audience goes, "oh, no! We've got to get rid of the evidence!" and then everybody is relieved when the car continues to sink and then disappears in the lake. Hitchcock's skill of making us feel sorry for Bates (before we know his whole story) is amazing.
     
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  21. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    Dirty Dingus Magee-Frank Sinatra
     
  22. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    punishing oneself to prove a point...illogical! ; )
     
  23. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    Evil Roy Slade-John Astin
     
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  24. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    There are probably 100s of movies where we sympathize with people who don't deserve it. Basically any movie with a criminal qualifies! :)
     
  25. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    One of my criticisms of movies I don't like is: "there's nobody I can empathize with, and most of them I'd never want to meet, let alone hang out with." I think the filmmaker has to find a way to make them sympathetic characters, even if they're criminals, so we understand who they are and why they feel that they have to do what they do.

    Another great film that takes a reprehensible character and makes the audience empathize with him is Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, where Alex is an awful futurist street punk who is very much the hero/anti-hero of the film. The manipulation of the audience by the director is uncanny and very skillful. Only later do you say, "hey, wait a minute -- this was a rotten guy!"

    Maybe the greatest character in TV history who fits that bill is Vince Gilligan's "Walter White" from Breaking Bad, where the two main messages of the show were: 1) people make bad decisions that lead to terrible consequences, and 2) when you start doing bad things, you find more and more ways to justify your behavior and become blind to the truth. That was a wrenching show when you carry it from the start all the way to the bitter end. But I actually liked the fact that Walter White did eventually realize he enjoyed doing what he did because he was good at it, and also that he triumphed over everybody who was his enemy. And he helped out his friends and family as best as he could. (Well, except for Mike and Hank, but there are always casualties in war.)
     
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