Moments where films ruin their own message

[bgmnts]

I was thinking earlier about The Breakfast Club, and how it has a pretty constant themes of privilege, social divisions, prejudice, ageing etc, and then right at the end they take all the goth shit off Ally Sheedy and it goes 'look she was conventionally pretty all along, now the archetypal jock can shag her yay!' in a swelling instrumental climax (I know my instrument swelled to a climax lol).

This seems to destroy the entire point of the film in retrospect, and is quite funny. Do we have any more examples of this, as I quite like the idea of a film not understanding its own themes.

[QDRPHNC]

Despite being wonderful in so many ways, Fantastic Mr. Fox doesn't exactly ruin its own message, it seems confused about what it's core message is.

Mr. Fox was a great athlete in school. Despite not being athletic in the slightest, and something of an outcast weirdo, his son Ash desperately tries and fails to impress his father with his athletic abilities, which his father ignores. At the emotional climax of film, Mr. Fox has a heart to heart with Ash and tells him he is glad he is his son. He accepts his son for who he is. Done, you think. Then, a short while later during the last big action scene, Ash out of nowhere performs a feat of great athleticism. His father turns to him admiringly and says, "You're an athlete!"

So what's the message there? Its good to be yourself, but even better to be like your dad? One of several odd choices in that film.

I was thinking earlier about The Breakfast Club, and how it has a pretty constant themes of privilege, social divisions, prejudice, ageing etc, and then right at the end they take all the goth shit off Ally Sheedy and it goes 'look she was conventionally pretty all along...

This is what I thought was so great about Dinner in America, it's the story of two outcasts who find each other but

Spoiler alert

neither of them change at all from beginning to end, their growth comes from the fact that they end up accepting each other's oddness completely.

[close]

[BJBMK2]

Natural Born Killers, amongst it's many garbled messages and "satirical" bits, seems to far too genuinely in love with the dickhead protagonists and there dickhead, Charles Manson-esque view of the world. Not quite gelling with, what I thought, was the overall tone? That the media is inflating and turning these people into celebrities and Christ figures? The actual film appears to be guilty of what it's critiquing, is what I'm sayin.

It's been a while since I listened to it, but I recall Oliver Stone on the commentary coming out broadly in unironic support of what Mickey waffles on about, in that interview bit.

[Keebleman]

The 'Burbs, where the film seems to be a satire about people's readiness to believe the worst about those who are 'different', and then ends up by showing that they were right to do so.

And the bit in Roxanne where Steve Martin chooses to do the 20 jokes as a words-are-more-effective-than-violence alternative to punching the guy, but then punches him anyway.

[C_Larence]

Promising Young Woman. Carey Mulligan's character Cassie devotes her life to getting revenge for her friend who committed suicide after her rape was ignored by the authorities. That revenge mostly takes the form of lecturing men who take her home thinking she's drunk, until she is killed by the man who raped her friend. The ending shows that this was Cassie's plan all along as she's sent a video of her friend's rape to a lawyer (who originally represented the rapist, but then felt bad about it) to show to the police and scheduled some girlboss texts to send that basically say ha ha i win. By dying and leaving everything in the hands of the authorities that have repeatedly been shown by the movie to be useless.

[George White]

Promising Young Woman. Carey Mulligan's character Cassie devotes her life to getting revenge for her friend who committed suicide after her rape was ignored by the authorities. That revenge mostly takes the form of lecturing men who take her home thinking she's drunk, until she is killed by the man who raped her friend. The ending shows that this was Cassie's plan all along as she's sent a video of her friend's rape to a lawyer (who originally represented the rapist, but then felt bad about it) to show to the police and scheduled some girlboss texts to send that basically say ha ha i win. By dying and leaving everything in the hands of the authorities that have repeatedly been shown by the movie to be useless.

I wanted an end shot with morning dawning, and Cassie having not burnt at all. But secretly alive. Yes, exactly like the Exterminator (1980)

[13 schoolyards]

Romper Stomper is pretty obviously all over the place, but for a film that constantly depicts its Nazi skinhead characters as total clowns whose every scheme falls apart due to their own inept bungling and stupidity, it does also present their racist "hordes of Asians are coming into our neighbourhood, buying up local businesses and pushing us out" views as being 100% accurate.

[Noodle Lizard]

Romper Stomper is pretty obviously all over the place, but for a film that constantly depicts its Nazi skinhead characters as total clowns whose every scheme falls apart due to their own inept bungling and stupidity, it does also present their racist "hordes of Asians are coming into our neighbourhood, buying up local businesses and pushing us out" views as being 100% accurate.

I guess companion Neo-Nazi film American History X has a sort of similar problem with its ending. The Nazi teenager who has just been completely cured of racism within the past 24 hours gets murdered by the gangsta kid he'd stood up to the morning before, which could be seen as making the moral less about racism being wrong, but rather that being a skinhead might get you killed by "those sorts".

I know that's not what it's really saying, but it's a muddled and rushed ending which undermines itself. The original script supposedly had Edward Norton returning to Nazidom as a result of this which, while incredibly stupid and on-the-nose, at least tries to make a point about the cyclical nature of hatred.

[FeederFan500]

The other thing I like about The Breakfast Club is that the nerd guy still ends up doing others' homework and leaving as a fifth wheel while the others are coupled up. After analysing the social dynamics, they decide to stick with them in another setting.

[phantom_power]

Promising Young Woman. Carey Mulligan's character Cassie devotes her life to getting revenge for her friend who committed suicide after her rape was ignored by the authorities. That revenge mostly takes the form of lecturing men who take her home thinking she's drunk, until she is killed by the man who raped her friend. The ending shows that this was Cassie's plan all along as she's sent a video of her friend's rape to a lawyer (who originally represented the rapist, but then felt bad about it) to show to the police and scheduled some girlboss texts to send that basically say ha ha i win. By dying and leaving everything in the hands of the authorities that have repeatedly been shown by the movie to be useless.

I saw that as being a fallback rather than the actual plan, though I agree that "trust the police to do their job" is a stretch

The 'Burbs, where the film seems to be a satire about people's readiness to believe the worst about those who are 'different', and then ends up by showing that they were right to do so.

I am not sure it is a satire but rather that plot strand is used as a red herring to make you wonder whether they are right or not. It uses satire to get that across but I don't think that is the point or message

[Glebe]

I was thinking earlier about The Breakfast Club, and how it has a pretty constant themes of privilege, social divisions, prejudice, ageing etc, and then right at the end they take all the goth shit off Ally Sheedy and it goes 'look she was conventionally pretty all along, now the archetypal jock can shag her yay!' in a swelling instrumental climax (I know my instrument swelled to a climax lol).

This seems to destroy the entire point of the film in retrospect, and is quite funny. Do we have any more examples of this, as I quite like the idea of a film not understanding its own themes.

YES! John Hughes had a bit of a reactionary streak.

[dissolute ocelot]

YES! John Hughes had a bit of a reactionary streak.

There's also Pretty in Pink where Mollie's character ends up with the good-looking jock rather than Jon Cryer. Some Kind of Wonderful is said to be an attempt to redress that, as it's the tomboy Mary Stuart Masterson who gets together with her male best friend.

Maid in Manhattan is pretty reactionary too if I remember, no thought of using the male hero's political power to actually improve things for hotel maids. But that's romcoms for you.

[elliszeroed]

The suggested drunken date rape at the end of Sixteen Candles, or did I imagine the nerd grinning while driving off with a drunk/ passed out girl?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Pretty funny how Weird Science is sort of considered the grubby one even though it's the one that finishes with the protagonists learning a solid life lesson.

[Rolf Lundgren]

There's also Pretty in Pink where Mollie's character ends up with the good-looking jock rather than Jon Cryer. Some Kind of Wonderful is said to be an attempt to redress that, as it's the tomboy Mary Stuart Masterson who gets together with her male best friend.

In Hughes' defence, his original ending was to have Andie and Duckie end up together but it got such a negative review from test audiences he had to very hastily write a new ending. To be fair to the audience, the story up to that point doesn't suggest that Andie and Duckie would make a good couple.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

The Life of David Gale

Possibly the movie that makes its point in the most incompetent way. Promising Young Female has nothing on it.

For the first half of the movie, David Gale (Kevin Spacey) had been shown as an intelligent and noble death penalty opponent, who always had the upper hand on his opponents in debates ("The sentence that you just approved? It's actually a quote by ADOLF HITLER!!!"), but then gets into a downward spiral when a former student of his (Rhona Mitra) accuses him of rape. His wife leaves him, he's fired, he becomes an alcoholic, and the only person who helps him is another activist, played by Laura Linney.
Except one day, she's found murdered and raped. A staggering amount of evidence points at Gale and his fascination for certain BDSM acts. He's sentenced to death and executed.

But a brave reporter (Kate Winslet) has in the meantime found evidence that it was all staged. The activist friend was dying of leukemia, so she and David Gale staged her own murder to have one innocent white and wealthy man sentenced to death and show that innocent people, in the actual legal system, can end up being executed. Also, the rape accusations from the student weren't true, she had sent him a postcard to apologize, which David Gale had kept in store until he was dead. It results in a massive scandal, after which we can suppose that death penalty is abolished in the entire country. No, let's make it the entire world.

Yeah, sure, it just takes forging evidence and lying to the cour for months, in addition to alienating your wife and your kid against you, just to get some gotcha! moment after you're dead.
It never came to the mind of any of the participants that, for someone who supports the death penalty, the entire project depicted abolitionists as manipulative liars who shouldn't be trusted.

[horse_renoir]

I am Legend is the one that jumps to mind, but I guess that is more of a film ruining it's own title rather than message.

[neveragain]

Natural Born Killers, amongst it's many garbled messages and "satirical" bits, seems to far too genuinely in love with the dickhead protagonists and there dickhead, Charles Manson-esque view of the world. Not quite gelling with, what I thought, was the overall tone? That the media is inflating and turning these people into celebrities and Christ figures? The actual film appears to be guilty of what it's critiquing, is what I'm sayin.

It's not a film I like but I always took the message as being "Look at the way we (the media) portray these people" as shown by illustrating their lives in a glorified, visually exciting manner.

[Sebastian Cobb]

There's also Pretty in Pink where Mollie's character ends up with the good-looking jock rather than Jon Cryer. Some Kind of Wonderful is said to be an attempt to redress that, as it's the tomboy Mary Stuart Masterson who gets together with her male best friend.

Maid in Manhattan is pretty reactionary too if I remember, no thought of using the male hero's political power to actually improve things for hotel maids. But that's romcoms for you.

If nothing else Huges clearly didn't really get what the Psychedelic Furs track was about yet just licenced it anyway. Who listens to lyrics anyway?

[Brundle-Fly]

Denouement? Nerds become as loathsome as the high school jocks they despised.

[Brundle-Fly]

Nick Love films (The Football Factory, Outlaw, The Business) seem to often conclude with the post-catharsis anti-hero looking into camera and saying with a cheeky grin, "Would I change anything abaht wot I did? Nah."

So, fuck all has been learned. Cunts gonna be cunts. And the cunts watching it feel reassured and vindicated that they can still be a cunt too. Probably, truthful, but it's so grimly nihilistic.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Nick Love films (The Football Factory, Outlaw, The Business) seem to often conclude with the post-catharsis anti-hero looking into camera and saying with a cheeky grin, "Would I change anything abaht wot I did? Nah."

So, fuck all has been learned. Cunts gonna be cunts. And the cunts watching it feel reassured and vindicated that they can still be a cunt too. Probably, truthful, but it's so grimly nihilistic.

The montage at the end of The Wire did a nihilistic 'nothing has changed' montage too but that was the point. It's still less depressing than The Deuce where the montage is how all the dingy spots are now pristine corporate chain stores in a tourist spot.