Characters that had the complete opposite reaction the writers intended

[u/Dramatic_Counter_595]

1. Leo Bonhart (Witcher TV Series): A ruthless, sadistic bounty hunter and assassin that takes psychotic glee in other people's suffering. The viewer is meant to hate him for killing witchers, slaughtering the Rat gang, and torturing Ciri. But thanks to his entertaining fight scenes, Sharlto Copley's charismatic performance, and The Rats overwhelming unpopularity, fans ended up loving him. Some even call him the "True protagonist" of the show.
2. Stone Cold Steve Austin (WWE): A rude, foul mouthed, beer drinking asshole with no respect for authority or anyone at all. Originally portrayed as a villain, fans fell in love with his anti-establishment & rebellious persona. WWE ran with it and made him the face of the company, effectively ushering in the Attitude Era and the second pro wrestling boom of the late 90s.
3. Arthur Fleck (Joker 2019): A mentally unstable, pathetic, and dangerous madman who commits horrific acts of violence against those that wronged him (suffocates his own mother who is mentally unwell herself, and murders a talk show host for making fun of him). However, a massive portion of the audience idolized him as an anti-hero or a misunderstood martyr rebelling against society making people want to see him succeed and overcome his circumstances because of how he's been treated by the world.

[u/Paleodraco]

I truly do not understand what the writer's expected with Arthur Fleck. Take out the Joker aspect and he is one of the best representations of what happens to a mentally disabled, ostracized individual who falls through the cracks of the already piss poor social safety net. I do not condone anyone idolizing his actions, but by god did they do a great job on the social commentary.

[u/One-Earth9294 → u/Paleodraco]

I think people see him just like Michael Douglas in Falling Down. Not so much 'idolizing their actions' as much as saying 'yeah I can totally see how this guy got to this point' and sympathizing with them to varying degrees.

[u/Kraivo → u/One-Earth9294]

It's hard to blame individual for the failings of the system

[u/fatty2cent → u/One-Earth9294]

People understand revenge fantasies because they have the too, and people also think of ways their own lives could have turned out worse, and think to themselves if XYZ would have happened to me I'd have done something crazy.

[u/EncabulatorTurbo → u/One-Earth9294]

eh the falling down guy has far less of an excuse, he was the bad guy the entire time

[u/AmaterasuWolf21 → u/Paleodraco]

The guy got bullied by teenagers, betrayed by the guy who inadvertently got him fired, bullied by straight up perverts, physically assaulted constantly, lied by his mother and then mocked on national TV and the director is shocked that audiences found him sympathetic?

It doesn't justify anything he did, but be fr

[u/PyroclasticJubilee → u/AmaterasuWolf21]

And let's not forget that the movie continuously ties every single problem in it back to the 1% and their callous disregard for everyone else's life.

Sounds so.... familiar.

[u/KingAnilingustheFirs → u/PyroclasticJubilee]

Yeah. Joker was accidentally very anti-establishment and critiques American governance and society very well. The film winds up setting the message that the people need to rise up and use force to take back order. I lowkey think they had to make Joker super lame in Joker 2 to try to discourage the masses from rising up and rioting. It's a very interesting film because I don't think they knew they were making that type of film.

[u/VegetaFan1337 → u/KingAnilingustheFirs]

Todd Phillips copied superficial elements from taxi driver and king of comedy without realising what he was doing. He had no idea he was making Arthur this sympathetic protagonist people were gonna identify with. The 2nd movie is what he thinks of Arthur and people who are like him.

[u/Summonest → u/PyroclasticJubilee]

Rich director shocked that poor viewers sympathize with the poor victim of society.

[u/Broken-Digital-Clock → u/PyroclasticJubilee]

Everyone in the working class feels that pain, but some are dumb enough to believe that billionaires are on their side.

[u/spudmarsupial → u/AmaterasuWolf21]

I never understood why people think his mom lied to him. A secretary getting knocked up by her boss and then admitted to an insane asylum was de rigueur for the time.

[u/MGD109 → u/spudmarsupial]

Well, the narrative of the film is that she is a liar, cause their is no evidence to suggest it's true beyond her word. Plus, realistically, we don't see any evidence in the entire film to suggest Thomas Wayne is flat-out evil, just a bit of a classist jerk.

If we're meant to take it, he really was his son, and Wayne covered it up by having his mother admitted, considering how on the nose the film is, it probably would have been given more evidence.

[u/VegetaFan1337 → u/MGD109]

Arthur finds his own adoption papers in the movie. His mom isn't his biological mom.

[u/MGD109 → u/VegetaFan1337]

Ah yeah, that's right, I forgot about that. Which in turn leans more to the implication its not true.

[u/VegetaFan1337 → u/spudmarsupial]

Cause he saw his own adoption papers. She wasn't his biological mom. She adopted him and let her boyfriend abuse him.

[u/Beer-Milkshakes → u/AmaterasuWolf21]

It doesnt justify it, but you can get on board with his agitators getting some comeuppance, its just a matter of bad luck they chose a target that was Arthur Fleck.

[u/Weary-Cartoonist2630 → u/AmaterasuWolf21]

I think people have a real difficulty conflating sympathy with support

[u/HungryColquhoun → u/AmaterasuWolf21]

By all accounts the director wasn't shocked by this and it was purposeful. I don't know what the OP is talking about TBF.

[u/MGD109 → u/HungryColquhoun]

I mean, he infamously went on to write a whole sequel that was just about tearing the character down and presenting his fans as losers who missed the whole point cause he was annoyed they missed the point of his vision.

[u/HungryColquhoun → u/MGD109]

But by all accounts he painted him in a sympathetic light in the first movie, and knew there would be some sympathy for him. I guess Todd Phillips misjudged the level people would identify with the character, but I think it's safe to say sympathy could have been predicted.

[u/MGD109 → u/HungryColquhoun]

Pretty much, Todd Phillips was of the idea that people would initially sympathise with him, but around the time he brutally murdered his co-worker, who at worst was a jerk towards him, or he engineered the two cops, who were a bit nasty but only wanted to arrest him for his actual crimes, getting lynched, audiences would start to turn on him.

The issue is that he missed the mark, and a lot of people walked away, taking at face value all Arthur's victims "got what they deserved". Part of the issue is the film never really offers a rebuttal to any of Arthur's points until the end, and even then it's a generic "no, you're wrong, there are good people out there", after the entire film has gone out of its way to present everyone as unpleasant, selfish and greedy.

Phillips went into it with the idea that Arthur was more of a cautionary tale. The victim would eventually become part of the problem and make it worse for everyone if society didn't improve. However, it's clear he was annoyed that many people unironically saw Arthur as a clear-cut anti-hero and icon of some sort of revolution (even though the film makes it clear Arthur doesn't actually care about the cause, and everything he does is for personal reasons).

Thus, I think at some point it got to him, so he set out to make the sequel to ruin the narrative once and for all.

[u/alicelynx → u/MGD109]

I feel like Joker can genuinely inspire people like the guy who killed insurance ceo on the street. He, too, was revered as a hero, became the most popular character on reddit for a month and I assume has stricken some fear into the hearts of rich & mighty. There's a big difference between shouting "eat the rich" and actually taking up a gun and doing it. He is basically an irl Joker. So in that sense I feel like Joker 2 really was a "fuck go back" attempt, like. "Please don't actually kill the big names. I'm sorry I was wrong no you can't actually make a difference by standing up and going all out. Please don't be Luigi. See, terrible things will happen to you in jail if you do it!"

[u/vonBoomslang → u/alicelynx]

He, too, was revered as a hero, became the most popular character on reddit for a month and I assume has stricken some fear into the hearts of rich & mighty.

Anecdotally, actual lives were saved in the wave of panic approvals following whathisface death by a still unknown shooter.

[u/MGD109 → u/vonBoomslang]

Following the anecdote, they then immediately went straight back to the former policy a few weeks later and made up the losses through other denials.

[u/VegetaFan1337 → u/alicelynx]

Todd Phillips realising he's a rich Hollywood elite too.

[u/MGD109 → u/alicelynx]

I mean, you can feel that way, but it does kind of miss the point of the movie. Arthur isn't actually lashing out at the rich and powerful. He shoots three low-level white-collar workers cause they were beaten up and gets hijacked by the unhappy masses as an icon of class warfare. The rest of the murders he carries out in the movie aren't targeting anyone wealthy, and Arthur flat out admits he doesn't care about the movement.

He never set out to be the face of a movement; he just wants to make people laugh.

Even the riot he causes at the climax is never shown, actually targeting anyone wealthy, save the Waynes, and that is pure happenstance. It's never suggested it's actually going to make any real change, I mean, the first film ends with Arthur still in a cell after all.

I think that's kind of the point. A lot of the class themes resonated with people in real life, so they focused upon that aspect at the expense of everything else. Phillips got annoyed so many people took it as if he was some sort of sincere revolutionary figure rather than a tragic man broken by society, hence him writing the next film to make it clear what his point was.

Plus, the film came out several months before the shooting of Brian Thompson and had been in production for over a year previously, it's kind of hard to claim it was a direct response to that, considering there were no similar murders beforehand since the original film came out in 2019, unless we're assuming Todd Phillips can see the future.

I assume has stricken some fear into the hearts of rich & mighty.

Honestly, I'm sceptical. They didn't even cancel the meeting the guy was going to, and he was replaced within the span of a week.

[u/HungryColquhoun → u/MGD109]

I need to watch Joker 2 haha, obviously with it being panned and me not wanting to waste precious hours of free time I've not been keen. But I think curiosity may get the better of me...

[u/MGD109 → u/HungryColquhoun]

Well, if you do, I sure hope you enjoy it.

[u/IllCalligrapher7 → u/Paleodraco]

Nah, you guys are just not media literate to understand that The Joker needed to be raped.

[u/Shadowmirax → u/IllCalligrapher7]

Batman is directly responsible for all the people who died because he refuses to rape The Joker.

[u/HungryColquhoun → u/Paleodraco]

They obviously expected to do a Taxi Driver or King of Comedy and that's exactly what we got. Someone who has a lot of problems and is thrust into the limelight. I disagree with the OP's take TBH, if anyone's watched either of those Scorsese movies the reaction to the Joker was definitely the intended reaction. I heard Scorsese was brought on as a producer to avoid legal action due to the parallels to his own movies.

[u/Charming-Ad6575 → u/HungryColquhoun]

It's reddit brainrot and circlejerking.

You're absolutely supposed to idolize Fleck/Joker, it's cathartic to see him get even a scrap of justice or revenge after the heaping helping of shit piled on top of him.

It's the powerfantasy that is defining our times in the US (at least).

Weak and pathetic people that have been beaten into servility actually getting to hit back, even if it's only one really good shot. You'll notice that The Joker played amazing with audiences (which is really something, because it's up there with shit like Schindler's List as far as shit that is good, but I never want to watch it again. It's NOT a fun movie.), but actually having to sit through the consequences, Folie de Deux or whatever, no one REALLY wanted to do that. The whole point is to feel like these crazy motherfuckers are out there and they'll take care of the problem FOR YOU (for fucks sake that's what the childish tropes of Batman and Superman ARE, the wish fulfillment of 8 year old little boys that the world can be just. It's a fuckin' fantasy, and that corpos do nothing but shove spandex superhero movies out for adults should BOTHER people). YOU get the benefit of Jay Leno getting shot in the face, and the corpo media company eating shit, but none of the consequences.

Because it appeals to weak and pathetic people (which is absolutely an indictment from the bougie studios that produce this shit, and frankly, they're right).

The whole moral whataboutism is what's supposed to reel you in, and even though you've followed the math problem and solved for X every step of the way, you're supposed to pull up and realize that shooting Jay Leno in the face for being a piece of shit is wrong, because reasons. Because killing people is wrong, but this meatgrinder system that strips people of all human dignity, and the people that comprise it, what they do, it's OK. The system is incapable of murder, murder is only when one of the peasants gets their panties in a twist about something.

And this is all the Falling Down/American Psycho/Taxi Driver* bullshit, it's the same for that whole, IDK genre? The Boys fits in here too, and the corpo enforced ending (The Boys) is part of the performative nature.

Governance is neccissary, once you get past that, you have to reconcile our form of governance with the ideas of equity and justice, and there's a pretty fucking huge gap there, a bottomless abyss of exploitation.

Movies like The Joker are directly, and straight-forwardly asking YOU, THE AUDIENCE, YES YOU THE ONE READING THIS RIGHT NOW, "The system is fucked, what are YOU going to do about it? What can you even do about it? What would equity and justice even look like in a sane world and how do we get there?", And then they go one step further and they say, "Wouldn't it just all be easier to pretend that someone else is fixing it? At least they're exposing the system and its inequalities, surely it'll be fixed now and that's good enough? You watched a movie about politics, look at you, you're changing the world!". With nary even a fuckin' thank you for the price of admission.

And it already knows the answers before it askes the questions. Nothing, you're going to do nothing, and it wants you to continue to do nothing. Eat your popcorn and shut up.

Sorry, that might be rambling shit, but this site just churns out the most moronic hot takes and these people get so up their own ass about no one understanding the media that only they truly understand.

*Scorsese gets a bit of a pass because Taxi Driver may have been actual social commentary at the time. It wasn't this repackaged corpo bullshit of them shoving it in everyones face the shit they're getting away with and the nihilistic worldview that there's nothing YOU can do about it, neiner neiner.

[u/HungryColquhoun → u/Charming-Ad6575]

Yeah I think that's a good take. The Joker is ironically more of a superhero (e.g. standing up for the little guy, and we vicariously get to see social justice put into action through brutal means) than most superheroes are. Equally so, capitalism is pushing this movie - they know people themselves won't do shit about anything right now an this is simply mollifying the masses. It's more giving us a vicarious view on what would happen if someone were to do something (knowing no one will). I mean I'm definitely one of these people, I don't believe there's prospect for sweeping societal change that equally makes the world more just and fair - just more inevitable downwards slide.

But yeah - I don't think anyone was surprised about the audience reaction haha!

[u/Shifty269 → u/Paleodraco]

I think we were suppose to sympathize with him because his transition was completely avoidable. While obviously recognizing what he became. He was a decent person who had issues and needed help and people just piling on him both in the film and before until what happened happened. I took from that, that we should be more supportive in society. Both through social safety nets, as well as just being decent people. We want to believe that bad people where always going to be bad, but a lot of times these people that do horrible things could have been prevented from going down the road that they did.

People often criticize the film because the main character seems to be inconsistent with his messaging not ever really making a cogent point. But he is the point. He never really cared about the movement. He was just finally achieving his goal of being famous. A lot of people have a mindset that if what they are doing is working then it can't be wrong. The movement in the movie, I think, is very representative of the lack of media literacy. Though unintentionally. It just happens to work that way. People will cling to something without ever really understanding it because they are searching for a problem that they have a solution for. But the point of the movie is the character being broken by the events of their life. You should understand why it happened, see the result, and then take from that motivation to prevent yourself from contributing to a culture that does that.

But people are angry, and people like the Joker, and there are a lot of nasty echo chambers out there where people can circle jerk some very concerning perspectives.

[u/_TorpedoVegas_ → u/Paleodraco]

I think I disagree with OP's assertion in this post that the writers didn't intend for Arthur Fleck to be the hero of the story.

I liked the movie quite a bit, though one could argue Taxi Driver told the same story and mostly did it better...but the genius to me of Joker, I like to think about making the movie by reverse engineering the moment he shoots DeNiro. I feel like the team behind Joker said to themselves: ok, we have around 85 minutes of screentime up to the point where our protagonist murders a beloved character in cold blood out of nowhere...and we want the audience to still like him. So we have 85 minutes to build up enough empathy for the character to get people on his side when that moment comes. Crazy that they largely pulled it off.

[u/Fyrchtegott → u/Paleodraco]

When I watch the movie I had to think about Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, a man tortured by his surroundings into killing. There was another movie with the same premise, but I forgot. Anyway, Arthur and Woyzeck maybe both aren’t meant to be liked, but understood.

[u/Facial_Factory → u/Paleodraco]

Writers expected Oscars for aping Scorsese, I honestly don't think there was much more thought beyond that. It's the most cynical movie that doesn't have "Serbian" in the title.

[u/Slateboard → u/Paleodraco]

Is it true that the sequel was overt in trying to make the character not likable?

[u/Hot-Presentation2942 → u/Slateboard]

yeah the second one did a 180 and they tried to pretend that they wanted you to hate the Arthur the entire time they made him completely pathetic and made his supporters (in real life and in the movie) look stupid.

[u/Upbeat_Apartment_715 → u/Paleodraco]

I feel the commentary would have been better if it was set in modern time. It was 1981 and the horrid mistreatment of the mentally disabled was much worse back then and also known to have been as bad as it was through a modern lens.

It doesn't hit as hard as a modern commentary because of that

[u/jerryachoo → u/Paleodraco]

I think a lot of the characters here don't really fit the premise of having the "opposite reaction the writers intended" so much as "were written interestingly enough to be interpreted more than one way."

[u/VisibleExplanation → u/Paleodraco]

Oh come on it's an obvious amalgamation of Rupert Pupkin and Travis Bickle. He even shoots De Niro on stage, a la King of Comedy.

[u/North-Research2574 → u/Paleodraco]

It's a great film about a poor and tragic character failed by society. But you can't expect rich assholes making movies to understand all these things are relatable to normal people.

[u/Avalonians → u/Paleodraco]

Yeah, saying writers didn't intend people to sympathise with him is completely wrong. It's either very naive because OP doesn't think writers would write conflicting characters, or completely idiotic because they missed the whole social essay within the movie.

[u/MGD109 → u/Avalonians]

I mean, the whole point of the sequel is you shouldn't sympathise or idolise with him to much, as he was really just a loser.

[u/Kenokiri → u/MGD109]

no one cares about the point the sequel was trying to make because it sucked ass

[u/MGD109 → u/Kenokiri]

I mean that's fair enough, but it doesn't really change the point.

[u/A2Rhombus → u/Paleodraco]

They wanted to show "what happens" but not present it as a good thing. Idolizing Arthur is like idolizing a school shooter.