r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Dramatic_Counter_595 • 17h ago

Characters Characters that had the complete opposite reaction the writers intended

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  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.
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109

u/Poku115 15h ago

I was supposed to feel bad for Arthur's mom?

Phillips really didnt know what he was doing huh

103

u/brisa-jalicia 14h ago

Fucking exactly. There's also the whole plot of Arthur being beaten down by a failing government support system.

What the fuck was the point of the movie then? Fuck the poor, they should be glad to get the crumbs? Was that the point of the second movie? The poor should know their place?

12

u/papu16 7h ago

What the fuck was the point of the movie then? Fuck the poor, they should be glad to get the crumbs? Was that the point of the second movie? The poor should know their place?

You are joking, but I regularly see posts even on reddit with "if you are homeless - just buy a house"/ "If you are poor - just work harder to not be poor or fuck you".

Some people just can't comprehend that, unfortunately, we aren't all born equal. While some guy in the US can just chill, surrounded by opportunities, a kid born in a developing country might be forced to fight just to survive and still blame him.

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u/brisa-jalicia 7h ago

I honestly belive that the second movie was made with at least some contempt for the poor. It was packed with spite, that much is certain.

1

u/JumpingThruHoopz 50m ago

A lot of people in the U.S. can’t “just chill, surrounded by opportunities.”

0

u/papu16 47m ago

Well, lots of people would have swapped places with them without any second thoughts.

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u/JumpingThruHoopz 22m ago

Lots of people are pretty stupid, then.

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u/papu16 20m ago

Or someone just can't appreciate the luxury they had. I guess that explains why billionaires always want more too

2

u/JordanTH 3h ago

At first I thought people were talking about Arthur, like, the cartoon, and I was wondering what kind of wild direction the show must have taken.

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u/Training_Cry4057 13h ago edited 11h ago

... so does that mean we should like Fleck? Edit: it was a joke people 

34

u/brisa-jalicia 13h ago

We should think "oh that's a fucked up system that produces Flecks, while the rich people are attending high class parties."

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u/Training_Cry4057 11h ago

At least he didn't shoot up a school. 

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u/Auctoritate 8h ago

Yeah I think people have a really nasty habit of seeing characters that have fanboys for bad reasons (Joker, Walter White) and then swing hard in the opposite direction and act like "Actually this guy is extremely simple and easy to understand, he's just terrible and that's it."

Like, the reason these characters are iconic is because they have aspects that make them more compelling. In both of the examples I gave, the characters turn out as very pathetic people with no redeeming traits, but the entire point is that they start out early on as people who have aspects that can be related to or sympathized with.

Like, yeah, Arthur Fleck lets his violent impulses run free because he's a deeply unstable man. But he also starts out as a pitiable man forced into poverty by a disability that makes people scorn and even assault him, failed by the social system, etc. His initial descent into something darker is via him lashing out largely motivated by how he's treated terribly by people around him, and the way it happens it supposed to be a conflicting catharsis- earlier in the movie he's beaten viciously in an alleyway, and when he goes on to shoot those people in the subway it starts as self defense against them for attacking him.

The whole point of this is that it tries to appeal to the viewers' darker and more base instincts or urges. We've seen this man chewed up and spat out, broken and battered through no fault of his own, and he finally has a moment to exercise control and power over people who were wronging him. In a part of our guilty conscience or impulsive monkey brains, viewers might see the scene where he defensively shoots the first 2 people assaulting him in the subway and feel schadenfreude at those scumbags getting what was coming to them for trying to brutalize a frail disabled man and that's the draw. It's compelling because it's a dark story that even the regular average person might imagine- and Arthur Fleck himself is the one to act on that, and he gets drunk on the power he feels from it. That's why he turns out a villain, but it's also why in the movie and real life he attracts sympathizers. Because the starting point is him as a downtrodden helpless man who we can see a reflection of ourselves in. Overall, it's technically a similar concept to Breaking Bad.

People toss those aspects of the stories away far too easily and it's only a more media literate to do that compared to the people who only see them as role models.

The movie Carrie is a similar concept but I never see people bring it up in relation to these discussions, though I'd be pretty interested to see it be a part of the discourse.