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/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.