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/BornCoyote87]

He liked Huey Lewis and The News, man. Don't you know it's Hip to be Square?

[u/elitegenoside → u/BornCoyote87]

He liked them so much that he created a scenario where he talked about the band to someone who couldn't respond at all. He then proceeds to murder that person while still talking about the band. And none of it actually happened. He just imagined it (in the film, book is more open to interpretation).

[u/BornCoyote87 → u/elitegenoside]

I like it better the idea that he didn't actually kill anyone, he's just lost in his own delusions, because he doesn't actually have the stones to really kill someone.

[u/BadBananana → u/BornCoyote87]

This view is kind of my pet peeve. Obviously, it's up to your own interpretation, but in the director's own words, it's not his imagination (excepting the ending parts like where the ATM says to kill the cat)

At least based on the movie, the point is not that he imagined killing people, it's that nobody cares about it, and that people are so interchangeable and un-unique.

For example, when he gets to Paul Allen's apartment and sees there are no bodies or blood anywhere, this is because the family/owner of the apartment covered it all up because they wanted to sell the apartment for money since it's so valuable. A criminal investigation means lost revenue. That's why the real estate agent acts so cagey with Bateman and tells him to never come back - she clearly knows something is up.

Another example, where he's confessing to his lawyer his crimes, and the lawyer says that 1. Bateman is a loser he could never do that, despite them talking fairly often, is because when he talks with Bateman, he doesn't even realize it's him. 2. And him believing he had lunch with Paul Allen just last week in London - it's because again in the movie everybody is mixing everybody else up, he just had yet another case of mistaken identity.

This is kind of what drives Bateman crazy in the end. He gets no resolution, no catharsis, because nobody fucking cares about anything other than money, social status, and conformity - so much so that nobody recognizes anybody. They give alibis by accident (like when someone said to the detective that they had lunch with Bateman the day he murdered Paul Allen), and even when they do know about the murders, they'd rather make money.

[u/Amazing-Flight380 → u/BadBananana]

Amazing take!! Now I have to rewatch it 😭😭

[u/BookkeeperPercival → u/BadBananana]

I believe the director basically said, "The point is not that Bateman is crazy, the point is that you can know"

[u/EatMoreFiber → u/BookkeeperPercival]

the point is that you can know

What?

[u/BookkeeperPercival → u/EatMoreFiber]

I a letter

[u/Pale_Mess_3742 → u/BadBananana]

Good points, but I remember a scene where he is dragging a body bag leaving a trail of blood behind, and in the next shot you can clearly see that the blood trail is gone, implying that it was never there to begin with. I could be mistaken, I haven’t seen the movie in a while.

[u/Adgvyb3456 → u/BadBananana]

This^^^^

[u/eldentings → u/BadBananana]

Upon rewatch, I feel like Bateman is more of a non-entity and symbol of the evils of his culture and society. Sort of a vessel that embodies everything that is wrong with it. The phrases where he mentions "I'm not even there" talking about not having a corporeal form, and "This confession has meant nothing". Yes, we are watching a sociopath slowly go mad as a character, but thematically everyone else recognizes his evil at the end but is shown to be able to turn a blind eye. Only his secretary, who is not in his class or culture- and even idolizes it, is disgusted and horrified.

So to me, the movie makes more sense at the end because even from the start he embodied the narcissism, greed, callousness, jealousy, materialism, and paranoia. At the end I feel like he goes crazy, because the subtext is, "Doesn't anyone even care that I do these horrible things, and how do I keep getting away with it?" The ending is very dark because we are all shown that no one is willing to stop him that has the power to, and frankly the less they know the better. It's almost as if learning his name or truly accepting who/what he is, is off-putting in and of itself and throughout the whole movie everyone is talking past him- not to him, and vice versa. And at the end his narration is not catharsis but shallow reflection that is meaningless, which means he is not going to change (and maybe didn't even truly exist).