Least favorite movie characters

[cwoy2j]

And to piggyback off of the piggyback thread. Who are your least favorite movie characters? My two least favorites are Adrian from Rocky and Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka.

[Death From Above]

Insert every Adam Sandler and Kevin James duo here.

[Craig H]

Stiffler in anything that isn't American Pie 1 and 2.

 

Also, funny you mention Adrian because I liked Adrian ONCE and the one time she is good, she's a part of the best moment in movie history.

 

"Win!"

[Jingus]

My least-favorites tend to be "antiheroes" whom I absolutely despite, but the movie keeps trying to make me cheer for them anyway. Alex from A Clockwork Orange and Mickey & Mallory from Natural Born Killers being the main ones. FUCK those people. I don't want to watch a movie about how hard THIER lives are; shoot them in the fucking head in the first five minutes, roll credits and let's go home.

[Elsalvajeloco]

My least-favorites tend to be "antiheroes" whom I absolutely despite, but the movie keeps trying to make me cheer for them anyway. Alex from A Clockwork Orange and Mickey & Mallory from Natural Born Killers being the main ones. FUCK those people. I don't want to watch a movie about how hard THIER lives are; shoot them in the fucking head in the first five minutes, roll credits and let's go home.

 

I've never been drawn to the Sid & Nancy/Bonnie & Clyde/Mickey & Mallory type characters in films. Maybe the only time I can think of off the top of my head is Badlands. Even then, it's because I found Sheen's character to be super endearing. When the local yokels are trying to get him a Coke while he's being arrested, you have to laugh. When Mickey & Mallory have to kill RDJ's character, it seems kinda goofy. It seems to be designed to not age well.

[J.T.]

My least-favorites tend to be "antiheroes" whom I absolutely despite, but the movie keeps trying to make me cheer for them anyway. Alex from A Clockwork Orange and Mickey & Mallory from Natural Born Killers being the main ones.

 

Well, TBH both of those movies fail so much in their quest to indict society at large that the movies end up celebrating the sadism of the anti-heroes we are supposed to sympathize with and ends up making them even more loathsome.

 

Clockwork Orange fails at being Kafka because Alex deserves to get what's coming to him and it fails at being Orwellian because there is not much socio-political merit to this tale.

 

Or as Roger Ebert so succinctly put it:

 

What in hell is Kubrick up to here? Does he really want us to identify with the antisocial tilt of Alex's psychopathic little life? In a world where society is criminal, of course, a good man must live outside the law. But that isn't what Kubrick is saying, He actually seems to be implying something simpler and more frightening: that in a world where society is criminal, the citizen might as well be a criminal, too.

[odessasteps]

George Bailey

[Curt McGirt]

Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ranks up there pretty high. 

[Reed]

Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ranks up there pretty high. 

In fairness, she is meant to be awful. 

[piranesi]

 

My least-favorites tend to be "antiheroes" whom I absolutely despite, but the movie keeps trying to make me cheer for them anyway. Alex from A Clockwork Orange and Mickey & Mallory from Natural Born Killers being the main ones.

 

Well, TBH both of those movies fail so much in their quest to indict society at large that the movies end up celebrating the sadism of the anti-heroes we are supposed to sympathize with and ends up making them even more loathsome.

 

Clockwork Orange fails at being Kafka because Alex deserves to get what's coming to him and it fails at being Orwellian because there is not much socio-political merit to this tale.

 

Or as Roger Ebert so succinctly put it:

 

What in hell is Kubrick up to here? Does he really want us to identify with the antisocial tilt of Alex's psychopathic little life? In a world where society is criminal, of course, a good man must live outside the law. But that isn't what Kubrick is saying, He actually seems to be implying something simpler and more frightening: that in a world where society is criminal, the citizen might as well be a criminal, too.

 

 

I feel like Ebert is missing the point of both the movie and book.  The violent, powerful energy of youth is both a kind of perfection (the strongest, fastest, most energetic and frenetic you will ever be) but also ugly and irrational and uncontrollable and brutal.  A glimpse of our purest (or at least most physically powerful) selves unconstrained and free.

 

The mechanisms of soceity needed to control that are equally ugly and repressive. Limiting on freedom and generating a bureaucracy of banal evils.  But it is also on some level necessary to contain how that unfettered strength and freedom spills out.

 

You're supposed to not know who to root for because neither are purely good or purely evil.  They are just natural things that  grow out of conscious beings living in a group.

[J.T.]

I feel like Ebert is missing the point of both the movie and book.  The violent, powerful energy of youth is both a kind of perfection (the strongest, fastest, most energetic and frenetic you will ever be) but also ugly and irrational and uncontrollable and brutal.  A glimpse of our purest (or at least most physically powerful) selves unconstrained and free.

 

The mechanisms of soceity needed to control that are equally ugly and repressive. Limiting on freedom and generating a bureaucracy of banal evils.  But it is also on some level necessary to contain how that unfettered strength and freedom spills out.

 

You're supposed to not know who to root for because neither are purely good or purely evil.  They are just natural things that  grow out of conscious beings living in a group.

 

 I love Kubrick, but I think that Ebert misses the point of the movie because Kubrick misses the point of the novel.

 

Burgess's great moral satire about how society seems to encourage self-actualization and promote individualism in its young people but really wants absolute conformity (and will grind their dreams into bone meal to get it) gets lost in the revelry of Alex's sadistic cult of personality. 

 

Kubrick kinda forgets that at its heart, CO is a coming-of-age story, albeit one told in the bowels of Hell.  Kubrick does not really hold Alex accountable for anything even though the whole point of the reversal of fortune in the novel is that Alex does indeed deserve what he gets. 

 

Free will and individual responsibility do not go hand in hand in Alex's demented cranium, just as sovereignty and service to the public welfare do not go hand in hand in the demented cranium of the society or government as represented in ACO..

 

Burgess is being critical of both of a citizen's moral obligation to its nation and a nation's moral obligation to its citizens.  Alex fails Britain and Britain fails Alex.

 

Kubrick's venom is spilled upon a society he sees as a emasculation machine where individuals go in one end and sheep comes out the other.  Only half of Burgess's premise.

 

Just my interpretation of the book vs the movie.

[Reed]

 

My least-favorites tend to be "antiheroes" whom I absolutely despite, but the movie keeps trying to make me cheer for them anyway. Alex from A Clockwork Orange and Mickey & Mallory from Natural Born Killers being the main ones.

 

Well, TBH both of those movies fail so much in their quest to indict society at large that the movies end up celebrating the sadism of the anti-heroes we are supposed to sympathize with and ends up making them even more loathsome.

 

Clockwork Orange fails at being Kafka because Alex deserves to get what's coming to him and it fails at being Orwellian because there is not much socio-political merit to this tale.

 

Or as Roger Ebert so succinctly put it:

 

What in hell is Kubrick up to here? Does he really want us to identify with the antisocial tilt of Alex's psychopathic little life? In a world where society is criminal, of course, a good man must live outside the law. But that isn't what Kubrick is saying, He actually seems to be implying something simpler and more frightening: that in a world where society is criminal, the citizen might as well be a criminal, too.

 

 

Alex was a nasty, sad, sadistic little prick. I mean, maybe that was the point: "OK, even if someone is a terrible guy, you still can't do that stuff to them."

 

But, he's so awful and deserving of his fate, it's hard to even conjure up a modicum of sympathy for him.

 

And Mickey and Mallory were narcissistic, self-pitying scumbags. 

[Curt McGirt]

That's true, but I still understand what Ebert's point of view is, because it's directed at people like me that enjoy the carnage of an Alex or a Mickey and Mallory. He had his own problems being "that guy" anyway -- he loved Last House on the Left, for example. Of course there are other reasons why I like all of those films but glimpsing into the abyss is definitely one of them. 

[Reed]

That's true, but I still understand what Ebert's point of view is, because it's directed at people like me that enjoy the carnage of an Alex or a Mickey and Mallory. He had his own problems being "that guy" anyway -- he loved Last House on the Left, for example. Of course there are other reasons why I like all of those films but glimpsing into the abyss is definitely one of them. 

 

"Glimpsing into the abyss" is one thing. Technically, all the great villain characters do that. Vader, Hannibal, The Joker, etc.

 

But there's something so truly petty, empty and pathetic about people like Alex and Mickey and Mallory. 

 

You're not impressed by them. They're not even worth hating. They're just...well, there.  They're nothing, really. 

 

Those guys were spree shooters before spree shooters were even a thing. 

[cwoy2j]

I can conjure up some sympathy for Mallory as she was sexually abused by Rodney Dangerfield and made to watch Tatanka matches.

[ChrisM]

Diane Keaton as Kay in Godfather, and Godfather Part II. Whiny and just a miserable person. 

 

Eli Roth as "The Bear Jew" in Inglorious Basterds. Roth is a shitty actor, and this role just makes that painfully clear. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

Diane Keaton as Kay in Godfather, and Godfather Part II. Whiny and just a miserable person. 

 

Kay was in the classic scenes. I can't say they were made classic because of her.

[Brian Fowler]

Diane Keaton as Kay in Godfather, and Godfather Part II. Whiny and just a miserable person.

 

Kay was in the classic scenes. I can't say they were made classic because of her.

The "it was an abortion" scene is amazing, and she's a force of nature in it.

This is an opinion I can't follow.

[Elsalvajeloco]

 

 

Diane Keaton as Kay in Godfather, and Godfather Part II. Whiny and just a miserable person.

 

Kay was in the classic scenes. I can't say they were made classic because of her.

The "it was an abortion" scene is amazing, and she's a force of nature in it.

This is an opinion I can't follow.

 

 

All the buildup was on Michael and that fact that he was about to superkick people through the wall. Dude, he was about kill TOM FUCKING HAGEN because he couldn't give him a straight answer. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

 

 

 

Diane Keaton as Kay in Godfather, and Godfather Part II. Whiny and just a miserable person.

 

Kay was in the classic scenes. I can't say they were made classic because of her.

The "it was an abortion" scene is amazing, and she's a force of nature in it.

This is an opinion I can't follow.

 

 

All the buildup was on Michael and that fact that he was about to superkick people through the wall. Dude, he was about kill TOM FUCKING HAGEN because he couldn't give him a straight answer. 

 

 

Now that I think about, my problem with Kay has to do with a lot of marginalized female characters in these movies. At no point does she elevate herself to being more than a sperm receptacle for Michael. Her getback was to ultimately destroy life as a means to stop this Sicilian way of life or whatever. The fact is she was nothing more than a companion who was along for the ride and that didn't stop Michael from making her look like a shitty mom standing at the door trying to see her kids. She's barely above Connie in the pecking order.

 

That's why it's a bit bizarre that characters like Elvira from Scarface are revered by women decades later as like these boss characters. Like Rihanna wanted to play her in a Scarface remake. Why? She did nothing. She was a burned out cokewhore in Miami in the 80s. She was one of several thousand women. Her duty was basically to fuck guys that it was advantageous to fuck.

[AxB]

Funny that we go from a discussion of not liking movies where the 'heroes' are villainous to a discussion of The Godfather movies without anyone pointing out that the heroes of the Godfather movies also have villains as heroes.

 

Also, Kubrick missed the point of Clockwork Orange because he was working from an edition of the book that doesn't have the final chapter in it.

 

My least favourite movie character is Mary-Jane Watson. And I liked her in the comics mostly.

[Elsalvajeloco]

Funny that we go from a discussion of not liking movies where the 'heroes' are villainous to a discussion of The Godfather movies without anyone pointing out that the heroes of the Godfather movies also have villains as heroes.

 

I don't think they ever really portrayed Michael as heroic for more than one or two scenes. There are a lot of traits you can associate with Michael, but heroic probably wouldn't be one of them unless you're only describing almost everything up to the turn. By the start of the second film, he is full on tragic figure.

 

Young Vito is really the only who gets the hero treatment. Everything he does pretty much can be justified.

[Brian Fowler]

The Godfather gets a lot of mileage out of never really showing the innocent victims or good guys.

The only cop that gets any character at all is the bodyguard of a drug dealer. Kay and Apollonia are pretty much the only innocent characters.

[Elsalvajeloco]

The Godfather gets a lot of mileage out of never really showing the innocent victims or good guys.

The only cop that gets any character at all is the bodyguard of a drug dealer. Kay and Apollonia are pretty much the only innocent characters.

 

Kay is innocent to a point. Her plausible deniability is up as soon as they're chilling in Lake Tahoe. I'm also being lenient because she got the Luca Brasi story as soon we saw her.

[Brian Fowler]

Well, she's innocent in the sense she's not personally doing anything.

My broader point is, we don't ever see the innocent victims.