Photo Courtesy of Eli Christopher.
Section 1: At least five of the following films are one of your favorite movies, OR one of the following, is your #1 favorite movie
Check All that Apply
⃞ Avengers: Infinity War or Avengers: Endgame
⃞ A Bourne Movie or Casino Royale
⃞ The Dark Knight
⃞. The Departed
⃞ Django Unchained or Inglourious Basterds
⃞ Fight Club
⃞ Forrest Gump
⃞. Gladiator
⃞ Good Will Hunting
⃞. Guardians of the Galaxy
⃞ The Hangover or Dodgeball
⃞ Joker
⃞ Jurassic Park
⃞ The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
⃞ Pulp Fiction
⃞. Star Wars: Episode III, IV or V
⃞ Superbad
⃞. Taxi Driver
⃞ Wedding Crashers, Anchorman or Step Brothers
⃞. The Wolf of Wall Street
Bonus Points if you and your bro discussed afterwards which way-cooler-than-you character from the movie each of you were. Bonus, Bonus Points if you mix movies/franchises:
“Bro, I feel like I’m Jordan Belfort, you’re Zach Galifianakis and Tanner is Mcglovin!”
Section 2: Your dad considers at least one of the following to be one of his favorite movies.
⃞ 12 Angry Men
⃞. Casablanca
⃞ Cool Hand Luke
⃞. Die Hard
⃞ The Godfather or The Godfather Part II
⃞ Goodfellas
⃞ Rocky
⃞ Saving Private Ryan
⃞ The Shawshank Redemption
⃞ Anything with Clint Eastwood, really.
Bonus Points if the only movies starring women he’ll watch are Aliens or The Silence of the Lambs. Bonus, Bonus Points if he doesn’t even remember Clarice’s name, only Lecter’s.
Section 3: Your female friend, girlfriend, wife, mother or sister considers at least one of the following to be one of her favorite movies.
⃞ Breakfast at Tiffany’s or The Breakfast Club
⃞ Bridesmaids
⃞ Clueless
⃞. Dirty Dancing
⃞ Lady Bird or Little Women
⃞. Legally Blonde
⃞ Love Actually
⃞. Mamma Mia! or Pitch Perfect
⃞ Mean Girls
⃞. Pretty Woman
⃞ The Princess Bride
⃞. When Harry Met Sally…
Bonus Points if she claims she only watches some of the selected films “sarcastically,” as a “guilty pleasure” or on wine night with the girls. Bonus, Bonus Points if they’re Twilight or Grease.
If you tested positive for 2 or more of the following sections, you may have a basic case of “Bro movies”
Bro, I Think These Movies Are Making Fun of Us
(Spoilers ahead for The Wolf of Wall Street, Fight Club, The Godfather Part I &II, and any gangster movie Scorsese has ever made)
I was a freshman in high school the first time that I heard someone say that their favorite movie was The Wolf of Wall Street. This would have been around the fall of 2014, so not even a year after the movie was released had it finally, but certainly not for the last time, reached the top spot for someone I knew. This seemed like a normal enough answer. I was a big fan and you certainly can’t go wrong with Scorsese. It was the qualifier that this acquaintance of mine said after that threw me: “It sucks that he got caught though.”
I started having Bruce Wayne style flashbacks to the scene where Jordan Belfort sucker punches his wife in the stomach while he literally tries to kidnap their children as I “Jim looked” at the invisible camera next to me. This marked the beginning of my conscious relationship with the “Bro movie.”
Now despite my hopefully not overly long quiz bit at the beginning, I am only chiding. I made all of that with love. I wholeheartedly love so, so many of the movies in every section up there. These are the totally benign, low hanging fruit of movies to generalize to one particular group, and obviously these generalizations are not really made to hold up on an individual basis. In fact, before I begin criticizing what I refer to as “Bro movies,” let me not come across at all like I am above this lifestyle, or even that it is inherently toxic. I have not one, but TWO Pulp Fiction posters. My family named our dog after a character in Jaws. I’m dressing up as a Brad Pitt character for Halloween. I probably qualify for every section myself in spades. I am certainly bro-er than your average dork.
What I’m actually here to discuss is a particular concept that a lot of dudes my age have unwittingly fallen victim to with a certain type of “Bro-movie.” The type is the masculine fantasy, and the two movies in discussion are The Wolf of Wall Street, and David Fincher’s Fight Club. Two movies that I have heard the most often cited as, but completely misunderstood, by dudes my age for their favorite movie.
So what is a “masculine fantasy” movie? Well, it’s basically just that (As dated as Animal House or as actually nuanced as Neighbors). With TWOWS and FC in particular, they showcase a basic story of a dude who starts out a loser, but in one way or another looks like Leo or Brad Pitt, is really fed up with being held down by their job or financial circumstance, then literally and figuratively breaks free, has a ton of sex, hangs with the boys, maybe makes a ton of money, drinks, drugs, punching. Basically sums it up. If you’re still confused, just ask an eighth grade lacrosse player what he expects from his college experience. Or what any man above the age of 15 who follows Dan Bilzerian on Instagram expects once he “gets his first bag.”
So, this subgenre is basically mainlined escapism for young dudes. Look like that, have all that stuff, overcome all my opposition, have a girl like that, bring all my bros along for the ride. And this isn’t necessarily a totally bad thing. All movies employ escapism to an extent for however broad or narrow their target audience is, and hopefully you as a viewer, regardless of whether this movie is aimed at you, can root for, or at least understand the goals of your protagonist. The part that I believe misses most dudes my age, and actually what makes TWOWS great (Look, I like Fight Club, but I was never huge on it), is that at a certain point, you want your protagonist to fail. Jordan Belfort and Tyler Durden are the WORST. That’s the whole point. At a certain point in the movie, the character’s horrible lifestyle catches up to them and all that was good with their life before starts being torn away from them. And they deserve it.
Movies about bad people have a very simple rule. Unless the director is deliberately trying to throw us a wild curveball, the ending goes one, or possibly both, of two ways:
Either the protagonist loses, or the audience does. The world of the movie does not reward genuinely bad protagonists. Movies like The Sting or Ocean’s Eleven can have criminal main characters that succeed, because they’re not really all that bad of guys, and they’re stealing from somebody worse. But characters like Howard from Uncut Gems, ehhh… not so much. Let’s take a look at Scorsese’s most famous genre, as well as the genre that probably best exemplifies this concept: The Gangster movie. Whether it be Goodfellas (which shares a ton with TWOWS), Casino or The Irishman, the story ends more or less the same. It follows a career criminal who at one point has it all, and then by virtue of his own terrible choices and lifestyle ends up miserable and probably alone: “Egg noodles and Ketchup.” Speaking of Leo, think about the ending for just about everybody in The Departed.
Or, if the immoral protagonist succeeds, we as an audience are disappointed. In either of the first two Godfather movies, Michael technically succeeds in his goals, but we as an audience are not happy about it. Michael may have succeeded as a man, or as a mob boss in defeating his enemies, but we only look on like Kay as we realize that a good person has become bad during the process. This may come as a shock, but movies about bad people are usually showing how it is in fact bad to be bad.
And perhaps what is most shocking is not just that a lot of dudes don’t get that these movies are (surprise, surprise!) anti-violence, anti-greed, anti-misogyny and and anti-cocaine, but that these movies actually go as far as to mock the demographic that loves them most. There’s a scene in Fight Club where the two main characters discuss which historical figure they would like to fight most, and their respective picks are Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln. Seconds later, one of them spits their own tooth down the drain. What more would it take for you to pick up on the fact that this is satire? You get that Borat isn’t just funny because mustache man say dumb thing in funny voice, right? It’s making fun of racists, sexists and people like your frat brothers. Remember when Bryce punched a whole in a wall when he found out Mad Max:Fury Road had feminist themes? Or when Brayden asked why after 45 completed seasons, SNL is “just now” getting political? These are the types of dudes who see Jordan Belfort and Tyler Durden as flawless role models. The point of these movies missed ‘em like a D1 scholarship. At their very nicest these movies are acting as warnings for you, and more commonly they’re s**tting on you. There’s a reason the movies end with Tyler Durden dead, and Jordan Belfort in jail. And you’re not supposed to feel bad about it. And perhaps the greatest irony is that if you aren’t smart enough to watch The Wolf of Wall Street and discern that this wife beating drug addict who ends up broke and in prison isn’t someone you want to model your life after, you probably don’t have what it takes to be the next Jordan Belfort anyways.
Look, The Wolf of Wall Street is a great movie, but maybe stop putting it in your Tinder bio until you get what it’s actually trying to say. This movie is super good, and that is of course assisted by the fact that it’s funny, raunchy and bat-s**t insane. But it’s just a movie. A movie about how this lifestyle seems great in the first half but ultimately destroys you and everyone around you. That’s why it’s great. In fact the majority of the movies I listed in the first section of the quiz have deeper themes, and stronger messages than just “that movie was sweet”.
Let me have a minute alone with the Bros here, ok guys? (I say as I get down on one knee, put my hand on Garrett’s shoulder, and earnestly look him in the eye)
I hate to break this to you bud, but you’re old enough to know. Blue Mountain State is not a real college. And if you think Tyler Durden, Travis Bickle, Rick Sanchez, Tony Montana, The Joker, or Jordan Belfort is a role model, then that is majorly unchill of you.
Get your s**t together Bro.
