Movie/TV recommendations

[melmer]

Yeah the end if year wipe was a little disappointing, but this new series is top draw.

Just watched graham norton, mark wahlberg was utterly trashed. Should check it out on YouTube

[ysbreker]

Speaking of Mr. brooker, don't forget: new black mirror episode on Monday!

[Roderick]

The Wipe episode was good, and then at 17:15 it became great as it used the same stock music Toonstruck used. But that may just be me.

[Ben X]

The Wipe episode was good, and then at 17:15 it became great as it used the same stock music Toonstruck used. But that may just be me.

Not just you!

[Roderick]

YES! BRO!

[Patrick R]

If you haven't seen John Cassavetes' Killing of a Chinese Bookie, you need to do so pronto. It's pretty much the greatest film ever made. It's heartbreaking and funny and tense and crazy and beautiful and moving and every other word that Peter Travers ever used. Hell yeah, it's a triumph and a tour de force.

It's also kind of similar in structure (though completely different in tone) to How to Succeed in Business which you also need to see, in case the Thumbs constantly name-dropping it hasn't already motivated you to do so.

[Max Ernst]

Do you want to watch a stop motion film from 1912 where a cricket in a little house explores the heartbreak of infidelity? Of course you do! See how excited I am? I answered my own rhetorical question!

 

[Roderick]

Le Grand Restaurant, the comedy classic from 1966 starring Louis de Funès.

Assez dit. I recommend it, it has some terrific non sequitur outbursts - though the climax foregoes the restaurant setting and thus feels a little off considering the thing is called 'the great restaurant'. Still, this is Funès at his best and funnier than most of the Gendarmes films.

[Luftmensch]

Ferris Bueller's Day Off is on Netflix so I watched it recently. I haven't seen it since I was pretty young so it came as a surprise to me that 1.) Ferris Bueller isn't the protagonist and 2.) the film is basically a fable in Objectivism. Also that movie is really slow.

 

Despite all that I really enjoyed it. I don't mean to give the impression I'm some kind of grumpy critic who likes to shit on classics.

[Patrick R]

Super smart critic Damon Houx agrees with you.

 

(Though, further down in the article, super smart critic Jeremy "Beaks" Smith disagrees.)

[Luftmensch]

I actually agree more with Jeremy Smith's take. I think, if Ferris Bueller was actually the protagonist, and the point of the movie was just to cheer him on for being a shit, I wouldn't like it at all. But he's not the protagonist, he's just the narrator. On the one hand, if you want to take it that way, FBDO is a wish-fulfillment fantasy, but the way I read it, it's actually about Jeane, Cameron, and Rooney, and how they get over, deal with, and come to terms with their problems (If you look at it like that, I think the first critic was completely missing the point).

[Patrick R]

I think Ferris Bueller is undoubtedly the protagonist. Just because he doesn't have an arc doesn't mean he isn't the protagonist. 

[Luftmensch]

I, and others, think there's plenty of doubt.

[Patrick R]

Again, a protagonist can be static. They're talking about selling screenplays, not literary criticism. "The protagonist is the character that suffers the most" is fine advice for someone who's trying to write, but it's hardly defendable as theory.

 

At any rate, whether or not he's the protagonist, the film clearly celebrates him. It basically throws a parade in his honor. The film never asks you to identify with Rooney at all.

[ThunderPeel2001]

By definition the "Protagonist" of a story is trying to achieve something, and the "Antagonist" is trying to stop them... right? I remember Die Hard director, John McTiernan, talking about how John McClane is actually the Antagonist -- he's the one throwing obstacles in the way of characters getting what they want.

 

With Ferris Bueller, he wants a day off -- and if you've watched the film a few times, you might come to the conclusion that he also wants to help save Cameron's life, and that's part of the reason why he wants the day off. This makes Principal Rooney most definitely the Antagonist.

 

Either way, we don't always root for the Protagonist, as Die Hard shows.

[Luftmensch]

It's perfectly up for interpretation and debate, which clearly proves that no, Ferris Bueller is not doubtlessly the protagonist. It's one way of interpreting the story.

 

I argue that Cameron, Jeanie, and Rooney are all the protagonists because they all have a shared goal of thwarting Ferris because they all feel like it's not fair that he can get away with whatever he wants. Ferris Bueller isn't the antagonist either, exactly, which is kind of the point; each of the protagonists redeem themselves by letting go of their jealousy. For a film that "never asks you to identify with Rooney," it spends a lot of time focusing on his story. All the obstacles, trials, and failures in the film are against one of these three antiheroes; the only times that Ferris almost gets in trouble are the moments when Cameron and later Jeanie have to make sacrifices to save him. If you took out the parts where Matthew Broderick narrates to the audience, it'd be completely ridiculous to call him the protagonist, because the story never really follows him.

 

But that doesn't mean it's completely invalid to call him the protagonist. It's debatable.

[ThunderPeel2001]

You think that Cameron is so jealous of Ferris that he wishes to thwart his plans...? Also, trying to stop another character from reaching their goals is the definition of an Antagonist, so by your definition, Cameron, Rooney, and Jeanie are all Antagonists.

[Luftmensch]

I didn't provide a definition, you did. I'll go by John August's definition since it's more interesting that yours, which can arbitrarily flip who's the protagonist or antagonist based on what  you decide counts as "something" (and following your logic, Indiana Jones and Mr. Incredible aren't protagonists).

Hero

My incredibly-simplified definition: this is the character who you hope to see “win.” While it’s fine to think of Superman, or Aladdin, the hero doesn’t have to be noble, or courageous, or especially talented. As long as you’re rooting for him, that’s what matters.

 

Main Character
Just what it sounds like: this is the character who the story is mostly about. Confused? Often his or her name is in the title: Shrek, King Arthur, Tootsie, Citizen Kane.

 

Protagonist
The character who changes over the course of the story, travelling from Point A to Point B, either literally or figuratively. She learns and grows as the story progresses. Generally, Protagonists want something at the start of the tale, and discover they need something else.

By this, I wouldn't argue that Ferris Bueller isn't the Hero, because for most people he certainly is (though I rooted more for Jeanie). Main Character is debatable, but he is the Title Character by definition. Protagonist, on the other hand, doesn't in any way include Ferris.

 

This definition isn't final or absolutely authoritative, but it's useful and interesting and does a better job describing what people actually mean when they're talking about heros and protagonists. Your definition doesn't seem to apply to anything.

 

Playing “spot the protagonist” can be a good intellectual exercise — up to a point. As I started writing Charlie, asking “Who’s the protagonist?” led to some important decisions about the storytelling. But trying to pin firm labels on the characters in Go or Pirates of the Caribbean would only prove frustrating.

 

If a story works, it works — regardless of whether characters are fulfilling their archetypal roles. So be wary of trying to wedge characters into defined classes, simply because that’s how they “should” fit.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Before we all crawl further up into the assholes of various definitions, maybe we should step back and realize why we're talking about this. You were surprised, upon rewatching the movie, to discover that Ferris isn't what you would call a protagonist, and in your words  "[you] think, if Ferris Bueller was actually the protagonist, and the point of the movie was just to cheer him on for being a shit, [you] wouldn't like it at all."

 

You didn't elaborate on what you meant by the first thing, but we can probably assume that you were just surprised that the title character didn't fit your preferred definition of a protagonist even though usually the opposite is the case. So, we don't have to argue about whether your definition of "protagonist" is right - we can just accept that you found it interesting that Ferris Bueller didn't have certain traits that you might've expected he would have because the movie is named after him.

 

The second point can also be made without adverting to what a good definition of "protagonist" is (and in fact it seems to have more to do with your preferred definition of the "hero"). Your point is that if the movie were about legitimizing Ferris' actions and making him seem awesome for what he does, you would not have liked it, but you didn't see the movie as doing that. So that's another interesting observation but again we don't need to descend into tedious semantic discussions about what protagonists really are.

 

Personally I think Ferris Bueller's Day Off hangs out in a small, exclusive group of "perfect movies" along with movies like "The Princess Bride" and (probably) "The Fifth Element." They're not the best movies in the sense that if I ranked every movie I had seen, they would be on top, but they're perfect in that they couldn't really do what they did any better, if you ask me. And I love them for it.

[Twig]

I have never understood the great love, even after reading this discussion, for FBDO. It's just... a movie. There's nothing special about it. I must've seen it a dozen times, thanks to television, which probably puts it near the top of my most-watched movies list. (I rewatch movies less than I replay games.) I always come away feeling nothing spectacular. And that's not to say it's bad, either. It's just... a movie! It doesn't inspire any kind of thought. It almost inspires a lack of thought. My brain turns off during the movie and back on at the end.

 

Am I misunderstanding that website, or have you seriously personally ranked 691 movies on a scale of 1-100? That is BABONKERS.

[TychoCelchuuu]

There are lots of reasons to watch movies - I watch a lot of movies because they make me think, or feel, something specific or interesting or complicated. FBDO isn't something I watch to get deep insight into the human condition. I watch it to feel good, basically, and also to laugh. It's like the comfort food of movies.

 

And yes, I've ranked 691 movies on a 1-100 scale. It's pretty easy if you just rank movies after you finish watching them because that takes 3 seconds. It's very helpful because that site uses the rankings to predict what your rankings will be for movies you haven't seen, which means for any movie on earth I can get a number from 1 to 100, predicting how much I will like the film, and the number is rarely off by more than 5. It's been invaluable for discovering stuff I wouldn't have bothered watching.

[Twig]

I can rank on a thumbs-up, thumbs-down scale in three seconds. But 1-100 is absurd. I'd give up after one movie. (It helps/hurts that all I care about is thumbs-up, thumbs-down.)

 

This isn't a knock on you or anything. For the record. But calling it "easy" is... a bit of a stretch.

[TychoCelchuuu]

You could rank every movie 100 or 1 and then the number it would spit out would probably be the % chance that you'd give it a thumbs up.

[Ben X]

Wikipedia's definition syncs with what I've always understood the terms to mean:

 

A protagonist (from the Greek πρωταγωνιστής protagonistes, "one who plays the first part, chief actor"^[1]) is the main character (the central or primary personal figure) of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, which ends up in conflict because of the antagonist.

 

Pretty simple, I'm not sure why John August is trying to redefine it.

 

Anyway, I have always found FBDO a little unsatisfying yet interesting for the reasons already discussed.

 

Also, Die Hard 5 is rubbish.

[Luftmensch]

Sometimes, antagonists and protagonists may overlap, depending on what their ultimate objectives are considered to be. Often, the protagonist in a narrative is also the same person as the focal character, though the two terms are distinct. Excitement and intrigue alone is what the audience feels toward a focal character, while a sense of empathy about the character's objectives and emotions is what the audience feels toward the protagonist. Although the protagonist is often referred to as the "good guy", it is entirely possible for a story's protagonist to be the clear villain, or antihero, of the piece.

 

The principal opponent of the protagonist is a character known as the antagonist, who represents or creates obstacles that the protagonist must overcome. As with protagonists, there may be more than one antagonist in a story. The antagonist may be the story's hero; for example, where the protagonist is a criminal, the antagonist could be a law enforcement agent that tries to capture him.

 

[. . .]

 

When the work contains subplots, these may have different protagonists from the main plot. In some novels, the protagonists may be impossible to identify, because multiple plots in the novel do not permit clear identification of one as the main plot, such as in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, depicting a variety of characters imprisoned and living in a gulag camp, or in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, depicting 15 major characters involved in or affected by a war.

 

Good job reading Wikipedia.

 

I don't consider John August's interpretation a redefining, just a refining. As a long-time professional screenwriter, he has his own sense of what ideas make sense and are useful in storytelling, and the protagonist, as he explained it, is part of that.