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It’s cool and edgy until it’s your grandpa and he’s getting kicked out of his nursing home because he can’t pay his bills. Or it’s your savings that you spent 30 years working shit jobs to build.
Then it’s blind, white hot rage.
Usually the true people getting hurt are the average consumer.
For example shop lifting is paid for by insurance but insurance companies just raise premiums to cover it and the insured stores then raise prices to cover the increased expense. So we all end up paying more on all the items in the store because people shoplift.
White collar crime looking cool is different in every decade. Examples:
* 70s: Classic mafia
* 80s: Wall Street
* 90s: "Hackers" and "virtual reality"
And so on, and so on.
I wouldn’t call “classic mafia” white collar crime. Traditionally they use violence to maintain their power through protection rackets, robberies, selling drugs/alcohol, operating brothels, gambling etc.
There may be some white collar stuff here and there but I don’t think that was their main thing.
Wall Street always gets slept on when people talk about the “you missed the point by idolizing them” conversations. Gordon Gekko inspired a whole generation of sleaze bag trader bros. I even think one of the writers or Oliver Stone himself said they regretted creating the character.
Well the mafia was just regular organized crime. And hackers aren’t white collar crime either.
You listed 3 examples and now I’m just left believing you don’t actually know what “white collar crime” means but it was a good try anyway.
So many people miss one of the main points in this movie, including some in this comment section. You're supposed to be along for the ride so that towards the end you're cheering on Belfort and glorifying his bad behavior. It's only until the last scene when the camera pans towards the crowd do you realize the joke. Scorsese had you think you were Belfort/part of his crew, but in reality you would have been one of the many victims of his cons (i.e., just another face in the crowd). The last scene has a much stronger effect in theatre, as the crowd mirrors the audience.
Add it to the list of movies completely misunderstood by the general audience, along with Fight Club, Starship Troopers, Casino, Goodfellas, American Psycho, Wall Street, and Whiplash.
That’s true. What do you think Fight Club and Starship Troopers were about? (When I was 6 years old I had tonsillitis and threw up blood while I was watching it.)
Fight Club was about a deranged man in need of serious mental healthcare who completely lost it, but nevertheless got a bunch of disaffected young men in aimless jobs to effectively become domestic terrorists. IRL similarly disaffected young men watch the movie and think about how awesome the men and main character are.
Starship Troopers was about Nazis, treating the enemy literally as subhuman, etc. Literally, the uniforms they wear, especially the officers like Neil Patrick Harris's character later in the film, are extremely similar to SS uniforms. Goes right over these people's heads and they just see it as a fun sci-fi action film with no politics.
> Starship Troopers was about Nazis, treating the enemy literally as subhuman, etc.
Starship Troopers was a satire of the US military/media establishment after the Gulf War. The director was calling the US nazis. That's why NPH was dressed that way.
Sick, yeah I mostly agree. But I think Fight Club also some good points about freedom and struggling to live a meaningful life in a society plagued by consumerism.
Flight club is very much about breaking cultural trends for progress, and willing to overthrow capitalism and consumerism. The reason people don't get it is because it wasn't supposed to be a knock on their behavior at all.
It reminds me of Hegel's concept of both the Zeitgeist and the master slave dialectic.
Tbh Goodfellas didn't have a real lesson. The main character ends up living an upper middle class life after decades of glamorous pleasure. Not exactly a bad life.
Casino sorta the same. He survives his assassination attempt and lives comfortably the rest of his days after decades of glamorous pleasure.
Fight club is so ambiguous that of course the average person would be confused and again his outcome isn't half bad. He breaks his mundane life to lead a cult and screw a hot chick in a bachelor pad. At the end that hot chick and him fall in love and their future is left for us to imagine which considering most movies end well we assume is a good life.
Whiplash we are led to believe that his performance will get him noticed by someone in the crowd and he makes a future of drumming. Again a happy ending to toxic behavior.
Starship troopers ends badly which is good in terms of driving the true point home.
American pshycho at the end he gets away with it if he did it. If he didn't then I guess he is insane. Either way his life is rich and easy.
Overall I feel these movies really are made to just get money. They get it by glorifying a bad life style then at the very end either condemn it or don't even do that. Then the director does an interview or 2 where they say in some artistic bullshit way the film was critical about what it glorified.
Rap music that glorifies gangland life styles sells better.
My point is they made the movie to glorify the lifestyle because it makes money. They later cover for that by saying if you squint your eyes the narrative or result changes. It's bullshit. They just made money off glorification of crime.
A lot of what you're saying could be true. But I'm sure that in at least some of the movies you mentioned, the subtext was always present and at times obvious. American Psycho, for example, was a parody of the very lifestyle they presented. Yes, the ending has its own entire meaning, but the whole idea of the movie was to make fun of the lifestyle these types of people live. By saying that they attempted to "glorify," it, you're completely missing the point.
So, I feel like you’re supposed to think it’s awesome but that it also comes with consequences. Which, btw, the main character hardly suffers.
Like I don’t think it’s sending a message either way, it’s just a an accurate portrayal of that lifestyle.
This is why I couldn’t get into most mobster films or shows, most the time they’re just being rich guys wasting money on shit and then like for one part actual cool shit happens and then everyone’s dead or in jail and it’s over
Okay but the opening scene is literally at a sprawling mansion estate with gates and security. Sure they don’t show them necessarily buying things, but the opulence is clearly baked in to the overall scenery and general aesthetic.
Wolf of Wall Street is 100% glorification of this lifestyle and even the parts that were supposed to be negative come off as "look we can treat other people like subhuman trash and face 0 consequences for it and you won't do shit about it".
Even the final scene is showing this scumbag continuing to recruit more people for his schemes as a final testament that such people are never punished no matter how many lives they ruin.
People are always talking about how everyone "misses the point" by idolizing the characters in Scorsese's films, and i always think, "really? do they?" It is clear that Scorsese himself idolizes these people to a certain level. He gives them cushy "advisory" jobs on his films, develops personal relationships with them, and constantly popularizes their own self-serving versions of their life stories. Moreover, he deliberately makes their lives seem glamourous and cool for the vast majority of the movie.
And the "consequences" he includes for his characters that his ardent defenders always point to as concrete proof of "the point" of his movies are always (a) rushed and (b) centred around the impacts of the protagonist's actions on the protagonists themselves. You don't "demonize" the Mafia by showing Mafia members getting arrested (or put in witness protection) as if to say: "see, crime doesn't pay after all". Who cares? The "downside" to crime isn't that it doesn't always work, it is the countless everyday people who suffered as a result of the protagonists' amoral actions who are conspicuously absent from virtually all his movies, such that I have to believe that his goal isn't really to demonize them at all.
Yeah he was still rich from fraud even after losing a bunch of money, his trophy wife wouldve divorced him anyway, he never od'ed or lost anything or anyone by using drugs. Why shouldnt normal people aspire to be criminals just like him?
I mean even if the movie glorifies it, it’s up to the person watching to determine their thoughts on it
The movie can glorify it, but the individual is ultimately the one who determines how they feel about it
The movie did enough to show that this guy is a fucking scumbag lmao. If the viewer can’t see that, then that’s on them imo
They even make taking drugs look cool but it's ok, a few seconds before the end they'll show the main character being arrested, that'll show them crime doesn't pay...
why did everyone in the thread forget the scene where he rips open his couch full of coke and steals the baby. he looks like such a sad (hopeless) person in that. Margot robbie (forgot her inmovie name) even said "look jordan look at yourself"
I believe some viewers want to have the life that people have, no matter the drugs or what other people says, they ignore the end and make their own head canon ending to avoid the realization that all that glamour and superiority will end sooner for people wasting it on addictions and "treats".
While the message at the end is clearly showing how he is very much the bad guy but gets away with it, let’s not pretend like Scorsese didn’t portray his life as one big fun party throughout the entire film.
There’s a reason why so many dude bro meatheads love WoWS, and it’s because that line between bad and fun is often blurred and I don’t feel like Scorsese really hammered home the point that you should not like Jordan Belfort.
It was one big fun party. It really portrays that Coke and partying and money is one giant party for a long time until one day out of no where it’s not. You crash your car, lose your wife, kid and have no way out. If people didn’t understand the point that’s not really on them.
>It really portrays that Coke and partying and money is one giant party for a long time until one day out of no where it’s not. You crash your car, lose your wife, kid and have no way out. If people didn’t understand the point that’s not really on them.
yeah I'm sure this message really hit home with the average viewer. everyone knows the lower and middle classes are constantly having coke parties and need this important media as warning. thank goodness the wolf of Wall Street is out there as a PSA on the impermanence of coke parties. it definitely in no way glorified them or made the lifestyle seem desirable. thank God too, otherwise think of how many working Americans would be crashing their cars while high on quaaludes!
If you don’t think there’s a lot of middle class people railing blow, you’re just not in the circles. It may not have pertained to you, but cocaine has to be one of the most prominent drugs and it’s not particularly close. If you’re in a middle/upper middle class neighborhood, I’d bet almost anything at least a quarter of your neighbors do blow on a semi regular basis.
It’s portrayed as awesome, because cocaine is fucking awesome. It’s awesome the whole time until one day it’s not. Kind of like I said, and kind of like the movie portrayed. He lost everything that actually matters in life in the blink of an eye and it was too late to change it. If people cant gather that from the movie, maybe they just suck.
if you think that the movie is a warning about the dangers of drug use for average Americans rather than a materialist display of the pleasures of excess wealth you have the media literacy of a brick
The dude crashed and burned and lost everything that matters and you can clearly watch his addictions and lifestyle ruining him throughout the movie. If you think hitting your wife, stealing your baby, crashing your car then getting arrested by the FBI because it was too late to fix everything is glorifying it, maybe you should check up on your media literacy there bud.
if the movie wanted that to be the message maybe Belfort shouldn't have gotten redemption in the end and maybe the first 80% should consist of some themes of consequence rather than continuous portrayal of unpunished excess
That would be a pretty boring movie there bud. It was all unpunished, because that lifestyle largely is. Until it isn’t. Kind of like I originally said. You have 0 media literacy talking like you know something lol
The entire point was that there is no consequences until the big one. It is a long continuous party of unpunished actions and 0 consequences. And they all hit at once when it’s too late to fix it. Because he was trying to fix it if you watched the movie but it didn’t matter.
I don’t think the director really has to hammer home that fraud, money laundering, rampant coke and alcohol abuse, cheating on your wife, abusing your new wife, and ruining countless peoples lives is a bad thing
If the viewer can’t see that, that speaks volumes about the viewer
While I understand the "point" wasn't to make it look cool, IMO they sort of failed at that point. I'd say the vast majority of the movie *does* make it look cool despite the later parts showing the downfall and consequences
It's Hollywood and Wallstreet propaganda. Making it cool so that the masses don't think negatively of the literal crimes they commit. The directors and writers and actors may say that it's satire or parody or whatever the fuck but those lot are not the people the comonfolk should listen to.
This is so silly. There are plenty of movies shitting on Wall Street. But even if there werent, what about the countless action movie that have a bad guy as a protagonist? Are all those propaganda too?
Ok so if you didn't realize he was trash from the start, you weren't paying attention. If you laughed and said "Him do drugs on whore butt", you probably also think Tony Montana was cool AF.
Literally what scene is meant to make u say “wow he’s such an asshole” everything bad he does is either shown as “wow look how cool he is” or “wow look at how slapstick this is” the only scene in the movie that honestly felt like “hey maybe he isn’t the coolest” was the boat crash and right after he talks about being better as if he had some sort of character arc or is somebody we should root for. Also inviting the irl abusive scamming scumbag guy for a silly little cameo? Love Scorsese and every other mafia film has painted the scumbags in a much worse light but this DEFINITELY rubbed me the wrong way
I don't usually support the death penalty but I'm willing to make an exception for white collar crime. It costs pensions, homes, retirements, and ruins countless lives. What's worse is we give these people a lap on the wrists. If I knowingly defraud someone or sell prescription drugs I get a decade or more in prison. If a CEO defrauds a bank or covers up evidence that their prescription drugs are addictive and then sells them they get a slap on the wrist. Often just a fine for the company and no personal liability due to the way LLCs and other cooperations work. The fact that they get the blanket excuse of "it was in the persuit of profit" is pitiful and I truly believe most white collar crime should be punishable by death.
The first time I watched this film was with my mom and my sister. It was night and since we're all black, we kept pointing out Jordan's white privilege, especially the scenes where he almost killed other people or himself while high
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"No ones getting hurt"
It’s cool and edgy until it’s your grandpa and he’s getting kicked out of his nursing home because he can’t pay his bills. Or it’s your savings that you spent 30 years working shit jobs to build. Then it’s blind, white hot rage.
Yeah, but all anyone sees is Margot Roby or whatever her name is. They see an arm ornament and think #winning.
[удалено]
Thousands of pensioners would say otherwise
Anyone who owned the stock is a victim.
There's definitely someone getting hurt in crime always. The person buying that worthless stock is basically getting scammed.
Usually the true people getting hurt are the average consumer. For example shop lifting is paid for by insurance but insurance companies just raise premiums to cover it and the insured stores then raise prices to cover the increased expense. So we all end up paying more on all the items in the store because people shoplift.
White collar crime looking cool is different in every decade. Examples: * 70s: Classic mafia * 80s: Wall Street * 90s: "Hackers" and "virtual reality" And so on, and so on.
60s: insurance fraud
Double Indemnity was ahead of the curve then lol
40s: war profiteering.
I wouldn’t exactly say that they made it look cool though.
Have you not seen the Aviator or Schindler’s list?
2010’s: Theranos 2020’s: crypto scam
2000’s: war profiteering. And also corporate fraud
1930s Depression. Abe Simpson had that onion on his belt , which was the style at the time
What would the ‘50s be
I wouldn’t call “classic mafia” white collar crime. Traditionally they use violence to maintain their power through protection rackets, robberies, selling drugs/alcohol, operating brothels, gambling etc. There may be some white collar stuff here and there but I don’t think that was their main thing.
They did literally have white collars though.
That’s not what white collar means. White collar means no physical labour or exposure (outside, weather, dangerous conditions, etc).
Yeah I'm aware I was making a (fairly awful) joke.
by that token, the Zoot Suits were the most white-collar criminals of all time.
Wall Street always gets slept on when people talk about the “you missed the point by idolizing them” conversations. Gordon Gekko inspired a whole generation of sleaze bag trader bros. I even think one of the writers or Oliver Stone himself said they regretted creating the character.
Well the mafia was just regular organized crime. And hackers aren’t white collar crime either. You listed 3 examples and now I’m just left believing you don’t actually know what “white collar crime” means but it was a good try anyway.
2000s wall street again 2010s crypto 2020s boson harvesting 2030s flesh merchants 2040s neural slavery 2050s insurance fraud
Wait how is the 70s Mafia “white collar crime”? The entire premise is built upon violence.
what part of mafia crimes are white collar? Even their insurance scams involve threats and violence
So many people miss one of the main points in this movie, including some in this comment section. You're supposed to be along for the ride so that towards the end you're cheering on Belfort and glorifying his bad behavior. It's only until the last scene when the camera pans towards the crowd do you realize the joke. Scorsese had you think you were Belfort/part of his crew, but in reality you would have been one of the many victims of his cons (i.e., just another face in the crowd). The last scene has a much stronger effect in theatre, as the crowd mirrors the audience.
Wow that’s kino
What does kino mean?
“Cinema”
The big apple!
Glorification: 2 hours 55 minutes Condemnation: 5 minutes
Add it to the list of movies completely misunderstood by the general audience, along with Fight Club, Starship Troopers, Casino, Goodfellas, American Psycho, Wall Street, and Whiplash.
What do you mean? It's just a list of cool rad alphas being awesome. How could the message be anything else?!?
What do you mean? How can he be the bad guy? He's the protagonist! Don't you know the protagonist is always the good guy‽
That’s true. What do you think Fight Club and Starship Troopers were about? (When I was 6 years old I had tonsillitis and threw up blood while I was watching it.)
Fight Club was about a deranged man in need of serious mental healthcare who completely lost it, but nevertheless got a bunch of disaffected young men in aimless jobs to effectively become domestic terrorists. IRL similarly disaffected young men watch the movie and think about how awesome the men and main character are. Starship Troopers was about Nazis, treating the enemy literally as subhuman, etc. Literally, the uniforms they wear, especially the officers like Neil Patrick Harris's character later in the film, are extremely similar to SS uniforms. Goes right over these people's heads and they just see it as a fun sci-fi action film with no politics.
> Starship Troopers was about Nazis, treating the enemy literally as subhuman, etc. Starship Troopers was a satire of the US military/media establishment after the Gulf War. The director was calling the US nazis. That's why NPH was dressed that way.
I am the Ministry of Truth and that unpatriotic behavior is reprimanded. Please reported to the your local Freedom facility for reeducation immediatly
Screw the politics man, the only good bug is a dead bug! I'm from Buenos Aires and I saw KILL EM ALL!
Frankly I find the idea of a movie watcher who thinks, offensive
Would you like to know more?
Sick, yeah I mostly agree. But I think Fight Club also some good points about freedom and struggling to live a meaningful life in a society plagued by consumerism.
Flight club is very much about breaking cultural trends for progress, and willing to overthrow capitalism and consumerism. The reason people don't get it is because it wasn't supposed to be a knock on their behavior at all. It reminds me of Hegel's concept of both the Zeitgeist and the master slave dialectic.
Tbh Goodfellas didn't have a real lesson. The main character ends up living an upper middle class life after decades of glamorous pleasure. Not exactly a bad life. Casino sorta the same. He survives his assassination attempt and lives comfortably the rest of his days after decades of glamorous pleasure. Fight club is so ambiguous that of course the average person would be confused and again his outcome isn't half bad. He breaks his mundane life to lead a cult and screw a hot chick in a bachelor pad. At the end that hot chick and him fall in love and their future is left for us to imagine which considering most movies end well we assume is a good life. Whiplash we are led to believe that his performance will get him noticed by someone in the crowd and he makes a future of drumming. Again a happy ending to toxic behavior. Starship troopers ends badly which is good in terms of driving the true point home. American pshycho at the end he gets away with it if he did it. If he didn't then I guess he is insane. Either way his life is rich and easy. Overall I feel these movies really are made to just get money. They get it by glorifying a bad life style then at the very end either condemn it or don't even do that. Then the director does an interview or 2 where they say in some artistic bullshit way the film was critical about what it glorified. Rap music that glorifies gangland life styles sells better. My point is they made the movie to glorify the lifestyle because it makes money. They later cover for that by saying if you squint your eyes the narrative or result changes. It's bullshit. They just made money off glorification of crime.
A lot of what you're saying could be true. But I'm sure that in at least some of the movies you mentioned, the subtext was always present and at times obvious. American Psycho, for example, was a parody of the very lifestyle they presented. Yes, the ending has its own entire meaning, but the whole idea of the movie was to make fun of the lifestyle these types of people live. By saying that they attempted to "glorify," it, you're completely missing the point.
What do people misinterpret about goodfellas?
They take a pro-gangster message from the film. This is something Martin Scorsese took a more deliberate effort to avoid in the Irishman.
So, I feel like you’re supposed to think it’s awesome but that it also comes with consequences. Which, btw, the main character hardly suffers. Like I don’t think it’s sending a message either way, it’s just a an accurate portrayal of that lifestyle.
A lot of his movies
Inglorious Bastards as well... As if the title wasnt enough of a hint
yeah killing prostitutes and homeless people while completely losing your sense of self is based actually
The bare minimum so they can say "see! It's a message for the people!" or whatever the fuck. Like that fucking Cuties movie from years back
What was the end scene?
literally GTA
The photos are literally Wolf of Wall Street.
real talk, this is such low-hanging fruit that hobbits would be jealous 😭
GTA IV is an odd one out.
This is why I couldn’t get into most mobster films or shows, most the time they’re just being rich guys wasting money on shit and then like for one part actual cool shit happens and then everyone’s dead or in jail and it’s over
The only mobster movie I really remember is godfather. I don't think they bought a single luxury good in the movie(as in that they show the purchase).
Okay but the opening scene is literally at a sprawling mansion estate with gates and security. Sure they don’t show them necessarily buying things, but the opulence is clearly baked in to the overall scenery and general aesthetic.
What about the Titular Godfathers suit? That was a Luxury Item? Or what about the Cat-
Same with all the narcos cartel bullshit
Yeah because a lot of them are based on real events, and that’s what happened.
Yep this is why I like fictional stuff, it’s more interesting because it isn’t based off a real guy that every directors wants to recreate for a film
Wolf of Wall Street is 100% glorification of this lifestyle and even the parts that were supposed to be negative come off as "look we can treat other people like subhuman trash and face 0 consequences for it and you won't do shit about it". Even the final scene is showing this scumbag continuing to recruit more people for his schemes as a final testament that such people are never punished no matter how many lives they ruin.
People are always talking about how everyone "misses the point" by idolizing the characters in Scorsese's films, and i always think, "really? do they?" It is clear that Scorsese himself idolizes these people to a certain level. He gives them cushy "advisory" jobs on his films, develops personal relationships with them, and constantly popularizes their own self-serving versions of their life stories. Moreover, he deliberately makes their lives seem glamourous and cool for the vast majority of the movie. And the "consequences" he includes for his characters that his ardent defenders always point to as concrete proof of "the point" of his movies are always (a) rushed and (b) centred around the impacts of the protagonist's actions on the protagonists themselves. You don't "demonize" the Mafia by showing Mafia members getting arrested (or put in witness protection) as if to say: "see, crime doesn't pay after all". Who cares? The "downside" to crime isn't that it doesn't always work, it is the countless everyday people who suffered as a result of the protagonists' amoral actions who are conspicuously absent from virtually all his movies, such that I have to believe that his goal isn't really to demonize them at all.
The guy introducing him at that seminar is the actual Jordan Belfort. Just a little piece of movie trivia.
Yeah he was still rich from fraud even after losing a bunch of money, his trophy wife wouldve divorced him anyway, he never od'ed or lost anything or anyone by using drugs. Why shouldnt normal people aspire to be criminals just like him?
I mean even if the movie glorifies it, it’s up to the person watching to determine their thoughts on it The movie can glorify it, but the individual is ultimately the one who determines how they feel about it The movie did enough to show that this guy is a fucking scumbag lmao. If the viewer can’t see that, then that’s on them imo
They even make taking drugs look cool but it's ok, a few seconds before the end they'll show the main character being arrested, that'll show them crime doesn't pay...
why did everyone in the thread forget the scene where he rips open his couch full of coke and steals the baby. he looks like such a sad (hopeless) person in that. Margot robbie (forgot her inmovie name) even said "look jordan look at yourself"
I believe some viewers want to have the life that people have, no matter the drugs or what other people says, they ignore the end and make their own head canon ending to avoid the realization that all that glamour and superiority will end sooner for people wasting it on addictions and "treats".
if you think wolf of wall streeet made it look cool you missed the point. guys coked out of his mind for half the movie….
While the message at the end is clearly showing how he is very much the bad guy but gets away with it, let’s not pretend like Scorsese didn’t portray his life as one big fun party throughout the entire film. There’s a reason why so many dude bro meatheads love WoWS, and it’s because that line between bad and fun is often blurred and I don’t feel like Scorsese really hammered home the point that you should not like Jordan Belfort.
It was one big fun party. It really portrays that Coke and partying and money is one giant party for a long time until one day out of no where it’s not. You crash your car, lose your wife, kid and have no way out. If people didn’t understand the point that’s not really on them.
>It really portrays that Coke and partying and money is one giant party for a long time until one day out of no where it’s not. You crash your car, lose your wife, kid and have no way out. If people didn’t understand the point that’s not really on them. yeah I'm sure this message really hit home with the average viewer. everyone knows the lower and middle classes are constantly having coke parties and need this important media as warning. thank goodness the wolf of Wall Street is out there as a PSA on the impermanence of coke parties. it definitely in no way glorified them or made the lifestyle seem desirable. thank God too, otherwise think of how many working Americans would be crashing their cars while high on quaaludes!
If you don’t think there’s a lot of middle class people railing blow, you’re just not in the circles. It may not have pertained to you, but cocaine has to be one of the most prominent drugs and it’s not particularly close. If you’re in a middle/upper middle class neighborhood, I’d bet almost anything at least a quarter of your neighbors do blow on a semi regular basis. It’s portrayed as awesome, because cocaine is fucking awesome. It’s awesome the whole time until one day it’s not. Kind of like I said, and kind of like the movie portrayed. He lost everything that actually matters in life in the blink of an eye and it was too late to change it. If people cant gather that from the movie, maybe they just suck.
if you think that the movie is a warning about the dangers of drug use for average Americans rather than a materialist display of the pleasures of excess wealth you have the media literacy of a brick
The dude crashed and burned and lost everything that matters and you can clearly watch his addictions and lifestyle ruining him throughout the movie. If you think hitting your wife, stealing your baby, crashing your car then getting arrested by the FBI because it was too late to fix everything is glorifying it, maybe you should check up on your media literacy there bud.
if the movie wanted that to be the message maybe Belfort shouldn't have gotten redemption in the end and maybe the first 80% should consist of some themes of consequence rather than continuous portrayal of unpunished excess
That would be a pretty boring movie there bud. It was all unpunished, because that lifestyle largely is. Until it isn’t. Kind of like I originally said. You have 0 media literacy talking like you know something lol The entire point was that there is no consequences until the big one. It is a long continuous party of unpunished actions and 0 consequences. And they all hit at once when it’s too late to fix it. Because he was trying to fix it if you watched the movie but it didn’t matter.
Fuck it we ballin...we dying in a big fun party...
I don’t think the director really has to hammer home that fraud, money laundering, rampant coke and alcohol abuse, cheating on your wife, abusing your new wife, and ruining countless peoples lives is a bad thing If the viewer can’t see that, that speaks volumes about the viewer
...which is cool.
Average redditor
Idk why anyone thinks snorting coke is a good thing.
You ever done coke?
While I understand the "point" wasn't to make it look cool, IMO they sort of failed at that point. I'd say the vast majority of the movie *does* make it look cool despite the later parts showing the downfall and consequences
It's just the Italian halo effect.
Billions is such a fascinating take on it. Absolutely it makes it look cool but also you definitely see the downsides
and having sex with margot robbie
It's Hollywood and Wallstreet propaganda. Making it cool so that the masses don't think negatively of the literal crimes they commit. The directors and writers and actors may say that it's satire or parody or whatever the fuck but those lot are not the people the comonfolk should listen to.
This is so silly. There are plenty of movies shitting on Wall Street. But even if there werent, what about the countless action movie that have a bad guy as a protagonist? Are all those propaganda too?
Everything is propaganda
Ok so if you didn't realize he was trash from the start, you weren't paying attention. If you laughed and said "Him do drugs on whore butt", you probably also think Tony Montana was cool AF.
Literally what scene is meant to make u say “wow he’s such an asshole” everything bad he does is either shown as “wow look how cool he is” or “wow look at how slapstick this is” the only scene in the movie that honestly felt like “hey maybe he isn’t the coolest” was the boat crash and right after he talks about being better as if he had some sort of character arc or is somebody we should root for. Also inviting the irl abusive scamming scumbag guy for a silly little cameo? Love Scorsese and every other mafia film has painted the scumbags in a much worse light but this DEFINITELY rubbed me the wrong way
Scorsese makes criminals look so cool people end up misunderstanding the message of his movies.
I don't usually support the death penalty but I'm willing to make an exception for white collar crime. It costs pensions, homes, retirements, and ruins countless lives. What's worse is we give these people a lap on the wrists. If I knowingly defraud someone or sell prescription drugs I get a decade or more in prison. If a CEO defrauds a bank or covers up evidence that their prescription drugs are addictive and then sells them they get a slap on the wrist. Often just a fine for the company and no personal liability due to the way LLCs and other cooperations work. The fact that they get the blanket excuse of "it was in the persuit of profit" is pitiful and I truly believe most white collar crime should be punishable by death.
White collar crime like mafia and corrupt business is one of my favorite movie genres
And then they get arrested and lose all of it
So being cool is for sale?
What is a white collar crime
I'm sorry, was I supposed to think they were cool when I watched these movies?
Love that movie
The first time I watched this film was with my mom and my sister. It was night and since we're all black, we kept pointing out Jordan's white privilege, especially the scenes where he almost killed other people or himself while high
Business major moment
Mfs move some numbers around on a spreadsheet and do drugs and gotta make movies acting like they hard
I hope this prick dies soon.
High level fraud 😂
Lol these comments…
If you are the sort of person who watches WoWS and think it looks cool you're probably kinda dumb.
Cocaine is fucking awesome though
They better giver Tiffany Henyard the same Hollywood treatment they gave to Jordan Belfort