Now that Hollywood is making boring movies about boring subjects…like Tetris and BlackBerries…why don’t they make a movie about Giga Pets and MySpace?
Those things were way cooler anyway. I can imagine it now:
Bryan Cranston as a lonely toy developer that wants to punish children by subjecting them to the stresses of keeping something alive; a washed-up Adrien Brody stakes his comeback by playing Tom Anderson who compulsively masturbates to Internet pornography as he gains inspiration for MySpace.
What the hell started this trend anyway? Who’s asking for these movies to get made?
I’ll admit, Moneyball was good. But that’s really the only highlight from this odd genre. Critics loved The Founder at the time, but does anyone talk about it nowadays?
I consider The Offer another example here. I imagine that we’ll be seeing more of “making of” dramas of our favorite movies in the near future. But we’ll know all of these stories will have happy endings. So Hollywood, if any of you degenerates are reading, here’s a suggestion for ya’ll:
The making of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate: the movie that nearly destroyed Tinseltown.
Yeah, like everyone else in the early 2010s, I was addicted to Breaking Bad. It came at a turning point when we started evaluating the male ego in art and storytelling. Many bitch about this paradigm shift, but honestly it’s given me a fuckton of creative fuel to write my dumbass stories.
Without it, I wouldn’t have a writing career at all! So thanks Breaking Bad for all the digital trees I’ve wasted on the internet.
But as time has passed, it’s obvious that there were problems with the show. Now I try to evaluate art by the intentions of the artist. So what were the showrunners trying to do here?
Apparently, creator Vince Gilligan didn’t know either. While I think everyone involved did their jobs in the most competent and effective way possible, in my opinion, there was a fundamental difference between Gilligan’s vision and Bryan Cranston’s portrayal of Walter White/Heisenberg.
I base this opinion on zero research, but hear me out…
I’m assuming, when the show was pitched, that the thrust behind the story was to watch the protagonist turn into the villain. At least this is what drew me into the show. But if that’s the case, we run into an age old Clark Kent/Superman problem.
Philosopher and film theorist Slavoj Zizek, while discussing The Joker, claimed that the real identity of a superhero IS the mask and the person beneath it is the alter ego. Or, in other words, the MASK is what permits us to be our true selves.
In that sense, Heisenberg-the “MASK”- is really what Walter White is. If Heisenberg was ever wearing a mask for a disguise, that mask was the man Walter White. Therefore, Walter White…or, more accurately, Heisenberg…was ALWAYS evil.
I’m glad all of that makes sense.
But the problem is Walter White doesn’t always ACT like the bad guy. In fact, he’s usually shown being a loving father and Jesse’s guardian. Sure, he poisons a child, watches a woman choke to death, etc etc. but Walter White…probably due to Cranston’s acting choices…seems to signal horror at some of his decisions. In fact, if memory serves, he shows a sigh of relief when he learns that the child WON’T die from the poisoning attempt.
He even begs for Hank’s life for fuck’s sake!
Would Gus Fring, Walter White’s arch nemesis, have done that?
Fuck no!
And therein lies the fundamental problem with Breaking Bad: the audience never severs its sympathy with Walter White. Nor, I would argue, were they ever encouraged to do so.
Was this a deliberate choice by the showrunners? Was Cranston too damn competent at his job? Did anyone think any of this through?
I don’t suppose that this undermines the quality of the show. It’s just annoying to consider while re-watching it. The show seems to fail at meeting its own objective.
In fact, this concept…displaying a totally deplorable character in the most engaging way possible…has been successfully done before. Perhaps you remember it: The Wolf of Wall Street.
To be fair though, Martin Scorsese has a knack for this kind of thing. In fact, the movie that put him on the map, Taxi Driver, does something similar. The audience is exposed to a deranged world of a protagonist, we even empathize with him to a certain degree, but we can’t ever imagine coming to his defense (as fans of Breaking Bad have done many times before with Walter White).
With the Wolf of Wall Street, Scorsese “let’s you in on the joke.” Jordan Belfort is an over-the-top nutcase, and Scorsese allows you to indulge in his depravity, but you know that the end will come crashing down at any moment.
Scorsese isn’t afraid to “pull the trigger”…or show you the moment when a protagonist looses his grip on reality.
While Walter White certainly had his over-the-top moments, the audience is never encouraged to lose sympathy for him. This is reinforced through the writing. White should have never of begged for Hank’s life, his relationship with Jesse should have been established as being purely manipulative and nothing more, his role as a father should have deteriorated, etc etc.
Perhaps that’s the limits of television. When you spend five or more seasons with a character, it’s hard NOT to have sympathy for them.
But it always felt as though Walter White never quite broke bad.
The Internet Ruined Everything 