I can speak from personal experience on this one: Taxi Driver (1976)
When I first watched it (admittedly I was only 13 or so at the time) I pretty much took it as a story about
spoiler
a socially-warped but well-meaning hero who stood up against the baddies and won, and saved the girl in the process.
Watching it a few years later, the true horror of it became clear to me, and the contemptible piece of shit Travis Bickle is was made obvious. I think I was just too young to get it, but I was also a huge De Niro fan and so, whatever his character was, I was ride or die with him.
Travis Bickle predicted incel mass shooters. People seem to think he was the cool antihero he thought himself to be, I often see his face in people’s profile pics and on cringy self-aggrandising quote memes. He was a disgusting pig of a man and the film is not a celebration of anything he did. On the contrary.
I can speak from personal experience on this one: Taxi Driver (1976)
When I first watched it (admittedly I was only 13 or so at the time) I pretty much took it as a story about
spoiler
a socially-warped but well-meaning hero who stood up against the baddies and won, and saved the girl in the process.
Watching it a few years later, the true horror of it became clear to me, and the contemptible piece of shit Travis Bickle is was made obvious. I think I was just too young to get it, but I was also a huge De Niro fan and so, whatever his character was, I was ride or die with him.
Travis Bickle predicted incel mass shooters. People seem to think he was the cool antihero he thought himself to be, I often see his face in people’s profile pics and on cringy self-aggrandising quote memes. He was a disgusting pig of a man and the film is not a celebration of anything he did. On the contrary.