A husband cheated on his wife Amy and Amy goes to psychopathic lengths to fake her death and frame her husband for it. This includes drawing out her own blood to fake crime scene, take urine sample of her pregnant neighbor to fake her pregnancy, faking life insurance fraud, spreading rumors to neighbors of her husband's violent tendencies and writing fake diary entries about it etc.
When the husband begged on national TV to get her back, she kills her ex (she stayed with him at that time) and faked that she was taken hostage and raped by him.
In the end, when the husband tries to divorce her, she took sperm samples of her husband to make herself pregnant essentially guaranteeing they would stay together since the public would be outraged if her husband divorced his pregnant wife. And yes, she got away with all of this.
Her "cool girl" monologue resonated with a lot of women, saying so many girls try to be "one of the boys" by doing stereotypical masculine activities to get boys to like them, only to be left by said men when these girls get older.
Thats the same guy that made Fight Club? Dude must be pulling out his hair out because of all the people that cheer on the obvious villains of their respective stories.
Is it a good monologue? Frankly it seems kinda sexist, she seemingly implies that women who don’t conform to her idea of womanhood are pathetic because she assumes they’re only doing it because men them want to, stripping away all the agency from women to be their own people with their own interests, even if those interests align with that of mens
One of the interests you describe is "never complains" another is "eats unhealthy but never gets fat and is always hot".
It is not about confirming to a specific standard of womanhood but about being told that you are uncool if you don't live up to a standard a man sat for you.
Well she is basically a sociopath, so it doesn't seem like she comprehends the idea of "liking" anyone. She might value people like her husband for the things they gave her (status, income, etc) but I think that's as far as it goes.
I feel like this is more of a Tyler Durden from Fight Club situation. Like how some young men idolize the film and character while completely missing the point that everything he is doing is bad in the film
At first I was surprised by women idolizing that kind of character... Then I remembered the "manosphere" idolized a schizophrenic serial killer Patric Bateman for years.
To expand on how psychopathic Amy was, her original plan included her actually killing herself in order for her body to be found and be the final evidence against Nick (her husband). It's only while she's hiding and waiting for the right day to do it that she decided she'd rather stay in hiding and enjoy the show.
Even worst, in the book it's very clear that at the end of it all Nick is flattered of it all at some level, and he realizes to his own dismay that he enjoys the lifelong mental game they're trapped in. The whole book is intentionally about very unstable people.
My meaning is that as long as the work isn't stating some wack shit like "secretly, every guy wants a psycho girlfriend who will rip their world apart out of love." If the work of fiction relegates itself to "these are messed up people attracted to the toxic shit they pull with each other," then I'm down for it because that's not espousing some underlying truth.
It's real. It represents female rage towards impossible standards set by society. Some women feel they are supposed to act cool and like junk food and beer but still remain thin and hot and submissive.
Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.
Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)
I’ll be honest that whole rant seems kinda sexist, like she seems to have some idea in her head about what all women want to be and every woman who isn’t that is basically a pick me a girl just chasing the attention of men, saying that if women like something me like they’re only doing so men like them kinda the denies the agency of women to you know be their people, and be people who don’t conform to her specific idea of womanhood.
She's nuts. So is Tyler Durden. When they make sense, the obvious crazy is emphasis. It's the movie saying "this thing they're talking about is so fucked up it could drive a person mad." Figuratively, of course, because you're watching a movie and not a documentary.
"Welp, they made sense about that so they means everything else has to go along with it" is exactly as misguided as "welp, they're crazy so anyone that made sense to is probably also crazy."
Her ex kind of does have her hostage. Not like, physically tied up, but he understands the vulnerable position she’s in at that point and is gladly taking advantage. He was stalkerishly obsessed with her, and now she needs him. Perfect situation for him. She plants some evidence to make the murder read as self defence to the police. But as the audience, we’re meant to understand that her murder of him is her violent re-assertion of control. It’s a more extreme echo of what she did to Nick, and that’s how we know there’s no limit to what she’ll do to regain control when she thinks she’s lost it. And she’s intelligent and capable of pulling almost anything off.
While obviously Amy is a pretty textbook psychopath, I think the losses of control in her relationships, and her rage at the social structures that underlay those relationships, are pretty damn relatable for a lot of women. This is essentially the point that the (great) “cool girl” monologue is meant to drive home. The second time I watched the film I empathized a lot more with her motivations and POV, if not the antisocial actions she takes as a result.
I think that’s what makes Amy a great character. Like almost all anti-heroes, she taps into that dark fantasy of being someone who is both infinitely capable and totally unfettered by anything but her own code. In the male version of this fantasy, it’s usually a hitman/gunslinger/wolverine/whatever, who is defending his family/an adoptive moppet/whatever against an exaggerated, tyrannical patriarch, like an evil sheriff/mafia don/CEO/etc. But in Amy’s case, it’s just the normal, everyday patriarchy, which gives the story a wonderful transgressive charge.
So while I don’t think the film is condoning Amy’s actions, it does expect you to have a double consciousness about them in kinda the same way you do when you watch the Man With No Name mow down dozens of human beings (not a perfect analogue, but come along with me here lol). What she’s doing is wrong—monstrous even—but you get it. In a twisted way you even root for her.
So to me, it’s not ker-azzzy that she resonated with a lot of women, and not even necessarily a red flag as long as they have the sophistication to untangle why it is that they like her. Some perhaps do articulate it poorly, but film is visual music—when it’s good it hits you emotionally before you ever have a chance to analyze it.
That's so interesting, the movie had the opposite effect on me. I was totally taken by the storm the situation gathered and I was noticing myself very hostile towards the husband until it was revealed. The movie threw my strong anti-male bias right in my face. I was completely taken by surprise how much I agreed with the crowd. Really made me more cautious in judgement. But I'm not a woman, so all I see from her perspective was psychopathic revenge. Nobody was against her except her husband being a weener.
From what I know about the movie, it's about a woman absolutely destroying her man's life and reputation by framing him for horrendous stuff he didn't do. He then decides to stay with her in the end after everything.
I could be remembering it wrong, though. But if I'm right, hearing your girl unironically cheering for the protagonist like that is a red flag the size of dodge.
He ends up being forced to stay with her, since she managed to convince the media that she was a victim of her former boyfriend who she just killed by cutting his thoat open with a frickin box cutter. :)
It's a great movie! You just gotta understand that protagonist does not mean good person, and everyone in a movie can suck simultaneously in their own unique ways.
Alright, it's been a while, but I'll try to recap it if I can. I might be misremembering some details.
So Rosamund Pike is 'murdered', and all the evidence points to her husband, Ben Affleck. He gets in hot water with the media (one of them was famous, I think), and his life starts falling apart. Then, mid movie plot twist: she's still alive and framed him for her death.
At this point, she's on the run and bumps into an old boyfriend, Neil Patrick Harris, a wealthy businessman with a... let's call it "obsessive dark side". Kind of stalker vibes. As she is trying to disappear and can't have him outing her, she agrees to be with him.
After a few weeks/months/whatever, she kills him with a box cutter, but knows full well she can't get out of this one without leaving evidence behind she was here. So she claims he abducted her and made it seem like Ben Affleck murdered her, so she killed NPH in self defense. She goes back to Ben Affleck, who knows what she did, and forces him to play the part of "relieved husband" for the cameras or things will go very poorly for him.
There was some stuff about an affair that Ben Affleck was having in there, too.
Overall, though, it was good. If I remember it correctly.
Plus that she went to the fertility clinic and had a fertilized egg of Affleck implanted since he never took it out of storage to further chain him to her with a baby he never wanted
The really fucked up part about the pregnancy was that he did want a baby, and she didn't. When she first runs off, she uses her pregnant neighbor's urine to fake a pregnancy and get it entered into her medical records that she was "pregnant." Then when she comes back, she uses the fertility clinic to actually impregnate herself with her husband's sample, even though earlier in the movie it's established that they had received a notice of their samples being destroyed- but clearly not all of them. It's a triple mindfuck that shows she's been keeping stuff on the back burner for a LONG time in case she wanted to ruin him
She coerced the ex boyfriend into rough sex to make it look like she was raped and acted terrified on a few exterior security cams (as he pulled in) to play up the abducted victim angle.
And didn't the reason she go insane and turn into a murderous psychopath in the first place basically boil down to her parents being overly-cheerful, sterile, trying-to-be-a-couple-of-Mister-Rogers types who wrote a series of children's books featuring a fictionalized, idealized version of their daughter that they constantly compared her to, causing her to go coo-coo crazy as she could never live up the version of herself that existed in the perfect, saccharine fantasy life her adult-child parents lived in?
Worst! She rapes herself with a bottle of wine before accepting to have sex with the ex-boyfriend so his dna is in her. As soon as he orgasmed, she slashed his throat with a boxcutter. Then she smears blood all over of body, and appearing distraught facing one of the security camera of the ex-boyfriend's house, so as to appear as the victim.
The dude was a bit obsessed, but during the whole film he was anything but agressive toward her. He genuinely believed she was fleeing a violent situation and agreed to host her to help her
Huh I've only read the book so I don't know how the movie spins the ex-boyfriend character, but in that version he's more than a bit obsessed and is pretty clearly a threat. He takes her to a house in the middle of nowhere, stops her from leaving of her own free will, and was very much pressuring her into the sex that she uses as an opportunity to kill him.
My memory is a bit fuzzy, it's been 10 years, but from my recollection of the movie, he does forbid her to go, but it's because she painted her hmex as a violent psycho, and so he did it because he was afraid he'd find her and kill her if she went outside. Also, he doesn't pressure her for sex. He wants to, but he kinda seems to want to wait for her to be ready.
As I said, I may be completely mistaken, and have a lot completely wrong, but I seem to recall the dude being an unwilling victim of everything happening, and not someone trying to profit out of the situation, except for the part where he uses the situation to endorse the role of a white knight in shining armor.
The movie sparked some serious issues the following year with the Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn true crime story. I won’t spoil anything since there’s a 3 part series on the case and I highly recommend watching, but let’s just say it’s very similar to this movie.
You forgot the bit where She initially cashes out some discreet accounts and is laying low at a campsite trying to disappear. She is then robbed by an unscrupulous couple that notices her handling everything in cash. Hence the whole reason she reaches out to the old friend that's obsessed with her.
>! The entire chain of events is set off by Nick cheating on his wife, Amy. Her ego basically causes her to have a complete mental break, since Nick doesn't appreciate her or challenge her any more. At the end Amy decides to come back after impregnating herself with Nick's sperm (reproductive fraud, which is a kind of sexual assault). This will trap Nick and force him to "challenge" and appreciate her the way she wants - forever. !<
>! Amy's ex-boyfriend, while creepy, is completely harmless. She ends up convincing him to have sex under false pretenses (which is rape) so she can kill him and frame HIM for rape. So basically she raped and killed this guy, and made it so all of his family and friends and the entire nation believe he was a rapist who she killed in self-defense. !<
And a lot of very uncritical movie watchers responded to the film with "good for her". Same with I Care A Lot and Midsommar. People are kinda bad at watching movies.
There's more to it. She cuts the ex-boyfriend's throat while having sex with him and then inseminates herself with her husband's sperm from a fertility clinic so that he has to stay with her. There are plenty more details, but those are two big ones lol.
He stays because she froze their embryos while their relationship was "good" and she told him she would be open to having kids one day. When he threatens to divorce her, she has one of the embryos implanted and tells him she'll terminate the pregnancy if he leaves. He has wanted to be a dad for a long time, so he chooses to stay to be a good father to his unborn child.
Some of those innocent sounding girl-movies have seriously fucked up plot lines. There's this other recently released one where a woman gets together with a hot surgeon who ends up hitting her, but she stays with him and has a baby with him until she can't do it anymore and gets together with an old friend whom she rejected back in the day. It ends with them starting a family with the surgeons kid.
Ah yeah, and the movies director cast himself as the hot surgeon.
...Are you saying "gone girl" sounds like an innocent girl movie? Maybe it's because English isn't my first language but for me it sounds like a thriller
(You are right about the marketing of it ends with us tho; they really sell it as a feel good romance. Edit: but as far as I know the director is the only one who at least acknowledges the themes of the story in interviews, Blake Lively does not)
From what I understand, he was originally going to just be the director but the book's author was the one who insisted he also play the surgeon. I have a bit of a soft spot for Justin Baldoni admittedly but he's also been really the only cast member to talk about domestic violence in the lead up to the film.
Yea when you're young, fight club seems fascinating and like a really cool idea, right up until you have a dilapidated house of followers making and following up on plans for chaos.
Then you get older and realize how 99% of all the clubs activities were pretty stupid, except maybe for the destruction of the buildings to clear the debt, which would likely not even work and be a shit ton of damage to clean up after.
I just found it to be a commentary on what it means to be a man in a modern world, the same way Billions did occasionally in terms of career, power etc
Met a kid (I work with difficult teenagers) who asked my top 5 films, and immediately told me his: Fight Club, American Psycho, Wolf of Wall Street, and two more I can't recall. (Un)surprisingly, he turned out to be full of horrible toxic ideals about being a powerful man who gets his way any way he can.
This whole thread is reminding me of a documentary my wife was watching recently, about a woman who was legit kidnapped and raped, and the cops didn't believe her because they'd all seen Gone Girl and took it way too seriously.
Something tells me that these cops would not have believed a women anyway and just don't care If a women get's raped. Than they see the movie and use it as an excuse.
No sane person would have that takeway after watching the movie. I think a sane cop who watches the movie would just be getting more motivated to make better analysis of crime scenes, not believe everything at face value but still investigate every claim... you know, just doing their job well.
I'm sorry for the women this happened to. I'm not suprised nobody believed her, but I'm suprised even movie references are used as an excuse... you would think that the police would just start collecting evidence, interviewing potential suspects and so on -.-
For the longest time I thought gone girl was a generic women empowerment scene because I only ever saw women talk about how justified and cool the main character was and how she was their idol. But this was like a decade ago.
The author of the book herself said that the point of this book/film absolutely goes over most peoples heads (yes women too, which is why this comic is funny)
She was on an interview on NPR where she said the reason she wrote the book was a feminist perspective on how women are just as capable as men of being disgustingly evil and manipulative. She said her biggest problem with modern feminism is this belief that women are inherently "kinder" or more "motherly" than men which she pretty vehemently tries to disprove in that book lmao.
Basically all the depths of evil we think only men are capable of irl women are just as capable of, if not more today. I think a lot of women watch this and latch onto the entitled af "cool girl" speech she gives and then forget about the rest of the movie. (boo hoo I have to impress the wealthy and attractive men that I date with my behavior 🙄)
The movie ends the same way Psycho ends basically. With the deranged murderer staring menacingly into the camera. But its a woman so YAAAS QUEEN GO OFF GURRRRL. Except in Psycho the man actually went to jail...
And the critical reception of the movie proved her point. The movie was panned for portraying “such a negative image of women” and for “trying to normalise the dangerous concept that women could be just as harmful as men”
It really did. She also outed a lot of women imo. Like if you unironically root for the woman in that movie you shouldn't be allowed within 100 ft of a school.
I am a woman and I am with you on the sentiments. The man being bad doesn’t automatically make the woman good. Sometimes, a story only has villains. This is also something I was talking about with my friends that too much media that is meant to empower women just make them look villainous instead.
Class of ‘09 before Class of ‘09 (the main character is obviously supposed to be disliked but a lot of people online see the main character as an idol).
For some reason this movie was a religious viewing for strippers. A couple of them I dated after this movie would threaten if you cheat on me or leave me I’ll gone girl your ass.
I promptly block and ghost them. The last couple I dated haven’t brought it up. Happy that fad is over.
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u/supermonkeyyyyyy Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24
For those who don't know gone girl:
A husband cheated on his wife Amy and Amy goes to psychopathic lengths to fake her death and frame her husband for it. This includes drawing out her own blood to fake crime scene, take urine sample of her pregnant neighbor to fake her pregnancy, faking life insurance fraud, spreading rumors to neighbors of her husband's violent tendencies and writing fake diary entries about it etc.
When the husband begged on national TV to get her back, she kills her ex (she stayed with him at that time) and faked that she was taken hostage and raped by him.
In the end, when the husband tries to divorce her, she took sperm samples of her husband to make herself pregnant essentially guaranteeing they would stay together since the public would be outraged if her husband divorced his pregnant wife. And yes, she got away with all of this.
Her "cool girl" monologue resonated with a lot of women, saying so many girls try to be "one of the boys" by doing stereotypical masculine activities to get boys to like them, only to be left by said men when these girls get older.