It depends on the movie or show for me. In Breaking Bad, Scarface, American Psycho, etc. (using cliche examples here) there are no doubt badass lines and moments, but if you’re not a mindless conservative consumer then you’d realize how pathetic the main characters are outside of very specialized situations.

Like Walt thinks he’s some criminal mastermind when in reality he’s just a very good meth cook and engineer. He thinks he can kill actual hardened, indifferent criminals by just walking up to their house.

Bateman is going around murdering people, but he’s obsessed with how he’s perceived by others and the brands they wear - a literal soydl consoomer in their parlance (it’s also theorized/implied that he’s such a bland loser that he fantasizes all his violent crimes).

Montana will kill hundreds of assassins sent to his mansion, but that was the consequences for embracing the American dream and realizing that capitalism is a soulless, racist, and lonely enterprise when it was far too late.

Tony Soprano can kill and chop up a body and have sex with dozens of mistresses, but he’ll have a heart attack over a box of uncle Ben rice because he hates black people, only to be treated by minority doctors.

But these shows and movies were written by intelligent people and half of the audience is too dumb or lazy to analyze it. Movies like Taken or the various police, SWAT, FBI, special forces dramas on ABC or whatever are taken at face value because it was written to be taken literally. Also, as for the strong female lead, these shows mentioned in this paragraph will usually have them, but they’re usually just tomboys who aren’t taken seriously until they commit police brutality/war crimes and every man in the force is like “whoa she’s just like me! I can trust her and now treat her with respect.”

But these are antiheroes. You can’t just be a normal guy who feels sad