Since no one gave the serious answer yet: term used by philosophers Deleuze and Guattari
In the meme it's how the characters in these sorts of stories have become so alienated by capital that they need to resort to extreme violence to change their social relations (usually in a self-destructive way, because revolution is precluded by the material conditions in the imperial core in these narratives).
IDK I think it's important to acknowledge a lot of these types of movies also significantly glamorize the protagonist. It's not typical that the film is 100% critical of the character and dumdums just completely misunderstand it, usually they're also given cool lines, cool music underscores their actions, cool aesthetics, they're shot in flattering ways, played by beautiful movie stars, etc.
Honestly just the music probably makes all the difference. Is the protagonist walking down the hall getting upbeat 80s music? They're doing a cool thing, positive vibes. Some unsettling music, or unexpected silence? Uh-oh, this is bad. What a bsd guy.
nightcrawler was a fun example of a creepy guy doing creepy stuff creepily while upbeat inspirational music plays. almost feels like a parody of both this type of movie guy as well as bootstraps type movies
definitely worth mentioning. fight club succumbs to this to the point of just being really bad satire. you gotta think if that many people missed the point it might be a problem with the nature of the work. still love american psycho though.
Man, Starship Troopers is so cool! I want to be a Citizen!
ummmm, he's literally the protagonist of the film which means he's the good guy. Like, hol'up isn't the point of every movie that the protagonist is a cool person, and the audience should act exactly like them to be cool too?
The tragedy of these movies is they are so good at reflecting back a critique of your existing social condition, a person can mistake that reflection as the only interpretation. I'll add The Matrix to this list too.
And miss the idea that it's critiquing at all.
"I told them it was just Batman, not THE Batman. What am I going to do with 5000 of these?"
The one thing Adornoid theories are good for: yapping about movies
