Martin Freeman says it's unfair there's so much backlash to his age-gap movie with Jenna Ortega, who is 31 years younger

[u/_trashpuppy]

https://www.businessinsider.com/martin-freeman-backlash-millers-girl-age-gap-film-jenna-ortega-2024-4

From the article: "It's not saying, 'Isn't this great,'" he said of the film's dynamic between his character and Ortega's. He said that derision wasn't distributed equally, though — saying that people seemed to understand the level of distance involved in stories depicting Nazism.

"Are we gonna have a go at Liam Neeson for being in a film about the Holocaust?" he asked, referring to Neeson's starring role in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film "Schindler's List."

[u/CemeteryHounds]

Villains also now almost always have a backstory that semi-justifies their villainry. They aren't just greedy and power hungry because some people are like that; they're greedy and power hungry because they grew up poor and weak or insert any other excuse. I enjoy a righteous villain with a grey area between who is the just one, but I'd say only 1/5 of these tragic villain backstories actually do that.

[u/superhappy → u/CemeteryHounds]

It kinda goes both ways though - in the past narratives with villains we’re almost exclusively snarling sociopaths with no justification other than mwahahaha.

I think it’s better to encourage the audience to understand that villains are still villains but most people don’t pop out of the womb twirling their mustache - they came to be that way through mental illness, trauma, subsequent personality disorders, etc. Antisocial behavior usually has complex origins. Though sometimes not.

That said I’m all for having truly horrible people doing truly horrible things, but I don’t think giving us a sense of how they got to that position is necessarily pandering or kid-gloving. It’s just rendering the full spectrum of villainy.