Did anybody else think that Colossal was incredibly misandristic?

I watched this tonight. And it struck me s incredibly misandristic. The whole "men are bad, women are good" thing with lots of double-standards pisses me off.

Did anybody else get that impression from this movie?

Never seen or heard of it, but it wouldn't surprise me. That seems to sum up about 80% of pop culture these days...

Pop culture writing maybe.

I got the impression that it's about a woman learning to confront and overcome her self-destructive tendencies even as they are being compounded and enabled by the men she knows (not just her uncaring ex-boyfriend, but especially her embittered childhood friend who willingly embraces the same toxicity she is trying to reject). It's less about saying "all men are bad" than actively addressing the badness itself that can (and does) have an impact on men and women alike.

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There was the protagonist, a woman, and four men. One man was the basically evil one who was always bad since childhood, one was the dumb idiot whom the protagonist seduces, one was a drug addict and one was the boyfriend whom the protagonist uses as a ticket until he, after a long time, kicks her out (but he still comes for her in the end). All of the men are presented as weak, evil, dumb and/or addicts. There is not a single decent one amongst them. It is very sad to behold.

I saw the movie Teeth (2007) and thought it was misandristic at first, cause all the male characters were sexual predators and sexual assailants, but maybe that is part of the dark comedy of the movie since the premise revolved around that situation. So maybe the misandry is unintended as could be in Colossal as well, but have to see it first.

Is the movie watchable? I am contemplating to watch it for the past 6 months! The mixed reviews just put me off.

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It got an 80% on rottentomatoes, so I thought the the reviews were good.

I will give it a try then. I saw a few youtube videos one places in the crap bucket and one in the underrated movie category. So i was a little hesitant.

Your enjoyment really depends on how well you take in the film’s hook.

The hook was decent (and at least it is an original idea), but the depiction of men in the movie (not even the single decent male love interest with whom to empathize) left the movie trashing all of the men in it.

How is that the film's fault, though? Bad men exist in reality and they do get opportunities to wield enough power and influence to force morally superior people to submit to their will. The film is reflecting that reality through the lens of a black comedy about alcoholism and kaijus. What's really sad to behold is how such a blunt metaphor for abusive relationships still gets interpreted as "misandristic" just because it doesn't try to force a positive male character into a story that clearly doesn't require one.

But you do understand that the film does this in order to make a greater point, right? Like I said before, it's about a woman overcoming her own self-destructive problems in the face of enablers and abusers - the audience is meant to empathise with her over anyone else. Giving her a love interest would wreck that point because then it's less a journey of self-improvement and more a matter of Finding the Right Man, which would be buying into the reductive male-centric nonsense that this film's trying to criticise (and also wouldn't be very original). I certainly don't get the impression that the character I'm meant to empathise with in all this is the ex-boyfriend who only shows up in two scenes.

Decent points, but I am very critical of movies (and there are so many) where every single woman is good, but most (if not all) of the men are bad. It seems to be meme in the Western world now that men are generally bad and that women are generally good and it riles me to no end.

Four men and not one of them is a decent human being? Really? Most people are decent people. It is the vast minority that are bad. However, men seem to be very over-represented in the bad category.

I think that's because the movies themselves aren't trying to criticise every single man for no reason so much as criticising specifically male flaws like misogyny and toxic masculinity, which means that they can't help but target the men who either have those flaws or allow other men to have them. Colossal isn't trying to say that all men are bad, but it is pointing out problems that men should be aware of. I'm a man and I understand that Colossal is not an attack on the whole gender so much as a necessary criticism of bad behaviours.

You say you're critical of movies like this, but so far your criticism only extends to "this movie has no unambiguously heroic male characters and a female protagonist therefore it is saying all men are bad and all women are good", which strikes me as a very superficial criticism that misses every point the movie is trying to make. Hell, I'd even argue that the junkie and idiot characters are actually somewhat sympathetic because they, like the protagonist, are also under the villain's thumb (the movie even cuts back to the idiot happily watching the robot get destroyed during the ending because it means he's also free of the villain). They are also subject to his abuse (even if it's not as obvious as the protagonist) and thinking that this doesn't make them "decent" characters trapped in a bad situation is quite frankly part of the problem. It doesn't matter if "most people are decent" (which is a pretty broad claim in itself) if they are unable to do anything to stop the indecent (especially when he's able to control a city-destroying robot). Besides, I don't think men being "over-represented in the bad category" is a major concern when you consider just how much society and civilisation has developed in a way that favours men even (or perhaps especially) if they're bad.

You are treading into very, very political waters. I am willing to have that discussion, but I don't think that this is the correct forum for it. (Although, I am not sure if there are any rules against it.) If you are willing to have a civil, rational discussion about those political points and if it is not against the forum's rules, then I am willing to converse with you on the subject. However, I would wonder if we could not find a more appropriate venue for the discussion. I think that the others who are here might tire of something which is so overtly political; I am sure that many of them see movies in order to escape the everyday over-politicized world.

I think the people here understand that actively questioning a film's politics and how they compare against one's own is a key part of discussing and criticising said film so of course it's no trouble provided it stays civil. That being said, I'd argue that your original point about accusing this film is misandry is itself based in identity politics so this thread has always had its own political bent that's only just getting more pronounced as the discussion gets deeper.

Short answer: no. Didn't get a misandric vibe from the movie.

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She mostly hangs out with men, not women. She's also attracted to men. I don't see how that translates as "man hating." People act sh*tty sometimes, and it takes self-work to escape from bad patterns. That's how I interpreted Colossal.

O.k. then, here we go:

1. Toxic Masculinity? Really? As if being a man were an evil unto itself? I reject this entire notion.

2. Most people are decent. This not a claim, but a natural truth. Without it, we would not have civilization. To believe otherwise is to believe the worst of Man.

3. "Besides, I don't think men being "over-represented in the bad category" is a major concern when you consider just how much society and civilisation has developed in a way that favours men even (or perhaps especially) if they're bad."

Society favors men? Really? I live in the USA (I do not know where you live). Here, women live an average of 7 years longer than men. Women are favored highly in court in divorce proceedings, in custody of the children hearings, and in any spousal abuse cases. Men are always assumed to be in the wrong in any marital problems or domestic violence. Men are always assumed to be in the wrong when accused of rape or sexual harassment. Women are 56% of those going to college, as compared to only 44% being men. While men are at least 40% of all domestic abuse victims, there is only 1 single domestic abuse house set up for men in the entire country as compared to over 2,000 set up for women. In many jurisdictions, whenever the police are called about a domestic dispute, they will automatically arrest the man no matter who called about the dispute or who is the victim. You can have any number of scholarships or colleges dedicated to women only, but it is anathema to have any dedicate to men only. 93% of on the job deaths are men, while only 7% are women. Men are required to register for the draft, be drafted and possibly die for their country, whereas women are not.

How in the world is that "a society that has developed in favor of men"?

4. The basic parts of a human being are: having a spine, having a brain and being a good person. The woman, despite her flaws, is represented as a human being with all three. The men are not. The antagonist is not good. The junkie has no spine. The idiot has no brain. The boyfriend has no spine. Only the single woman is presented as a complete human being. Despite the overwhelming numbers, men are horribly under-represented as whole people.

5. I have no problem with movies where the women are the protagonist (or even every main character). I love a good movie no matter what its flaws. I love both of the Bad Mom movies and Annihilation despite the fact that none of them pass the Bechel Test in reverse. That is o.k.. What I cannot stand is misandry and double-standards. Colossal showed (despite the vast majority of the characters being male) not a single male as a complete human being, but the only woman as all of that and even more. That is where my objection comes in. I am sure that, should the gender roles have been reversed, many women would have rightly been perturbed about their representation and would have complained as well.

Please remember that this is to be a civil discussion. I do welcome your responses to my points.

This is what I wrote:

I think that's because the movies themselves aren't trying to criticise every single man for no reason so much as criticising specifically male flaws like misogyny and toxic masculinity, which means that they can't help but target the men who either have those flaws or allow other men to have them.

So no, "toxic masculinity" does not mean every man is inherently bad - instead, it is a social construct that implicitly encourages men to act in a certain manner in order to meet the standard of a quote-unquote "real man" (even if it is at the expense of others and one's own self). It is something that every man should be aware of and refuse to tolerate because it just causes more problems (e.g. telling a depressed man to toughen up).

I already argued that most of the main characters in this movie are decent - there are only five characters of any real significance and only one is an out-and-out villain while the rest are various levels of flawed. In any case, I don't know why the movie is obligated to have most of its characters be decent people anyway - an audience comprised of mostly-decent people should be able to understand the difference. It's not like Reservoir Dogs becomes a bad movie just because all but one of its (all-male) main characters are murderous bank robbers.

Ask President Trump.

As for the statistics themselves, these ones always seem to get rattled off without any apparent regard for further context - it was men who had the power to start the draft in the first place, after all (or that the reason men are more likely to be assumed guilty following rape accusations is because false allegations are a statistical minority). A fact or a statistic is but a piece of information and it can only tell you so much about the big picture - I would encourage you not to take all these statistics at face value and actually think about whether or not they are ultimately justified beyond just trying to dispute people complaining about men. I'd even say that the lack of domestic abuse shelters for men feeds into the concept of toxic masculinity because of the prevailing misconception that most (if not all) men are fundamentally too tough to be abused, so it's not like I'm being deliberately unsympathetic in this regard.

Here is the disconnect, though - in the last paragraph, you rattled off all these stats about how unfairly men are treated in society yet here you're the one who's trying to make these characters into less than they are because of your own conceptions about how well-defined a character (or human being) has to be that honestly doesn't account for nuanced characterisation or human complexity. Also, this conflicts with your frequent assertion that "most people are decent" - does this mean that real-life people who don't meet your definition don't qualify as human beings to you?

Wait, what's the "Bechdel test in reverse"? Two women talking about a man? Two men talking about something other than a woman? One man not talking to anyone? No men at all? In any case, you understand that the Bechdel test is meant to underline how women in films only exist to serve narratives about men and how that issue is much more common than the reverse, right? Besides, your claims of misandry and double-standards are still determined by an extremely limited definition of what constitutes good characterisation and, well, basic humanity - going by your rationale, every movie that's ever had a male villain automatically qualifies as misandristic for daring to show a man not being a good person.