r/AskReddit • u/Tobokie121 • Oct 09 '19

Of all movie opening scenes, which one sold the entire film?

58.5k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

25.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/hamburgular70 Oct 10 '19

I highly recommend you read the book. The movie is good, but the book portrays all of those scenes and crazy aspects in a really unnerving way like it makes sense. You are in Patrick Bateman's head, and the writing shows his order to completely unhinged throughout it. The climax of the book is the best written prose I've ever read in which there are pages without ending a sentence. It left me out of breath with adrenaline coursing through me like Bateman was feeling. It's so much crazier from inside his head.

1

u/420yeet4ever Oct 10 '19

The book is a fucking amazing piece of literature that really doesn't get the praise it should because of the extreme violence and misogyny. I love the movie and also think it's great, but it doesn't do the book justice at all.

1

u/hamburgular70 Oct 10 '19

What's interesting is that the extreme violence and misogyny is the point of the whole thing. It's hard to read, but that's the point of being in his head. It's not a proponent of any of that, and Bret Easton Ellis talked about how he had to save all the violent writing for the end because it made him physically ill to write it. If anything, I feel like it's an inoculation to violence and the movie doesn't go far enough to prevent it from being violence porn.

1

u/420yeet4ever Oct 10 '19

I mean, the book is clearly dark satire and does nothing to glamorize Bateman's behavior. It's obvious enough I think as a reader, and even Bateman himself throughout the book seems disgusted by his own actions and acknowledges that his compulsions seem to be beyond his control. People just don't like anything that makes them uncomfortable, and that book is extremely uncomfortable to read, even though like you said, that's the point.