I Care a Lot is a great film but it needed a better villain unless your antagonist can attack
your protagonist's disabling belief systems you have an inept antagonist someone who doesn't have
any way of pushing the protagonist out of their comfort zone and ultimately giving us
the catharsis that we're looking for from stories in general when a film like I Care a Lot comes
along with such an incredibly powerful protagonist except me it's so much more important to come up
with an antagonist who can go that much further with them look what first scene I Care a Lot lets
us know everything about the protagonist that we need to know it lets us know that she has found a
way to game the system and she is ultimately not a good person would lead to success and happiness it
doesn't it also lets us know her weakness and i've been poor it doesn't agree with me and it also
lets us know what her disabling belief is about the world these are all key elements to a strong
protagonist awesome job we started off strong i agree order uphill what's her disabling belief
i hear you ask well in the very first moments of the film she actually says you're not good people
trust me there's no such thing as good people what she's doing there for is she's trying to
rationalize with the audience that she is totally okay with what she's doing because anyone else
would do it in her position next we get to see her in her element where she is most comfortable she's
in a courtroom and she absolutely thrashes a poor fella he's just trying to get to see his mother in
a home however he's not allowed to it's a goddamn nightmare she has kidnapped my mother please sir
calm down outside the courthouse he confronts her and this is where we learn that she is completely
impervious to threats threats of violence she is literally fearless you may be a man but if you
ever threaten touch or spit on me again the filmmakers now have to bring in the antagonist
well they decide to bring in a cliched 1990s russian mafia mob boss we get very very quickly
that this chap is not afraid of violence and is just as self-assured as the protagonist
but sir the film now spends a lot of time making sure that we draw as many parallels
between these two characters as physically possible everything that she does he does
but within his own world this includes not really valuing human life i only
had him six months i thought he'd last us at least another five years
[ __ ] now i have to cash him out turn over everything to his inheritance what a [ __ ] waste
did we lose any in transit three we're getting the product from the others at the medfield property
is that my smoothie in the film the main motivation of conflict is the control over this
old lady who happens to be one an absolute golden goose for our protagonist in terms of money and
the secret mother of the ex-russian mafia mob boss person so great it's a really clear motivation we
now get into the second act of the film and this is unfortunately where it falls apart so how did
this happen because of the way the protagonist has been set up at the beginning we already know
that she is completely unfazed by violence and the threat of violence so when the first tactic
of the russian mafia mob boss person is to send a lawyer through to try and threaten her or bribe
her we know that she will never go for it also the threats don't really feel that scary because again
she's not that fazed when things start to escalate now and they start to get violent again she's
unfazed you should be scared right now why are you gonna make another big [ __ ] speech well
as you can see she's completely unfazed by the threat of being murdered i'm going to kill you now
okay you're not afraid of death
and he still hasn't gone after her core weakness yet the only time i would say that she starts to
look a little worried is when the doctor that she uses to get her clients so she can milk
them for all of their moolah is murdered sorry i'm just closing up did you have an appointment
but i think this was a missed opportunity this specifically was the moment in which
if the russian mobster was using his noggin instead of killing the doctor he would have
used the doctor to turn the very system that she is abusing against her in that way he's actually
attacking her greatest weakness which is her greed her source of her money the system that she's
trying to gain to get power so if he takes that from her she now actually has to change the way
she plays the game to be able to come out on top we gotta go if they killed her they're coming for
us next we don't know they killed her Karen may have had trouble we didn't know oh really do you
believe that also it feels quite strange that if someone had kidnapped a russian mobster's mother
they wouldn't have quite a dramatic and drastic reaction to that instead of just sending a lawyer
with quite a small bribe given the circumstances i think if your opening gambit is 150 grand
then Jennifer Peterson must be worth a lot lot more than that to whoever it is who sent you here
also we know that he's willing to draw a gun on his own comrades so why did he resort to violence
so late in the game and why was that his biggest weapon why wasn't his weapons actually targeting
her actual weaknesses instead of targeting her strengths i'll feel the same way when i'm dead
not even nothing why be scared of that so how could they have improved said villain for I Care
a Lot first of all i probably would have tried to get through the violence and the threats of
violence a little faster just kind of really power through it so we can get to the more interesting
conflict where they can start to iterate so they start off in their comfort zones russian mafia guy
he doesn't mind throwing some violence at her and she doesn't mind throwing some court cases at him
cool happy days they're both in their comfort zone here and now they both have to move and
start iterating on each other's attacks such as the judge being tackled he could have also found
a way of freezing her assets or cutting her off from the very hospital that she currently controls
if it was that he actually got to the doctors working in the care home then maybe there was
another way of him potentially getting his mother back and because i never really felt that the
mother had any chance of getting out even when the three mob guys came to the home it just felt silly
it never felt like a real threat good morning good morning my name is walter smith now if you're
game for a slightly more dramatic change i would honestly have thought a more effective antagonist
for our lead would have been someone who can come from her blind spot now early in the movie
our protagonist says yeah you say that but in heart most of us are weak compliant and scared
she basically doesn't believe that anyone who is old has any fight in them a great way of
subverting this then would be that she targets someone who actually is very very capable and
could even be the reflection of who she is currently in their own past therefore it's
someone who knows the game understands the greed understands the mentality and is therefore able to
game the system back on her are you i am acting on behalf of concerned parties this would have been a
really really fun way for them to really explore one the issue of care homes and the way in which
they're currently run two the way in which these care homes are being influenced by capitalistic
methods and three the way in which greed seems to motivate so many of these characters
i hate you but ugh the money we could make finally having the two versions of the same character
but in the two different generations we're in a really rich space to explore the value of money
for different generations I Care a Lot is a really really enjoyable film and i thoroughly
recommend that you check it out but I Care a Lot just deserved a better antagonist to enable us to
really explore these deep and really important issues and to shine the way it almost did