In LA right now, there stands a billboard which feels like it couldn’t have existed even at this time last year. It was not funded by any business, nor corporation looking to advertise its wares. It isn’t warning of any dangers to public health, nor does it tell you that the best burger in the country is conveniently located just five miles southwest. It doesn’t want your money. Instead, it was paid for entirely by ordinary people. Fans of a popular franchise. The point of the billboard is not to raise awareness of a new movie, but rather to ask something of a movie company called Marvel.

For Our Beloved Hero, it says, emblazoned in white letters aping the very style of the company it’s appealing to, Please Bring Back Tony Stark. And underneath, the chaser – a hashtag, the emblem of our times. #BringBackTonyStarkToLife.

In 2017, Zack Snyder left the DC movie Justice League after suffering a heartbreaking personal tragedy. He was replaced by comic book auteur Jos Whedon, who cobbled together the rushes of what Snyder filmed and added some flair of his own. The finished result – called Josstice League by some salty fans – was derided as tonally uneven, bewilderingly complex, and insultingly boring for a movie of its stature. The blame in the fan community lay squarely with Whedon. He didn’t understand the DC culture, tried to add humor where it wasn’t appropriate or necessary, and crafted a narrative that made barely any sense. The answer was obvious: Zack Snyder had to return and finish what he started.

Thus the hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut was born. Fans rallied en masse to demand DC hand the reigns back over to Snyder and allow him to finish the movie the way he had intended. This did have some positives – the fans managed to raise $500k for suicide prevention in honor of Snyder’s late daughter Autumn – but there was also a lot of toxicity: fans berating each other, and threatening studio executives on Twitter whom they believed were standing in the way of the Snyder cut. Even Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins and Batman director Matt Reeves got caught in the crossfire. It all led to WarnerMedia Studios CEO Ann Sarnoff declaring her disappointment in the fans for their behavior.

And yet, this behavior was eventually rewarded. Likely sensing there was money to be made, Warner Bros invested a reported $70 million into reshoots as Snyder was finally allowed to make the movie he had planned all along. Releasing the 4-hour movie on the new streaming service HBO Max was a shrewd plan, as it allowed a wider awareness of the service and likely brought with it a whole host of new viewers at $14.99 a month. While it remains to be seen whether Warner Bros will make their money back, they have at least sated the millions of fans clamoring for this to happen. But at what cost?

For those of you unaware, the character of Tony Stark – played by Robert Downey Jr since 2008 throughout several Marvel movies – was killed off in a heroic act of selflessness which saved the universe. His death marked an endpoint for a series of movies which had all started with him. It felt right, almost poetic. His death meant a new beginning, a rebirth for the Marvel Universe. Add to that, Robert Downey Jr himself had expressed a desire to end his tenure as Iron Man and move on to a new phase in his life. One can hardly blame him.

So why now? Three years after the events of Endgame, where Stark saved the world and lost his life, why do fans suddenly feel the need to demand his return? The answer feels simple: the door has been opened for fan movements to demand what they want, sensing the studios will bow to the pressure in order to protect their revenue streams.

You can understand the studios’ fears: Captain Marvel was the victim of a movement to tank its Rotten Tomato scores after a legion of (what one assumes must be) insecure men took to the film aggregate site and deliberately marked low scores to deter people from watching. The all-female Ghostbusters movie fell victim to a boycott after fans of the original claimed it was cultural appropriation born from political correctness.

This cultural narrative of assumed privilege is toxic and harmful to the movie industry. For after all, who would want to take on a project where the slightest error could earn the ire of millions and millions of fans? Fans who take to conventions every year to argue in detail about why their preferred Star Trek captain is the best, or why this particular issue of Superman had the best artwork of the whole run.

The problem is now these toxic fans have been emboldened by studio acquiescence. Releasing the Snyder cut has sent a message that this behavior can and will be tolerated. It invites further toxicity in the hopes of retaining finances. It’s in Paramount’s decision to overhaul the CGI on Sonic the Hedgehog after the initial trailer led to widespread fan backlash. It’s in LucasFilm’s damning silence during the racial abuse hurled at Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega after The Last Jedi. The voices dominating the culture appear to be the ones harassing studios and actors, the ones threatening to pull their support if the movie doesn’t meet their exact specific requirements. Addressing these concerns has the effect of then legitimizing them. Imagine that in any other movie culture. Imagine fans of this year’s Oscar winner Nomadland demanding Chloe Zhao reshoot the movie to include a different company other than Amazon? Imagine a campaign to have Emerald Fennell change the end of her movie Promising Young Woman because they weren’t happy at the fate of Carey Mulligan’s Cassie?

Consenting to the whims of toxic fans who just want their way has one specific problem: they will always want more. It may start with a billboard asking for the return of a beloved character, but where will it end? If we deify the Snyder cut, are we then deifying the legions of fans whose campaigns of harassment and bullying led to it? If we reward the cult-like behavior of geek culture, what will be the future of Hollywood? And, more importantly, what will it say about us as a society that we allowed the most toxic and bitter of us to have such a loud voice?

As savage reviews go, nothing compares to the legendary Roger Ebert’s review of the 2001 film Freddy Got Fingered. In his scathing attack on the film, Ebert gave this stinger of an insult: “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.” It’s pretty brutal to read Ebert’s review of Tom Green’s directorial debut, but he wasn’t the only critic with something to say about the abysmal picture. Fellow critic Leonard Maltin described the film as an “Instantly notorious word-of-mouth debacle became the poster child for all that’s wrong with movie comedy.” However, it’s probably the film critic Brent Simon who best summed up the film by calling it “A crime against humanity”.

Like so many notoriously critically panned films such as Plan 9 From Outer Space, Showgirls, The Room, Cats, and last year’s Capone (see my in defense of Capone piece here) I have a soft spot for films that are known for being trainwrecks especially when I investigate the often complicated and messy production history behind such movies. Films like Showgirls, The Room, and Freddy Got Fingered have such a weird production background, with tales of directors’ visionary passions spiraling out of control and it’s for this reason that I’m drawn to these films like a suicidal moth to the flame.

Before people start to question whether I’ve lost the plot and try to get me sectioned, let me explain the purpose of this article. Firstly, I am not a ‘fan’ of Freddy Got Fingered. It’s a hard movie to endure, let alone watch for entertainment. The film leaves you withering in your seat in discomfort. Twenty years on and it still has the power to shock and disgust the viewer, there are so many scenes that leave you feeling horrified whether it’s the scene of Tom Green’s character licking a bone protruding out his friend’s leg wound or when his character jerks off a horse while shouting like he’s on crystal meth. The purpose of this article is to examine the messy behind-the-scenes production of the film and how it has gone on to become a cult classic.

When we consider the cinematic landscape of the late 90s and early 00s, gross-out comedies such as American Pie, Dude Where’s My Car and There’s Something About Mary were all the rage. These types of comedies were all about pushing the boundaries of what was considered “good taste”. Jonathan Victory from Headstuff.org discusses what made these types of comedies so popular, stating the following, “Combining humor relating to bodily functions or taboo subjects (often of a sexual nature) with farcical situations in which characters embarrass themselves, they were considered edgy entertainment.” Rising comedic star Tom Green was inspired by these gross-out comedies and sought to create the grossest comedy out there in the shape of Freddy Got Fingered.

Tom Green seemed to have it all. He had a popular show on MTV (back when it wasn’t just reality TV shows) called The Tom Green Show which featured a mixture of sketches, stunts, music, and hosted segments. Green certainly understood what was popular with the youth market and saw the appeal of shows such as Jackass. With an appearance in the hit film Road Trip and a brief marriage to Drew Barrymore, Green suddenly exploded into the public consciousness.

The film follows Gord (played by Green himself), a slacker who dreams of becoming a well-known cartoonist. The film focuses on his relationship with his angry father Jim (Rip Torn), who Gord is desperately trying to win his approval. And so while Gord works on creations like “X-Ray Cat” (a cat with x-ray vision that only works on wood) and “Zebras in America” (his dysfunctional family, if they were zebras) he also engages in an increasingly heated feud with his dad that involves, among other things, relocating his entire house to Pakistan and accusing him of child molestation (hence the movie’s title).

The character of Gord is an interesting one to analyze and deconstruct. In lots of ways, Gord isn’t too dissimilar to the likes of characters that Adam Sandler played throughout the 90s (and well into the early to mid-00s). This overgrown man-child who slacks off and tries to hold onto a pre-teen adolescent lifestyle for as long as possible. Somehow, Sandler’s characters are seen to be loveable if not annoying. However, Gord is the total opposite. He’s such an overgrown man child, that it’s simply repulsive. Could this be an attempt by Green to show us that viewers shouldn’t be simply laughing off the likes of Sandler’s characters and excusing their faults? Jonathan Victory makes a compelling case for the film, stating that its themes, narrative, and ideology is far more complex than anything on the surface. He writes the following, “The film’s title Freddy Got Fingered is referring to traumas of the past, recognizing the pain felt from them and yet showing a way forward be it on the personal, national or even global level.” This implies that there’s more depth to the film than first meets the eye.

It’s hard to regard Freddy Got Fingered as a misunderstood masterpiece when you first attempt to watch it. The film’s comedy is so surreal and alienating that it leaves the viewer feeling like they need a long hot shower the moment the credits have rolled. However, according to Green, the film had been cut by the studio resulting in a tonal mess of a movie. “The cut of the movie was about half an hour longer. It had a very dark soundtrack throughout. Some of the songs were the same, some different. There were scenes that were removed. A lot of it wasn’t just scenes; it was the length of scenes, the amount of time we held on certain shot. The tone was completely different. The movie’s choppy now. It was smooth all the way through. Important scenes were removed. Things were made shorter to make them less gross, less shocking, less strange—to keep it moving.”

There has been much debate about whether you can deem Freddy Got Fingered as a flop. When asked by Vulture in 2018, Green had this to say, “It made $14 million at the box office, okay? Which basically means that it actually made its budget money back. But there was also a pretty scientific understanding that all of my fans were buying tickets to Crocodile Dundee and then sneaking into my movie because it was R-rated. You literally couldn’t get a seat in a theater where my movie was playing that opening weekend. All over Los Angeles, the theaters were packed. A lot of things about the way people write about that Freddy Got Fingered are unfair.” The film’s production was $14 million, which it made back at the Box Office and it also went on to make $25 million in home rentals. By that logic, then you could argue that the film was in actual fact, a success.

Success or not, the case remains that Freddy Got Fingered is a unique piece of cinematic history that has to be seen in order to be believed. The film received eight Golden Raspberry Award nominations in 2002, winning five. Green personally appeared at the ceremony to accept his awards, bringing his own red carpet and saying: “I’d just like to say to all the other nominees in the audience: I don’t think that I deserve it any more than the rest of you. I’d like to say that; I don’t think that it would be true, though.” The film may have damaged Green’s career, but after battling testicular cancer and winning, Green has proven that a few negative reviews won’t ever stop him from doing what he wants. And, to be honest, there’s something daring and exciting about Green’s insane creativity in a place like La La Land.

“Oh, God…”

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) laments the loss and devastation at the end of the Battle of Wakanda, minutes after Thanos (Josh Brolin) snaps his fingers and obliterates half the universe. The silence of death fills the forest, where people turned to dust at random. Sentences are left unfinished. A whisper of a wind highlights the emptiness following Thanos’ snap. Confusion turns to fear, which turns to grief. The Avengers, both on Earth and across the galaxy, are faced with something they haven’t faced before: total, utter, and complete failure. They had setbacks before, of course. But they were not prepared for the scale of this disaster.

When it comes to the four Avengers movies, everyone has their favorites. Some people love the “get the gang together” energy of the 2012 original, or the strange messiness of 2015’s Age of Ultron. Of course, 2019’s Endgame is one of the most viscerally crowd-pleasing superhero movies ever. For me, however, the doomed Infinity War ranks as the best one. Now I have heard the criticism that the movie has no stakes because everyone knew that there’d be a sequel and the universe will continue even beyond that. And I mean, sure, that’s technically accurate. But for me, the stakes of the film go further than just the snap.

Each of the main characters are faced with not only a formidable villain but also their own fears, anxieties, insecurities, and doubts. Thanos may always be one step ahead in their race against the clock, but he brings something out in them that terrifies them. The Avengers—both the originals and the newly inducted—are backed up against the wall and scrambling. It’s uncomfortable, it’s scary, and it makes for great drama. The fatality at the center of this movie—where literally the fate of the universe hangs in the balance—gives the film a somber and heightened feel. There are jokes, of course, and there are the epic moments we have come to love, or at least expect from the franchise. But that is but a band-aid for the truth we and the Avengers want to ignore: the only way this movie ends is if Thanos gets all the infinity stones and wipes out half of everything.

The stakes in Infinity War come from our heroes facing their exact fear. For Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers, it’s confronting who they are without each other. Their clash in the previous movies divided the team and they can’t rely on each other. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has to figure out his purpose in life after what’s left of Asgard is overtaken by Thanos. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is faced with a superior model of himself, one who so effortlessly embodies what Star-Lord wants and craves, reacting with impulsiveness and selfishness at crucial times. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) finds himself unable to transform into the Hulk, right when the Hulk is needed most. Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) has to deliver the Time Stone, the one thing he protects most, to someone who will absolutely misuse it. Gamora (Zoe Saldana) comes to the horrifying realization that her father considered the torture and abuse she suffered at his hands’ acts of love. King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and the powerful Wakandans are uncertain if their brilliant technology is even enough this time. Vision (Paul Bettany) puts his existence on the line. Finally, Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) has to watch her one true love die twice, once by her hand for the greater good, the other out of her control. Even if these characters find small victories, they don’t last long.

One movie that Infinity War reminds me of is 1999’s Magnolia. Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic melodrama features interconnected people in Los Angeles grappling with their worst fears coming to light. And the Magnolia comparison isn’t just thematic. The editing in Infinity War (by Jeffrey Ford and Matthew Schmidt) is near breathless, especially as the film rolls towards its climax. Much like in Magnolia, the film moves from subplot to subplot and ratchets up the tension for each one. In Infinity War, it can feel almost unbearable at times, especially with the specter of inevitable failure hanging over the film. It’s such a unique tone for these films, which usually keep things light. Maybe the Magnolia comparison is a little silly on my part. But I want to appreciate that Infinity War has a structure unlike anything in the MCU that came before. Infinity War balances all these disparate characters and locations, keeping Thanos as its black-hearted core. It achieves this by hopping around relentlessly. It’s somewhat disorienting but in a way I find exciting.

As much as I love the doom and gloom of Infinity War, it is still an enormously entertaining movie for me. Thor’s arrival in Wakanda with Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel) ranks among my favorite moments in the whole franchise. Also, the “who is Gamora?” exchange still makes me laugh three years later. The thrill of seeing superheroes from different sub-franchisees interacting with each other keeps the film nimble, as does its focus on characters outside the main Avengers. Thanos himself is a compelling villain, not only for his effect on the Avengers but also because he seems himself as the hero of the story. All of these elements combined make Infinity War my favorite of the four Avengers movies and keep it fresh for me three years later.