6 Movies People Think They Understand (But Don’t)
I wrote an article a while back about how I really don’t like the story of Peter Pan. I don’t even really like the movie all that much (the Disney version) because the character of Peter is such a jerk. In that article I explained how that movie, even though it’s considered a “classic”, never really resonated with me when I was a kid, the way it seemed to for everyone else, and how it’s important to encourage your children to think critically about the media they consume.
Basically… think for yourself and don’t just go along with the pack. If your kids start exercising those abilities now, when it comes to things like movies, then maybe they’ll be able to use them in higher-stakes scenarios throughout their lives.
And while it’s important for kids to learn to think critically about the things they watch and read, it’s also important for us adults to do the same. Sometimes we’re influenced by the common opinions or feelings regarding certain things like, for the purpose of this article, movies.
Here are six movies that people think they understand, but really don’t.
Now, I have NOT scoured the internet to see if the points I make below have been made or hashed out already by someone else.
Here we go…
#1 – 12 Angry Men
I’m starting off this list with a killer classic of Golden Age Hollywood.
This movie is always on lists of “Best Old Movies”, especially those that are geared toward people who don’t normally like old movies.
And that’s surprising at first blush, considering almost the whole movie takes place in one room.
While the movie is loved by many and widely considered first rate, one of the major criticisms of the movie is that it’s not a very accurate representation of how actual juries work.
For those who haven’t seen it… the story is about twelve jurors who are tasked with rendering a decision in what appears to be an open-and-shut murder case. Straight away, eleven jurors are convinced of the defendant’s guilt. One juror feels it’s their moral duty to talk about the case for at least a little while before deciding the defendant’s fate. In doing so, he slowly sows reasonable doubt in the minds of the eleven others.
Intrepid Juror #8 basically pokes holes in all the prosecution’s arguments and he sometimes uses some pretty unconventional methods to do so which include introducing new evidence (like the fact that the key witness had marks on her nose which suggested she wore glasses, which threw suspicion on whether or not she could accurately make a visual identification of the defendant) or doing his own investigations (like buying a knife that was identical to the “unusual” murder weapon to illustrate that the knife wasn’t unusual at all).
Critics of the movie say that while these plot points are entertaining, the new evidence would never be permitted in a real jury.
As a juror, you are not permitted to speculate on things that aren’t brought up during the trial (like the marks on the woman’s nose) or introduce new evidence that you discovered doing your own after-hours investigations (like the knife). Doing this kind of stuff can result in a mistrial or the juror being dismissed or charged with contempt of court for violating the trial rules.
Basically, the process of the jury deliberation shown in the movie was embellished for the entertainment of the audience.
While those criticisms are technically correct, I argue that those plot points are essential to the message of the story. The whole point of the movie is that the established legal system was this close to sending an innocent man to the electric chair. Had everything worked “perfectly”, a potentially catastrophic mistake could have been made. This movie shines a light on the glaring deficiencies of our legal system. The process was barreling along as it should have been and was only stopped by the gumption of Juror #8 and his willingness to circumvent the system entirely.
Yes, Juror #8 broke the rules. But it was the only way to show how inadequate the system is. The fact that he NEEDED to break the rules and introduce his own evidence to get a poor, marginalized youth out of the grinding gears of the legal system is the whole point of the movie.
So, does our system actually work? If all twelve of these intelligent men dutifully followed the rules like they should have (like the system intended them to), then the system would have potentially failed.
#2 – Cast Away
Everyone’s favorite silent film!
Everyone knows this one. Tom Hanks gets stranded on a deserted island, grows a beard, and loses his volleyball. Perseverance. Will to live. FedEx.
Beyond that, people think that this movie is a bittersweet and tragic story about two lovers ripped apart by fate. After all, Hanks’ character (Chuck) is on the cusp of marrying Helen Hunt’s character (Kelly) before he boards the ill-fated plane. When he shows up alive four years later, Kelly has moved on and has a family of her own.
No one can blame her. After she thought Chuck died, she needed to carry on with her life. The scenes of the two of them coming to terms with the “what if” toward the end of the movie are truly moving, especially in the capable hands of Hanks and Hunt.
What most people don’t realize is that Chuck and Kelly were actually terrible for each other and the plane crash actually saved them both from a lifetime of misery!
The movie makes this very clear.
In an early dinner scene with Chuck’s extended family, we are informed that Chuck has been reluctant to propose to Kelly. Chuck is so reluctant, in fact, that it has become a big joke to the rest of the family. How does Kelly react when the subject of her boyfriend not wanting to marry her is brought up at the dinner table in front of a crowd of people? Well, Kelly seems just fine with it. She’s not upset at all and actually seems a little relieved.
When Chuck needs to leave immediately for work (on the doomed plane), Kelly accompanies him to the airport. In the car, they exchange Christmas gifts before saying goodbye. It’s revealed that Chuck gave Kelly hand towels, which she pretends to like. Chuck, after some time, let’s her know that they were actually a joke.
Then Chuck reveals another gift that looks suspiciously like an engagement ring box. What’s Kelly’s response to seeing it?
“I’m terrified.”
Do these sound like the actions of people who are truly in love? Giving terrible gifts as jokes (and not knowing the person well enough to know that they wouldn’t get it) and reacting with literal fear at the prospect of being together forever?
Fast forward to after Chuck gets off the island. Kelly is understandably emotionally shaken by finding out that Chuck is still alive. When she thought he died, she moved on with her life, as many in her situation would have done.
But we find out that in the four short years Chuck was gone Kelly met someone new, got married, bought a house, and had a kid (who looks to be about two or three years old at the time). That’s a lot to get done in four years for anyone, let alone someone who also needs time to mourn the death of her boyfriend first. It seems like she got over Chuck preeeeetttty quick.
All of this points to the fact that Chuck and Kelly were never meant to be together. The plane crash was a blessing in disguise.
This is the movie that springs to mind when people think of Audrey Hepburn at her most elegant and sophisticated.
I’ve seen this movie described as a “playful rom-com”.
Anyone who thinks either of those two things regarding this movie either hasn’t seen it or didn’t get it.
This movie is not really a happy one. It’s sad. It’s melancholy. It doesn’t show Hepburn’s character of Holly in a favorable light. In fact, Holly isn’t elegant or sophisticated at all. She is a complete and utter trainwreck, getting blackout drunk while pathetically chasing rich men (who inevitably dump her) before stumbling back to her messy apartment and nameless cat.
The very first scene in the movie is a “walk of shame”, for goodness’ sake, showing Holly, after another empty night of partying, sadly peering through the window of Tiffany & Co (the only place, according to her, where she feels any happiness because it’s an escape from her miserable life).
Holly is not some worldly, glamourous socialite. She WANTS to be that, but in reality she is a trashy, hillbilly, former child-bride who is desperately running from her abusive past. The little black dresses and tiaras and cigarette holders are all a costume.
Yes, Audrey Hepburn was the epitome of class at the time (…Grace Kelly has entered the chat…), but that’s exactly what made the casting so brilliant. The film needed an actress of Hepburn’s caliber to embody all the conflicting elements of Holly. Hepburn, as Holly, needed to sell to everyone that she was classy and sophisticated. Her survival depended on it. Hepburn did it so well, though, that many people have no idea what the movie is actually about.
If you really want Hepburn at her most elegant and sophisticated, try Roman Holiday where she plays a literal princess.
#4 – The Lifeguard
This is a little bit of weird one, as this movie is not nearly as well-known as the previous three on this list.
I stumbled upon this movie on Netflix many years ago. The promo cover showed a smiling, sun-drenched Kristen Bell in a red bathing suit. The tagline under the title was “This summer, growing up is optional.”
The movie looked like a typical rom-com. Brightly colored, somewhat mindless, and altogether forgettable. I had a few hours to kill that day, so I gave it a try.
I wasn’t prepared for what kind of movie this actually was. Much more statutory rape than I was expecting!
The plot goes like this…
Kristen Bell plays Leigh, an almost thirty-year-old woman, who becomes frustrated and disenchanted with her newspaper gig in the city. She starts experiencing panic attacks, so she leaves and goes back to her childhood home. Her dad is happy about it but her mom suspects something is amiss. While in town, Leigh reconnects with two of her friends from childhood (Todd, who is an art dealer, and Mel, who is a principal at the high school).
Leigh starts working at the local public pool as the lifeguard (the job she held when she was younger). This leads her to getting mixed up with the pool maintenance guy’s son, Jason. The problem is that Jason is only sixteen years old.
As Leigh and Jason’s relationship progresses, Leigh drags Todd and Mel into her circle of negative influence, which includes drinking and smoking pot with Jason and his underage friends (including Matt, who desperately wants to leave town but is waiting for Jason to feel ready to go with him).
Eventually, things go south when Leigh and Jason are found out and Matt commits suicide after Todd attempts to seduce him.
I told you I wasn’t prepared for this movie!
I was so confused when this movie ended that I went to the internet to see what other people thought of it. Not surprisingly, a lot of people felt like I did… like they were misled. Everyone thought this was going to be a light-hearted comedy but were met with something much sadder. The movie apparently got terrible reviews, too.
The user reviews on IMDB were interesting. A lot of people talking about how this movie was a tale of forbidden love. A tragic love story! A tale of love that could never be fulfilled! The tragedy was that Leigh and Jason could never really be together because of their ages.
That didn’t sit well with me. I could see what those people were getting at, but that wasn’t the impression I got from the movie.
Here is my interpretation of this movie…
I actually think this movie is really skillfully done. It demonstrates how monstrous behavior can be downplayed or completely excused by regular people as long as it’s packaged and marketed attractively.
There’s a reason they cast cute, blonde, little Kristen Bell to play the lead. They needed someone whom the audience would automatically side with, even when she is shown engaging in wholly unacceptable behavior.
Leigh’s choices aren’t sugar-coated. There is no ambiguity in what she’s doing. It’s explicitly stated that she is almost thirty and having sex with a sixteen-year-old child. They didn’t make her character twenty-two and just out of college. They made her a full-fledged, grown-ass woman. That was intentional to make it clear that her behavior was out-of-bounds.
But as the movie goes on, we find ourselves thinking, “Well, it’s not so bad, right? I mean… they’re in love… and she’s going through a lot… and she’s pretty…”
And that’s exactly what the filmmakers want us to think! They want us, as normal, not-predatory people, to sympathize with the predator in this story in order to frighten us into realizing that we, too, (just like Todd and Mel) might excuse Leigh’s behavior if we had been party to it. What does that say about us? Would we really speak out if we saw this happening? Or would we minimize it? Would the children in the story be safe around us?
That’s terrifying to think about.
The filmmakers want us to be dragged into Leigh’s sphere of influence. Unfortunately, it worked far too well for many of the people who saw this movie.
Interestingly, the plot synopsis on Wikipedia completely leaves out the facts that Jason is only sixteen-years-old and that Matt commits suicide as a direct result of Todd’s come-on. On the topic of Matt, Wikipedia states that he kills himself because Jason wants to stay in town with Leigh instead of leaving with Matt for a better life. But that leaves out the huge plot point of Todd, who feels emboldened by Leigh, hitting on Matt (who, I’ll remind you, is a child) after Matt begins to trust Todd and confide in him. It’s the shocking betrayal of a child’s trust of an adult that drives Matt over the edge.
It shows that whoever wrote the Wikipedia synopsis ALSO missed the point of the movie.
Everything about the movie is intended to make us gravitate to Leigh and her friends and make us think the things they do aren’t really all that bad. Even the marketing of the movie with the aforementioned sunny promo cover is intended to trick us into thinking this is just a love story instead of one about adults taking advantage of children.
We’re meant to sympathize with Leigh and not realize right away what that sympathetic impulse says about us.
While watching this movie if you’re not thinking, “Woah, get your sh*t together, lady! And stop being creepy around the local kids!” then you missed the point.
#5 – Snow White (2025)
A lot of people (those who have seen this movie and those who haven’t) think this movie is a bunch of soulless, woke garbage that betrays the spirit of the 1937 original.
While I definitely think the 1937 version is superior (I mean, it would be nigh impossible to improve upon it), this 2025 version actually does a lot of things right and is not nearly as “woke” and progressive as many think it is.
One of the biggest criticisms of this new version is that Snow White is too much of a “girl boss”. She doesn’t sing about pining for the day her prince will come. Instead, she bands the poor people together and leads an uprising against their rich oppressor who hoards all their food (the evil queen).
Basically, people didn’t like that Snow White wasn’t this soft, cute, squeaky-voiced, little teenager anymore and viewed her more as Che Guevara who talks to animals.
What those people don’t realize is that in order to make a full-length, live-action movie, the filmmakers NEEDED to give Snow White more agency, otherwise the story wouldn’t make sense and we, as the audience, wouldn’t buy it. Let me explain…
When Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came out, it was the FIRST feature-length cartoon. It was quite literally an experimental medium. Audiences had never seen an 83-minute cartoon before. It’s understandable that the story and its characters were a little two-dimensional compared to what we expect to see nowadays.
But in the almost 100 years of movie-making and story-telling since, audiences have come to expect certain things. Making a version of Snow White in 2025 with real actors meant that the filmmakers HAD to give Snow White reasons for doing all the things she does otherwise we, as the audience, wouldn’t believe the actions of the characters.
And those reasons make sense when you consider the story of Snow White.
In the original, we just see Snow White as the abused step-child of the evil queen. But in order to make a movie for modern, 2025 audiences some things need to be addressed, namely…
What happened to Snow White’s mom? And why did Snow White’s dad shack up with that evil chick who becomes the queen?
Also, Snow White’s dad was the king and Snow White was his only child. It makes sense that he was teaching her how to be a strong leader because she was next in line for the throne. That’s not some woke, “girl boss” messaging. That’s just logically fleshing out points that weren’t able to be addressed in the original movie.
Another criticism of the new version is the fact that a non-white actress played the title role. Now, I am only going to address that aspect of Rachel Zegler’s casting. I am not going to address the controversy surrounding her comments to media outlets and her social media posts. I am only going to discuss why it doesn’t matter that she is non-white while playing the character of Snow White.
Of course, it goes without saying that if seeing a swarthy complexion pisses you off then you have deeper issues than I can reasonably address on a site about clothing, but thinking that the character of Snow White needs to actually have pale skin misses a major point of the movie itself.
People who are up-in-arms about Zegler playing Snow White say that it doesn’t make sense because Zegler doesn’t have lily-white skin like the 1937 cartoon version did, therefore the whole “Who is the fairest of them all?” doesn’t work and the whole plot collapses. Way to go, color-blind casting! “Diversity” strikes again!
Here’s what those people don’t get. The evil queen isn’t jealous of Snow White because she’s white. She’s jealous of Snow White because she’s PRETTY! In this context “fair” means “pretty”.
I always thought that was obvious, but I guess I was wrong.
Snow White’s name doesn’t matter to the plot. In the original, yes, it references her white skin but that’s because white skin was the beauty standard in 1937 America, along with bob haircuts and drop-waist dresses. They were just trying to convey that Snow White was pretty.
The 2025 version actually stays consistent on that front! How do I know that? Well, because they cast two actresses (Zegler and Gal Gadot) who, by modern standards, are conventionally attractive. For the plot to work, Snow White doesn’t have to be white, she just needs to be good-looking. The fact that beauty standards have changed since 1937 is immaterial.
This movie was never going to be able to live up to the standard of the original, which is a brilliant film. Regardless of whether you like it or you don’t, it’s definitely not a vehicle for left-wing indoctrination.
#6 – Barbie
I only saw this movie once, and I was really tired while watching it, so if I am mistaken on any plot points here, I am willing to admit it, because my memory of the movie might not be 100% accurate.
People seem to think this movie shines a spotlight on the ills of the patriarchy. It definitely does that, but I think it’s more of a spotlight on the ills of humanity on the whole.
In the beginning of the movie, we are introduced to the inhabitants of Barbieland, the Barbies (who are the higher caste) and the Kens (who are the lower caste).
Their society cannot be considered matriarchal, however, because neither the Barbies nor the Kens are humans or can be considered female/male. They are dolls. That’s important to remember.
Everyone seems perfectly happy with the exception of one of the Kens who feels sad with his station because of his inability to spend more time with one of the Barbies.
When that particular Barbie and that particular Ken travel to the “real world”, they experience our patriarchal society and get a glimpse of its effects.
Barbie experiences fear and assault while Ken experiences acceptance and validation for the first time (indicating that he was not experiencing those things while back in Barbieland).
Ken eventually goes back to Barbieland and, with the other Kens, overthrows the established order and places the Barbies in the subservient roles (the roles that the Kens previously occupied).
Barbie then goes back to Barbieland and essentially does the same thing. She and the other Barbies rise up against the Kens and restore the previous arrangement: Barbies on top, Kens on the bottom. They do this by distracting the Kens long enough so that the Kens are unable to participate in the creation of the new society. The Kens are intentionally excluded from contributing their views to the society’s new constitution.
The Barbies essentially wrench power back from the Kens and place themselves back at the top of the social order. Even after Barbie has seen the devastating effects of an uneven society (ours) she does not advocate for a future society where the Barbies and Kens SHARE power.
Nope. Barbie does the same thing the Kens did, which is claw and fight her way to the top and place others under her. Barbie fights for the same kind of uneven society she just experienced.
And you can’t say, “Well, the Kens were fine with it at the start of the movie, so what’s the problem in just going back to the system they had before?”
The problem is that not all the Kens were happy. This isn’t like Pleasantville where everyone was perfectly content, if ignorant. Beach Ken was shown to be unhappy, so it establishes that they are capable of feeling something other than complete, vapid contentment.
Remember, neither Barbie nor Ken are humans so we can’t apply our wants and expectations onto their society based on what we feel about our own. We can’t say, “Yeah, well the Barbies deserve to be in power in their society because our society is so tipped in men’s favor. It’s good that at least one society is tipped toward women.”
But we’re not talking about men and women here. We’re talking about creatures that LOOK like humans, but aren’t. If those creatures didn’t look like Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, we probably wouldn’t have as strong opinions about who should be in charge of their society. We probably wouldn’t be “rooting” for one group over another because those groups wouldn’t resemble us.
After Barbie and Ken experience human nature, they DON’T go back to their land and establish an equal, egalitarian society that specifically rejects the damaging concepts of hierarchy (which they viewed firsthand) that makes the “real world” so oppressive. Nope. They go back to their land and fight each other tooth-and-nail for power until one group wins out. And who’s to say that the struggle won’t continue with each group overthrowing the other from time to time?
Now, you can argue that Barbie and Ken were negatively influenced by our patriarchal society and then brought those toxic behaviors back to Barbieland. You can argue that they were just displaying what was demonstrated to them: clamoring for power at the expense of others.
I mostly agree with that. But the Barbies and Kens had a hierarchal society long before they knew what our patriarchal society was all about. Their concept of social caste didn’t originate when Barbie and Ken showed up at Venice Beach.
I think that what Barbie and Ken learned from us is how to scrape and scrounge for power at the expense of another. The restlessness and the desire to oppress wasn’t there before Barbie and Ken came back from our world. We know this because, even though Ken was sad at the beginning, he had no desire to overthrow the Barbies, just like the Barbies had no desire to overthrow the Kens once the Kens took power.
But once Ken and Barbie each go back to Barbieland with their newfound knowledge, the competition for, not only power, but power OVER SOMEONE ELSE, the desire to put someone below you, begins. Because, remember, neither Ken nor Barbie desire to share their power with the other. Each group tries to establish themselves as the ones in charge over the other group.
That is what these creatures learned from spending time with us. They experienced humanity and this is what they took away from it.
What do you guys think of my takes on these movies? The beauty of art is that it can be interpreted in so many different ways! Let me know your thoughts and definitely let me know if you think I’m wrong! Remember, even if there is a collective, agreed-upon opinion of a movie (or book, etc), you don’t have to go along with it. That kind of critical thinking is important to impart to your children.
