2012: Dr. Adrian gives a rousing speech aboard one of the doomsday-evading-Arks on the importance of humanity looking out for one another and convinces the captain to open the gates, allowing more people in. While well-intentioned, this decision indirectly results in the Diabolus ex Machina offings of Gordon and Tamara via the ship flooding. No one even mentions all the Chinese workers they just sent off the boats to die, either.
American History X is about Derek, a reformed neonazi, trying to help his younger brother Danny to not go down the same path as him, which leads to them reflecting on the origin of their prejudices. In the end of the movie, Derek sucessfully convinces Danny to abandon his ideology... only for Danny to be shot dead by a black gang member in the school bathroom. To make things worse, the only thing that Danny did to him previously was puffing cigarette smoke on his face.
American Pie: Near the beginning of the movie a bunch of friends make a pact to get laid before the school year is over. Then near the end of the movie, they decide that was a dumb thing to do, since sex shouldn't be a goal in itself, but something you do with a person who's important to you and when you both want it. That's a nice moral. But then, they all get laid the same night anyway! To make matters worse, when Jim wakes up and finds Michelle (whom he does not particularly care about at this point in his multi-movie arc) has already gone, his response is "I got used. Cool!" and completely ruins the apparently intended Aesop.
Animal Farm (1999) falls into this due to Adaptational Karma. The original book is principally about the problem of the Full-Circle Revolution, and how any authority that places itself above the workers while taking the lion's share of their efforts is wrong, whether they identify as capitalist or communist. Humans, in the world of the book, embody the exploitative ruling class, and any attempt by the animals to emulate humans is treated as a sign of placing themselves above their kin. The book ends with the pigs becoming no different from humans, bullying and killing the other animals to make their money. However, the film decides to instead end with the farm being bought by another family of humans after the pig's organization collapses, and this is treated as a happy ending, because the new family will obviously run it much better than the pigs. So it turns out that an exploitative ruling class is perfectly fine, after all; just so long as it's a friendly exploitative ruling class. Indeed, considering that the farmer in the book was a clear metaphor for the Russian monarchy, apparently the movie is saying that the Soviet Union could have been fixed just fine if they'd reinstated the Tsars. Given when it was made, this may have been altered to reflect the fall of the USSR and capitalist Russian Federation supplanting it (along with the other post-Soviet states), which was viewed favorably by most at the time (after Putin became effective dictator, many people's views soured).
The movie tries to tell us that we can learn something from tribes who live with their homeworld, rather than off it. The Aesop breaks when you see that the Na'vi's ability to coexist with nature stems from their biology which they take for granted, rather than any sort of discipline. It's also worth mentioning that when an element of nature they can't biologically link with, that is humans, enters the picture, they are completely unable (and rather unwilling) to coexist in any way whatsoever.
Furthermore, it's clear that the lifestyle of the Na'vi is devastatingly brutal — they are routinely killed off as children — and the only reason it comes across as positive for the hero is that he's immune to most of the dangers, since he'll just wake up in his tank if his Avatar dies. Oh, and he also has to use human technology to lay claim to the dragon that Only the Chosen May Ride. It's very telling that the original script ran on Gray-and-Gray Morality and had both sides equally to blame for the conflict and wrongdoing.
Avengers: Endgame: Steve Rogers hosts a support group for people who lost loved ones to the genocide of Thanos. He tells them that loss is a natural part of life and that sooner or later one needs to start moving forward, using his own loss of Peggy Carter as an example. At the end of the film when the Avengers have perfected the science behind time travel, Steve goes back and reunites with a young and living Peggy. So in other words Steve's whole viewpoint is dictated entirely by his options.
Batman Begins: During his training to become Batman, Bruce Wayne is ordered to kill a criminal that the League of Shadows arrested. He refuses, since he decided he will not be an executioner. The moral is If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!, but to escape the temple without having to kill the criminal, he intentionally burns the whole temple down, presumably killing many people there, maybe even the criminal he was ordered to kill in the first place.
Beverly Hills Chihuahua had a message about adopting animals from shelters and the sequel even had a celebration promotion about National Spay/Neuter Month. This is despite the fact that the movie ends with Babies Ever After and the sequels involve the puppies.
The pulpy action classic Billy Jack features the heroic title character — who identifies himself as a pacifist — using martial arts to defend a hippie commune from evil racist rednecks. The lesson that pacifism is a wonderful and noble ideal to strive for is severely blunted by how little good it does the hippie kids when bullies want to beat the crap out of them, since the only thing that gets the goons to back off is Billy Jack showing up to lay the smackdown, in some instances even listing in detail exactly how he's going to beat the crap out of them before doing so. In The Trial of Billy Jack it seems as if the reality of his methods dawns on Billy for the first time in his life when he tries to talk one of his students out of unnecessary violence, only for them to ask right back "What do you call what you just did to those thugs?"
The Black Stork was intended as a pro-eugenics film supporting the Mercy Kill of disabled infants, but in some ways it unintentionally supports the social model of disability. Despite the title cards' insistence that Leffingwell Jr.'s heritage makes him defective both physically and mentally, there's no evidence that he was born insane, and his obvious deformities only rarely cause him any inconvenience that doesn't involve other people. In fact, it seems like he would have turned out fine if not for everyone treating him like a freak.
Blade Runner can be interpreted different ways depending on which cut you watch. Harrison Fordhas gone on record stating that he is not a proponent of one of the theories supported by many, including director Ridley Scott himself, that Deckard himself was also a replicant, arguing that if it were true, it would be a broken aesop, since the purpose of the story, as well as the original book, was to show how human the android/replicants (most notably Roy Batty's final act) were compared to the inhumanity expressed by the humans who created them and are now hunting them down.
Buddy features a woman who takes a baby gorilla home and raises it among her multiple pets. As the gorilla ages, it becomes more destructive and inconvenient to keep and she sends it off to an ape sanctuary. The moral, involving the problems of keeping exotic pets, is ruined because she already has two pet chimpanzees, who are portrayed as lovable little pets with no problems. Chimpanzees are far more destructive and violent than gorillas.
The Butterfly Effect: The ending. The lesson that you can't possibly undo all of your past mistakes and that you have to accept them for what they are is broken by both of the endings, as Evan does precisely that by removing himself from Kayleigh's life entirely. The real mistake he had to fix was meeting her in the first place (theatrical cut) or being born at all (director's cut).
The first Carnosaur tries to preach a Green Aesop about the dangers of man destroying nature with machines and that nature belongs to the animals, but it is undermined by being a movie about killer dinosaurs and Dr. Tiptree's solution of eradicating the human race through artificial means.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory squeezes a pro-family Aesop into the story when Wonka, having fallen into depression after Charlie refuses to leave his family for Wonka's offer to take over the factory, comes to Charlie for advice. Their conversation is as follows:
Wonka: I don't feel so hot. What makes you feel better when you feel terrible? Charlie: My family. Wonka: Ew! Charlie: What do you have against my family? Wonka: It's not just *your* family, it's the whole idea of... You know, they're always telling you what to do, what not to do and it's not conducive to a creative atmosphere! Charlie: Usually they're just trying to protect you, because they love you.
The problem there is that "just trying to protect you" does not remotely justify the behavior of Wonka's father as shown in the flashback scenes. In the post-Halloween flashback, the father's tone made it sound very much like he was more interested in berating Wonka for wanting to be a normal kid than looking out for his dental health. When Wonka expresses a desire to get into the candy business, his father's reaction is clearly one of disgust, not concern. That sort of treatment is, by most standards, a perfectly valid reason to cut ties immediately upon reaching adulthood. Usually they're just trying to protect you - sometimes they're just offended that you would have the audacity to be different. Wonka was just lucky that his father saw the error of his ways during their time apart.
Christmas with the Kranks, based on the John Grisham novel Skipping Christmas, is about a couple whose adult daughter is going to be away for Christmas, so they decide to eschew their typical lavish, expensive and stressful celebration in lieu of a vacation cruise, to the protests of their overbearing neighbors. Predictably, their daughter announces, two days before Christmas, that she'll be back, and bringing along a new foreign boyfriend to whom she's been hyping the annual Christmas party for weeks, forcing the parents to abandon their plans and throw a party together at the last second, with the help of said neighbors. Intended moral: "Don't let the stress of preparations distract you from why you celebrate." However, since the couple's idea seems so reasonable to normal people, and the neighbors' reaction comes off as completely overblown, the real moral of the story is "You can't escape Christmas, even if you try." And the entire reason the Kranks want to skip Christmas is that they realize that they can go on a tropical cruise for less money and none of the effort they put into their Christmas party: in other words, skipping Christmas to go on the cruise is their way of not stressing the preparations so they can focus on why they celebrate the holidays.
"Stone Cold" Steve Austin star vehicle The Condemned (2007) revolves around a shady producer who arranges for ten death-row inmates from around the world to be dropped in an island and forced to fight to the death while the "show" is broadcast onto the Net under the name "The Condemned", hence the movie's title. However, WWE Films made the bizarre decision to turn this into a moralist tale by having several characters berate the brutality and senseless violence of the show ... all the while showering the audience with scene after scene of brutality and senseless violence (and some rape for good measure). To top it all off, it culminates with this quote: "All of us who watch ... areweThe Condemned?" To which several critics replied "Yes. Yes we are." It doesn't help matters that the intended aesop itself conflates fictional violence with real violence. In short, it's a very hypocritical film whose message goes against the franchise that made it. Oops.
Contact has a Aesop that seems to be something along the lines of: "We all have faith in what we believe, and just because your beliefs are in science (rather than religion) that doesn't give them more credibility." Except the very last exchange between Kitz and Constantine completely blows that premise out of the water in Ellie Arroway's specific case:
Constantine I assume you read the confidential findings report from the investigating committee. Kitz: I flipped through it. Constantine I was especially interested in the section on Arroway's video unit. The one that recorded the static? Kitz: Continue. Constantine: The fact that it recorded static isn't what interests me. Kitz: [Pauses] Continue. Constantine: What interests me is that it recorded approximately eighteen hours of it. Kitz: [Leans forward so he is looking directly in the camera] That is interesting, isn't it?
Frustratingly for science- or justice-minded viewers, Constantine and Kitz apparently never even let Arroway know that she has evidence of her experience (as opposed to just faith). They just quietly give her a dream job to make it up to her.
The Count of Monte Cristo combines this with Do Not Do This Cool Thing in the final scene where Edmund professes that his revenge was not worth the steep moral and physical price he paid to achieve it... but we just spent two hours watching him enjoy every minute of his bloody revenge and it was awesome.
Crash: Despite the film proudly bearing an obstinately anti-racist message, the only two Koreans of any real importance to the plot turn out to be slave traffickers, and Asians being bad drivers is a running gag.
The Day After Tomorrow features a straw Republican American president, who refuses to believe repeated warnings of catastrophic climate change, and is used to make a point about right-wing science denial. However, the actual climate change event in question, featuring the entire Earth being buried in snow within a few days, is every bit as unscientific as the film's target of satire, making the president's scepticism entirely justified.
Day Breakers is one long analogy for our dependence on oil, set in a world of vampires and a dwindling supply of blood. Which is fine... right up until the end where they create a substitute for blood. This changes the moral from "don't blindly waste resources and deal with the problem before it becomes a problem" the "blindly waste resources and science will stop the collapse of civilization just in the nick of time." It gets further broken when you consider that alternatives to fossil-fuels already exist; they're just not yet economical. It’s also pretty daft comparing dependency on oil to the diet vampires are biologically hardwired with. They have no choice but to drink blood; most of them are unaware there is a cure and they are physically incapable of consuming anything else.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951): The intended message is Humans Are the Real Monsters because Klaatu is a peaceful ambassador whose home planet fears Earth will expand into outer space due to its advances in space and nuclear technology, makes the Earth stand still to deliver a message of peace, which culminates in Klaatu's accidental death. Except, Klaatu arrives with zero warning, shuts down all power on Earth (with the exception of hospitals and in-flight airplanes) — which potentially caused thousands of deaths — all to deliver a message of complete annihilation if they do anything remotely "threatening" to a planet they didn't even know existed solely because Earth has the theoretical capability to attack them, not because of any action Earth intentionally or unintentionally made against them. This makes Klaatu's planet look extremely hostile and xenophobic, ruining the film's intended message.
Despite switching to a Green Aesop, its 2008 remake doesn't do so well, either. We're destroying the other species on our planet, and aliens think that's bad. But there's no reason why Helen's love for Jacob should change Klaatu's mind. A mother's love for a child of her own species, while charming, doesn't really show anything except a desire to perpetuate her species. It'd be more valid if she showed love for an animal, perhaps something completely dissimilar to humans. Instead, The Power of Love conquers all. Plus, in the original, Klaatu still believes in human goodness despite the distrust he faces, whereas in the remake, Klaatu is as distrustful of humans as they are of him.
Justice League has the tagline "You can't save the world alone." However, it might as well be "You can't save the world without Superman." Being individually the most powerful character is shown to be the best way to prevail for both the heroes and the villain. While there are instances of the League working well as a team (a few hiccups aside), the main plot arc centers around the combined efforts of the other heroes not being enough to defeat Steppenwolf until Superman returns in the Final Battle and punches him around easily. Amusingly, while Zack Snyder's Justice League doesn't have that tagline, the League is far more in sync as a team, and while Superman's Big Damn Heroes does help turn the tide around and he's still just as easily able to trounce Steppenwolf, the day is not won entirely thanks to him (that's more on Flash and Cyborg).
The premise is that using time travel to alter the unpleasant moments in your past can have disastrous consequence. In this instance, it causes the multiverse to gradually converge on itself after too many do-overs. Among the elseworlds featured is Superman: The Movie, which featured Superman reversing time so he could save Lois Lane from dying and there was no negative side-effect from his actions.
After realizing that saving people like Barry's mother, Burtonverse Batman, and Supergirl, from their fated deaths is impossible, Barry implores his younger alternate self to let them go because they can't be brought back to life, but it's okay because they'll always exist at some point in time. However, this is around the same time that the movie brings out Uncanny Valley CG recreations of both Christopher Reeve and George Reeves as Superman (plus Adam West as Batman, though that one is at least reused archival footage), a move that has generally been derisively called digital necromancy for cheap nostalgia-bait by viewers because both actors couldn't consent to their usage in this movie and probably wouldn't even if they could, the latter because of his resentment about never being able to escape from the character's shadow in his career, and the former because he forbade the creation of new imagery using his likeness standing up after his paralysis, with only one exception for a charity video.
Wonder Woman (2017) shows Diana having to learn that the cruelty of humankind can't be instantly purged by slaughtering a Satanic Archetype, and it works... for all of a minute. Turns out that Ares wasn't dead after all, and while he didn't force anyone to fight, he did inspire people who would. To exacerbate the problem, the moment Diana kills the real Ares, soldiers start hugging each other, and then there's an instant cut to the peace celebration, making it look like she did instantly purge humanity's cruelty.
One of the introductory scenes shows a young Diana losing a contest on Themyscira when she is forcibly restrained from completing the competition by Antiope after having taken a shortcut. The theme of "never taking shortcuts" rings hollow when one remembers that Diana is a princess and a demigod who was able to enter the toughest athletic competition on the island when she was just a child, and nearly outcompeted her older, more seasoned opponents thanks to her royal status, quick thinking and supernatural abilities.
Maxwell Lord seems to be an indictment of '80s consumerism and capitalism as a whole. However, the rest of the movie goes out of its way to glorify '80s fashion trends, ritzy apartments and office spaces, fancy cars, and shopping malls, i.e. representations of those very things.
For all of Diana's talk about how she has given up so much for the world and wants one thing (Steve) in return, she has an enormous condo, tastefully decorated, with a gorgeous view overlooking the Potomac... i.e. the exact sort of space someone like Lord might covet. Diana may not covet more the way Lord does, but still indulges to a hefty degree.
The climax of the film shows Diana successfully convince the world to renounce the wishes Maxwell has given them by pointing out that "the truth is all you need". As pointed out by several online reviews, the message can also be taken that people across the world should be satisfied with their circumstances in life, even if they're poor, infirmed or wished for completely altruistic things. That the entire world seemingly accepted Diana's pleas without question (or being shown in any detail) belies the bizarre double-meaning of the intended theme.
Barbara's behaviour and style changes as the film goes on to represent how she is seemingly being "corrupted" by the Wish Stone, and Diana only breaks the hold it has on her via the subsequent "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight moment. Yet, the film not only plays up the Evil Is Cool stereotype in a benign way, but also makes Barbara Unintentionally Sympathetic, in a similar manner to Selina Kyle in Batman Returns — a character who is continually harassed by her co-workers (and in Barbara's case, a creep who she is only able to escape from with Diana's help), the film playing up her near-killing of the man who attempted to assault her as being the point where she's become irredeemably evil (even though this is the second time he's tried to do so) and her subsequent defense of Maxwell being done in a panic because she doesn't want to lose the benefits she's been given. It also makes the case that having a role model is not necessarily a good thing, as Barbara's idolization of Diana (despite Diana going out of her way to help her) leads to her becoming vindictive and jealous.
Descendants's main aesop is about how you are not defined by your parents no matter what they may try to raise you to be... even though almost everyone in-universe introduces themselves as so-and-so's child and some even try to follow in their parents' footsteps, while some characters have almost no identity outside of who their parents are. Most notable with Lonnie (Daughter of Mulan), who tries to join a swordfighting team that's all male in the second film after being portrayed as a much less tomboyish in the first.
The Devil Wears Prada: Andy is presented as being "too good" for the fashion designer assistant job she applies for, and she derisively says she will only tough it out for a year to gain the experience and connections needed to get the job she wants. When she finally learns to take her job seriously and do it well she's presented as "selling her soul," while her abruptly quitting is presented as "holding true to her morals." However, when she applies for the serious journalism job that she only took the fashion designer assistant job to get, they almost don't hire her due to her abrupt departure ("holding true to her morals"), and only hire her due to Miranda giving her a glowing recommendation... which Miranda only gave her due to Andy learning to do her job well ("selling her soul") in the first place.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days has An Aesop about owning up to mistakes when you make them. Greg's father Frank lectures him on this, and Greg's confession to him in the climax of the film is what finally fixes the trust issues the two have been dealing with for most of the movie. Problem is, Frank is a Bumbling Dad who doesn't follow his own advice — earlier in the film, he and Greg inadvertently ruin a pot roast his wife had been preparing for supper, and rather than telling her this, he allows her to serve it anyway while avoiding eating any of it himself.
District 13: Ultimatum contains one of the most broken Aesops ever seen: After having foiled the villain's plan to blow up Banlieue 13 in order to have it replaced by a rich suburb, and exposed his orchestration of the civil violence leading to that decision, the leaders of all five stereotypical ethnic gangs (Black Rastafarians who look like rejects from the Lord's Resistance Army, robe-clad bearded Arabs, Trigger-Happy Portuguese used-car salesmen, tattooed Asian martial artists and white Neo-Nazi skinheads) — who all voluntarily racially segregated themselves into different blocks and have only united to fight a common enemy — give the French President an "inspirational" speech on how they're like a family that protects, unites and brings people together!
Eat, Pray, Love is built on the idea that money and possessions aren't everything, something that anyone with considerably less money than the protagonist couldn't afford to take the time to discover.
Fear Of A Black Hat parodies the broken Aesop of gangster films like Scarface and New Jack City in a music video called "A Gangsta's Life Is Not Fun". Meaning, the point of the films are to show how being a ruthless criminal and selling drugs is wrong, and yes the villains do pay the price for their actions in the end. However, ninety percent of the films shows them being awesome beforehand. Which results in them having a lot of fans and the message of the films being missed, entirely.
Ice Cold: I'm the G.A.N.G.S.T.E.R. like Scarface bitch I'm a superstar. Revered by all, though I am the villain, gain more juice by the others I'm killing. Profiling and styling, drive a fly ride and hoes just pile in. I make gangsta money, cause I'm gangsta bold. Fuck gangsta bitches, wearing gangsta clothes. And I kill with will of steel for thrills, another way to pay the bills. I'm the boy wonder, god of thunder, wrong move and I'll put you under. I'm notorious, I live glorious, I'm the fly gangsta the remains victorious. Stay in the top-self clothes, stay fucking the top-shelf hoes. Because I'm the gangsta they call number one... but don't try this at home kids, a Gangsta's life's not fun.
The First Wives Club: First wife Brenda is obsessed with her weight and taunted about her supposed fatness by her ex's new girlfriend. This treatment is rightfully seen as incredibly cruel. However, only minutes earlier, Brenda was snarking that "the bulimia has certainly paid off" in reference to the girlfriend's slimness. Plus, she makes nasty comments about slim women throughout the film, "anorexic fetus", etc. All of which are presented as amusing. So the moral is that it's horrible to taunt fat people about their weight, but perfectly acceptable to joke about slender people having a potentially deadly eating disorder.
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie has the Aesop that being ugly doesn't make you inferior or bad in any way. This is broken by the fact that said Garbage Pail Kids act like complete assholes for half the movie and, moreover, are Villain Protagonists.
Gattaca: The film's message (set in a future where Designer Babies are the norm and those born without genetic screening are denied good jobs) is that discriminating based on genetics is wrong and that even people with physical defects are people too. Unfortunately, this is shown by having a protagonist with bad eyesight and a heart defect get a job as an astronaut, which are objectively valid reasons not to take him even today.
The Gladiator (a 1986 TV movie) tells the story of a mechanic who, distraught after the death of his younger brother in a car crash, Mad Max-es his tow truck and starts dishing out vigilante justice by disabling the cars of drunk drivers before they can do any damage. Except … the man responsible for his brother's death wasn't a drunk driver. He's actually some kind of vehicular serial killer of whom the mechanic's brother was just one of many victims. The whole anti-drunk driving motivation just doesn't seem to work.
As a whole, the first two films seems to give out the main message "If there's no Christianity, then there's no morality". This is broken, because of how Christian characters are belittling/discriminating Non-Christians, that's actually an immoral thing to do.
In the first film, Willie Robertson of Duck Dynasty had interviewed with Amy that even though he does receive criticism for the show for being openly religious, Willie states that he won't judge viewers for that and people have the right to change the channel if they don't like it. However, at the end of the film, during the Newsboys' concert, Willie again appears, and encouraged everyone in the concert to text at least 100 people, saying "God's not dead". Um, really, Willie? Saying "Respect people's views" and "Make people believe that 'God's not dead'" are two very different things.
Also in the first film, after Professor Radisson lost to Josh Wheaton's case on God's existence, Radisson gets killed by a car, probably sent from "God", as a way to get him to change his faith on his deathbed, giving out the message "Best way to change a Non-Christain's faith? Put them through hell or near-death experience!". Right before that happened, however, the reason why Radisson was out to begin with was because he had read a letter from his diseased mother, saying no matter what happens, never lose faith. He then was moved by it, and tries to go to the Newsboys' concert so he can reconcile with both Josh and his ex-girlfriend, and decides to become a Christian again. So, not only that message was broken, but especially since he's not EVEN a true "atheist" to begin with.
Godzilla (2014): "The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control, and not the other way round. Let them fight." Except when Godzilla fought the MUTOs, they almost defeated him and then there would've been nothing to stop them from ending the world. It was only when humans got involved on Godzilla's behalf instead of against him that he managed to win.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): The intended message is that humans are not meant to tamper with nature (namely the Titans) for good or for ill intentions, as doing so always leads to calamitous consequences. However, at the end of the film, the awakened Titans' presence on the planet is healing dying ecosystems, causing endangered species to bounce back and providing humanity with new resources — and the Titans are awake because Ghidorah, a hostile alien who explicitly exists outside of nature as terrestrial lifeforms know it, forcefully woke all the Titans up at once whereas before their awakenings were slow and gradual. Ghidorah in turn was awakened by a Well-IntentionedEco-Terrorist who wanted the Titans awakened precisely to achieve the end results that occur at the film's end. This is somewhat downplayed, in that while the ending implies the future is now brighter for humans and the planet alike after the Titans' awakening, in the present, humanity specifically have suffered massive devastation and loss of life due to Ghidorah's actions.
What really breaks the aesop is that at the film's start, Monarch is inching towards being taken over by the government and military, who either don't see or don't care for the Titans' ecological value, and only want the monsters all killed off while they're sleeping. And based on the military's rude response to the Mexico crisis which made it clear how little faith they had in Monarch's intervention, the takeover of Monarch would've probably become a certainty after Rodan's awakening if not for Ghidorah's Apocalypse Wow. It's unknown how the military would've achieved their aim of exterminating the Titans, but if they'd succeeded, it would've likely had devastating future ecological consequences, on top of flouting Genocide Dilemma and ridding the world of numerous admittedly majestic creatures forever. And if the military's extermination attempts failed or didn't get every waking Titan (like how Monarch's attempt to kill the male MUTO in its cocoon in the first film spectacularly failed), it could very well lead to the Titans retaliating against humanity, and most of them retaining negative or at least neutral relations with the surviving humans afterward (this last point is especially relevant if you're among the viewers who believe Godzilla is keeping Titans away from human cities at the end precisely because of Serizawa's sacrifice). So in summary, the Well-Intentioned Extremist meddling with nature set off a chain of events that brought about the best possible future for everyone overall, after nearly causing The End of the World as We Know It (it's this messy).
The Greatest Showman tries to have the moral of "don't judge people who are different" that's rendered moot when you realize the circus troupe work in a job that relies on them being exploited and mocked for their deformities and, in real life, was a job where they were exploited for their looks.
The Hannah Montana movie spends the entire movie preaching the Aesop of "Be Yourself", even if it means giving up on the glittery lifestyle... And then it completely breaks it with a Reset Button ending. Miley reveals her true identity to the people of Crowley Corners, and sings a heartfelt song about having learned said Aesop... and then immediately afterwards the people of Crowley Corners proceed to all agree to keep her identity a secret and let Miley continue her dual life.
Hangman's Curse was probably meant to have an anti-bullying and anti-prejudice message. The jock bullies are portrayed as unquestionably wrong for picking on the Goths just because they're different, and the school administration is criticized for failing to do anything about it. Even the one halfway sympathetic member of the football team acknowledges that he should have known better than to engage in that sort of prejudice. However, the film's "happy" ending includes the Goths changing their entire looks and personalities to be more "normal", which undermines the central message by implying that they were in the wrong for being "weird" (and that, by extension, the jocks had a valid argument against them).
Hellboy II: The Golden Army has an anti-prejudice message, showing the Hellboy's struggles to be accepted by regular humans. Somewhat undermining the message of tolerance:
It's treated as completely unreasonable that humans might be wary of a demon who almost destroyed the world last movie, and is still destined to do just that according to a literal messenger of God.
Incidentally, the human who managed to stop Hellboy from killing everyone last movie is the same one Hellboy had Reassigned to Antarctica.
Neither the characters nor the movie ever spares a moment's thought for any humans that got killed, including their own teammates.
The protagonists are only once seen protecting someone other than themselves or their friends. And that one time is just to portray the humans as ungrateful bastards. (While they ultimately defeat a genocidal Big Bad, they only did so in self-defence.)
The heroes repeatedly risk the lives of every human everywhere because they want to Always Save the Girl (or guy).
In conclusion, the Aesop seems to be "Accept those who are different from the norm … and screw those that aren't."
Beth wants Neil to marry her, but he doesn't believe in marriage. Then she dumps him despite seven happy years of living together. The movie reveals Neil to be more devoted and dependable than most husbands who are shown as either lazy or unfaithful. Beth soon realizes this and asks Neil to take her back. Refreshingly, in a Chick Flick, no less, we have An Aesop that marriage doesn't automatically make a couple happier or more committed, and a woman can still find happiness without it. But then Neil breaks it by asking her to marry him anyways. Meaning that no, a woman truly can't be complete without marriage after all and that a man will always marry a woman if he loves her.
This is an issue with Gigi and Alex. The entire movie lays out the premise that women need to accept men as straightforward — if they say they're not interested, women need to accept this. But every single man who says this then changes his mind, proving that the women who were supposedly deluding themselves were in actually fact accurate — Gigi was the exception to Alex's rule, Beth was correct in thinking a man will marry you if he loves you, etc.
Throughout the entire film, Alex constantly spells out to Gigi not that men are straightforward and will just tell a woman when he's not interested, but that actions speak louder than words. If a man seems to be giving "mixed signals," as in he says he's interested but then leaves the woman to do all the work and make all the compromises to be with him, cheats on her, won't leave his wife for her, etc. odds are "he's just not that into you" and she should move onto someone who is. But then the film breaks this Aesop by portraying Neil as a man who honestly doesn't believe in marriage yet doesn't love Beth any less, then breaks thatAesop by having him cave by marrying her anyway. Then Alex breaks his own Aesop that his own "he's just not that into you" behavior toward Gigi was to hide that he was into her, etc. The film is very inconsistent about its own message, with some couples proving the "he's just not that into you" rule and others not.
Housewarming is a comedy about acceptance of immigration in French society beyond clichés and prejudices, but showing immigrant workers as doing a very shoddy job at home improvement sends a mixed message in that direction, to say the least.
Hypocrites is all about, you guessed it, hypocrisy, and how the lazy and hypocritical members of a pastor's congregation are too lazy and hypocritical to follow the pastor on the "narrow way" up a mountain to the Truth. But the pastor isn't willing to help anyone. Both of the women who follow him fail to make it to the top because the path is too steep. The one who gets the closest, the one who was looking adoringly at him during the sermon, actually extends her hand and says "I need your hand", but he refuses to help her.
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry is about how you shouldn't discriminate against gay people … but every gay character in the movie is a flaming stereotype and the main characters treat the very idea of pretending to be gay as hideously unclean and disgusting, and it never changes. Additionally, they try to support gay marriage by having the main characters exploit it.
It's a Wonderful Life makes a profoundly moving anti-suicide message by illustrating how much value its suicidal protagonist, George, adds to his society. It's able to sell this message easily for its superlatively heroic protagonist - but unintentionally limits the reach of its argument by focusing on such an unusual person. Most people don't have George's social value, many suicidal people don't even have dependent loved ones as he does, and by basing its rationale for anti-suicide on one's value to society, rather than the inherent value of human life, the films risks signalling to people who lack George's social value (or who merely think they do) that there's no reason not to kill themsleves.
Johnny Dangerouslylampshaded and parodied this trope. After spending the entire movie presenting a spoof on gangster films to support the moral "Crime doesn't pay," the eponymous character walks out of his pet shop wearing a fashionable men's suit, hops onto the running board of a period luxury car driven by a chauffeur with the character's gorgeous wife in the front seat (she's wearing a white fox wrap), mugs to the camera and says, "Well, it paid a little."
Jurassic Park (1993) wants to warn us about the consequences of trying to control nature ("Life finds a way"), except that it also has a heavy dose of Do Not Do This Cool Thing, and ultimately misattributes the cause of the problem: extremely shoddy management and security systems that would look poor in a city zoo, brought on by corporate espionage and bad business practice.
A Knight's Tale: The main moral of the film is that a noble spirit and strength of will can turn anyone into a hero, regardless of birth. This is broken in two ways. First, The Hero pretends to be noble to attempt to change his life. Second, at the end of the film, the Black Prince falsely claims that the hero is of noble blood and uses his position to make sure no one can challenge that statement. So you don't need to be born into the elite class to be successful, but you do need to be in the elite class.
While a common conservative justification for the type of transphobia seen in Lady Ballers is to protect women's spaces, the film also promotes the idea that women are always physically inferior to men including at sports, which is both misogynistic and condescending and undermines the alleged "pro-woman" bent.
Lethal Weapon parts 3 and especially 4 contain some very strong anti-gun messages, including several Take That! jabs at the NRA and a scene where Riggs explicitly tells Leo Getz that he shouldn't have a gun because he's not a cop, and then throws Leo's pistol (i.e. his personal property) into the ocean. It's easy to conclude from what the films have shown that our cop heroes shouldn't have them either, considering how many times they've demonstrated extraordinarily careless, irresponsible and dangerous behavior with guns, including negligent discharges, muzzle sweeping, poor trigger discipline, and pointing loaded guns at each otherfor laughs.
Liar Liar: The moral is supposed to be that Fletcher's constant disregard for the truth was a bad thing that nearly caused him to lose his family and wasn't even necessary, since he still managed to win a massively important case without lying once. However, a number of instances show that Fletcher telling the truth was inconvenient for him but actively hurtful to other people, like a woman who was minding her own business in an elevator when a random guy starts talking about her breasts or the office assistant whose boss makes cruel remarks about her hairstyle and outfit. To its credit, it does at least have a scene where Fletcher explains to his son that there's a substantial difference between a good and bad lie, and a good and bad truth, which is only lost on the boy because of how much he's been repeatedly hurt by his father's lies.
The Life of David Gale is about how the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment because a demonstrably innocent man can be sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit: the titular character is on death row for raping and murdering a woman friend, but a journalist discovers videotape evidence that in fact she committed suicide and made it look like murder in order to frame Gale. This bit of evidence is only released after he's been executed, and there's widespread outrage that an innocent man has been killed. But then the journalist gets an unedited piece of the same videotape which shows that Gale was in on the whole plan all along, and indeed watched the woman die, with plans to let himself be framed for her murder, get executed, and then have the death penalty abolished once he's posthumously exonerated. What exactly this makes him guilty of is another question, but he's certainly not innocent. Where this gets weird as well is that the movie is fully aware of the problem with this - everything in it came about because the governor in the film claimed he would call a moratorium on further capital punishment if anyone were ever wrongly executed, but then once it happens he refuses to call that moratorium because the state can't be held accountable for someone abusing the system to deliberately kill themselves.
Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life attempts to preach An Aesop about how looking at Internet porn will ruin your life. The 14-year-old protagonist starts out as a champion swimmer and ends the film as a suicidal mess. Except because it's Lifetime TV, the most they can actually show is just Justin looking at women in skimpy costumes and the film's Aesop gets undermined when all the problems that happen to Justin don't actually come from looking at porn in general. He gets addicted to energy drinks simply because he drinks them when he looks at porn, which could have just as easily happened from drinking them regularly during any activity; he also gets into trouble with people in town because the classmate whose porn he was watching accuses him of raping her because he won't sleep with her, which raises a lot of questions about said classmate's actions (and reaction to getting rejected) and why she's making porn of herself and hosting it on the Internet despite being underage - all of which the film completely ignores to focus on the clearly worse issue of a teenage boy looking at pornography.note The movie does throw a bone to the argument that it's perfectly natural for a teenage boy to look at porn by having the father espouse that belief, but he's a man in a Lifetime movie; he could have introduced himself by telling us the sky is blue and he'd still be in the wrong. Half the kid's problems stem less from him looking at/getting addicted to pornography and more from having a mother who feels such a habit warrants arm-flailing hysterics, therapy and interventions. And yet the mother is meant to be the heroine of the story.
Stranger in My Bed tries to empower women to leave their abusive husbands. The main protagonist, Sarah, leaves her husband by faking her death in a cave accident and flees across the country from Washington to West Virginia to get away. Aside from the apparent aim of stuffing as many Domestic Abuse cliches as they possibly can in one scene, it sort of accomplishes this goal... had the movie ended with her leaving. Her escape is only the beginning, as her husband inexplicably knows she's still alive, tracks her down, and becomes a serial killer, killing her friend for no reason, her new boyfriend's father for even less reason in a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, and then trying to kill Sarah herself and said new boyfriend, which isn't better but more logical. This is absolutely mangled, as the first half tells abused women to leave, only for the second half to say that if you do leave, your abusive husband will kill everybody you've ever cared for.
Dirty Teacher is about an oversexed, disturbed female high school teacher who initiates an affair with one of her students and antagonizes the boy's girlfriend. The intended Aesops seems to be "beware of sexually predatory behavior from authority figures" and "if you know someone who is being sexually abused, report it as soon as possible." However, the explanation for why the boy has sex with his teacher is that his girlfriend won't have sex with him, and gives him mixed messages on the matter, leaving him really horny and frustrated and ready to be manipulated by a beautiful older woman. Thus, it feels like the Aesop is actually "girls, if you don't put out to your boyfriend, he'll just go get it on with someone else who he doesn't know as well, and maybe get into trouble."note The teacher angrily kills him after he breaks off the affair by running him over with her SUV, then she tries to frame the girl for the death
Limitless has a drug which makes you superhumanly intelligent while you're on it. The protagonist discovers, to his horror, that other people who have taken it have had fatal experiences with withdrawal (the only survivor of withdrawal he finds is a complete burn-out). His girlfriend points out that while he's on the drug, he's a different person, and that when he's off the drug he finds himself completely unable to cope and so desperately seeks to continue his supply. There are even escalating side-effects of headaches and missing time when he's on the drug. Seems like a fairly clear Aesop about not relying on artificial crutches to succeed and a metaphor for steroid hormones. However, in the end, he uses the drug to solve all of his problems and becomes a U.S. Senator, who is clearly destined for the White House. The implication is that drugs are in fact good as long as you use them wisely.
The director's cut has an alternate ending which is more ambiguous. The Bradley Cooper character is still on the drug at the end, and De Niro's character owns the company that produces it. And Cooper's final speech to De Niro is less him putting De Niro in his place like the theatrical ending and more of a rant showing that he is in denial about his current situation.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe often invokes Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse when it comes to villains with a tragic backstory, with the heroes telling them it doesn't excuse their actions and that others who suffered similarly didn't turn out like them. However, in many cases the villain actually suffered worse trauma than the heroes did, or the heroes had positive influences or a chance at a normal life that the villain didn't, which can give the impression that they might have gone down the same path themselves had their positions been reversed. The heroes also often condemn the villains for being willing to use violence to achieve their goals, even if they have no issue doing so themselves.
Mazes and Monsters has the aesop that role playing makes you insane, which is broken by the fact the protagonists have their own family problems and the role playing actually brings them together and occupies them. The only one of them who completely breaks and becomes detached from reality, Robbie, has major pre-existing psychological problems unrelated to the game, and his friends are completely unaffected by it.
This makes for incredible irony when you consider that the movie was based on certain people's interpretation of real life events. Even when fictionalizing it, they cannot escape the insanity of their own viewpoint.
Mean Girls 2: The moral of the story seems to be "don't be a follower," but in the end, Abby decides to attend Carnegie Mellon instead of her original goal of NYU just to stick with Jo, who in turn based her college decision solely on it being the school her dead mother went to.
Played for Laughs in Men in Black 3 when Jay is pulled over by two racist cops who obviously believe he stole the flashy car he's driving. He begins lecturing them on stereotyping and says that just because he's black doesn't mean he stole the car... then he admits that he actually didsteal it. "But not because I'm black!".
The Mighty Ducks has two. The first Aesop, "don't take youth sports too seriously," is broken in the first film when the team's coach poaches the best player on the opposing team through a blatant application of rules lawyering, forcing an eleven-year-old to choose between his friends & father and his "team spirit." The second Aesop, "it's not important whether you win or lose, it's only important if you tried hard and had fun," is broken on a regular basis all throughout the series by the Ducks' habit of winning every important game they play in, usually with heavy applications of Down to the Last Play.
Moulin Rouge! is a movie about how love is the most wonderful thing there is and, more specifically, about how "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return"... despite breaking them both brutally. Yes, love can make you extremely happy... but it can also make you dumb like Satine, who bought into Zidler's "Break His Heart to Save Him" ploy to keep Christian away after she learnt that she was terminally ill from consumption to prevent him from finding out. Or, it can make you crazy and evil like the Duke, who almost raped Satine and threatened to take away the Moulin Rouge or kill Christian if she didn't go with him because he thought she loved him. Or all of them, like Christian, who didn't realize falling for a prostitute would mean she'd have to sleep with other men and who cruelly slut-shamed Satine in front of an audience after being beaten up by the Duke's thugs and having his heart broken by her because he thought he really didn't mean anything to her but easy money. And in the end, all the happiness Christian and Satine had together is dwarfed by all the pain, suffering and misery it caused them in the long run and by her death, and seeing how broken and desperate Christian is after that, it's implied that he probably will never get over it...so, was it really "the greatest thing"?.
In The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, Dorothy spends most of the film wanting to ask the wizard to make her a famous singer, until right at the end where she rejects it because she realises that what she really wants to go back home. Then, when she does get back to Kansas, she's immediately given an offer to become a famous singer, which she accepts. There's a suggestion that this is okay, because she now understands Kansas is still home even when she leaves it, but it doesn't quite land.
The film's message is ostensibly about the value of family and accepting one's parents. There was also "home is where the heart is." It does nothing to convince the audience that North had any real world logic in going back to them.
How does what happens in a child's dream count as a compelling message? Those stereotypes presumably aren't prevalent in universe, so it fails show that there are far worse parents out there, which should be a relatively easy task.
On Our Own, after being purchased by Feature Films for Families, received added scenes with Peggy's mother baking a cake while reacting to Peggy relating the story about the Robbins children to her. If the Robbins children never ran away, they never would have met Peggy — and Peggy never would have met Jack (who she planned to marry)! However, Peggy's mother maintains that Mitch's necessary acts of theft (in order to keep the family together) were morally wrong — and she planned to give Mitch an earful, as well as a hug.
Penelope has the same problem as Beauty and the Beast, of which it is a gender inversion — once she learns to accept her own appearance as an ugly person with a pig nose, she transforms into an attractive Christina Ricci.
Pinocchio (2022, Disney) manages to break almost all the Aesops in the original story and cartoon by never allowing Pinocchio to do anything bad. On Pleasure Island, for example, instead of being drawn into the chaos by Lampwick he passively rides through all of the exhibits on a boat, never doing anything himself other than drinking some beer.. root beer. Yet he still starts to turn into a donkey, implying that this isn't the consequences of his actions but simply an unavoidable result of existing on the island at all.
The Rambo franchise started out with First Blood, an anti-war condemnation of the dehumanisation of soldiers. In it, a returning veteran of The Vietnam War suffering from PTSD gets treated like crap by the country he fought for, accidentally kills one of his abusers in desperation and is hunted by the National Guard, only to end it by being talked down by his commanding officer (or by committing Suicide by Cop in the book it was based on). Film two and three of the franchise turned into action films about Rambo being a One-Man Army sent back into active war-zones to defeat the bad guys and help people, somewhat turning the message of the original film on its head.
One of the morals of the film is that you shouldn't play games to win, you should just play them for fun. However, if you lose in the OASIS, you "zero out" and lose all the money and items you've obtained. It gets worse since the OASIS currency is just as valuable as real world money, meaning you can potentially lose all of your savings and go broke, as seen when Aunt Alice's boyfriend zeroes out and loses all of her savings. Additionally, Halliday left his fortune and control of the OASIS to whoever wins his extremely dangerous contest, which also conflicts with his "play for fun" message.
Furthermore, the movie's Anti-Escapism Aesop where Wade shuts down the OASIS a couple days every week because the creator realized too late real life is the greatest adventure, and he wants to pass that along to the rest of the players.
Number 1, this rings false when Halliday creates the ultimate video game, then sets up a contest with a huge (real) monetary reward for exploring the virtual universe and plumbing its mysteries. And then at the end he tries to say there were better things they could've done with their time. Maybe Halliday shouldn't have come up with a contest encouraging people to spend all their time in the game trying to solve the mysteries he set up, if what he really wanted people to do was embrace real life and improve the real world.
Number 2, Halliday says this because despite his success he never had many close friends and only went on one date in his whole life. So he wants people to learn from his mistakes, turn off the video games sometimes and embrace life. Understandable. But Wade meets his group of Fire-Forged Friends, his perfect girlfriend, becomes a hero to billions and gains untold wealth because they spent all their time playing the OASIS and trying to win the contest.
Richie Rich briefly attempts to teach that money can't buy friendship, when that's effectively what happens when Cadbury pays off some local kids to visit Richie at his mansion and eventually befriend him.
Rock: It's Your Decision comes off less like a young man finding his moral path and more like he's been brainwashed by his parents and pastor into abandoning his friends and personality.
Saturday Night Fever glamorizes the disco scene of The '70s (to the point that it was released in a sanitized PG-rated version that strips out much of the more shocking elements), despite being a Deconstruction of said culture. Even with that excuse, the apparent message audiences took from it is far different than what the characters experience. It portrays heavy drug and alcohol use, empty casual sex, Jerkass protagonists with a serious case of Moral Myopia, and date rape (which is implied to be Annette's fault for getting drunk and high, and wanting to make Tony jealous, instead of blaming Tony's friends for taking advantage of her.) And yet, disco is portrayed as glamorous: there's all the dancing, the obvious escape from reality, the cool outfits, and a great soundtrack featuring The Bee Gees. In fact, if it weren't for this film, disco wouldn't have been as popular as it was.
Shallow Hal had an intended Aesop about how people should not be so shallow and judge people on the kind of person they are, not by how they look on the outside. This loses some steam considering how many fat jokes it has at Rosemary's expense.
Shoot 'Em Up has an anti-gun message all while containing the most gun-centric and gun-glorifying scenes ever put to film, in which both the heroes and villains accomplish almost every task set before them by using guns, right down to delivery babies. The irony is so blatant that it's surely intentional, making this a Stealth Parody.
Skyfall: Everyone in MI6 talks about how they're not too young/old for the job, yet they all fail at everything. Bond fails to get to his partner on time and Moneypenny fails to take the shot at the thief. Bond fails his test, fails to reach the informant, then misses the shot-glass. Q falls for the honeypot virus and M falls for the false capture. Finally, Bond fails to protect M.
Spectre tries to make a point against drone warfare when M lectures about how human agents can kill, but can also decide not to kill. The opening scene has Bond launch an assassination that spirals out of control into a collateral-damage-fest in the middle of a crowded festival in Mexico. This was a rogue operation he'd been working on behind his superiors' backs for years, because a video from his deceased previous boss told him to find and kill that target and then spy on whoever attended the funeral. None of that shows a whole lot of restraint nor sense of proportional responses. Later in the movie, M and Mission Control find the Big Bad's base on a satellite image, in the middle of the desert, easily and cleanly destroyable via an air strike. But the preferred option is to leave Bond to handle it alone by going up to the base, give up his weapons when asked, get captured and tortured, and only survive thanks to massive levels of Plot Armor and Bond Villain Stupidity. Given this Too Dumb to LiveCowboy Cop as an alternative, drone strikes suddenly look a lot more sensible.
Spider-Man: Homecoming has one of these in-universe. Peter is forced to watch a PSA video hosted by Captain America while in detention, in which Cap says that the real cool people follow the rules. The gym teacher showing the video admits the message doesn't work since Captain America is now legally a war criminal for opposing the Sokovia Accords, but the school hasn't gotten around to updating the curriculum yet. Also unstated is that Steve Rogers only even became Captain America in part becausehe broke the rules to get himself enlisted.
Star Trek: Generations: In the end, Picard tells Riker "time is a companion that goes with us on a journey and reminds us to cherish every moment... because it will never come again." Except that Picard saved the day because he was able to revisit particular moments in time.
In Star Trek: Insurrection, an idyllic society that is portrayed as perfect exists without technology, on a planet with magical radiation that makes the advanced medical technology of the Federation unnecessary, even though the chief engineer needs technology to see and the captain needs technology to keep his heart beating. Then, without technology ceasing to be bad, the heroes use phasers, transporters, starships and holodecks to save the planet to live their idyllic, technology-free existence as the easy victims of anyone who happens to stroll past. You could argue that the Federation was partially responsible for bringing a technologically advanced enemy to their doorstep, and thus the ante had been upped to where using technology wouldn't break the aesop, but Worf's Bajoran friends can tell you how well being defenseless and minding your own business works in a galaxy with the Romulans, Cardassians, Dominion, and Ferengi. On top of all that, the idyllic society that promotes the 'Technology = Evil' message is actually using technology of its own, in the form of farming implements and an irrigation system. The line where technology becomes bad seems to be drawn at an arbitrary point.
Word of God from Lucas says that the Sith are evil and suffer for their constant desire for more, while jedi are accepting of the world as it is already. But not only does that contradict the actions of the sith and jedi in many of the film (jedi going out to fix a problem, by hunting sith or a criminal, etc, and helping the rebellion, while Palpatine had rested on his laurels when he had built his empire), it also doesn't reflect the setting we see, in which Palpatine gets everything he wants, and runs a galactic empire for decades, as the jedi have all but died out, with the few survivors living out their days in hiding in a desert and a swamp, dwelling on their past mistakes, until new jedi arise to help overthrow the empire.
The Rise of Skywalker reveals Rey was the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine leading to the Aesop one can come from the worst background imaginable and still become a hero. But it also reveal's Rey's parent's weren't nobodies who sold her off for drinking money as presented in the prior movie, but Good Parents who did that to protect Rey from Palpatine's and their influence, even sacrificing their lives to do so, which helps motivate Rey to oppose Palpatine. So Rey actually came from a pretty good background, all things considered, which played a critical role in her becoming a hero.
Steel has an anti-gun message, even though Steel uses a weapon that is, by definition, a gun. Moreover, he wants to create more such weapons to stop the bad guys... from creating more such weapons.
The Swarm (1978) preaches environmental responsibility: the military wants to use pesticides that would damage the environment, while Michael Caine's scientist, Dr. Crane, keeps suggesting other methods. Unfortunately, the threat of the killer bees is so overdone (at one stage, they cause the explosion of a nuclear power plant) that this continuing refusal is hard to justify. Especially when Crane finally succeeds by pouring oil on the ocean and setting it on fire.
Swimming with Sharks: Buddy Ackerman, who's being tortured by Guy whom he had mistreated, unleashes a speech about how one has to suffer to earn good things and be willing to work for them and how he endured it too. It would be nice except that Buddy was not simply a demanding or strict boss but a complete and utter sadist who took extreme pleasure in mistreating everyone he could and blatantly stole a brilliant idea Guy had. The film spends so long showing Buddy as a monster and Guy as a dogged employee that the sudden shift to make Guy the bad one for committing these acts just feels like a last-minute apology. If Buddy's speech is the intended Aesop, the moral of the story is "If you endure suffering, you have every right in the world to make others go through the same and anyone who says otherwise is a naive spoiled brat."
Terminator Genisys has the dubious honor of ruining the central aesop of the entire franchise. While the original continuity was about humanity creating its own executioner out of warmongering and paranoia, TG has an evil time-travelling robot smuggling Skynet in under the guise of an innocuous application, ostensibly designed for the betterment of all mankind. This practically exonerates humans of the wrongs the story is supposed to be warning against. If anything, the fault of humanity can be found in not being suspicious and paranoid enough.
Toys has a strong anti-war message and portrays all but one of its military characters as dangerous lunatics... but then in the finale the heroes stand against the villain and solve all of their problems with violence.
Unhinged (2020) The film’s message appears to be that you should be careful and considerate towards other drivers who might be having a bad day, however because it begins by establishing that the man is a murderous psycho rather than introduce him at the traffic-lights without a backstory, it breaks that moral and puts everything he says about teaching Rachel a lesson into question when he might have simply been looking for if not deliberately trying to provoke someone to target For the Evulz, making the moral that you should never honk at or confront other drivers over potentially dangerous, irresponsible or rude behavior out of fear that they might be a murderous psychopath with nothing to loose who will who make you and your love ones their next target.
The film Utøya: July 22, a reenactment of the Breivik Massacre (the film being named for the island and date it took place on) has, among others, the moral that it is possible to retain humanity while on the run from a shooter. The catch is, the heroine helps absolutely no one and gets herself uselessly killed. If she had run to the hiding place and stayed there, it would be better for everyone. The director stated that the aim of the film is to show the danger of right-wing extremism, but since all of Breivik's motives and his phrases (he was reportedly shouting "Die Marxists!" during his rampage) are cut from the film, there is nothing left to support this thesis.
The Christian movie What If... runs on a big Broken Aesop. The premise of the story is that a life led by God is better than one that isn't, even if the former makes you poorer and less important. The movie sets about proving this by having the main character, a CEO who is on the verge of executing a hostile takeover of a company, transported to a parallel universe where he is the minister of a failing church, and married with several kids. Instead of having God or anything else solve the problem and proving the aesop, it has the main character solve all of the financial problems... by using the stock market knowledge he gained from being a Godless CEO in the other world to invest in the companies he dealt with there, thus making a profit when the deal went through. Read: he committed Insider Trading with himself in a parallel universe. Due to the weird circumstances, this isn't a crime, it may not even be a sin, but it certainly doesn't establish that one should believe in God when the optimal resolution hinges on knowledge gotten from not believing in him.
Woman Obsessed: A woman's new husband is built up for the first ¾ of the movie to be abusive towards her and her son. At one point, while what happens next is open for interpretation, he appears to rape her after closing the door (she even mentions that her child with him was conceived out of "fear and hatred," so make of that what you will). She then loses the baby and the husband takes her to the doctor, which is very far away and carried her the last six miles. The last ¼ of the movie contains the doctor chastising her for wanting to leave her, you know, abusive husband and everybody forgiving him. While the problem isn't that he was redeemed, it was that the first ¾ of the movie built up how horrible and abusive he was and how much we should hate him, but the last ¼ quickly snapped into expecting everybody to forgive him for doing something good. The worst part is that not only does everybody forgive him and he ends up being the hero, it actually ends with her begging his forgiveness for wanting to leave him. The Aesop turns out to be "If your husband beats you, stick around if he helps you anyway because his Freudian Excuse makes it OK." Then again, the movie was made in the late 50s, so there is probably some Values Dissonance here.
The Wizard of Oz: The moral Dorothy learns during the film is that everything she wants is at her home in Kansas. However, while she did wish to travel the world, she wasn't dissatisfied with her life on the farm and she only ran away because she was scared Miss Gulch would kill Toto (although her interaction with the traveling mystic reveals otherwise as she confirms his guesses about her general unhappiness and alienation). This is rectified by the musical, for which the opening number is entitled "Nobody Understands Me," and Dorothy expresses her feelings of loneliness and being misunderstood.
X-Men: The audience is supposed to find Senator Kelly's Mutant Registration Act reprehensible, but he brings up a good point that there's nothing stopping people with superhuman abilities from using them with ill intent. He specifically brings up Kitty Pride's ability to phase through walls, remarking that there's nothing stopping her from waltzing into a bank vault or into the White House, and indeed in X2: X-Men United Nightcrawler does exactly the latter, teleporting right past all the Secret Service agents and coming this close to assassinating the President. Granted, this point is undermined by the fact that Nightcrawler had been kidnapped and brainwashed by a rogue human military officer demonizing mutants to carry out his own genocidal agenda, but still.
"No, they can't cure us. Because there's nothing to cure. Nothing's wrong with you." Says the woman with perfect control over the local weather to the girl who has to constantly avoid touching anyone for fear of killing them. The intent is obviously that it's not inherently bad to be different, but the message kinda falls apart when it's being delivered by someone who won the Superpower Lottery to someone whose Power Incontinence renders her Blessed with Suck.
It's even broken in-universe when Beast, who also has no control over his appearance, points out directly to Storm "Not all of us can blend in so easily. You don't shed on furniture." But it rings a bit hollow when Storm is still put in charge of the school anyway.
