YMMV / Malcolm X

• Anvilicious: The end, in which Ossie Davis flat-out tells us what to think about Malcolm X.
• Award Snub: The film received a whopping two Academy Award nominations for Best Actor (Washington) and Best Costume Design. It won neither. Washington's snub is particularly criticized with many saying the Oscar should've been his and he lost because Al Pacino was overdue.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In the film, Malcolm, Betty, and their children manages to escape their house unscathed after it was firebombed. In 1997, Betty Shabazz died of third degree burns after her grandson Malcolm Shabazz set their house on fire during a psychotic episode.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Malcolm saying "Yeah, that brother's starving!" gained traction, particularly among Twitter, as a reaction clip for whenever people online act horny.
  • Malcolm slamming his desk in anger is a popular gif, usually for learning someone respected is actually problematic much like Malcolm learns at that point in the film.
• Misaimed Merchandising: "X Brand" potato chips. Yes, they were Halal. Yes, all the proceeds went to charity. Still...
• Misaimed Fandom: Some viewers and activists have embraced Malcolm's rhetoric during the scenes where he is fully ingrained with the Nation of Islam even though the film ultimately shows Malcolm making his pilgrimage to Mecca and realizing the group's rhetoric is a bastardization of Islam and racial equality.
• Narm: As moving as the ending montage is, the sequence immediately after it, with the school children shouting "I am Malcolm X!" in succession, comes across as a bit forced and over-dramatic.
• Retroactive Recognition: The film features an early appearance by Michael Imperioli, if you didn't recognize him from Goodfellas.
  • Kate Vernon, who plays Malcolm's girlfriend Sophia, would later gain widespread recognition for her role as Ellen Tigh in Battlestar Galactica (2003).
  • Walter Emanuel Jones has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it role in the background of the opening barbershop scene. A year after the film came out, he became internationally known for his role as the original Black Ranger in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
  • Talmadge Hayer, the only member of the assassination team to get caught, is played by Giancarlo Esposito, many, many years before he shot to stardom as Gus Fring on Breaking Bad.
  • Wendell Pierce appears as Ben Thomas, another member of the assassination team, around a decade before he broke out as Detective Bunk Moreland on The Wire.
  • Richard Schiff, who plays a reporter at the press conference Malcolm gives after his trip to Africa, would later become known as Toby Ziegler on The West Wing.
• Values Dissonance: A meta example. While the justification can be made for its historical setting, a movie with that many uses of the N-word would not be given a PG-13 rating these days.
• Vindicated by History: Despite its unexceptional critical reception around the time of its release and its relatively obscure status in the present day, several big-name fans (including film critic Roger Ebert and director Martin Scorsese) have proclaimed it to be one of the best films of The '90s. It's also regularly considered in the running for being Lee's best film alongside Do the Right Thing. It was added to the National Film Registry in 2010, meaning that the US government considers the film to be culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.

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