Another example of lazily-interpreted, might-makes-right, proto-Nazi Nietzsche comes from the movies inspired by the real-life murder case of the Nietzsche-reading pair Leopold and Loeb. The most famous one is, of course, Hitchcock’s Rope, which, you guessed it, also namedrops the main dude, but there’s also Murder by Numbers, a Sandra Bullock-Ryan Gosling thriller you probably forgot until now, and that, yup, well, also references him. Misinterpreting Nietzsche is sadly a general pattern in mainstream movies, but hey, if they can’t even understand what turns their own classic, cyborgs-from-the-future, wars-in-the-stars blockbusters into diminishing-return franchises, it’s not like we could demand much better.
So what’s next, Hollywood? How about an eternal recurrence action movie that doesn’t absolutely suck? Or will the MCU end up returning back to the first Iron Man in a few years and claim an entire endless looped time reboot? Because yeah, just as it happens with True Detective-referenced circular time, time loop movies are the other Nietzschean theme par excellence, and even his great fictional work has been argued by non-grifty, actual Nietzsche specialists to be set in a Groundhog Day. So Netflix, since you’re obviously obsessed with eternally returning to this idea, why not just get it over with and call me so we can do it properly?
I mean, even the theme song is already written.
Top Image: Universal Pictures