The Fight Club of Movies: The “Filmbro” Experience
- Esther
- Jan 16
- 4 min read
It’s getting harder to escape a Letterboxd "Filmbro" explaining Tyler Durden or the ‘genius’ of Godard jump cuts to you nowadays. In this Film and TV article, Esther dives into the exclusive and supposedly ‘secret’ world of the "filmbro" club.
“The first rule of fight club is that you do not talk about fight club”.
A quote that seems to resonate deeply with the secret society of “filmbros”, notorious for being misunderstood intellectual hermits who pride themselves on gatekeeping their apparent “niche” taste in cinema. Albeit their top 4 Letterboxd films have either been nominated for, or won countless awards for best original screenplay at Cannes or the Oscars. So much for underground exclusivity.
According to the internet, there are mainly two subgroups of filmbros. The first subtype of "filmbros" usually falls under the “performative male” category. Their prominence usually arises in the dating scene or any social function, where they want to stand out and be perceived as a hopeless romantic who’s in touch with their feminine side through the media they consume.
Their taste in films ranges from French New Wave films to modern romantic films such as Vivre Sa Vie by Jean-Luc Godard, Jules and Jim by François Truffaut, Buffalo 66 by Vincent Gallo, and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Michel Gondry. They could give their unsolicited views on all these convoluted films while still completely misinterpreting the casual subjugation of the women characters as objects of desire in their fantasy playground.
The second type of "filmbros" is essentially a stereotype of a subgroup of insufferable self-proclaimed cinephiles who think they have an acquired taste in films, when really their lens of the cinematic world is just a certain subset of mainstream Hollywood movies.
The general film discography of the latter usually consists of any Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino films, like Inception, Interstellar, Reservoir Dogs and Inglourious Basterds, to name a few; mafia movies like The Godfather, Goodfellas, and Scarface; and films that dabble with the male loneliness epidemic, like Taxi Driver, Fight Club and Joker.
This set of films, in their words, is usually described as “hands down, the greatest film of all time” or “S-Tier films”, accompanied with unrelenting condescending remarks of “you probably wouldn’t get it” or “you’ve probably never heard of it”. They are too conceited to realise that there are other exceptional foreign and underground indie films in the film space that probably offer a far better portrayal of the male gaze. This begs the million-dollar question: what qualities of such films are so special in the eyes of the filmbros?
A universal recipe to bait and reel the attention of these filmbros is the obvious andocentric-driven plots that promote the traditional masculinity portrayed in cinema, which is a direct reflection of our reality, where a man’s worth is only recognised through their displayed macho bravado used to conceal their insecurities and vulnerability, which has a close correlation with male loneliness.
Most of these films have a dark and gritty tone, giving them a waft of sophistication and mystery in the air. The glorification of violence and aggression depicted in these films is used as an emotional suppressant to resolve conflict, or even viewed as a cathartic experience to gain a sense of control to prove the character's hypercompetency. This creates a false sense of superiority and reinforces the disillusionment that one's strength can only be recognised through the lens of being socially dominant.
A common misconception about these “filmbro” movies is that they’re exclusive to men who hold strong patriarchal values. In reality, they fail to realise that half of the movies that they idolise are mostly satirical takes used to critique the culture of toxic masculinity and the patriarchal system that feeds into it. Instead, they would romanticise the protagonist's blatant flaws, putting them on a pedestal and labelling them ‘iconic’ or ‘goated’ while completely missing the point of the plot and the recurring fundamental themes that play out in the film.
This social pandemic of assembling the “filmbros” has made a definite impact on film culture and society. Without even realising, the “filmbo” mindset has created a segregation within the film community by homogenising critical discourse and alienating others who explore and appreciate unconventional ideas in cinema. Ironically, this community is also just as much of a victim of the culture it perpetuates; it embeds values of ‘stoicism’ in younger viewers, discourages them from opening up and instead spiraling into rage and fantasies of control.
The “Filmbros” is more of a concept than an actual group of boys who only dress up as Patrick Bateman or Tyler Durden for Halloween every year. Figuratively, they represent men who are consciously or subconsciously incapable of identifying the complexities of being human, regardless of the gender roles portrayed in films. They are only competent to resonate with the superficial qualities of those films, without even knowing they’re the product of a patriarchal male-dominated industry that caters to the male gaze.
They are always just… missing the point.
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