re: Michael is actually the villain in Godfather II

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I hate Diane Keaton but no wonder she left him

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dude she aborted his son, and in the end, she tried to come crawling back anyways.

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And if you haVe your brother under your thumb after that incident, do you really have to kill him?

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He tried to have him KILLED..

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The murder of Appollonia seemed to make him hate life and the world.

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rightfully so

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She took out the future boss ....Because of this must end

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That would be her justification, sure, but to Michael, that's unforgivable, it's murder of his son.

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He didn’t know it gonna be a hit, he was obviously not the sharpest tool in the shed and manipulated by Roth and Uncle Jr

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Any disloyalty must be punished, or it will happen again eventually.

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That’s why I think the last scene of the movie when he is sitting alone thinking about the last dinner he had with the family before going off to war is the best, most powerful scene in the series. Not really showed just how far he had fallen.

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There's a lot going on in that scene. Sonny brings Carlo home and introduces him to Connie. Tessio brings in the birthday cake. And of course, Fredo is the only one who congratulates Michael on his decision.

Too bad Brando didn't come back, but perhaps the scene is best as it is.

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We all understand that’s Michael’s rationale, we’re just saying with Fredo it’s not necessary

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it was even said above how Fredo was manipulated/played a fool in regards to setting Michael up.. whos to say it doesn't happen again? Fredo was a liability, he had to go.

He probably just means her and her acting style. She's a little weird. Kind of over-acts

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the problem is that this dies in the first movie. not with the Corleone family, but with the 5 families

they all choose to become degenerate drug dealers, except the Corleones. so this romanticized version of terrible people is gone forever

if Michael didn't do what he did and how he did, they'd all have been killed. it's that simple

they're all villains. you just bought into the window dressing. a couple scenes after that wedding Vito sends muscle to a Hollywood producer to force him to pick Vito's relative in a movie role (after that relative cucked him)

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Agree.

Their family is dead if they don't take out the heads of the other families.

And Vito was ruthless as hell from the very beginning. He's just painted in a different light

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I hate Diane Keaton but no wonder she left him



Why, in film and TV, do people always hate the woman who doesn't want to put up with the man's dumb shite?

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I just hate her as an actress.

Well and the characters she plays - haven't liked a single Diane Keaton character, her shrill, ugly holier than though personality is grating. Hated her Annie Hall character...Family Stone, Father of the Bride, First Wives Club...her goal in every movie is to emasculate and get back at her man.

My favorite scene in Godfather is when Michael shuts the door in her face. God she is so annoying.

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He still had the values and the advisors.

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Like cheating on his wife, setting his sister up with a trash buddy of his, and not listening to his (adopter) brother/lawyer

At its heart the movie is about the social change taking place over the time period that the story covers.

Vito represents the pre-modern value system. He is just as concerned with power, money, prestige, and all of those things as all men have been down through the ages, and he is ruthless in its pursuit. But, he tempers his materialism with a deeper set of values. Family is important, perhaps most important, to him. He has a moral code that he lives by. The drug business would have made Vito a lot of money, and he knows it, but he still turns it down because it feels wrong to him. In his mind, he only hurts those who either deserve it, or who have made a conscious choice to make a living in a way that might get them hurt. He respects bargains and stands up for those who have stood up for him, even if only in a small way. He is not just a father to his sons, he is legitimately close to them, and they to him.

Contrast this with Michael, who represents modern morality. He has no depth of character at all. Although he seems like a nice guy when we first meet him, it gradually becomes clear that he is anything but. His treatment of Kay is sociopathic. He keeps her around when it is convenient, leaves her when it is convenient, and then shows back up again years later and simply expects her to come back, all while failing to mention that he got married and his wife was assassinated in the interim. He wants wealth and power for its own sake, but has no idea how to be happy. He talks about how much he loves his family, but he spends almost no time with them, sees them mostly as leeches and ingrates, and disposes of them when that becomes more convenient than keeping them around. He doesn’t care who he hurts in order to get what he wants, nor does he have any scruples about what kind of business he gets involved in.

The message of the movie is that because there was more to Vito than just a thug chasing money, he found happiness, while Michael, for all of his success, never does.

One might also see the movie as a critique of capitalism, a system which tends to reward selfish, immoral, antisocial behavior. The Corleones are rich and powerful precisely because they are willing to do whatever it takes to gain wealth and influence, and Michael succeeds where Vito failed precisely because he was willing to be even more immoral and antisocial than Vito was. But the success that Michael finds is a lie, and in the end he longs for a time when he wasn’t eaten up by the crass materialism that the system encourages in him.