YMMV / The Whale

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Ellie the Jerk with a Heart of Gold that Charlie believes her to be? Someone just lashing out because of her own Dark and Troubled Past, but ultimately trying to help others? Or is she just a cruel bully who takes sadistic pleasure in tormenting others, like her mother believes? Near the end of the movie, she blackmails Thomas into smoking pot and photographs him doing it, then records him admitting to stealing from the church and sends all of it to his church and family. While Charlie believes she was genuinely helping Thomas since it let him reconnect with his family once they forgave him, it can also feel like Ellie's attempt to torment another person simply failed because she didn't foresee the reaction her actions would get.
  • Was Thomas's family being genuine, or were they trying to lure him back home in order to exact punishment on him?
  • Was Dan the Pizza Man motivated to spy on Charlie out of a desire to help him, or just curiosity? Did he flee simply because he was revolted by Charlie's appearance, or did he also feel guilty for discovering Charlie's secret?
• Angst Aversion: Although this film has been praised, there are still many people who find it too depressing to watch, with Ellie's hostility toward Charlie and Charlie's deteriorating health being the biggest contributors.
• Award Snub:
  • The film was expected to get an Academy Award Adapted Screenplay nomination, having made the lineup at the Critics Choice and BAFTA awards, but ultimately missed. It also missed the Best Picture lineup despite nabbing a nomination at the Producers Guild of America awards.
  • While Brendan Fraser and Hong Chau scored Academy Award nominations for their performances (the former won Best Actor), Sadie Sink did not.
• Base-Breaking Character: Ellie. Some praise her for Sadie Sink's genuine performance, while others find her too unbearable to stand out in any way.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Liz and Mary (especially the latter) telling off Ellie for her treatment of Charlie.
  • Charlie slowly walking towards his daughter (despite his current state) while she reads her Moby-Dick essay from middle school to him. His satisfaction in seeing his daughter's happiness for once really seals it.
• Critical Dissonance: Slight example. On sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, critics scores are pretty mixed but lean in a somewhat positive direction (60 and a 65% respectively). Audience reactions, on the other hand, were significantly more positive, with a 7.7 average score for the former and a whopping 91% on the latter. What's also notable is that this is a significant step-up for Aronofsky, whose last two films were pretty low on the audience end of things (especially mother!, which is infamous for being one of the few films to get an F rating on CinemaScore).
• He Really Can Act:
  • While Brendan Fraser has a history flexing his chops as a dramatic actor in works such as 1998's Gods and Monsters or 2002's The Quiet American, a vast majority of movie viewers associate him with silly popcorn blockbusters, such as The Mummy Trilogy franchise, or comedies like George of the Jungle or Bedazzled (2000), even following his hiatus and return to acting in the late 2010s. His tour de force performance in this film, believably capturing the emotional and physical and life struggles of Charlie, a suicidal man who is also clearly very intelligent and selfless, blew away everyone's expectations, being a feat that probably few professional actors can hope to match, earning him many well-deserved accolades, including the 2023 Oscar for Best Actor.
  • To a lesser degree, Sadie Sink, who is well-known for her work on Stranger Things, shows her worth as Ellie, a deeply unpleasant yet still troubled individual whose estrangement from her father at a young age resulted in major self-esteem issues.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Ellie. She may be unpleasant, possibly sociopathic, but she was abandoned by Charlie at a very young age and has struggled ever since, feeling undeserving of love.
  • Mary as well. She's not exactly a pleasant person to be around and drinks excessively, but she did have to deal with a man who married her just to have a child and then left her for another man. She's also been the victim of cyberbullying from her own daughter, and she sounds so hopeless as she describes how evil she thinks her daughter is.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The main reason why the film was highly anticipated was because it was Brendan Fraser's first leading role in a theatrical film in more than a decade.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Only frame in the movie ^ExplanationFor whatever reason, news outlets, journalist sites, and even the film's theatrical poster seem to only use this specific frame◊, which led to people semi-ironically asking if that is the only frame in the whole film. This led to jokes that either the movie is absurdly short or is a hour and 50 minutes of that frame alone, such as this for the latter interpretation.
  • "That's an interesting perspective."^ExplanationCharlie's gently snarky response to Ellie calling Walt Whitman a "nineteenth century faggot" has gotten some use as a reaction image to bad takes.
• Nausea Fuel: Charlie binge-eating on pizza and other unhealthy foods to the point of having a Vomit Indiscretion Shot.
• One-Scene Wonder: Samantha Morton shows up one hour into the film for a ten-minute sequence, but most certainly makes her presence felt. The fact that it's a pivotal scene helps.
• Signature Scene:
  • The shot of Charlie glaring out with a somber expression, as mentioned in Memetic Mutation.
  • The binge-eating montage is also one of the most frequently discussed scenes in the movie, as well as one of the saddest.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Ellie's general hostility and resentfulness towards Charlie is quite heartbreaking, to say the least.
  • "I need to know that I have done ONE THING RIGHT WITH MY LIFE!" Even its usage in the trailer alone had viewers admitting to tearing up, especially because of how real the sadness appears when taking into account the inner and external turmoil Brendan Fraser dealt with.
  • The aforementioned and widely discussed binge-eating montage, with many viewers and critics calling it a depressingly realistic depiction of an eating disorder.
  • "Daddy, please..."
  • The ending, which heavily implies but doesn't confirm if Charlie died just as he's made his daughter happy for once.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The film's official poster◊ has been heavily criticized and mocked for being oddly airbrushed and giving off an almost "horror"-like feel.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Ellie is presented as being justifiably angry that her father walked out on her at a young age, but her behavior in the film points less to her simply being hurt and acting out and more towards outright psychopathy. She posts pictures of dead animals online, makes violent threats to her schoolmates, insults and abuses Charlie at every turn (even drugging him at one point), and helps Thomas purely by accident, as she couldn't imagine that a family would want to reconcile with their son. Charlie's need to believe that she really is a good person reaches the point of being delusional. Her mother, who has equal reason to be angry at Charlie, seems to have made her peace with his decision and considers her daughter nothing less than a monster.
• The Woobie:
  • Charlie, who lost his partner to suicide and has been estranged from his family for years, with his daughter openly harassing him at every opportunity.
  • Thomas, who has also been estranged from his family and was even blackmailed and manipulated by Ellie upon finding out his secret. Fortunately, his family manages to reconcile with him anyway.

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