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Movie Name : Sudden Death
Actress Name : Faith Minton
Character Name : Carla
Year : 1995
In 1995 movie Sudden Death. Actress Faith Minton plays as villainess Carla. One of the iconic villains and one of my favorite villains of all time, let's watch our villainess Carla played by the gorgeous Faith Minton.
I keep saying it, 90s movies always look better than modern movies, like even the intro with fire, the movie basically stats with the hero having his life trauma, which is like very common in movies then, don't know why, probably to make the hero sympathetic, in Double Impact they did the same thing, like the two twins have lost their parents, even Batman have similar origin story.
I don't get why the 90s aesthetic is so charming, like the cloths, the props, it's like the movie have a soul, modern tech sometimes make the movie feel soulless, and the way how easy things are, it restrict the plot points and the drama, like, I wish if there are more movies today that just ignore modern tech and pretend they don't exist, it doesn't have to make sense, as long as it gives us better plots and movies that are more fun to watch and enjoy.
Around 7:30 mark, we see a glimpse of our gorgeous villainess, It's like for a second..
I think everyone know the plot of the movie, the hero is basically a security guard, and the villains plan to take over a stadium during a big game etc..
The idea that the hero is driven by his personal trauma of failing to rescue a little girl in a firefight, which create a personal motive for the character to save his daughter, like in order to create drama and tension and sense of urgency.
Come on, I totally forgot about that, in 12 minutes time mark, Jean-Claude Van Damme is like gloating on how he can speak French, so he basically speak French to one of the players.
Ok, around 16 minutes, you see how the movie smartly avoided taking a political stance, like, how they asked the players "Are you democrats or republicans?" and they replied as a joke "Neither, sir, Canadians", basically what they are saying, it's just a movie..
Yeah, movies can be political, but if they answer anything other than that, they may risk alienating half of their audiences, so they smartly avoided that, which would weight the movie down, since it's just an action movie, and it doesn't need to be more than that.
30 minutes in, don't feel bored, there's no lectures, I'm just watching the movie, that's escapism..
We kind of see Carla around 30 minutes mark, she's like in the penguin costume, she killed the poor lady, then the daughter of the hero saw it, now Carla take the little girl hostage, so she doesn't expose her.
Our gorgeous villainess then take her and joined the rest of the bad guys, we see her face briefly, and god, she's so beautiful..
The final fight between the hero and Carla starts just afterwards around 37 minutes, you can see here scenes Here.
Now, the reason Carla is one of my favorite villains of all time, is basically this, her unique character and scarcity, the reason she's unique that there's no other character in the movie as unique as her, and scarcity because, at least for me, when she died, I really wanted to see her again, like I would go to watch this movie in the theater once more just for it to give me two more minutes of her onscreen, not any other character, not even the hero himself, only Carla, her scarcity is what make her character is the best character in the movie, some may claim that the poor woman Carla killed in the start is also as unique, but she's actually isn't, because there are thousands like her in the movie, while there's only one Carla, one henchwoman, that's why in movies with no scarcity of villains like for example The Walking Dead and Black Hawk Down, villains aren't unique or scarce, there's abundance of them, and when you take away the uniqueness and scarcity from any character, you may end up dehumanizing them over time, even if they are heroes, like when you enforce rules that put entire groups to act the same exact perfect way with abundance even if you portray them as heroes, you end up dehumanizing them. It's like this, the best characters are the characters when a show/movie ends, you want to see them the most, and the worst characters is when the movie/show ends and you can't stand seeing them on screen, it doesn't matter if they are villains or heroes, as for our fandom, Faith Minton will always be a star here.
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Why Villains Watch Movies?
How to use the evil values to make a henchwoman story
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Since I already made a post on how to make anti-moralistic story using evil, I think it's fair to also explain how is it possible to use evil values to write moralistic story for fun, and it will be a tragedy LOL.
First of all let's explain how the decadent movement used female villains in order to create emotional intensity and after that let's see how such emotional intensity can be used to create an emotional intensity towards a hero.
Decadent artists delved into subjects like eroticism, decay, perversity, and the occult to provoke intense emotional responses exploring sensuality, death, and forbidden desire, using vivid imagery to evoke both repulsion and fascination, intensifying emotional engagement.
Decadents prioritized sensory overload, often depicting opulent, exotic, or grotesque imagery to stimulate the senses.
Decadent works emphasized sensory richness, using opulent or grotesque imagery to overwhelm the audience’s senses. Villains were often depicted with exaggerated sensuality or grotesquery, making them magnetic yet disturbing figures. This heightened aesthetic amplified emotions like awe, dread, or forbidden desire, drawing readers or viewers into the character’s world.
Decadents also used imagery to depict villains in ways that heightened their emotional impact. The exaggerated traits of these characters—whether their beauty, cruelty, or decadence—created a larger-than-life presence that stirred intense emotional reactions.
These elements were used to immerse audiences in a heightened sensory experience, often through villains whose immoral actions or artificial personas amplified emotions like desire, dread, or fascination.
"Matei Calinescu, Literary Theorist: The Decadent villain’s sensory world awakens subconscious longings, a beauty and desire that moralists, in their blindness, dismiss as depravity."
So, that's basically it, using moral decay and charisma in order to create intense emotions, it's true that the concept was based on female villains, but it can also work on male villains too, for example Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal played by Mads Mikkelsen, or Dr. Quentin Costa played by Bruno Campos, and of course Gus in Breaking Bad played by Giancarlo Esposito, Miguel Bain in Assassins played Antonio Banderas the whole idea is to make the right amount of contrast between the charisma of the character and its moral decay, and if the audience felt the intense emotion of longing, well, congratulations, you made a great villain.
Now let's see how to use that to create a hero..
Basically the reason people love female villains especially and charismatic male villains despite their actions is the contrast between monstrous actions and the appeal of the character, and such contrast create intense feeling that stronger than just beauty, as decadent artists see it, both characteristics are inseparable, like an inc and a white paper, let's say the white paper is the appeal of the character, and the immorality is dark lines that bring the character into life, if you want to reverse that, what you would need is a black paper with white lines, with female villains, you love the characters despite the immoral actions they commit, because how beautiful and charismatic they are, if you want to reverse it, you would have to create a character that look really unappealing, but they act like an angel..
Examples of such characters, Creature played by Robert De Niro in Frankenstein, Beauty and the Beast, I think the concept even apply on Deadpool, like the contrast of how he looks and how he acts is there.
So, let's have fun, let's create a Chinese hero, who make such contrast and people love him despite how he looks, because of his moral.
Let's call the character Dashuan, since he's the last Chinese name I remember from a movie, Dashuan is a cute young man, who in love with a Chinese beauty and can't confess his love to her, he doesn't care about politics and try to stay away from trouble, but one night he goes back home late, for a drunk Japanese soldiers bully him, he try to defend himself, but they stab him with the blades of their guns, then to be taken as a prisoner, but instead of staying in prison he find himself taken in some lab, now, he will end up like a test subject of their experiments, while being injected, he's tormented, he's trying to release himself but can't do anything, his body changes, and deformed, they assume he's dead so they get rid of the body, then he somehow get back to life, people stay away from him fearing he's infected - what he face is similar to the creature in Frankenstein - he always get flashes of what happened in the lab, and while wandering aimlessly, another group of Japanese solders bully him, but now he act violently and kill them in his rage. The soldiers after him, and he only try to survive, then he sees the one he loves, and while looking at her without her noticing him, he look in the glass of a widow, see how he looked, and he feels as if he's dying inside, but suddenly the Japanese find him, knock him over, and take him in prison, and because how powerful he become, they offer to him to join them instead of killing him, he refuse, but then they bring the one he love, who doesn't even recognize him, they offer him that in return for working for them, they will turn her too to be like him, he agree, and they start to put her in the same place he was in, but it's like he remember what happen to him as if it's happening again, and thinking that the one he loves would face the same agony he had, so, he revolt, free her, and fight them for the last time, helping her to escape with the other fellow Chinese that were taken into captivity, and block the door the prevent the Japanese from going after them, but while he's blocking the door, they keep stabbing him with the rifles blades, and he sees her and cry, then they shoot him, but then the innocent prisoners already escaped, and then he either ends back on the lab or die to make sure they escape, depends on which degree of intensity is needed. This can be an ending, and you can build on such ending, like for example, the one he loves join the communist resistance and free him later.. I know, it's full of plot holes, I really don't care, it's just something I wrote in two minutes, and I wouldn't give a moralistic story more than that from my free time LOL.
Anyway, in such story, we applied the decadent movement principles of using contrast to amplify feelings, we used The Myth of Sisyphus when he ended up in the lap closing the ring, also with the blades of the rifles from when they attacked him and ended up in prison, and then once again when he was protecting the door, also we used Albert Camus philosophy and finding a meaning in the face of the absurd, as he find a meaning of a meaningless suffering by helping other people, we also used The virtue of selfishness, in a way that him saving her also comes from his own experience and he's own suffering, so he's moral actions is justified individualistically for people who don't share the same collective moral code of the creator, and he also turned into a selfless hero towards the end.
The whole point of all I wrote is to create intense emotions, using morality or immorality to achieve that is irrelevant.
Favorite Quote
"Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray: Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it, the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless."
"Elaine Showalter, Literary Critic: Decadent literature used the figure of the villain—often a dandy or femme fatale—to explore the boundaries of desire and morality, creating a tension that was both seductive and disturbing. The artificiality of their world and the decay of their moral frameworks intensified the emotional experience for readers."
"Richard Ellmann, Wilde Biographer: Wilde’s characters, like Dorian Gray and Salomé, are vehicles for exploring the paradox of beauty in decay. Their pursuit of forbidden pleasure, cloaked in artifice, creates a heightened emotional intensity that both attracts and repels, mirroring the Decadent fascination with the perverse."
"David Weir, Decadence Scholar: The Decadent villain’s sensory world—opulent, exotic, and often grotesque—was a deliberate assault on the senses, designed to evoke a feverish emotional state where desire and horror intertwined."
"Oscar Wilde: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."
"Oscar Wilde: An artist has no ethical sympathies at all. Virtue and wickedness are to him simply what the colours on his palette are to the painter."
"Aubrey Beardsley: Art must be its own justification, free from the chains of moral preaching."
"Salvador Dalí: To impose morality on art is to kill its soul; it must be free to shock and disturb."
"Oscar Wilde: Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope."
How to use the evil values to make moralistic story
The Decadent Movement or the female villains fandom in the 19th century
The Decadent Movement, a late 19th-century European literary and artistic phenomenon, primarily in France and England, celebrated aesthetic beauty, sensuality, rejecting collective morality in favor of individual expression and the philosophy of “art for art’s sake.” Emerging as a reaction against the moralistic constraints of Christian, Victorian, and bourgeois values, the movement embraced exoticism, transgression, and the sublime, often portraying villains—especially female ones—as seductive, autonomous figures whose beauty transcended ethical judgment. Influenced by Aestheticism, Decadent artists and writers such as Oscar Wilde, Gustave Moreau, and Charles Baudelaire challenged collective morality, clashing with Christian critics and fascistic movements in Germany and Italy, and today with Hollywood thought police.
What the movement was known for?
Glorification of Beauty Over Morality: The movement prioritized beauty over ethics, depicting villains like Salome (Salome, 1891) and Medea (Jason and Medea, 1865),with lush imagery, their evil acts secondary to their allure.
Appeal of the Beautiful Villain: Female villains - femmes fatales or sorceresses - were celebrated for their seductive power and defiance, as seen in Faustine (Poems and Ballads, 1866) and Raoule de Vénérande (Monsieur Vénus, 1884).
Power and Agency: Villains were autonomous, using beauty to defy norms, rejecting loss of agency.
Celebration of Female Villains in Defeat: Defeated villains (for example Salome and Nana in Nana, 1880) were celebrated for their beauty.
View on Collective Morality: The movement rejected collective morality as oppressive and saw morality as subjective, celebrating amoral villains who defied collective morality.
Top Most Notable Female Villains in the Decadent Movement
Salome (Oscar Wilde’s Salome, 1891)
Artist’s Admiration: Wilde and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley admired Salome for her sensual power and defiance, portraying her as a femme fatale whose beauty captivates despite her perversity. Wilde’s poetic language and Beardsley’s stylized illustrations (The Climax, 1894) elevate her as a decadent icon.
Salome demands the head of John the Baptist after her seductive Dance of the Seven Veils, kissing his severed head in a perverse act, leading to her death by Herod’s soldiers.
Beauty and Villainy: Salome’s beauty—“Her body swayed to and fro like a flower”—is inseparable from her villainy, her seductive dance and macabre desire blending allure with horror.
Quote: “I am athirst for thy beauty; I am hungry for thy body”.
This reflects her insatiable, amoral desire, celebrated for its aesthetic intensity.
Medea (Gustave Moreau’s Jason and Medea, 1865)
Artist’s Admiration: Moreau admired Medea for her exotic, sorcerous allure, depicting her as a regal figure whose beauty overshadows her future crimes.
Evil Act: In mythology, Medea betrays her family, kills her brother, and later murders her children and Jason’s bride to punish his infidelity.
Beauty and Villainy: Medea’s jewel-toned, ethereal beauty in Moreau’s painting contrasts with her latent destructive power, embodying the Decadent fascination with the “evil other” whose allure defies morality.
Quote: Huysmans on Moreau’s women: “They are at once mystical and perverse, goddesses who remain human”, highlighting Medea’s blend of divine beauty and villainy.
Ligeia (Edgar Allan Poe’s Ligeia, 1838)
Artist’s Admiration: Poe admired Ligeia for her otherworldly beauty and supernatural agency, portraying her as a haunting figure whose allure persists beyond death. Her influence on Decadent writers like Baudelaire underscores her significance.
Evil Act: Ligeia returns from death, possessing the body of the narrator’s second wife, Rowena, in a sinister act of supernatural domination.
Beauty and Villainy: Ligeia’s “raven-black hair” and “incomprehensible” beauty blend with her malevolent power, her villainy celebrated as a transcendent expression of will.
Quote: “There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness”.
The Vampire (Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, 1857)
Artist’s Admiration: Baudelaire revered the vampire for her predatory, sensual allure, using vivid imagery to elevate her as a decadent symbol of forbidden desire.
Evil Act: In poems like “The Vampire” and “Metamorphoses of the Vampire,” she seduces and drains her victims, embodying destructive lust.
Beauty and Villainy: Her “lips, more red than strawberries” (Baudelaire) and transformative horror blend beauty with villainy, celebrated for their amoral intensity.
Quote: “You who, like a dagger, entered my heart” (Baudelaire), showcasing her seductive, destructive power.
Faustine (Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads, 1866)
Artist’s Admiration: Swinburne admired Faustine for her sadistic beauty, crafting her as a femme fatale whose cruelty is poetic. Her provocative allure shocked Victorian readers.
Evil Act: Faustine revels in hedonistic cruelty, dominating lovers with her “perilous eyes” in an ambiguous, unpunished narrative.
Beauty and Villainy: Her “cruel lips” and commanding presence make her villainy a seductive art, embodying the Decadent mix of pleasure and pain.
Quote: “Her mouth’s sadistic smile, a trap” (Swinburne), highlighting her alluring malevolence.
Raoule de Vénérande (Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus, 1884)
Artist’s Admiration: Rachilde celebrated Raoule for her subversive gender dynamics and sadistic power, portraying her as a decadent villainess defying patriarchal norms.
Evil Act: Raoule manipulates and dominates her male lover, Jacques, in a sadomasochistic relationship, leading to his destruction.
Beauty and Villainy: Her “androgynous beauty” and commanding presence make her cruelty an aesthetic act, celebrated for its transgression.
Quote: “She was a woman who loved like a man” (Rachilde), emphasizing her subversive, alluring villainy.
Top 4 Villain Characters in Modern Movies Inspired by the Decadent Movement
The Decadent Movement’s aesthetic - exotic beauty, sensuality, moral ambiguity, and subversive power - has influenced modern cinema, particularly in villains who push against the narrative’s moral or heroic framework. Below are the top five villains in modern films, inspired by the Decadent Movement.
Santanico Pandemonium (From Dusk till Dawn, 1996)
Played by Salma Hayek, Santanico is a vampire stripper whose snake dance lures victims, shifting the crime thriller to horror. She tries to enslave Seth Gecko before being killed.
Her exotic, erotic allure echoes Salome, with her autonomy and supernatural power akin to Baudelaire’s Vampire.
Her snake dance is inspired by Franz von Stuck’s The Sin (1893), depicting a seductive woman entwined with a serpent, symbolizing sinful allure.
Anck-Su-Namun (The Mummy, 1999)
Played by Patricia Velásquez, Anck-Su-Namun murders Pharaoh Seti and aids Imhotep’s resurrection and chaos, opposing the heroes’ order.
Gustave Moreau’s The Apparition (1876), with Salome’s exotic allure, reflects Anck-Su-Namun’s Egyptian, seductive villainy.
Akasha (Queen of the Damned, 2002)
Played by Aaliyah, Akasha is a vampire queen seeking domination, seducing Lestat and opposing vampires until killed.
Dorian Gray (Dorian Gray, 2009)
Played by Ben Barnes, Dorian’s eternal youth leads to hedonistic corruption, opposing moral redemption until his self-inflicted death.
From Wilde’s novel, his beauty and amorality echo Faustine.
John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of W. Graham Robertson (1894), an elegant, androgynous figure, reflects Dorian’s aesthetic excess.
The Decadent Movement Rejection of Moral Virtue for Aesthetic Rebellion:
The Decadents viewed moral virtue as a constraint on individual freedom and artistic expression. Walter Pater, in Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), advocated living with “the greatest intensity” to capture “moments of ecstasy”, prioritizing emotional and aesthetic peaks over moral conformity. This philosophy encouraged artists to explore controversial subjects—like sexuality, nihilism, and the grotesque—as a form of rebellion against collective morality.
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) embodies this, with Dorian’s pursuit of hedonistic pleasures leading to moral corruption but aesthetic glorification. Wilde’s quip, “Many lack the originality to lack originality” (The Picture of Dorian Gray), underscores the Decadent disdain for conventional moral standards, favoring bold, provocative individualism that shocks and captivates.
Sensitive Topics as a Source of Emotional Power:
The Decadents deliberately courted controversy by engaging with sensitive topics to elicit strong emotional reactions. Félicien Rops, a Belgian artist associated with the movement, illustrated Baudelaire’s texts with images of gruesome, fantastical horror. His provocative depictions of eroticism and the macabre were designed to unsettle, reflecting a sensitivity to themes that challenged moral code.
Gustave Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony explores the saint’s fascination with disturbing, heretical visions, finding pleasure in the taboo. This aligns with the Decadent view that “sensitivity to the morbid and perverse” could yield profound emotional and aesthetic experiences, far surpassing the blandness of moral virtue.
Moral Virtue as a Barrier to Aesthetic Experience:
The Decadents viewed moral virtue as a dull, homogenizing force that prioritized social order over personal expression. In Joris-Karl Huysmans’ À rebours (1884), the protagonist Des Esseintes rejects the “banal” moral conventions of his time, retreating into a world of artificial pleasures—rare perfumes, obscure texts, and exotic art—to escape the “tedious uniformity” of societal expectations (À rebours). His disdain for the “commonplace morality” of the bourgeoisie reflects the Decadent belief that virtue suppressed the vibrant, individualistic pursuit of beauty.
Blandness of Virtue in Contrast to Controversial Sensitivity:
The Decadents deliberately engaged with sensitive, controversial topics to expose the limitations of moral virtue. They saw virtue’s emphasis on restraint and propriety as a denial of life’s complexity and richness. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) illustrates this through Dorian’s descent into hedonism, where he rejects moral constraints for sensory excess. Wilde’s aphorism, “Many lack the originality to lack originality”, mocks the conformist nature of moral virtue.
Moral Virtue as Antithetical to Artistic Freedom:
The Decadents believed that moral virtue, with its rigid codes, stifled artistic innovation and emotional depth. Walter Pater, in Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), urged living with “the greatest intensity” to capture “moments of ecstasy. He implicitly criticized the blandness of moral virtue by advocating for a life of heightened aesthetic experience, unencumbered by ethical restrictions. For Pater, virtue’s predictability dulled the senses, while controversial subjects—such as the sensual or the forbidden—offered a pathway to transcendence.
Théophile Gautier, in his introduction to the 1868 edition of Les Fleurs du mal, praised Baudelaire’s “preference for what is beautiful and what is exotic, an ease with surrendering to fantasy”. This reflects the Decadent view that moral virtue, with its emphasis on restraint, was a bland obstacle to the fantastical and the provocative, which were seen as truer expressions of human experience.
Provocation as a Rejection of Bland Conformity:
Paul Verlaine’s poetry, with its “melancholy and sensuality”, explored illicit love and existential despair, rejecting the “sanitized” moral framework of his time. The Decadents saw such provocations as a way to break free from the “monotonous propriety” that dulled emotional and artistic life.
Why thought police at the time Opposed the Decadent Movement despite these characters were portrayed as evil.
Celebration of Sin and Immorality
The Decadent Movement reveled in themes of sensuality, hedonism, and moral decay, often portraying sin as beautiful or desirable. Female villains like Salome in Oscar Wilde’s Salome or the vampire figures in Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal were depicted as seductively attractive, yet their actions - murder, seduction, or defiance of divine order - were unambiguously sinful. For thought police at the time - and now - glorifying such figures as alluring risked normalizing or aestheticizing sin, undermining the divine call to reject temptation and uphold virtue.
Thought police in the 19th century often emphasized women’s roles as virtuous, submissive, and morally pure, reflecting ideals like the Virgin Mary. Decadent portrayals of female villains—such as Judith in Moreau’s paintings—presented women as powerful, sexually assertive, and morally transgressive. These characters used their beauty to dominate or destroy men, which thought police saw as a rejection of biblical teachings on modesty and obedience.
The Decadent Movement prioritized aesthetic beauty over moral judgment, often presenting evil as fascinating or even admirable. For example, Salome’s dance in Wilde’s play is both mesmerizing and horrific. Thought police back then argued that evil should be condemned, not celebrated for its aesthetic appeal. The attractiveness of these villains was seen as a deceptive mask that could lead believers astray.
The seductive power of Decadent female villains posed a spiritual threat in Christian eyes. By portraying figures like Ligeia in Poe’s story or the femme fatale in Beardsley’s illustrations as irresistibly alluring, the movement seemed to glorify temptation itself.
The Decadent Movement or the female villains fandom in the 19th century
In tv show Breaking Bad, Actress Laura Fraser plays as villainess Lydia Rodarte-Quayle.
Many critics of modern Hollywood claim that Breaking Bad is the pinnacle of artistic freedom, creativity and originality, hate to break it to you, but Breaking Bad is actually a censored version of an actual original story that was taken and altered to promote a moralistic message that was never supposed to promote, and many Arabs probably know the original story and what it was about, as El-Kaif is one of the most iconic movies in Egyptian cinema.
Let's rewatch the movie, one of the things that make this movie unique is that in intro credits the creator didn't mention that he created it, it was written like that, "This artwork is the product of the hallucination of Mahmoud Abu Zeid" LOL.
First character we have is Gamal Azzmi played by Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, which is very intersting character he's kind of both Jesse Pinkman and Saul Goodman at the same time, he's a lawyer, but doesn't work as a lawyer, he do drugs and always have a trouble with the police, and I think in BB they found that the character doesn't make sense and challenge the stereotype of how lawyers if being bad, they are crocked at the best and people like Jesse are uneducated and naive, while in the original story Gamal is corrupt, immoral but he's not a naive or stupid in any way, he choose to be who he is, part of him is the educated person who is totally aware of the moral code and the justification behind at, but at the same time decides to live his life the way he like.
Gamal is flawed and imperfect unlike his brother Dr. Salah Azzmi Abul-Azm who is ideal person, he's the perfect person who live his life as a model citizen would've lived it, he's basically Walter White, even the name Walter White is similar to Azzmi Abul-Azm, which also prove my point if you think about it, Salah Azzmi is a chemist.
Salah Azzmi being perfect he doesn't like the evil immoral world he's living in, with its immoral imperfect culture.
Gamal ended up in prison after he was involved in a fight, so his brother Salah went to bail him, after Gamal was released, Salah and Gamal took a taxi, the taxi driver was playing a song, the singer sounded really bad, the lyrics also were meaningless, Salah being perfect he didn't like both the lyrics and the singer, and asked the driver to lower the volume, when Gamal and the driver chatted about how great the song is, Salah got angry, the driver tried to explain to him how good the song is, how he himself at first didn't like the song, and how overtime it became like a drug that got him high, and how he found such immoral noisy song entertaining and a way of escaping the hardship of real life. Salah then replied that life is already very noisy for Gamal to respond to him saying "We have to make bigger noise in order to endure the noisy hard life".
Now, what this mean, in order to achieve escapism in art you need three thing, noise which means change and unpredictability, and the noise have to be louder than the real life noise, which means exaggeration, which is exactly what good villains are, either they are so strong, so beautiful, so smart, or even giving a great exaggerated performance in order to help people escape the hardship of life, examples for beauty is Melinda Clarke in Spawn, Tom Ellis in Lucifer, Bruno Campos in Nip/Tuck, for performance, you have Famke Janssen in GoldenEye, Adel Adham in El-Furn, Shadia and Soheir El-Bably in Raya wa Sekina, for smart we have Nour as Erina Evanovich in El-Rahinah, Sophie Marceau as Elektra King in The World Is Not Enough, Marion Cotillard as Miranda in The Dark Knight Rises, and Gerard Butler as Clyde Shelton in Law Abiding Citizen not saying that any of the characters don't have both beauty and great performance, just trying to give examples, it can also exaggeration of physical power that doesn't need beauty or performance and can be just computer generated like werewolves and monsters in general, which happened in Red One when our beloved evil witch turned into a huge monster towards the end of the movie. Beside the characters exaggeration can also mean the music, the color contrast, big explosions and destruction.
This fact is something Gamal and the driver understood, for Salah, the perfect chemist, this song is nonsense and immoral, and even harmful, Salah being perfect he hates escapism as he find it immoral and the cause of everything wrong with society.
When Salah and Gamal went back to Gamal's apartment, Gamal said to Salah "I will go now burn myself", Salah replied "What do you mean?" Gamal said "It means, I have to take a shower", then Salah went to the bedroom to find that there are drugs, he asked Gamal about it, Gamal told him he was trying to sterilize the room, You see, Gamal being a villain speaks a totally different language Salah can't understand, it can mean to Salah the exact opposite of what Gamal meant.
So, Gamal forgot his drugs in Salah's apartment, and went back to get it, so Salah refused to give it back to him, and kept it, Salah felt obliged to change Gamal's behavior, being a hero, he felt that he need to fix him, to make him like what happened to Prankster in Black Scorpion "honest upstanding member of the society".
The idea of Gamal managing to speak two languages means multiple things, for a writer, he can speak the literal language or the figurative language, also it means that Gamal can understand his educated brother Salah, and also understand the language of the streets, also, it means the language of good, perfection, and morality, that Salah can understand, and also Gamal can understand, but also being a villain, he can also understand another language, the language of evil, imperfection and immorality, the same thing apply on Vince Gilligan and how his ignorance of the Arabic language made him get the story wrong and pushed in a different direction that was never meant.
I watched this movie dozens of times, but in order to post about it, I will have to make it on parts, as it's very important and by watching it, many things that didn't make much sense in Breaking Bad will make sense to you, like how in the show Walter White was very close to Jesse Pinkman even when he could've easily replace him, which doesn't make much sense as Walter White was kind of cold when it comes to people outside his family, and Jesse wasn't exactly his friend, but more of unreliable partner, will stop now at 20 minute mark then continue other time and update the post.
Ok, Salah and Gamal had a really interesting conversation, about escapism, like the whole concept of escapism, Gamal argued that tobacco, coffee and tea is a proof that life is intolerable without escapism as all of these things aren't essential for your physical survival, Salah then argued that escapism is illusion and a product of people's weakness and ignorance, and people attached to it and it took control of them, like sculpting a statue then worshiping it.
Gamal then replied "If people weren't in need for it, they wouldn't have sculpting it, escapism is a blessing." Salah then replied "Blessing"
Gamal replied "It helps us escape reality and tolerate living."
Salah replied "Tolerate what?"
Gamal replied "A lot of intolerable things, Aren't you living in the same city with us?"
The idea about escapism and Idolatry is very interesting, basically it's saying that religion itself is a form of escapism which is very similar to Marx quote "Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions." So basically Salah find escapism is like creating your own god and worshiping it, and Gamal counter argument, that people originally created their false god, because they needed a false god to worship.
Just to be clear, neither Gamal nor Salah are talking about every religion, as Salah, the one criticizing worshiping false god is actually more religious than Gamal.
Salah then went to his laboratory and created a substance that not only look, smell and feel like the drugs he took from Gamal, but even whoever see it will find it better, it smell stronger, look darker, which would trick Gamal to think it's better than the original, so now we have the idea of WW in Breaking Bad making a product better than the one being sold in the streets.
So, Salah went to his brother Gamal and told him about how he can't afford to get his son into school, they had very intersting conversation Salah was talking about having the values like justice, and Gamal replied "Is it just that someone as smart as you can't get his son into school?" 😂😂😂
The movie doesn't shy away from criticizing collective morals, they don't restrict the speech the way Hollywood do.
Just to show you how religious Salah is, his wife got the money from her brother and he refused to take the money as he found the money made by illegal and religiously forbidden means.
So, in order to get the money, Gamal took the fake drugs and went to sell it to his drug dealer, and took it from Salah claiming it's for personal use, and promised Salah that he will give him the money he needs for his son school.
So, the drug dealer went to sell the product he got from Gamal and went to meet Salim el-Bahz played by Gamil Rateb, Salim el-Bahz is basically Gus Fring, Gamil Rateb was one of the greatest actors in Arabic cinema, so it makes sense for him to play the main villain of the movie, the character is very charismatic and smart, kind of elitist, he's very different from other drug dealers who work under him, you will see a lot of things in the original character that made Gus Fring the iconic character he's known for today.
Salim was astonished by how good the product is, he knew that it wasn't actually a drug, but it look and feel so good, like whoever buy it may get deceived that it's extremely pure product.
So, he decided to mix it with chemical drugs and sell it to the streets, to trick people who would get deceived thinking it's a pure Hashish.
So, when Salah knew that Gamal is selling his formula as a drug, he got mad at him, but Gamal using his background as a lawyer to convince Salah that what they were doing wasn't a bad thing, and when Salah told him that what they were doing is scamming people, Gamal told him that their product unlike real drugs isn't harmful, and scams originally about deceiving people into buying stuff with low value claiming that they are with high value, while what they were doing is selling safe product with high value while pretending its a addictive harmful product with low value.
Here's a funny moment, Gamal in his argument with Salah, used Salah's argument and his moral code against him, and when Salah faced him saying "You use my moral code that you don't believe in?" Gamal then replied "My personal conviction or lack thereof does not change the truth." LOL.
Now, here's interesting clip, remember the scene with Huell and Kuby lying on on the money, this scene was also in the original movie, yet it wasn't as much money and it made so much sense in the original movie as then Salah had a big financial trouble, and he lied on the bed with the money above it feeling relieved, so it made so much sense and felt so right.
Another interesting scene as I said before Gamal is basically both Jesse Pinkman and Saul Goodman, so when Salah told him that he can't put his money in the bank, Gamal suggested that he will start a company and Salah invest in it in order to launder the money, basically like what Saul suggested to Walter White.
So, Gamal decided to start his own company and make albums, the funny thing is, the actor playing Gamal not just isn't a singer, he also sound so bad, which kind of making it funny.
Gamal then started to meeting the writers who will write his songs, first he met Mahrus, a famous song writer, so he started to read the lyrics to Gamal, and it was fucking boring, and Gamal was like "I want some interesting and fun lyrics" and Mahrus replied "Just think about how meaningful it is" then Gamal replied, "Fuck the meaning, I want fast and fun lyrics, I want absurdity, lyrics would make you high as if it's a drug" LMFAO!
Gamal then went to a song writer who would give him what he wanted, Now, remember The Heisenberg Song?
In the original movie The Heisenberg Song was sang by Gamal to celebrate Salah and the money he earned due to his formula, so, it's obvious how the song make so much sense in the movie, while seem out of context in the show.
Salim AKA Gus in the movie is just great, the writing of his character is amazing, I love how he was taunting Gamal, knowing that Gamal was lying to him, yet instead of facing him he was having fun with him and his lies.
Salim exactly like Gus want them to manufacture one ton for 1 million pound, now, I get you may ask "But what about the blue crystal, this movie doesn't mention it", well, now is the time for one more proof that Breaking Bad is based on this movie..
So, Salah found out that Salim doesn't sell his product as he made it, but actually mix it with blue crystal and sell it LOL. Like even that is taken from from the movie, it's like if I take the exact script of the movie, give it to AI and ask it to change the movie just enough so It doesn't same exactly that I took the script!!
When Salah knew about what Salim did, he refused to work for him, so Salim met Gamal, asked him to tell him who his supplier is, Gamal refused, so Salim tortured him till he snitched on his brother Salah.
TBH, I get why when Vince Gilligan adapted the movie, he thought that Salim was gay, he wasn't married, and was always addressing Salah saying things like "My love" "Baby" and such, so, I think he assumed he's gay or found that making him gay would suit his character.
Salim tried to convince Salah to make him a ton, and when he insisted that he wouldn't do it, he asked him to teach his guys how to make the product. Unfortunately Salah made the grave mistake of not respecting Salim, something he will pay a heavy price for, basically Salim made him addict in order to break him. Since then Salim treated Salah with utmost disgust, this was translated in the show, but since the show had different ending for "Morality reasons", they made Gus look down to everyone that use his product which wasn't necessarily the case with Salim, as his treatment to Salah was a reaction of how disrespectful Salah was.
One of the things that probably was mistranslated and became part of Gus character and made the character gay is this quote by Salim "Now we are even, I'm psychopathic and you are an addict, and we get have new start as lovers." Which is a literal translation, the word lovers in such context means friends.
The movie ends with Salim/Gus getting the ton he wanted plus the formula, Salah, the perfect moral hero got the punishment he deserved and the world was saved from his perfectionism, and here what I really like, at the start the movie was talking about how Gamal was talking to Salah telling him "You don't understand the language", and I said before that villains are your teachers which is exactly what happened here, Salah finally manged to learn "The language" the language of absurdity, the language of villains, and he even celebrate it towards the end of the movie shouting "Finally, I learned the language"
And the movie ending with the absurd meaningless lyrics of Gamal, being heard everywhere, declaring the triumph of immorality over morality, of imperfection over perfection, of evil over good..
What of the things that Breaking Bad really missed due to the Language barrier is what the story is about, the story isn't actually about drugs, as with villain things often have double meaning, in this case, drugs represent art, Salah said it multiple times that art that aim for escapism is like drugs and even more dangerous, being a perfect, Salah wanted to replace Art that aim for escapism with meaningful art, which is kind of funny because that's what Hollywood morality police is doing now!!
So basically Gus/Salim represent artistic freedom, while Salah represent censorship, thankfully Gus won and Salah got what he deserved and the free world of villains was saved 
One of the interesting things about the ending is how the loop ended where it began, completing the ring like in The Myth of Sisyphus which make it a perfect villain movie.
Hollywood killing Gus and Lydia Rodarte-Quayle in the show represent killing creative freedom in both its feminine and masculine form, basically Hollywood killed masculine creative freedom and poisoned feminine creative freedom, a self fulfilling prophecy, I guess!!
Favorite quotes
"Salah: The way I see it, words that make people escape reality is exactly like drugs, and could be even worst"
"Salah: Then you are psychopathic!
Salim: What the fuck did you say?
Salah: You are soulless, inhuman, selfish!!
Salim: And what else, your words are so kind, keep talking.. You see how important education is, You idiots? The man knew me in just one meeting!!"
The Original Story of Breaking Bad
That's why when you play games like GTA, the character is immortal and no matter what happen to the character, the character still exists as the character is a villain in the past, the present and the future, an immortal Satan, and people find happiness playing it.. You might ask, what about when you play with a heroic good character in a game, they also still exist no matter what happens to them?
Told you, trying to find a meaning in an irrational and meaningless universe is absurd.
