Fight Club would be neat, as a reversal of the implied tropes.

The movie we got has Tyler as the narrator’s masculine ideal. “I look the way you wanna look, I fuck the way you wanna fuck.” He’s a fit, clever, hyper-confident… cult leader. The film casts Ed Norton as Hollywood’s idea of a schlub. An also-ran. Largely the same archetype he played from The Italian Job to Birdman, dancing along a spectrum from identifiably pathetic to kind of a broken asshole. Of course that guy dreams of being supermodel-era Brad Pitt, looking like the underwear ads they both mock.

The reverse is when that schlub is supermodel-era Brad Pitt, and still feels nothing. He’s on the corporate ladder, he has statue-esque physique, he is everything society tells him to be. And he’s teetering on the edge. All it takes to push him over is a few run-ins with this unshaven, superficially-charming nutjob, full of uncomfortable questions and obscene suggestions. A man who visibly does not give a fuck. Some business-casual Diogenes, more Travis Bickle than Patrick Bateman, who lives in a condemned building, and still congenially invites him to stay. His manic arsonist dream bro. When this version’s Tyler scoffs at a Calvin Klein ad with bodybuilder abs, the narrator does not laugh with him, because it is a vicious jab, asking: is that why you’re like this? To look good in your undies? That guy lands the crazy hot chick from therapy. He obliterates the narrator’s self-image by demonstrating that none of that toxic masculinity shit matters.

Admittedly prone to some hey-wait moments after, y’know, but it’s not like dudebro audiences were thinking deeply to begin with.