Some thoughts I have on Obsession that I haven't yet seen discussed too much in the tags (or I have, but I just want to express them in my own words):
While it's somewhat played up for comedic purposes, the scenes in which Bear asks Not Nikki to stop doing something and she just goes "Okay! :D" stick out to me so much. She was very willing to hear him out when he complained about her behavior (at least sometimes) but it was never going to be enough anyway. When he was telling her that hiding in the corner and watching him sleep made him uncomfortable, she seemed genuinely worried about having made him feel bad, something he never once did for her or the real Nikki (made even more heartbreaking by the "I can be anything you want me to be!" line)
A lot of people are focusing on how Bear first asks to alter his wish and only asks to cancel it once he's told it can't be altered (understandably, it's a great and very important scene), but do not forget that after he buys more One Wish Willows, the first thing he tries to do is wish for Nikki to "only love him as a friend." Even when he's trying to revert things back to "normal" he still feels entitled to having her in his life. And at first I thought "well that's still not good but it's a little better" but then I thought about it for more than five seconds and no, that's not a little better, because after everything he put her through she would never want to have anything to do with him ever again. To try to ask for her to still be in his life is also extremely selfish of him
Still on the previous point, when he asks Ian to wish for him to have never made a wish. There's a lot to say about this scene, but one of the things that sticks out to me is that phrasing. Don't wish for Nikki to have her autonomy back, just make a wish that will make me feel like I fixed my mistake and might turn things back to how they were before my wish (aka, with Nikki still liking me, even if just as a friend)
One more thing about that scene, when he tells Ian that "he can be with Nikki". Of course he says that he "didn't mean it that way", and I sort of believe him, but it's impossible to ignore that he immediately thinks bringing up Ian's attraction to Nikki will make him agree to go along with his plan, the same way his own attraction to Nikki made him make his wish
Maybe this is just me, but when he's in the car with Sarah and he questions her on whether she thinks he should be with someone "like you?", he doesn't seem upset like I assume someone would be if they're in a committed relationship and another person suddenly suggests they should be with them instead. He seems very open to the idea, despite never once having been shown to have feelings for Sarah (in fact at the beginning of the movie he outright tells Nikki he doesn't like her like that), like he just wants to be loved by a woman and now that a "normal" one is showing interest in him he's very willing to abandon Not Nikki despite literally wishing for her, just because she's not exactly what he hoped for and is causing him problems
This is more so just praising Inde Navarrette's acting skills, and I know the point is that Not Nikki is the exact opposite of Nikki, but one notable difference between the two is their crying, and now that I think about it their screaming too. Not Nikki cries and screams in a sort of childish way, and it reminds me of the way some men want their girlfriends to act, like a child that needs them for comfort (maybe minus the screaming). It doesn't work with Bear, it comes off as a bit of a tantrum and just annoys and freaks him out, but despite obviously being how she really feels, with the fact that he literally wished her into existence, I can't help but feel that even the way she expresses pain is geared towards making him like her. But Nikki screams like a regular, horrified adult woman. When she cries in the final scene, there's no high-pitched whining to it, just pure horror and despair. Man I hope Inde Navarrette gets tons of awards for her performance
I really want to rewatch this movie, it's been 24 hours and I can't stop thinking about it
amandla
baratheonpilled
romaincrisis
