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Forrest Gump Doesn't Deserve The Hate

I guess most people hate it because it got the best of both worlds: won several Oscars and made a lot of money. And in the same year, The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction were also released.

By Satyam Ghimire | Date:

Last modified date:

Also available as a YouTube video.

I didn’t know people labeled Forrest Gump as a bad picture. I always loved it. For me it’s a beautiful story of a good man and I am entertained. Plus the soundtrack is one of my favorites.

Forrest Gump sitting on a bench
Frame, rights belong to the respective distributor and producer.

The main argument Forrest Gump haters make is that Forrest himself has no character arc. He is a simpleton with no depth. He doesn’t change at all throughout the movie. He makes a fool of himself during historical events and in front of famous people, rather than trying to understand what’s going on and behaving properly. And it’s a nostalgic idolization of the boomer generation, a sort of flattery to them. Give them flashbacks of what happened in their time and they will vote for you in awards and buy tickets. It’s a conservative propaganda, you know, do what society tells you to do and you will earn medals, give interviews, and be a millionaire.

Yes, Forrest Gump doesn’t change at all, but the people around him do change because of him. Primarily Lieutenant Dan and Jenny. Dan learns to appreciate life and make his peace with God, though he wanted to die in the war. Jenny is redeemed from her behavior and choices, all that were a direct result of trauma and abuse by her step father. In the end, she makes her peace too, and she knows she has finally found a loving home.

Forrest helps strangers find a community and hope, from something as absurd as running across America. Bubba gets a friend who listens to him, and his family gets a lot of money from Bubba-Gump shrimp company and they escape their generational poverty.

Though the movie is told from his perspective, the movie isn’t totally about Forrest but people around him. He is like a feather that floats in the air, those who see or experience that floating feather find it beautiful, but the feather is still the same.

Yes, Forrest is slow and limited, but he still has depth. He knows what love is, he knows how important it is to be smart and breaks down while asking if his son is smart, unlike him. He knows his life would have been a lot better if he was smart. He has this naive habit of seeing the best in people, he knows that people have better self insides, though they seem unaware of it and believe otherwise.

The movie is also about destiny and fate and trying to live with it. Forrest can’t help it but be stupid. Just like Jenny can’t help herself and walk on a good path. Just like Lieutenant Dan can’t help but curse his life. The movie is a sort of balance between fantasy and reality. A slow man is a war-hero, wins ping pong, gets to meet famous people, gets to be a millionaire. That’s fantasy. But the same man couldn’t get any love from that one person whom he always wanted. And only later this person turns up with a baby, when she has AIDS and no one wants to have her anymore. That’s reality.

Nostalgia for the boomer generation? Yes, there is, and so what? Promotes conservatism? What?

I guess most people hate it because it has the best of both worlds. It won several Oscars and also made a lot of money, 677 million dollars. Adjusted for inflation that’s like 1.44 billion dollars in August, 2024. And in the same year so many good movies were released, primarily The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction. Both were robbed from important awards and both made little money.

Forrest Gump can’t get away with this, can it? In my opinion too, The Shawshank Redemption should have won the best picture and should have made good money. That’s a much better film. That’s my favorite film. But that doesn’t give me a reason to hate Forrest Gump, does it?

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How Brooks from The Shawshank Redemption Could Have Been Saved?

Red was pretty much like Brooks, but luckily he got a friend: Andy. What if Brooks had a friend like Andy in his time?

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