In the new hit movie Marty Supreme, the story is pushed forward by how lead character Marty Mauser keeps making messes then, rather than cleaning them up, manages to expand their scope beyond reason. Marty is attempting to prove himself as the world’s greatest table-tennis champion, to escape his meagre mid-century New York City circumstances and achieve a dream he’s locked on to, seemingly more out of desire to achieve it than a particular love for the sport.

And just as he’s presumably blown up some natural athleticism into a monomaniacal quest, all of Marty’s misdeeds across the film escalate. He cajoles, then lies. He quickly turns a pushy request to borrow money into petty theft, which then becomes armed robbery. At one point, a little ping-pong hustle at a New Jersey bowling alley literally blows up into a gas-station fire. Marty will not accept anything less than ultimate victory, which means he will especially not accept responsibility for his actions. And we, in the audience, are invited to like him anyway, at least in part because he is played by Timothée Chalamet.

As Marty Supreme has reached a sizable audience, that last bit has become a sticking point, at least for some. There are plenty of YouTube and TikTok videos asking why, exactly, we’re supposed to be happily following this near-sociopathic character for well over two hours, causing publications such as Variety to weigh in on Marty (and Chalamet’s) likability.

This is not the first likability conversation inspired by an awards-season contender, and it won’t be the last. But it feels like the first time in a while that this kind of bafflement (or tut-tutting) has been expressed toward a male lead in particular. The self-interested protagonists of best picture nominees such as Birdman, American Hustle, Joker, or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood didn’t appear to inspire much discourse about whether they were proper male role models; those discussions more often turn to women, especially in depictions of motherhood, such as Jennifer Lawrence’s character in the recent Die My Love. That movie barely seems to be in the awards conversation despite a bravura turn from Lawrence, in part because of the sheer difficulty audiences have found in getting on the movie’s aggressive, “unpleasant” wavelength.

So in a way, the regression to fretting about the likability of Marty Mauser feels weirdly just. But there may still be some gendering going on here; it’s hard to untangle questions of Marty’s likability from Chalamet himself, particularly his combination of a slender, more stereotypically “feminine” appearance and semi-parodic macho bravado (in the film and his tireless promotion of it). Rather than his star charisma mitigating Marty’s bad behaviour, Chalamet’s beauty (and appeal to female fans) only seems to further inflame anyone who might not be convinced by his big-noise status.

It’s happened repeatedly with Chalamet’s closest analog in ambition and star power: Leonardo DiCaprio – whom audiences and critics have most recently greeted as downright lovable playing a burnt-out, half-competent ex-radical in One Battle After Another. But in movies such as Killers of the Flower Moon and especially The Wolf of Wall Street, DiCaprio faced questions of whether he and the movies in question were glorifying criminals simply by depicting them at such length. DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort (like Marty Mauser, based on a real-life figure, though the Marty Supreme adaptation is far looser) was a particular object of ire, with hand-wringing over whether audiences could even really discern Belfort’s criminality when cast in the megastar image of Leo.

To complain about a character’s likability while also worrying about modelling poor behaviour is to place yourself above the rest of the audience; sure, you understand how bad this guy is, but what about all the dolts who aren’t so enlightened? Let’s assume, though, that at least some objections to Marty Supreme are not concern-trolling but genuine dislike: a visceral reaction against spending 150 minutes with such a selfish jerk (and scepticism over whether the film’s ending even begins to redeem him). Who can’t identify with feeling an animal dislike toward a fresh-faced brat? As it happens, I get it from a lot of YouTubers and TikTok scolds.

But lingering questions of a character’s likability – their ability to serve as a rooting interest, a figure of audience identification, or even a charismatic antihero – can feel like a particular curse and gift of the cinema. A novel can (if the author so chooses) dig deeper into a specific character’s psychology, and while there will always be readers who, say, whine about Holden Caulfield’s whininess, there are also plenty of English teachers who can guide readers through The Catcher in the Rye or other books where the protagonist may not scan as a lovably scrappy underdog (or whatever students may have been mistrained to expect from literature).

Movies, though, don’t come with the same degree of instruction. We’re not taught as much about how or why to “read” them as students, and they’re presented foremost as entertainment. As much as they can and should be vehicles for more than that, mainstream cinema has also spent more than a century basking in the glow of stars. A movie star’s job, after all, is to draw and hold our attention, even if the immediate circumstances of their surroundings might otherwise strike us as overfamiliar, obtuse or dull. When a star pushes too hard, too soon, against that innate expectation of likability, it can feel like a broken contract.

The art of cinema deserves more than demanding shiny things for our amusement, of course, but it’s also uniquely able to provide those shiny things. Tedious likability conversations may be the price we pay for that beguilement – which is also never going to work equally on every single audience member. Some who blanch at Chalamet’s snot-nosed, self-inflated insouciance in Marty Supreme may find themselves, in 20 years, watching Chalamet play an equally “unlikable” character and be charmed by him anyway. I’m honestly not all that convinced there’s a literary depth to Marty Mauser’s sins, but then, it also didn’t occur to me to disconnect from Marty Supreme for that reason. In a film culture that often seems to be aspiring to homogenisation, being allowed to spend time in the company of immoral or obnoxious characters can feel like its own strange magic trick. Likability may be an unfair demand placed on cinema, but such an expansive medium is, in the long run, more than up to the task.