Alan Krumwiede (Contagion)

Alan Krumweide is a main character in the 2011 movie Contagion. He is played by Jude Law in the movie, and is a blogger that writes articles on the internet. While the rest of the main characters in the film are doctors that do their best to support the people, and one parent that struggles to keep his daughter safe, Alan is the outlier in the cast because he objectively doesn't further the plot in a meaningful way.

Why He's Loathsome

 * 1) He is a static character, and not only are most static characters uninteresting but they rarely give the viewer reason to like them. Alan acts the same way throughout the whole movie without any drastic change.
 * 2) He perpetrated a fraud supposedly for the good of the public, but he downright started a conspiracy which lead to several crimes being committed by people that believed in him.
 * 3) He never had the virus, yet he lied to the public and fooled the people into believing that Forsythia was the cure for the virus by taking a dose after claiming he showed symptoms, which was a lie and he was already healthy. He gave many people false hope.
 * 4) Furthermore there is no explanation to why he lied to the public. Possibly for money, since he did profit off his scam.
 * 5) * Through the visual story-telling, the audience may come to some conclusions as to why he did the things he did. Perhaps he's a conspiracy theorist that believes the US government is against the people, perhaps he wanted fame, perhaps he wanted money, or perhaps he wanted to spread hope he thought was true. It's good to keep the imagination running, but from the sheer fact that Alan's role is not openly established through visuals or telling that he is just an badly written character with no obvious point except our own emotions.
 * 6) ** Also, Alan probably never cared about the American people, since he had taken a dose of a convenient medical item that he first told someone else about, clearing stating it was the cure, before claiming he had symptoms; so should he be a villain? He doesn't act like a villain though, he acts like a perhaps selfish or very full-of-himself guy, but he isn't a villain. Why is he presented like a villain if the virus is the true villain? Alan isn't a villain, yet if he isn't a villain then why don't we catch a moment of him in his prime? Erin Mears had a ton of moments that made the audience care for her, yet Alan doesn't have a single scene where he sheds off his skin; he isn't a villain but we don't get to really understand him.
 * 7) He has a massive ego, and he's such a grossly high self-esteemed individual.
 * 8) He believed that the American government and the health organization was lying about how much they really knew about the virus, which was false.
 * 9) He was sure the vaccines for the virus might have side-effects such as autism or cancer; this means he thinks autism is a harmful disease.
 * 10) He's irritating and insufferable, and he acts like he's right and never thinks he isn't. Doubt makes a character come to life, yet he shows no doubt about whether or not he is in the wrong (save for one small scene, but it seemed to have been forgotten by the creators).
 * 11) * He approached Dr. Sussman without making an appointment and talked to him while he was still on the phone with someone.
 * 12) * He threatened to sue a woman he was talking to, and was really unkind to her even though she showed no sign of hostility.
 * 13) He never showed remorse for lying to everyone about Forsythia. He just kept blogging after someone bailed him out of jail.
 * 14) He gets a lot of screen time, even though the point of focusing on a character in a film is to get a feel for what they are going through, which the viewer doesn't receive. The viewer may get the sense that Alan believes he is fighting for a good cause, but since he's an ass to almost everyone he meets and that he's so smug that watching him doesn't provoke the same emotional response as the other characters in the movie do. As explained earlier, his motives are never explained and the audience doesn't know what he was trying to accomplish. The point of a character like him to relate to, yet nothing much about him is established.
 * 15) * Furthermore, one could argue that Alan Krumwiede is just a stone-cold money-grabber looking for fame. If he was supposed to be a villain or main character then why doesn't he have clear motives or healthy qualities?

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) He does further the plot of the movie in several ways.
 * 2) He's probably supposed to be unlikable, and he does offer a realistic look onto how not everyone acts rationally during a pandemic.
 * 3) Jude Law portrays him very well.