Canonically, Patrick Bateman was killed by a little girl

I don't consider Patrick Bateman, the (very flawed) protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho, to be some classic character in literature, exempt from alternate interpretations within the culture.

But killed by a preteen girl?

That's how American Psycho 2, Morgan J. Freeman's truly terrible sequel to Mary Herron's terrific American Psycho, starts out. (Note the J. in the director's name. This is not the voice of Red and God making a random terrible movie.)

Before she's played by Mila Kunis, the young Rachael Newman was a kidnapping victim by Bateman, who was in the process of killing Rachael's babysitter at the time she got herself free from the shackles binding her to a chair. Because Bateman underestimated her and was not keeping an eye on her, she found a large kitchen knife and plunged it deep into his back. 

That's a pretty laughable idea in a pretty laughable movie, one that was widely panned, involvement in which Kunis herself publicly regretted. (Freeman's thoughts on the film are not known to me, either Morgan or Morgan J.)

To be clear, this has nothing to do with any notion Ellis put forth about the ultimate fate of his most famous character. Ellis never wrote anything else about him after the end of his novel, and in fact, he was one of those shouting from the rooftops his disavowal of this movie. The movie is actually based on a novel called The Girl Who Wouldn't Die, which has nothing to do with American Psycho and was tied in with the IP after the first movie was a hit.

So Bateman's death here is not actual canon, of course, because a movie like American Psycho 2 laughs in the face of a notion like canon. But it's funny to consider that if you are a person who considers everything in a movie to be a real and authorised part of the story of a famous character, you would have to accept that this is how Bateman meets his maker.

My concern with this has nothing to do with some idea that being stabbed by a preteen girl means Bateman "went out like a bitch" or some other toxic notion that loans Bateman any sense of greatness that he doesn't deserve. In fact, you could argue that it emasculates him in a way that is somehow righteous.

But the movie around it is so dumb in so many ways that it just feels like it doesn't earn the association with a character who was conceived with such sinister elan, and then portrayed in such a memorable way by Christian Bale. 

For one, the movie is narrated by Kunis' character, and in a typical example of the movie's many weaknesses, the sound mix is off, so her narration sounds too distant in the soundtrack. Never mind that she just doesn't sound like a psycho. The narration sounds more like a teenage girl who talks too quickly. 

If you are going to go this route with the story -- which involves Rachael trying to get to Quantico to work for the FBI, and hoping to become the TA of a criminology professor played by William Shatner -- then at least give her some real strange predilections, other than murder. We know Bateman was obsessed with Huey Lewis and the News, personal hygiene, designer suits and having the best business card on the block. If you are going to bother to associate unrelated material with a "franchise," if you want to call American Psycho that, at least try to make her feel like a spiritual successor to Bateman in some way, a girl we'd peg as not quite right if we saw her on the street. The character was not written that way, nor can Kunis -- who I liked a lot in general -- play her that way.

Anyway, this shit movie does not deserve any more of my time today.