Joesph Gordon-Levitt declares his character in '500 Days of Summer' the 'real villain'

One of Hollywood’s most acclaimed films, 500 Days of Summer had been a heated topic of discourse ever since it came out in 2009.

While many may have wondered how Zooey Deschanel’s character of Summer could ruthlessly break the heart of Joesph Gordon-Levitt’s seemingly sweet avatar of Tom Hansen, the debate appears to have finally settled as to who deserved the audience’s wrath more.

Many fans pointed out how Summer was not to be blamed in the film for turning down Tom’s idea of a one-dimensional manic pixie dream girl  that was projected on to her and Gordon-Levitt seems to be giving this argument a nod of approval.

Responding to a tweet that labelled Deschanel’s character as the “movie villain” and Gordon-Levitt’s as the “actual villain”, the actor wrote: "I approve this message.”

Speaking about how the audience misunderstood Summer’s character as the villain, Deschanel told Entertainment Weekly back in 2019: “This is a movie with zero dramatic irony. Zero. It is 100 percent from Tom’s point of view, which we’ve talked about before, but it’s one thing people very much misunderstand about the movie. They think Summer’s a villain.”

"And a lot of it has to do with this voiceover, and I think that’s sort of part of the point, that the voiceover sounds authoritative, so you believe that it’s true,” she added.

Gordon-Levitt chimed in saying: "We all think that our perspective is authoritative, and Tom thinks that his perspective is authoritative. But life’s actually a lot more subjective than that.”