What is Nihilism, Anyway?

Ever stared at your ceiling at 3 AM thinking, “What’s the point?” Welcome to nihilism! This philosophical viewpoint suggests life has no inherent meaning or purpose. While everyone else is planning their “perfect” lives—morning jogs, career ladders, retirement funds—nihilists just shrug and ask, “Why bother?”

The word “nihil” comes from Latin, meaning “nothing,” and that’s pretty much the vibe—no meaning, no morals, no control. It’s like being a leaf falling from a tree. The leaf doesn’t ask, “Why am I falling?” or “Where am I going?” It just goes with the flow, carried by the wind or the river, and honestly, that’s kind of poetic.

Ready to explore this philosophy without having an actual existential crisis?  Each movie has its own flavor—dark, funny, violent, or absurd—but they all share that delicious nihilistic undertone.

Spoiler alert: But hey, in a meaningless universe, do spoilers even matter?

1. Fight Club: Punching Through Meaninglessness

Our nameless narrator lives the American dream—corporate job, IKEA catalog apartment—yet can’t sleep at night. Enter Tyler Durden, his chaotic alter-ego who introduces him to the liberation of destroying everything he once valued.

Fight Club begins as men punching each other in basements and evolves into Project Mayhem, a nihilistic movement aimed at resetting society. The film brilliantly explores how meaninglessness can become revolutionary: “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”

In today’s world of curated social media perfection, Fight Club’s message hits harder than ever. When nothing matters, everything becomes possible—even if that “everything” involves soap made from liposuction fat and blowing up credit card companies.

2. A Clockwork Orange: Nihilism Gets Ultraviolent

Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece follows Alex and his “droogs” through a dystopian landscape where moral boundaries don’t exist. Alex doesn’t commit “ultraviolence” because he needs money or has trauma—he does it because in a meaningless universe, why not choose Beethoven and baseball bats?

The film’s second half raises fascinating questions when the government “cures” Alex through behavioral conditioning. Is forced morality better than nihilistic freedom? As the film suggests: “A life without pain or fear is a life without meaning.”

Kubrick isn’t showing violence for shock value—he’s asking whether free will might be the only meaning in an otherwise meaningless existence. Not exactly family movie night material, but perfect for those philosophical 2 AM conversations.

3. No Country for Old Men: Death Wears a Bad Haircut

When Llewelyn Moss finds $2 million from a drug deal gone wrong, he sets off a chain reaction that puts him in the path of Anton Chigurh—nihilism with a cattle gun and possibly the worst bowl cut in cinematic history.

What makes Chigurh so terrifying isn’t just his killing spree—it’s how he sometimes leaves people’s fates to a coin toss. “Call it,” he says, letting random chance determine life or death. No emotion, no malice, just cosmic indifference flipping quarters.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Bell watches this unfold like someone watching the world change too fast, lamenting: “The end of the world is the end of a man’s life, I guess.”

The Coen brothers emphasize nihilism through the film’s structure itself—characters die off-screen, plot threads remain unresolved, and expected confrontations never happen. It’s like ordering a five-course meal and getting philosophical uncertainty for dessert.

4. Taxi Driver: Loneliness on Wheels

Travis Bickle drives his taxi through 1970s New York City, watching “all the animals come out at night” through his windshield. Surrounded by millions yet connecting with no one, Travis embodies urban alienation in its purest form.

His famous line, “I’m God’s lonely man,” captures that special flavor of nihilistic isolation that comes from feeling like a stranger in your own life. It’s basically the 1970s equivalent of posting sad song lyrics on your social media at 2 AM.

What makes this film brilliant is how Travis’s eventual “heroic” violence isn’t born from morality—it’s his desperate attempt to make his existence mean something. When the media accidentally celebrates his rampage as heroism, the film basically says even society can’t distinguish between meaning and meaninglessness anymore.

Scorsese created the cinematic equivalent of that late-night feeling when you wonder if you’re the only sane person in a crazy world, or the only crazy person in a sane one.

5. The Big Lebowski: Nihilism, But Make It Chill

After all that existential heaviness, The Big Lebowski offers nihilism with a White Russian chaser.

When thugs ruin The Dude’s prized rug (which “really tied the room together”), he gets pulled into a bizarre kidnapping plot involving self-proclaimed nihilists who hilariously declare “We believe in nothing!” while still wanting ransom money.

The true nihilist is The Dude himself, though he’d never use that term—too much effort. With his cocktails, joints, and bowling, he shows us a peaceful acceptance of life’s meaninglessness.

Take the scene where he’s kicked out of a cab for saying “I hate the Eagles, man!” Most people would be annoyed at being stranded, but The Dude just accepts it and moves on. Why fight the current?

While other nihilistic characters rage against the void, The Dude simply abides. His philosophy: if nothing matters, why not enjoy a good White Russian with friends? As he says: “The Dude abides.” Four decades of philosophy departments couldn’t come up with anything more profound.

Embracing the Void (Or Not, Whatever)

From explosions to bowling alleys, these films offer different flavors of “nothing matters.” Fight Club gives us destructive rebellion, A Clockwork Orange shows moral vacancy, No Country for Old Men presents cosmic indifference, Taxi Driver explores urban alienation, and The Big Lebowski offers peaceful acceptance.

The beauty is that they don’t just philosophize about nihilism—they let you experience it without having an actual breakdown. They’re philosophical thought experiments with better soundtracks.

So grab some popcorn (or don’t—it doesn’t matter anyway, right?), dim the lights, and let these movies take you nowhere in particular. After all, in a universe without inherent meaning, movie night is as good a purpose as any!

Which of these films spoke to your inner void? Drop your existential thoughts in the comments below—or don’t. As The Dude would say, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

In a world where nothing inherently matters, we’re free to decide what does. Maybe start with figuring out which of these movies to watch first!