The Neon Demon, Mr. Robot's Demon

“One morning I woke up and realized I was both surrounded and dominated by women,” Refn says on his decision to write a female-driven genre film. “Strangely, a sudden urge was planted in me to make a horror film about vicious beauty. After making Drive and falling madly in love with the electricity of Los Angeles, I knew I had to return to tell the story of The Neon Demon.”

In the film the character of Jesse is played by Elle Fanning, whom Refn calls “a powerhouse of talent” and “absolutely amazing.” The 17-year-old is said to become enveloped by a clutch of vapid LA women who resort to voodoo and cannibalism as a way to harvest her beauty.

We don’t know specifically who else has been assigned roles in that hideous clique. However, as the remainder of the ensemble includes former Refn player Christina Hendricks, who took charge as Mad Men‘s self-appointed matriarch, we’d hazard a guess and say: she’s probably involved in the madness. The Hunger Games Jena Malone and Dark Shadows‘ Bella Heathcote round out the main female complement. Source: www.inverse.com

Mr. Robot #4 "Daemons" was blanketed in vagueness and open for interpretation, taking us on a journey to figure things out for ourselves while also not putting too much stress on getting those answers. What first seemed like a show solely about paranoid Elliot and his hacker adventures is quickly becoming a spotlight on fringe lifestyles. We'll start with Elliot, whose increase in snorting pain powder quickly spiraled into full-blown physical dependency after he broke his rule of moderation during a particularly stressful period of responsibility with changing the world. "Daemons" became the druggie dry-out episode as Elliot was thrown into a hotel room to exorcise his demons and went on one hell of a mental adventure.

He obviously has an unrequited thing for Angela that's been put to the side since the pilot in favor of hooking him up with Shayla, he's repressing his childhood because his dad died and his relationship with his mother was awful, and the dreamy imagery backed all that up. Source: www.tv.com

The cast and creative team sat down at New York Comic Con to shed what little light they could on the series’ much-anticipated season 2. “I was just driving over here with [creator Sam Esmail] trying to pick his brain, and he wouldn’t reveal much because that’s Sam,” said Rami Malek, who stars as perpetually-hoodied hacker Elliot Alderson.

“He did say ‘get ready.’ And I said ‘what do you mean?’ And he said ‘it’s going to be rough.’ I’m thinking, how much rougher can it possibly get? He just looked at me and said ‘it’s going to get worse.'” Mr. Esmail, for his part, was as tight-lipped as Mr. Malek described, but he did offer up an idea of what to expect while answering the only issue I had with Mr. Robot‘s first season: why would anyone stay so loyal to Elliot, while he is so obviously mentally unstable.

“You have to think about what all the members of fSociety’s intentions are. They want to cause this awful, catastrophic event. They’re not the most balanced folks either,” Mr. Esmail told me. “But we’re going to explore that in season 2. We’re going to look at why they are following this leader who is a little off.” Source: observer.com

Angela is ambitious but lacks confidence, savvy but lacks technological skills. She relies on her childhood friend and colleague, Elliot Alderson, for assistance in critical situations -- in both business and her personal life. Angela’s mother died when she was young, from cancer which developed after her exposure to toxic chemicals at a factory owned by Evil Corp. She has a strong relationship with her father, Don, though events at Allsafe begin to strain their relationship. As Angela navigates corporate politics, Don worries that his daughter approaches moral compromise.

As a senior network technician for cyber security firm Allsafe, Elliot protects corporate clients — including the ubiquitous Evil Corp. As a vigilante hacker, he monitors the people in his daily life and protects those he’s close to from their own flaws. Originally from Washington Township, New Jersey, Elliot now lives alone on the Lower East Side. He suffers from crippling anxiety, which stems from memories of his difficult childhood. His father died when Elliot was young, and his now-estranged mother was brutally cruel. Elliot has spent most of his adult life isolated from the world around him.

With the arrival of Mr. Robot, Elliot’s world changes entirely. Fsociety’s members and mission offer him a renewed purpose leaving him faced with the question of whether to numbly continue the life he knows or risk everything and participate in Mr. Robot’s revolution. Source: www.usanetwork.com

“I think I watched Taxi Driver more than any film I did in preparation for Mr. Robot,” Malek revealed. “I was enthralled by [Travis Bickle] and it’s such an iconic movie. De Niro did something so revolutionary with that character. He embraces a guy who was on the fringes of society and made him relatable — humanized him. That’s something we’ve aspired to do with a lot of the characters on this show and something I really work hard at doing with Elliot.” Source: editorial.rottentomatoes.com

In Martin Scorsese's 1976 film Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro plays a mentally unstable Vietnam veteran, Travis Bickle, who drives a cab and fantasizes about a beautiful blonde who works at a political campaign headquarters. In his unbalanced state of mind, the taxi driver figures that his assassination of a presidential candidate would really make him somebody in the eyes of the world and of his fantasy object. As the film unfolds, he becomes increasingly depressed at the sleaze and degradation around him and anoints himself the defender of a teenaged prostitute, Iris. -"Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier" (2012) by Brad Steiger