7 Movie Badasses (Who Completely Fail To Deliver)
Movies need you to be scared of the bad guy and impressed by the badass. The method for getting you to buy into this is often the same: by looking the part, and by having other characters go on and on about how badass someone is.
But often when it comes time for said badass to actually, you know, fight somebody, he tends to be profoundly disappointing -- even if nobody else in the movie notices.
#7.
The Uruk-hai -- The Lord of the Rings Series
The buildup:
These giant, muscular, snarling, spitting terrors are the elite troops the bad guys in the Lord of the Rings series plan to use to conquer everyone in Middle-earth.
Even Tom Bombadil?
In the films, a great deal of screen time is dedicated to the creation and mass production of these super-soldiers, specifically bred by Saruman for the purpose of murdering absolutely everyone. They're supposedly created by cross-breeding "orcs and goblin-men," though the lack of any scenes portraying orcs and goblin-men fucking is a glaring omission in this process.
We guess that's kind of hot.
Sure enough, the first Uruk-hai off the line gets as badass an introduction as any character in film history. Orcs dig him out of a muddy cocoon, at which point he jumps out and murders the first dude he can find. This soldier has a confirmed kill within five seconds of being born.
He suckled from the teat of murder.
And Saruman creates thousands of them.
But then...
After half a film's worth of buildup, we finally see the Uruk-hai in action at the end of Fellowship of the Ring. They pursue the fellowship and manage to kill Boromir.
You know, the guy who got his ass handed to him by two unarmed hobbits.
Well, eventually. Boromir, with multiple arrows piercing his internal organs, manages to kill half a dozen or so of the Uruk-hai before breathing his last breath. It's played like a devastating loss for the fellowship, but on Saruman's side they had to have been realizing that if that kill ratio kept up, the orcs and goblin-men were going to need to step up the fuckin'.
Which, to be fair, they totally did.
But OK, there were only a few Uruk-hai in that scene, and maybe they were tired or something. So in The Two Towers, the real Uruk-hai army shows up, 10,000 of them at the Battle of Helm's Deep ...
"So, um ... is there, like, a plan? We aren't just going to charge right into their arrows, are we? Guys?"
At which point rows and rows of them are mowed down by a tiny, ragtag group of random untrained dudes the good guys pulled off their farms. The massive, overwhelming force of specially bred soldier-monsters is held at bay for hours before they resort to suicide bombing the fortress. This works briefly before reinforcements show up for the good guys -- reinforcements of regular soldiers, not specially bred super-soldiers -- at which point the Uruk-hai flee for their lives and are punched to death by trees.
Trees on Thorazine.
All told, the Uruk-hai have a record in battle just slightly worse than the Star Wars stormtroopers. And that's saying something.
#6.
Quint -- Jaws
The buildup:
When the town of Amity is under siege by a ferocious killer shark, Quint descends from the heavens to kick it in its great white nutsack. He interrupts a town meeting where everybody is panicking about the monster terrorizing the town to say that for 3,000 bucks, he'll find it -- by himself. Then he ups the ante:
"I'll find him for three, but I'll catch him, and kill him, for 10 ... For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing." This of course raises the question, what did the three thousand dollar package include? Was Quint just going to go out, and point to the shark?
Regardless of what flavor of shark-murder stew the town chose, the movie makes it clear that Quint can back it up: His house is lined wall-to-wall with boiled jawbones. Also, he doesn't appear to stop drinking the entire time he's in the movie. In an alcohol-fueled monologue, he tells Brody and Hooper about the time he was stranded at sea while serving on the USS Indianapolis, a boat that was famously torpedoed and sunk during World War II and had two-thirds of its adrift crew eaten by sharks. This guy harpoons our nightmares for a living.
Those are not the eyes of a well-balanced person.
But then ...
The shark attacks the boat and, well, Quint kind of just falls right into its mouth.
Sure, it's a big shark, and it eats its fair share of people before the end credits roll, but Quint's specific job was to not get eaten. We're pretty sure that part was underlined in the contract he signed. His entire livelihood involves confronting sharks and not getting eaten by them.
"Jesus, Quint, are you even trying to hunt sharks?"
But sure enough, when the shark is biting the tail end of the boat, Quint sort of lies on the boat like Hungry Hungry Hippos and lets gravity do the rest. The guy the movie spends two hours building up as the Rambo of shark murder gets taken out by a live-action Crocodile Mile.
Sure, anybody can drop the ball once, lose his footing and, you know, fall into a shark's open mouth. But keep in mind that this was after he smashed the ship's radio and blew up the engine, leaving them floating around aimlessly. It would have been more useful to leave Quint behind in his jawbone mansion.
The moral of the story? Don't drink and hunt homicidal sharks.
#5.
Scarecrow/Dr. Jonathan Crane -- Batman Begins and The Dark Knight
The buildup:
Dr. Jonathan Crane seems pretty badass despite looking like a dime-store Jack Skellington. His fantastic use of a scarecrow mask and psychedelic drugs reduces ultra-powerful mob boss Carmine Falcone, a man who literally ran Gotham City from the bottom up, into a muttering drool farm presumably warming his own leg with a steady stream of urine.
He's either terrified or taking a truly epic shit.
Crane is also an instrumental part of a supervillainous plot to destroy Gotham City (which we are led to believe has every bit the size, population and economy as New York City or Chicago) from the inside out, bringing the entirety of a massive infrastructure to its knees within a matter of minutes. Also, he sets Batman on fire and kicks him out a window, all of which he does without so much as throwing a punch or pointing a gun at anyone.
We don't want to step out of line here, but ... you could make the argument that the guy was every bit as effective a supervillain as the Joker.
Have at us, commenters.
But then ...
Crane gets tased in the face by Katie Holmes and dragged off by a horse while shrieking like Judge Doom at the end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Ah, but when he returns, he ...
... replaces his horse with a Segway?
... oh, wait. He doesn't. That's the last time we see him. Enduring that colossal letdown after two hours of buildup is like breaking open a pinata to find it full of chewed bubble gum.
But then he returns in the sequel, revenge on his mind, badder than ever!
Hmm ... no, that's not right, either. When we see him again at the beginning of The Dark Knight, he's been reduced to selling tainted drugs out of the back of a van to Russian gangsters in a municipal parking garage. Seriously? This is the same guy who had Gotham City by the balls? By the time the writers are done with him, he's one step above a Nigerian email scammer.
"Wanna buy some weed?"
#4.
Robert Muldoon -- Jurassic Park
The buildup:
Robert Muldoon is the hunter guy in charge of controlling the inmates at Jurassic Park. So he immediately gets badass points just for the fact that someone read his resume and gave him the job as the captain of the guards for dinosaur jail.
"Get busy living, or get busy eating people."
He looks like Crocodile Dundee's war-torn older brother, so it's not hard to picture him strangling a stegosaurus with his bare hands. And he has a grizzled and jaded attitude to match, coupled with a deep intuition for dinosaur behavior that clearly illustrates him as a man who functions on a different level than the rest of us.
And let's not forget that he outclasses the tyrannosaurus in a factory-standard Jeep. We can only imagine how awesome it would be if Jurassic Park had been a huge success and he got to host his own nature show.
But then ...
He winds up going down easier than Quint. And it's even less excusable, since this guy was on a freaking salary, and presumably sober.
You should never presume sobriety when Australians are involved.
The moment in the movie where Muldoon finally stops talking about the goddamn raptors and gets to go face-to-face with them and show us how much ass he truly kicks, he puts up as much of a fight as the cows they feed to the dinosaurs. The man gets outsmarted in 10 seconds by an extinct animal with the brain of a dolphin.
"Clever girl. 'Clever' being a relative term."
This is literally the exact job he was hired for, and he utterly fails in spectacular fashion. Even the fucking children were able to trap the raptors, and they're not even on the payroll. In the end he makes absolutely no difference whatsoever in the well-being of those around him. He might as well have been carrying a pool noodle to escort Laura Dern through the jungle.
even though boba did nothing {on screen} it can be inferd from his battle worn armor that he has quite a few kills under his belt all i can say is his death was THE WORST thing george lucas did to starwas including the prequels {at least the prequels werent loved by the fans then ground into the dirt} i myself not a fan of expanded univers still treat that comic were he excapes the sarlacc as cannon becuse well he is boba and by god he could of totaly burst out . {note: i think redicusly bad deaths are geneticy programed into the fett family as his "father" who in the awsome game starwars bounty hunter effortlesly took out a rouge jedi but gets is ass haned to him by mace windu who was attacking like a kid with a baseball bat}
ReplyThe Ninja Robocop guy from 'Robocop 3'. There's a whole 3 acts of massive buildup about how badass the guy is, and how he's totally going to whoop Robocop's ass, then when the big show-down comes, Robocop just takes a leaf from Indiana Jones' book, and whips out his gun and ices the m**********r with one shot.
ReplyAm i the only one that was just waiting for them to compare boba fett with batman when they were listing why he is awesome?
ReplyHe is a guy with no power in a world people with "super powers" (force), and just says f**k that and uses gadgets to fight them.
Not saying he is as badass as batman, but the similarity is there :P
Sorry to sound like a 1st year film student here, but it’s redundant to have both Quint and Muldoon on this list, because they are actually the same person.
ReplyBoth films (directed by Speilberg) give us a trio of potential heroes. Quint and Muldoon represent the proletariat – a working class hero who’s kind of cranky and blunt but has experience in this sort of thing. Proletariat fails and dies. Dreyfuss’ Hooper and Goldblum’s Malcolm represent the intelligentsia. They are obnoxious and self-absorbed but “My, what a big brain you have!” They also fail. So it’s up to the likable middle-class everyman (Brody/ Dr. Grant) to save the day. Both movies also serve up a greedy capitalist who gets oh-so embarrassed in the end because being greedy is baaaaad.
Speilberg’s Amblin Entertainment also produced Arachnophobia, which uses the same formula except that the intellectual dies and the proletariat lives. I guess because cardiac arrest had already called dibs on being John Goodman’s cause of death.
Same trope, different person. The list is about people, not tropes. There are no repeats.
Kinda interesting how in the book, Malcolm was right. Also, in the movie, Malcolm was also right. He preached all along that the park was not viable and would fall into chaos. His "failure" was trying to distract the T-Rex's attention away from the kids in the movie, and trying to run from the T-Rex when it turned on their SUV in the book. So either way, I don't see how he "failed"
We don't know the exact nature of Bishop's programming. It's possible that he's secretly working on Company orders to retrieve the Aliens, like Ash was. But in such a way as to not let on that he is, because they know that Ripley would try to destroy him. And when he saves Newt from getting sucked out into space, that IS rather badass for a robot that's been torn in half.
ReplyA lot of this was good, but falls into the same trap that a lot of these articles fall into, namely poor justification. I'm fairly certain dolphins could run us into the ground were it not for their physical "handicap" of being restricted to the water. Then there's the bit with the scarecrow. Nolan was going for realism, and realistically, Scarecrow did just what anyone with a stable fear juice would do were they a villain, flood the city with it. As for the Dark Knight, I agree, the least they could've done was have him holding a bank hostage for the sake of his experiment with fear, but he wasn't the star villain, the Joker was.
ReplyAnd speaking of the Joker, he managed to trick Batman, and the entire police force several times resulting in a dead ex-girlfriend, a demolished jailhouse, a new villain made from one of the good guys, a destroyed Hospital, numerous misc. deaths, intense psychological trauma for thousands of people given several moral dilemmas, and managed to get an entire bank robbery team to kill themselves. If that isn't "villain" enough for you, just what would you consider an "effective" bad guy?
"I'm fairly certain dolphins could run us into the ground were it not for their physical "handicap" of being restricted to the water."
And you are basing that on.... what, exactly? Chimps are pretty much on par with dolphins, and how many chimps do you suppose have been to the moon? I counted zero, but then again I'm terrible at math. Dolphins are very intelligent, sure, but there is absolutely no reason to assume that they would be the dominant species if only they could live on land. The whole dolphin hype thing is 90% horseshit. If someone finds a Little Mermaid style underwater empire, or a dolphin that can correctly calculate the mass of the sun, gimme a call.
Dolphins defuse mines (for us of course) . Chimp's don't do that.
robert muldoon actually survives and kills 4 raptors in the book with a grenade launcher
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesYa Muldoons an absolute badass in the book
...but also a drunk, contrary to this article.
Drunk? He's even more bad-ass!
He does only guess at sobriety in the article
Scarecrow's f*****g awesome and Nolan totally under used him.
ReplyBut my real concern is this line:
"The man gets outsmarted in 10 seconds by an extinct animal with the brain of a dolphin."
Dolphins are smart as f**k and I think that kind of undermines the effect you were going for. Consider the following:
"The man gets outsmarted in 10 seconds by an extinct animal with the brain of a chicken."
Just sayin
Not exactly. Velociraptors, we are told time and time again by the characters, are dolphin-smart, with a natural wolf-like hunting instinct and the personality of a pissed off pitbull. However, human beings are more intelligent than dolphins. That's why we're not the ones crammed in cages, forced to perform for the sqeaking porpoise-masses, or being needlessly hunted in Japan. So, when he says they have "the brain of a dolphin", he's giving the velociraptor the credit it's due while also explaining why a human (not just any human, but an experienced hunter and an Aussie!) should have been able to outsmart these creatures that can be bested by a reflection on a metal shelf.
"Nolan's movies are realistic in as many ways as a Batman movie can be. Realistically, a guy like Crane isn't really much of a threat except that he's smart and ruthless. He's also arrogant, and mostly used for his ability to plan and f**k with people while he has them locked in a room with guards outside and no weapons (or tasers)."
Reply"Sometimes the anticlimax fight can be just as thrilling when you realize the symbolism. You're supposed to think about what happened with The Bride and Bill. Real fights don't take place between people with stats and levels like in video games. A bullet to the back of the head kills people like Hitler, Osama, Stalin, and whoever else, no matter how many people they're in charge of or what their video game level would be."
It sounds a bit "kiddie" saying this, but what about "the guy" from Spy Kids 3? The three kids spend most of the movie talking about how great he is and he appears, opens a door and immediately dies.
Reply"I think that was the point. Also, all signs kind of point to 'The Guy' being a bunch of BS planted in the game by a criminal genius (as much as kid movies have those in actuality) to give false hope."
With Boba Fett's badass credentials, you forgot to mention his dad is Jake "The Muss" Heke!
ReplyCook me some eggs!!!!!
As for the Quint/Jaws question; I had always assumed that for $3000 he was going to kill and KEEP it, but for the full 10K he would allow them to retain the dead shark for publicity/money making etc. He DID collect shark parts after all and one as big as Jaws would surely be worth something to the money-having public.
ReplyOtherwise, good article.
Great article.
ReplyTo be fair, Muldoon was perfectly capable of thwarting the raptors in the book. HE just got Killed by Adaptation.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesAgreed, he kicked ass in the book. is funy cause in the article they say how he must have been sober, well not only did he kick ass in the book, he did it drumk too!
I couldn't remember if he was a drunk or not in the book. Whats funny though, I was just talking to a friend about that scene with Muldoon. What I don't understand, was the need for him to extend the stock on his SPAS 12. Its a SHOTGUN! All he needed to do was blow the first ones face off, then turn, and fire again. Problem solved.
I think you mean "to bring up a completely irrelevant point," considering the title of this article makes it clear that they are only using the movies as a source. Reading comprehension is an important skill.
Which is why tburdboy said "To be fair, Muldoon was perfectly capable of thwarting the raptors IN THE BOOK". Damn you just made yourself look stupid and bitchy at the same time.
While reading the book, everytime they were "safe", Muldoon would get sent into a suicide mission by Hammond, like "Go find me Nedry", "Go and shot the Rex", "Go and distract the raptors", etc. Some of those were even his idea. The funny thing is not that he always survived, is that in half of those mission he'll take Genaro with him and both of them survived the island. Also he did shoot a raptor or two.
@Steve
You'd best be goddamned strong if you're going to fire a shotgun without a stock while holding up to your face to aim. Otherwise it's just as likely to fly back and smash your face in.
Only movie heroes and wannabe-badasses fire shotguns like that. That he did extend the stock was actually more a nice touch in Jurassic Park. Not to get into the whole issue of shotguns being mostly non-penetrative and the raptors in the movie likely had tougher, thicker skin.
And, yeah, he was badass in the book.
7 and 5 you got all wrong. Mainly because if you haven't read the books/comics there is alot you're gonna miss. And Boba Fett is implied hes awesome just like every other movie with a role model or hired gun.
ReplyWhich part of the phrase "Movie Badasses" did you fail to grasp?
There is a big hint in there about the article not being about comics or books.
I think they fed goats to the dinosaurs, not cows.
ReplyJust sayin'.
They fed a goat to the T-Rex, they lowered cows into the raptor paddock.
you are probably a little bit clinically retrded if you so thoroughly misunderstood the ending of kill bill. tarantino is not one for subtlety, yet somehow the dead-obvious message was too much for you. DIE, a*****e, please die. We don't need people this stupid to be alive.
Reply Hide All See All 9 RepliesYour an idiot.
*you're
I think what we don't need is people getting so upset over a f*****g movie.
Pajaroto, not even the movie! A section of an article about a movie!
my god, what an overreaction!
Wow...just wow.
really wow.
Damn dude, calm down.
Someone thoroughly misunderstood the point of this article.
i have to disagree with the Bill thing. he masterminded almost all of it, including his own death, and included a drug so the bride didn't feel so bad about it afterwards. genius.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI doubt that, since he geniunely didn't seem to know about the Five-Point-Exploding Palm Technique that she had mastered.
He may not have known she was taught that particular technique, but I do have a feeling that he didn't stop her because he didn't really want to stop her. Maybe all masterminded, maybe only subconciously... but for whatever reason, he reckoned that it was time to die. Maybe something as simple as figuring out he'd probably lose the match anyway, maybe as an act of redemption, maybe he was just tired of life.
Too bad he couldn't have really gotten out that way, rather than hanging himself while flogging his hog.
In my opinion, they should have included Col. Kurz from Apocalypse Now. Practically the whole movie is a build up to meeting him, Martin Sheen is told countless time about how radicall a field commander Kurtz is in fighting a guerrilla war. However, for no more than about 15 minutes do we actually get to meet Kurtz (Brando) before Sheen kills him. In that time, he has reletively little dialoge and we do not see him engage in any actually combat operations!
ReplyAgreed. I know I'll be committing heresy by saying this but I wasn't crazy about the last 15-20 minutes of Apocalypse Now. The rest was pure gold though, especially Robert Duvall's scenes.
umm, dude, this is kind of embarassing... you missed the whole point of the movie. It's really awkward for you, because now you look like you have down syndrome. You sat through a 3 hour movie about the hellish consequences of war. The brilliant conclusion to the film is that Kurtz is not a "badass" at all, but a fat, manipulative psychotic who has been destroyed by the jungle.
LOTR (movie) completely suck at explaining the origin of the URUK-Hai. They were bred from Orcs and Goblins mingled WITH ACTUAL HUMANS. And yes, by means of the ancient mating ritual we all know and love. Also -the army had been growing FOR YEARS. The story told from Bilbo's party until Frodo leaves the Shire takes no more no less than eighteen years to roll. The year before Bilbo's party, Saruman had joined 'The Dark Side', which means when the war broke out, half of the Uruk-Hai were already licensed drivers. Aditionally, in the book, the Fellowship doesn't slay that many Uruks, their host itself is smaller, and the army that comes in aid of Théoden in Helm's Deep is that of Erkenbrand, leader of a thousand sword-in-hand footmen, which, i guess, would be pretty effective against an army worn out, caught off guard, designed to fight cavalry, clumsily armored, lacking mobility, and, i presume, sick from the rainfall.
ReplySince you specify (movie), I assume you think the books explain it better... And you're kind of wrong. Saruman did breed humans and orcs, but Uruk-Hai were the result of a more general eugenics program.
Not to mention assaulting a defending position is going to result in the deaths of many of your troops anyway, no matter the discrepancy between the two sides (well, assuming the defenders are completely, functionally retarded). Hence, why they had relocated and dug in at a castle dug into a mountain side with a proven history in their lore for successfully holding off assaults. So you'd expect them to be able to hold off for hours.
That's not even a particularly long period as far as castle sieges go, especially in the LOTR universe. The siege of Sauron's fortress (depicted in Fellowship's prologue) was supposed to have lasted a couple of years, for instance. And, to reinforce your last comment, doesn't matter how seemingly badass your infantry is, when you're surprised and flanked by a sizeable cavalry force, you're at a disadvantage.