An obsession with "badass" - Page 2

There are certainly different kinds of badass: the earned, cathartic badass (Shaun in Shaun of the Dead, Doug in The Hills Have Eyes) and the stoic, unchanging badass (the stereotypical 80s actioner).

I don't think there's anything wrong with the former, but the latter is definitely an acquired taste. Hell, my dad doesn't like John Wayne because "he's always right". Guess he's never seen or didn't understand The Searchers, but you see what I'm trying to say here.

For me, personally, I don't think I'd even watch movies if there was never a badass in sight, type 1 or type 2. Of course, like horrid pointed out, there's nothing worse than faux badassery (xXx, the first Fast and the Furious) brought in a completely unironic fashion.

My personal favourite Rock moments in Scorpion King were throwaway lines where they almost offhandedly established what a badass he was. ("Maybe later.")

But that's just me.

Yep.

I think the problem with that scene from Aliens is, as some others have said, in the 20 plus years, it's become so quoted and referenced that we kind of forget what the line meant back then, or, in the case of Patrick and myself, we don't remember it at all because we were too young to have seen it in the theatre. I mean, when you have Direct TV doing that scene in commercials and the last Harry Potter book "paying homage"* to it, it's become kind of watered down.

*Okay, maybe this is debatable, but that moment was still awesome, and, dare I say it, badass.

The most badass HP moment for me was Gary Oldman clocking Jason Isaacs in the last one. Was that in the book?

Fixed.

I just thought of this: one of the most badass moments of the last few years was in fact an utterly pacifist one.

The doctor in Pan's Labyrinth telling the captain "real men don't follow orders for orders' sake", slowly walking away, getting shot in the back, walking another step and collapsing.

She's more than just a badass in Aliens and Alien3, though. She has an emotional journey that spans all three films, 'badasses' don't do that. It's only in the third film where she's just there to be tough and enigmatic, pretty much the definition of badass.

I think what Patrick's trying to get at is the free pass given to poorly written characters because they're bad ass. It's just become another piece of geek chic and I find it kinda troubling at times. I just don't get off on watching infallible, ice cold characters do extreme feats, it feels more like a sideshow attraction than a piece of cinema. It's why as soon as I heard people talking about Beowulf leaping from something's eye sockets and yelling his own name I gave up any desire to see the film.

It just feels far too manipulated and far too cynical to actually be believable. The example of the post above is what I imagine a true bad ass to be, not some muscular Spartan who kicks the shit out of a bunch of Iranians.

I prefer my badass super or non-human.

This pretty much sealed the deal for me.

I find it curious that so many equate badass with violent. A 71 Hemi-Cuda is badass as is Bo Diddley and I don't see much violence to speak of there. Though I am pretty sure Bo could kick any one of our asses if he so desired, even in his current ailin' state.

The eye thing in Beowulf is a perfect Combination of 'badass'/ridiculous/funny.

Then why did he mention Josh Brolin and Ripley from Aliens? Ripoll's issue is much more encompassing than just poorly written characters, it's the term in general.

You guys are getting WAAAAAAY to philosophical over badass. Casey Ryback is much more of a badass than the doctor from Pan's Labyrinth. Don't confuse honor with badassness. Ryback has both, the doctor only one. And that's a good thing. Having the doctor be badass would have completely destroyed the film, while having Ryback nobly accept death while protecting a child on a train bound for another train filled with fuel would have ruined Under Siege 2 (fuck you all if you try to say the film was already ruined).

A lot of you sound like giant pussies in this thread. There's a line between the effete way you guys describe tough characters that are meant to be fun,
and true meatheadedness that's seriously enjoyed by certain people (not naming names).

Yes, well, hence the different types of badass.

I don't know, I think telling the person who has proven to be a cold and efficient killer that he doesn't agree with anything he does is far more bad ass and applaudable than stabbing Tommy Lee Jones a dozen times and smashing his head into a TV monitor.

Predator is one of the great action movies of all time. So is Aliens. Preferring one over the other is just opinion.

The reason both of them are great is for the exact reason you talk about - they take their time. In each film, we go almost half-way through the movie before we really get into the action. There's a ton of set up. In no way does Alien fall short of Predator in this fashion. No other character in either movie is nearly as developed as Ripley is. That's why her "Bitch" moment is so great.

And there's so much depth to the story, as well. The first action scenes are really nothing more that set-up for how the rest of the movie will go down. We're able to see the characters when the shit really hits the fan. As was mentioned before, many of them were filled with bravado, but we start to see them fall apart (Paxton, Gorman) or blow up (vazquez, Drake) and show their true colors. The company, the history, etc, it's all played calmly and perfectly to set up a strong, emotional, completely satisfying ending.

Predator does this, as well. I'm never going to diss Predator as long as I live. I just think they're both films of similar structure.

Then you don't really get it. They're two completely different things. Badass would have been saying what he did and beating the General into the dirt.

Accepting death isn't badass. It can be noble, honorable, applaudable, moving and all sorts of other positives, but not badass.

But what makes the 'Bitch' line work exactly, it's just an easily swallowable breakdown of what her character has been through for the last thirty minutes. If she uttered the line as she took her first course of direct action it'd be a lot more impressive, as it is she says this defiant line after she's faced down the Queen once and saved her proxy child.

If Badass is just the innate ability to hit things then it's even more of a horrible term than I originally thought.

Guttenberg, I disagree completely. Goddamn, do I disagree, and I love movies where things are hit and stabbed and smashed into monitors.

She says it after she gets into the mover. Before that, she was running, but now, to protect the child, she puts her fear away and steps up to her nightmares and confronts them directly. It's the perfect moment.

There's an element of toughness involved to being a badass, not honor or pride. The best badasses have elements both, but you can be a badass without the other two (we call them the 'bad guys'). I don't know why you're trying to connote non-tough attributes to badass. There's no point, and it's not a bad thing. You're just trying to call a spade a hoe.

Oh come on, by that point she's already taken a step by asking Hicks to teach her to use a Pulse Rifle. She's even gone down into the layer of the Aliens and nabbed Newt back from the inner sanctum.

I think you're just being incredibly narrow-minded. It's like saying one can only be "cool" if one follows the latest fashions and listens to whatever's in the top ten at that moment.

I do think "badass" involves a physical component. Or just preternatural luck that nobody in real life could possibly have. Like the way Batman can backhand a guy without even looking to confirm he's there.

Without that, you're a weakling with good intentions. The Pan's Labyrinth doctor example is that of a hero. But Batman would've told the General that same thing and backhanded the General without even looking to confirm that he's there.

No, it's just understanding language. Words mean things and you're trying to stretch the meaning of a word to extend to a group of people who don't need that tag applied to them. If you don't like that the word 'badass' applies to a certain physicality, that's one thing. To say that it means something else is a completely different (and dumber) story.

Paul McCartney gets it.

And Spike, she learned how to use the rifle to protect herself. She went into the nest to rescue Newt and run. When she dons the mover suit, she's attacking, which is something she had never done before. That's her hero moment. It's the fucking climax - plot-wise and character-wise - for god's sake.

That's not even the best badass moment in that movie. "You won't be the first pig I've gutted", now that's fucking badass.

And yes, Predator and Aliens are both very, very good action movies... but let's not get ridiculous and sit here and say that fucking PREDATOR has better characters and characterizations than Aliens. For fuck's sake... I love Predator, but come on. Hicks, Ripley, and Burke alone would put an end to that idea, even if the rest of the film was populated by cartoon characters.

What? She was going into the lion's den out of self-defense, or defense of her 'child'. Then the alien queen comes onto her turf and fucks up her shipmate and again threatens her family. There's a reason it's placed there, and it makes total sense. Desperate mother/victim-> Protective mother, that's why the line works.

I love Predator to death, but yeah I totally agree.

Okay, I can understand you feeling that Ripley is a real character with depth who has a journey. But come on, man. Hicks is a nonentity. He has no setup, no journey, and doesn't change. He's barely a character at all. And Burke is a cartoon. He's the evil corporate scumbag who will do anything in the name of ambition. And, again, he has no journey. He doesn't change or learn. That's what "character development" means; it means they develop as characters. Neither Hicks nor Burke do that in any way, shape or form. You obviously have a very different idea of what character depth is than I do.

And just to blow this silly theory about age and the "bitch" line completely out of the water, I'm 43. I saw Aliens in the theater in 1986. And I thought that line was embarrassing right out of the box. It wasn't cathartic, cool, or an organic outgrowth of a character journey. It was just typical James Cameron badassery, and incidentally, senseless. Why is she speaking to the thing in the first place? It's exactly the same moment as Linda Hamilton's "You're terminated, fucker". It's a generic action movie kill line, nothing more. Dialogue is not a Cameron strong suit.

I like Aliens, honestly. But that's all. I just like it. The near-religious fervor that it's defended with kind of frightens me, to be honest. You all talk about it the same way Ebert talks about The Third Man, as if it's a pinnacle of cinematic art, and to question its greatness is unthinkable. It's just a good action movie, and that's enough. This attitude is more than a little ridiculous.

Dellamorte wins!

It's inconceivable to me that a conversation about the "badass" ideal (a conversation with which Hemingway would have been very comfortable, btw) has gotten this far without someone bringing up Lee Marvin in Point Blank.

Marvin's character is badass because he's human. When he hits you, he doesn't knock you through a wall. And when you hit him, he bleeds. But he's tough, and he just keeps coming.

That's a lot more interesting than some roided up superman.

Frank's post just made me realize that two of the most badass performances I've seen come from two similar films, Terance Stamp in The Limey and Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast. Both cases of old, small men who give off incalculable levels of menace due to little more than their irresistible focus on getting what they want. They are scary because they think they deserve to be selfish.

This is also exactly what I love about Indiana Jones, by the way. He gets the crap beaten out of him, and feels every bruise and scrape along the way. But he just doesn't stop. The first two Mad Max films have the same appeal.

There are a wealth of movie lines over the history of film that have been a great cathartic moment for both the characters and the audience. I don't see how any of them can be criticised if they fit in to what the character is feeling. The bitch line is a perfect summation of anger, frustration and sheer protective rage Ripley is feeling after all the previous events down on the planet. She means to protect her new daughter by killing the Alien queen, and the bitch line is simply a vocal representation of how she looks and what she's about to do. It's terrific, so kindly quit pissing in my Cameron flakes.


And Die Hard, where (for the first three anyway), McLane would take a beating but still (just) keep on going.

I wouldn't feel the need to keep pissing on people's Cameron Flakes if they didn't keep insisting they're a nourishing meal. Cameron Flakes are junk food. I like junk food, and I'm not ashamed of it enough to claim that it's a balanced meal.

So because you don't like the cornflakes, you've made it your mission in life to piss into every bowlful you can find?

Somebody has to make you people eat your vegetables.

And I do like the cornflakes. I said that. I just think they're a snack.

Don't forget Tom Regan, he gets his ass handed to him every 5 minutes and still comes off as a tough guy

In my opinion, I think the "Get away from her, you BITCH" line was Ripley's make or break moment - she just came thisclose to her and Newt dying not only from the Queen, but from the reactor going boom. She saw all of these hardcore Marines get annihilated, Hicks get wounded, Bishop torn apart right in front of her just as Ripley and Newt reached what they thought was safety on the Sulaco. To discover that Ripley went through all of that, only to find out the fucking Queen was still after her and Newt when it should be dead in a nuclear explosion - it struck me that Ripley finally snapped and all her fear was used up.

She was running on pure anger and adrenaline by then, she was tired of being afraid of these creatures ever since Alien; she'd lost so much at this point because of it (including her own daughter as being in a life pod for 57 years since the first film meant she missed her kid grow up, live her life, and die of old age) and was about to lose her surrogate daughter in Newt. Ripley finally lost her fear - she was going to take the Queen out once and for all, even if she had to die to do it. Even if she did die, she probably reckoned, she wouldn't be afraid any more.

That doesn't blow any theory out of the water. The fact you didn't like it back in the day is a reflection on you, not the movie.

Apparently you wanted Aliens to be You Can Count on Me. It's not. It's just a wonderfully crafted action movie, and that's all it's trying to be. You wanted to see more character development from secondary characters? I can't imagine anyone writing a critique of Aliens and asking "Where was Hicks' journey as a character?" with a straight face. Apparently, the fact that the first third of a 2.5 hour movie being nothing but set-up isn't enough. We need to dig into Hicks' history and learn about how he once dreamed of being a ballet dancer, but was roped into service during the war against Omicron Perseii VIII and found his true calling.

Agreed, though I think we need to draw another line here - more interesting isn't necessarily more badass, it's just more interesting.

That was so many kinds of wrong, I don't know where to start. My criticism about Hicks' lack of journey wasn't about saying that the film should have done that. I was responding to someone who said that he and Burke had character depth, and pointing out that they really don't. I'm not saying that they should. It is, completely and totally, the Ripley show, which is exactly as it should be. The fact that people think that Hicks and Burke are deep characters says, to me, that they're reading a lot into the film that isn't there.

Try reading the whole conversation before you lob your snark grenades next time.

Wasn't Linklater supposed to be doing a sequel to The Last Detail?

I can live with that.

As much as I love Aliens, I have to agree with this.