I have watched a few more movies than usual recently. In the first place, I always enjoy a good Christmas tale or two. And secondly, when flying to the U.S. I spend 8 hours trying to convince myself I’m not 8 miles above the world. This calls for mindless action movies and stupid comedies.
In that time, I’ve become a bit perturbed at movie bad guys. For the most part I wish they would just take better care of themselves.
In all of the action shoot-up flicks I watched as I bumped 35,000 feet above Terra firma, I realized that the only people who care for their personal safety during a gun fight are the good guys. Or at the very least, the protagonist. They carefully hide behind pillars, walls, door jambs. They tediously time their gunfire to thwart return fire. They even use tactics to draw attention away from themselves and towards nearby dumpsters, stairwells, and cars.
But the bad guys? Nah.
The bad guys run carelessly through doorways, the other side of which house their heavily armed enemies. They run recklessly out in the open even after a bunch of their friends have just been shot dead from a balcony. They don’t hide, duck, or try out any tricky stratagems in order to avoid being shot and killed. They just run willy nilly into the open as if they know it should be this way. Very Zen. But still, I really wish they’d take better care of themselves.
Another sort of bad guy that really threw me was the evil witch. Now, the evil witch in the show we watched really really wanted to use a really really terrible spell. Really bad. So bad that even her evil witch friends warned her against using it. “Don’t do it,” they shrieked. “You’ll end up in an eternal pit of despair from which you’ll never be able to climb.”
The evil witch’s response: “Meh.”
Meh?
Seriously?
I don’t care how evil a witch is, you don’t just ignore terms like “eternal pit of despair” without sitting down to think things through. At the very least she should take a moment to remind herself of her motivation and end game. What’s exactly driving her to want to use this awful spell and what will the outcome be? In this case it would be used against Prince Charming and Snow White. So is it simply envy and revenge?
I can’t imagine a bit of revenge is worth “an eternal pit of despair.” Believe or not, I’ve been envious of people before and even wanted revenge, but in most cases I’ve gotten over it. Moreover, if getting revenge on someone meant disappearing into an eternal pit of despair, I hope that I’d just lighten the fuck up and recenter myself with tacos and a couple of beers.
Then there are the Christmas villains. Not the Grinch or Scrooge, who are, like, so over. I am talking about the villainous boyfriends featuring in Christmas romantic comedies. One thing I learned watching painfully contrived Christmas romantic comedies with my sister is that if you are a woman in a relationship you had better watch out at Christmas time, because that’s when you’re going to get dumped.
And harshly, too. Because the guy who dumps you is going to be one heartless son-of-a-bitch. First off, who dumps someone the week before Christmas? Bad form. It makes you wonder why these sweet girls with hearts of gold were with them in the first place. (But that’s another blog post for another day when I’m jetlagged out of my mind and can’t think of what to write about.)
Secondly, why don’t these boyfriends realize they are about to become Christmas villains? Don’t they know they are doing something awful just before the holiday whose movie goal is to make people change heart? Don’t they know, simply from watching movies likes ones they themselves are starring in, that they’ll end up regretting it, but by the time they realize their blunder, their ex will have met their true love?
I wish someone would tell these guys. I know they’re Christmas villains, but still, even the bad guys deserve a second chance, don’t they?
