I was listening to some music this morning and the DJ scratched in a soundbyte in the middle of the track. The clip was a line is from a classic gangster movie and I've heard it sampled numerous times. This got me to thinking about the actor that said the line and his iconic portrayal that has since gone on to become part of our collective cultural fabric. This, then, got me to thinking about other iconic characters.
Here's the list I came up with of the top twelve:
12. The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) The Terminator (1984),
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991),
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
The single most bad-ass robot of all time played by master-thespian and all around strong guy, Arnold Schwarzenegger. You've got to give it to James Cameron for casting Arnold as the cyborg villain instead of the muscular hero. That genius little twist, the star of the movie being the unstoppable killing machine and the heroes being a young, scared couple, served to meld the science-fiction time-travel aspects with that of a horrific monster movie. And Arnold was scary as hell. He cut a menacing figure and the fact that audiences could hardly understand half the shit he was saying made him all the more frightening.
Seven years later he returned to the role, but had been reprogrammed to be the good guy (in another great twist) in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day.Twelve years went by and they made
Terminator 3, which I'd rather not talk about right now (although it did have one great scene with Arnie hanging off the back of a giant crane-truck as it barrels through Los Angeles, causing all kinds of destruction).
11. James Bond (Sean Connery) Dr. No (1962),
From Russia with Love (1963),
Goldfinger (1964),
Thunderball (1965),
You Only Live Twice (1967),
Diamonds Are Forever(1971)
Everyone's favorite James Bond. There's no denying that Sean Connery was the preeminent Bond (hell, he made the role famous), and he's on this list because everyone's heard of James Bond. Even my grandmother probably has an image in her head of Connery in a tuxedo, smirking like a jackass. I would've put him higher on the list but Pierce Brosnan was my favorite James Bond (this has alot to do with
Goldeneye being the first Bond I ever saw on the big-screen). Bond.
10. John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone)First Blood (1982),
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985),
Rambo III (1988),
Rambo (2008)
In
First Blood, Sylvester Stallone plays a disaffected Vietnam veteran getting harassed by police in small-town Washington. He essentially turns the tables and kind of beats the shit out of the whole police department through the course of the movie. The first movie is important, I think, because it helped usher in the era of the Cold-War super-man movies of the 80's and early 90's; being 12 years old in the early nineties, I was of the perfect age to enjoy them immensely.
Ronald Reagan's post-Vietnam style of stirring up good-old fashioned American pride was very conducive to one man ass-kicking armies (it should come as no surprise that Hulk Hogan came to prevalence around this time). It's kind of sad that John Rambo goes from kicking cops' asses in the first movie, to being sent back to Vietnam to kick even more ass in the second movie, to, tragically and (now) kind of ironically, working with the Taliban to kick Russians' asses in the third movie.
What was he doing in the fourth movie? Wasn't he in Burma or some shit? Who cares?
09. Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair)The Exorcist (1973),
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
You know what's scary as fuck? Linda Blair as a little girl who gets posessed by the devil in
The Exorcist. The voice was Mercedes McCambridge and the special effects had a whole lot to do with the success of the characterization but I think it's still a pretty significant performance. Considering that Linda Blair probably still gets recognized from the role almost 40 years later, I'm sure she thinks it's significant as well. She kind of reprised the character in the hilarious 1990 Leslie Neilsen spoof,
Repossessed (which I haven't seen since I was about thirteen, so don't hold me to that).
08. Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund)A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984),
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985),
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987),
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988),
A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989),
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991),
New Nightmare (1994),
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
The undisputed king of horror villains. Through eight movies (of varying quality) Robert Englund played the boogeyman, Freddy Krueger. After being arbitrarily exonerated for the murders of little kids, Freddy is burned alive by an angry mob. He dies and comes back to haunt the dreams of the same mob's children.
A key to the success of Freddy was the dreamworld he inhabited, which led to some absurdly awesome and surreal death scenes. As the years went on he became a kind of cult-figure and anti-hero to millions of people who would show up to see how he'd go about killing the (bland) new batch of sleepy teenagers struggling to stay awake (and alive). The garish red-and-green-striped sweater, fedora, and razorblade glove have become a permanent fixture in Halloween celebrations all across America every October.
07. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford)Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981),
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984),
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989),
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Indiana Jones made archaeology cool. Well, not really. He did make crazy globe-trotting, tomb-raiding, swashbuckling adventures cool... but, I guess those were cool already. It's Indiana Jones' sardonic sense of humor that's the secret to his success. That and being constantly annoyed by the people around him.
He's a classic hero; mild-mannered professor by day, action-packed super adventurer by night. Up until 2008, I considered the Indiana Jones trilogy one of the most perfect and consistent collections of movies of all time. Damn Hollywood, why are you always fucking up my trilogies?
06. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson)The Shining (1980)
This one's kind of a dark horse because I'm partial to the film.
The Shining is some kind of crazy, psychological horror masterpiece. It doesn't dumb itself down and explain anything to the audience. It lets unexplained phenomena remain just that, unexplained.
It touches on all kinds of issues, writer's block, isolation, family dynamics, alcoholism, spirits, murder, insanity... and at the center of it all is Jack Nicholson's seething performance as a man so consumed by his personal demons that he loses himself in a ghostly, dreamlike trance and (possibly) unwittingly goes about the task of trying to brutally murder his wife and kid with an axe in a giant, ominous hotel they're stuck in for the winter.
05. Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones)Star Wars (1977),
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980),
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
Vader chokes motherfuckers out without even using his hands, son. How you supposed to fuck with that? Plus, this guy rides around on a spaceship that destroys planets. What kind of shit is that? That's some grand ole evil shit is what it is.
The one argument I can make for Darth Vader being one of the most iconic characters ever is the fact that
there's a bust of him on the northwest tower of the Washington National Cathedral. No bullshit.
04. Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro)Taxi Driver (1976)
"You talking to me?"
Taxi Driver is one of the grimiest, sleaziest, most psychotic and delusional movies I've ever seen. I mean that all in a good way. The film concerns an angsty, angry-at-the-world taxi driver named Travis Bickle who, after unsuccessfully courting a beautiful woman and almost numbly falling into a deep despair, decides he needs to do something important with his life. Yet, his reasons are almost completely self-involved. Travis Bickle is the character I could see
The Catcher In the Rye's Holden Caulfield slowly turning into if he kept grumbling about the world like an asshole.
03. Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland)The Wizard of Oz (1939)
I was looking over the original list I had jotted down and there weren't many women on it at all. In fact, there were none. Until it hit me, Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz. As a matter of fact, she jumped towards the top of the list pretty quick because Judy Garland's appearance in that movie, I'm sure, has informed many a deviant farmgirl fantasy all across the world. The fact that she's alone in the fantastic, unfamiliar land and all she wants to do is go home is what makes her so relatable to anyone who has ever felt lost.
02. Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando)The Godfather (1972)
In Vito Corleone, Marlon Brando created a character so respected and feared that he hardly ever had to raise his voice to get anything done. Corleone is seemingly, at his heart, a moral and fair man that loves his family more than anything else. He knows that the drug business is detrimental to the family and society as a whole, and he wants no part of it.
His calm reserve resonates with people who watch
The Godfather. That and the fact that he's not above getting a fucking prize-horse's head chopped off and slipped in between your silk sheets as you sleep. You never really see Corleone going crazy or committing crimes himself, but his force is felt because you know he can have you killed with the slightest raise of his hand.
01. Tony Montana (Al Pacino)Scarface (1983)
This is the role that started me thinking about iconic movie portrayals to begin with. I put Tony Montana at the top of this list because the character as a legend/cult figure/status symbol almost overshadows the film itself. Every few years I'll rewatch Scarface and I'm always amazed by how much I enjoy it. The way it has pervaded pop-culture (specifically gangster, hip-hop culture) almost lessens the movie in my head when I think about it. It's the old "so many people like it, it can't be that great" routine, but not in an entirely superficial "this is just for me" sense. It seems that people put it on a pedestal as a representation of what they hope to achieve and what they want to become.
Obviously, if you look at the ending of the film, it's not a very happy one. That argument has been made many times. But if you think about the rest of the movie, shit, Tony Montana's kind of an asshole. He doesn't even seem to enjoy the opulence in which he surrounds himself. He walks around with a mean mug and only really seems to laugh or smile when he's up to some sinister shit.
At the end of the day, it's a classic rags-to-riches story completely centered around Montana's drive for success. That fierce determination kind of gets people going. Of course, he is an asshole, but a goddamn charismatic asshole if ever there was one.
There's a bunch more that didn't make the list for whatever reasons. Here's a few:
