Am I the only one tired of the concept of the Anti-Hero? It seems like everyone these days is in a mad rush to have books, tv shows, movies, or comics with a main character who is a loner who plays by his own rules. Or she’s beautiful but deadly.
There was a time when this concept made sense, but these days it doesn’t. The term anti-hero implies a reaction against something, but there’s nothing for this to be reacting against. Not that the creators know this - every time they debut their latest anti-hero they act like this is a totally new and exciting concept.
For a change, I think it would be nice to have an actual hero. The anti-anti-hero. Someone who really believes in doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. Some folks would call that boring, but is it any more boring than a million Han Solo or Mad Max clones in a row?
And while I’m at it, there’s nothing new about dark, gritty, or edgy. In fact, I propose a moratorium on all three of those terms. The schtick has gotten OLD. Nothing new has been added to it in a while now. Edgy isn’t edgy if everything is edgy.
And yet people eat this stuff up. “Dude, I like this comic because it’s EDGY and GRITTY. The hero has a dark side to him, unlike…” Unlike who? Unlike every other hero with a dark side running around these days? “This book takes fantasy and makes it gritty and dark!” Hooray! Because we needed to add elves and magic to the already trite cyberpunk universe!
I’m not saying there isn’t a place for this sort of thing and that I don’t like ANY of it, but all things in moderation. Rebellion loses its punch when everything is rebelling, and especially when it’s not actually rebelling against anything. When the machine is gone, it’s okay to stop raging.
Sigourney Weaver’s character in Aliens might fit the bill. Just a person trying to do her job who gets caught up in events. While Han Solo is anti-hero, Luke Skywalker isn’t.
I agree that rebellion long ago lost it’s punch. As for the anti-hero reacting against something, usually what’s being reacted against is the incompetence of all or most of the other characters in the story. The message of most movies which possess anti-heroes is that society or normal life is hell in a handbasket, and the audience can live vicariously through the anti-hero, cutting away all the bullshit and making their little piece of the world behave as they want it to.
Their are positive protagonists though, they just don’t fit the classical definition of heroic. Tom Hanks in Big. ET. Powder. Tommy Lee Jones character in that silly movie about old men going into space. Jodie Foster and Matthew McConnaghey’s (sp?) characters in Contact. When you look at all the movies out there, there are countless positive roles. When you look at what does big box office though, you tend to see the anti-heroes topping the list alongside special effects.
…but then one thinks of the Great(est?) American Hero. I’d live with never seeing a true good guy again if it meant not seeing him pop back up (in whatever lame incarnation… Jar Jar Binks)
slight hijak
Jar Jar, according to a few reputable sites… is a Jedi in the second movie.
A Jedi.
I just changed religions.
The only thing i can see as being good about that is it means Jar Jar will die at the hands of the Sith.
Great thread, and I agree 100% with the OP. The anti-hero was cool up until, say, Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction is a damn great film, but it really took the anti-hero concept as far as it could possibly go (IMHO). Going any further down that road is just pointless-you wind up trying to make heros out of villians, which would explain Schwarzenegger’s career.
Of course, I could make the case for some exceptions to a few more anti-hero films. James Ellroy, for instance. If someone made a REALLY great adaption of ‘White Jazz’ for film, I’d allow one last great anti-hero. It would probably end up a lot like 'Kiss Me Deadly, tho. Now that I think about it, Robert Aldrich took the concept of anti-hero pretty much as far as it can go without the hero morphing into a villian, and that was in the 50’s.
Hmm… maybe the problem isn’t that the anti-hero is a tired concept, just that it gets made into a cliche all too often.