10 Movie Characters Who Aren't What You Think

3. Nicolas Winding Refn's Protagonists Are The Same "Mythological Creature"

Trust Nicolas Winding Refn to offer up a game-changing, idiosyncratic interpretation of his own material, revealing in an interview a few years ago that main characters from his movies Valhalla Rising, Drive and Only God Forgives are in effect the same archetypal entity.

Refn says that One-Eye (Mads Mikkelsen), the Driver (Ryan Gosling) and Lt. Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) are all "a mythological creature that has a mysterious past but cannot relate to reality because he’s too heightened, and he’s pure fetish...One-Eye, Driver and [Chang]...are very much rooted in fairy-tale mythology, of people with supernatural powers. Again, part of my, I guess, intense fetish of masculinity."

It goes without saying that there's no point trying to fully literalise Refn's commentary, but the similarities between the characters are myriad: their few spoken words, their mysterious pasts and their ambiguous motivations, for starters.

Refn has even toyed with the idea of making another movie featuring One-Eye to bring the journey across this metaphysical quasi-franchise full circle, but nothing has yet materialised.