The role of a protagonist in your basic mainstream movie is to propel the plot: the story is all about them, and their actions and reactions form the thrust of the narrative. In many cases, the protagonist is also the hero, the moral compass of the tale, capable and strong in all the ways that matter. This is basic storytelling, Narrative 101. So what happens when your narrative features a traditional hero-protagonist who, over the course of the movie, is revealed to be something altogether different? On a good day, itll be because the movie is engaged in sleight of hand: a magic trick, whereby the audience is deliberately wrongfooted, their expectations confounded in a rewarding and entertaining way. Take The Usual Suspects, for example: the whole point of the film is the revelation that the narrator, one of the main protagonists and the only really likeable person in the story, is not who he says he is. On a bad day, the writer and director will have no idea. In this case, the films not about subverting genre tropes or an example of the unreliable narrator: its a straightforward mainstream Hollywood-style story, but one in which the hero-protagonist just isnt. Perhaps its because hes not nearly as noble or admirable as he seems, his actions when you think about it fairly foolhardy, even reprehensible. Perhaps its because hes not nearly as capable as he appears, the events of the film occurring despite him, not because of him. Hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory has helped popularise one of cinemas most famous examples with Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), where hero Indiana Jones is so irrelevant to the outcome that the Nazis would have done exactly what they did (located and secured the Ark Of The Covenant, decided to open it to check the contents before presenting it to Hitler and become consumed by the power contained therein) whether hed been there or not. With that in mind, here they are: the hero-protagonists of cinema who just dont live up to the name, or the hype.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
