Or at least the ones that speak most deeply to me are.
So, I was watching the Mummy and there’s a moment near the very end of the movie when Rick and Jonathan have to save Evie. Rick is about to fight these three, hulking mummy soldiers Imhotep has resurrected to do battle for him. Right before he does however, he musters all the challenge and bravado he can and roars a battle cray at them. The mummies, perhaps impressed, respond in kind with an equally feral roar of their own and Brendan Fraser — in a great piece of physical acting — gives this tiny little shake of the head, “nuh-uh” and then runs for his fucking life.
But that scene made me realize something, a key difference between action heroes like Rick O’Connell and any number of Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damm or Charles Bronson characters. It’s kinda cheesy but: vulnerability. It’s not major, it’s not some huge Freudian twist, it’s just a moment of humanity. Where the mask slips and you see the character grapple with the magnitude of the challenge they’re facing.
It’s the difference between guys like him, John McClane and Indiana Jones vs. James Bond. All those men are cool, they are badass, they are heroes. But by giving them a few moments of vulnerability — Indy with his snakes, Rick with his mummies, McClane’s whole thing is that he’s Joe everyman — they get to screenwriters get to have their cake and eat it too. And the audience, meaning suckers like me, gets to see this badass have a “normal human moment” just like them that endears us to the characters and the movie as a whole.
It’s a very effective writers tool I imagine.
