Expository Hairstyle Changes in Live-Action Films.
Examples:
- 16 Wishes: When Abby's wish to stop being treated like a child backfires by turning her into an adult, her curly hair becomes straightened to signify the sudden age change.
- Ace Ventura Jr. has the main character's hairstyle change to look more like his father's when he becomes determined to be a pet detective. He also wears the same clothes as him.
- In American History X, Derek Vineyard sports a shaved head when he is a skinhead and has hair both before he makes the change and after he rejects his racist beliefs. His brother also sports a shaved head when Derek returns, showing that he is following in Derek's footsteps into the skinhead clique.
- The Lifetime Movie of the Week Amy And Isabelle uses Amy's hair as a clock to show the stage of her and Isabelle's relationship. In flashbacks, Amy is shown with a beautiful head of long curly hair. In the present, it's cut short. Flashbacks later reveal that Amy had an affair with her teacher, and Isabelle cut the hair off in a fit of rage after she discovered this. Later in the movie, after mother and daughter have sorted out their issues, Amy is taken to the hairdressers to have the haircut tidied up.
- Avatar - Jake begins the film as a marine with a crew cut. As he embraces life with the Na'vi, his hair grows out a little.
- In Beauty and the Beast (2017), both the Prince and Madame Garderobe, an opera singer, attend a party in the prologue wearing massively extravagant wigs to demonstrate their obsession with vanity and outward appearances. In the grand finale after the curse on the castle has been broken, both have their natural hair showing as a sign of their Character Development while enchanted.
- In Boyhood Mason usually has longer hair around the angstier parts of his life (the exception is when his abusive stepdad gives him a Traumatic Haircut). Likewise, his mother favours bobs and shorter styles whenever she's married or in a relationship. When those relationships end, she lets her hair grow out.
- In Cabin Fever Marcy's hair is straightened on the first day of the trip. The next morning (after their run-in with the hermit) and the start of the weird events - her hair is more unkempt.
- In Charlie's Angels (2000), Knox's hair - along with his clothes - changes from shaggy, unkempt computer geek to slick coif when we find out he's the bad guy.
- In Chevalier (2022), Joseph Bologne
(the "chevalier" in question), wears a white wig while out in public and interacting with whites, as was customary for the time period. While at home, he wears his natural hair, though still combed straight. As the film progresses, having now been ostracized by the white, aristocratic society, he no longer wears the wig when he goes out, particularly when mingling with Paris' black community, and by the film's conclusion, as he prepares to give a concert intended to fund the French Revolution, he's wearing it in cornrows, a customary African hairstyle, showing that he's fully embracing his black identity. - Divergent:
- Tris's hair is used as a clock to symbolize her character development. In Divergent, when she is part of Abnegation, it's tied up in a modest bun. When she joins Dauntless, it's kept in a ponytail. It only comes down whenever she's at her most vulnerable (usually when she's alone with Four). In The Divergent Series: Insurgent she cuts it drastically short, showing how she's haunted by what's happened to her. She forgives herself for everything at the end of the film, so it has grown longer by The Divergent Series: Allegiant to reflect this.
- Jeanine wears her hair down in Divergent when she's merely a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing. When she takes control in The Divergent Series: Insurgent she now wears her hair up.
- Natalie's hair was in a bun like Tris's at the start of Divergent. When she pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment in the climax to rescue Tris her hair is now down.
- In An Education, Jenny wears her hair in sophisticated updos when with David and his friends, but loose when she's with her schoolmates. Very symbolic of the fact that for all her pretense, she's still very much a child.
- In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Clementine's hair color indicated what part of the timeline we are seeing: red during her relationship with Joel, green in their first meeting, blue after they break up. When they are seen together and she has blue hair, it's a hint that they got back together and this is not part of the memory removal flashback.
- In Excalibur, Arthur grows a beard after his "Wart" stage to show that he's become King Arthur and not the callow youth he was in the early parts of the film.
- In Get Out (2017) when Rose is revealed to be the villain it's marked by her hair being worn up and out of her eyes. In fact in the very scene featuring the Face–Heel Turn she ties her hair up.
- In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:
- In Part 1, the trio's hair grows gradually longer as they're out in the wilderness. Harry is shown getting a trim from Hermione but she later says "never ask me to give you a haircut again". Hermione herself begins the film with shoulder-length hair but it eventually reaches down to her elbows.
- In Part 2 the epilogue gives the trio different haircuts to show they're adults now.
- In Higher Learning, the shaved head demonstrates Remy's transformation from confused youth into deranged white supremacist.
- In the movie I Spy Returns, Bill Cosby is shown doing a comic double-take over his old identity picture (from the TV series) with its '60s afro.
- James Bond movie Die Another Day:
- Bond's imprisonment in North Korea is marked by the growth of his hair and a beard (real reason: Pierce Brosnan was filming Robinson Crusoe), and once he escapes the first thing he does is get a cut and a shave to look like the Bond we know.
- Not to mention henchman Zao's abrupt change from relatively normal-looking to both Bald of Evil and albino. (Oh, and he's got diamonds in his face, but that comes rather secondary to the missing hair.)
- Jurassic World shows Claire sporting a bob as a sign of what an independent career woman she is. By the time of the sequel - during which she's now in a relationship with Owen - her hair has grown out long.
- From The Last Samurai: Katsumoto's son, Nobutada, received an Important Haircut at the hand of Japanese riflemen; then he reappears as part of the rescue party that breaks his father out of imprisonment, and holds off the riflemen armed with bow and arrow. Algren is stunned by the sight of Nobutada since his wild and loose hair (and chosen weapon) gives him the appearance of the Native Americans he had had to fight prior to the movie.
- In Little Women (2019), as in the source material, Jo cuts her hair off to sell to support her sick father. In this version, we can thereafter tell whether we're in the flashback or the present, based on the length of her hair (short in the past, has grown back by the time of the present-day scenes).
- In Limitless, we see the protagonist's ex-wife in flashbacks with beautiful hair, but when we meet her, she has tangled, dishevelled hair and is suffering the after-effects of using the drug. Also, the protagonist's hair changes throughout the film depending on what's going on and how much time has passed.
- In The Lord of the Rings, among the changes signifying the transition from Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White are a whiter, cleaner, and better-trimmed hair and beard.
- The Magdalene Sisters uses Bernadette's hair to show the passage of time. It's cut short after she tries to escape, and it growing back to its original length shows that time has passed. After Crispina is taken away, there's a Time Skip to show Bernadette with her hair grown out long. She now has the courage to escape from the laundry with Rose.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Loki starts off with tidy hair that doesn't reach his shoulders during Thor. When he returns as a would-be world conqueror in The Avengers, his hair is quite a bit longer and noticeably uncared for. This serves as an indicator that he's considerably less stable than before, now more of a straight-up villain rather than a sympathetic Anti-Villain. Come Thor: The Dark World, Loki's hair becomes more orderly while in captivity but is longer to denote the passage of time. After Frigga's death, he becomes very disheveled due to grief. In Thor: Ragnarok, his hair is more curly than in previous appearances, giving him a softer look.
- From Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers, Steve Rogers has an appropriately 1940s era haircut, which makes him stand out especially in the latter along with his wardrobe choices. By the time of Captain America: The Winter Soldier he has a more modern haircut to symbolize how he's become used to the present day.
- For Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes starts with the tidy hairstyle of a disciplined American soldier to the wild untamed locks of the chaotic Winter Soldier. For The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it is noticeably short again after he seems to have distanced himself from that.
- Doctor Strange. The clean-shaven Strange grows a messy Beard of Sorrow after his hands are ruined in an accident, and he loses his ability to wield a scalpel let alone a straight razor. He trims it back to a well-kept goatee after finding new purpose as a sorcerer (using an electric razor).
- In Ant-Man, Hope Van Dyne has a Sci-Fi Bob Haircut, but in Ant-Man and the Wasp she's grown it out due to her and Hank Pym being on the run after the events of Captain America: Civil War. This was actually lampshaded by Luis when describing Scott and Hope's history.Luis: Scott met Hope and he was like, "We should be a thing" and she's like "Nah, I'm all business. Just look at my hair!"
- Natasha Romanoff's hair noticeably undergoes some changes after Captain America: Civil War. While its length constantly shifted between movies (it ended up being reliable that her hair went from short to long and back with each of her appearances), the colour was always meant to be the same. At the conclusion of Black Widow, set immediately after Civil War, she cuts her hair short and dyes it platinum blonde, to better help in hiding from Ross, and sports this look for the duration of Avengers: Infinity War. However, after the time jump in Avengers: Endgame, she's grown her hair out and it is red again, with only some blonde tips left. This happens to be when she begins taking a leadership role in the Avengers and returns to being a public figure, while also having her look like her normal self in her final days before she dies.
- The title character in the movie Father Stu wears his hair messy and unkempt when he's an alcoholic boxer/struggling actor. It gets neater when he starts to get his act together and starts dating a woman from his church. By the time he enters the seminary, it's in a neatly cropped style and finally, as he develops a progressive muscle disease, it's in a buzzcut (likely because he can't maintain anything else).
- Master: Jasmine arrives to school wearing her hair in its natural texture. After having trouble fitting in as an African-American student in a mostly white campus, she starts to wear her hair straightened. Thanksgiving break arrives and with everybody gone, she goes back to her natural hairstyle.
- In The Matrix, clothing and hairstyle changes indicate whether a scene takes place in the real world or in a computer system. After taking the red pill, Neo wakes up in a strange place with no hair or clothing. Later, Morpheus uses this effect to explain the Matrix to Neo:Neo: Right now... we're inside a computer?
Morpheus: Is it so hard to believe? Your clothes are different. The plugs in your body are gone. Your hair has changed. Your appearance now is what we call "residual self-image". It is the mental projection of your digital self. - Mean Girls:
- For each act of the film, Cady has a different hairstyle representing her journey from "homeschool jungle freak" (straight and ponytailed) to shiny plastic (a more puffed up, curled style to gel with the other Plastics) to actual human being (a simple, messy style).
- In the epilogue, Gretchen is seen with completely straightened hair now that she's in the Cool Asian clique. One could interpret this as going from hair so big ("it's full of secrets") to having nothing to hide or be ashamed of.
- Regina begins wearing her hair tied up around the time the other Plastics start growing disillusioned from her.
- In The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, Joan's hair is used as a symbol throughout the movie:
- At the beginning, when she's convinced she's God's messenger, it's long and very blonde.
- When she arrives to Orleans to lead the army, she gets a boyish haircut to keep the generals from making comments about her being a girl: it works immediately, and she's the leader of the group by the next day. She keeps her hair short and it gets darker at each battle scene until she only has a few gold strands left.
- When she's in prison, doubting her faith and thinking she's going mad, her hair grows darker still and grows long again, though not as long as it was before she cut it.
- Sent up in The Naked Gun series when a flashback to the characters in The '70s, and they all have longer hair (but don't look otherwise any younger), culminating in OJ Simpson's character, whose Funny Afro is so big that it gets stuck in the door. A character then says in the present "That's right! You were one of the first test subjects for Minoxidil!"
- In Napoléon (1955), Napoléon Bonaparte goes from long-haired revolutionary general to short-haired autocrat after he assumes power.The film even has a whole scene of Bonaparte getting a hair cut, mostly as an excuse to switch actors.
- In The Next Three Days Elizabeth Banks' character's hair goes from sleek platinum blonde (similar to her character in Iron Man) to a wavy rusty brown after being imprisoned for three years.
- In The NIN9S Margaret/Melissa/Mary has plain brown hair that turns a vibrant red after she persuades Gary/Gavin/Gabriel to stop pretending to be something he's not.
- Ophelia: The final scene depicts her with waist-length hair again, she having previously had cut it short, indicating several years have passed since then.
- In Queens Logic, when Carla signals she wants to change her life, she has Patty dye her hair red.
- In A Royal Christmas (a Hallmark Channel movie), the snooty Queen Isadora continually wears her hair in updos. At the end of the movie, having finally accepted her son's relationship with a commoner, it's down.
- From The Royal Tenenbaums: Richie grows the typically long, scruffy hair and beard after his nervous breakdown, and then cuts and shaves them both right before slitting his wrists with the same razor, because of his love for his adopted sister, Margot.
- In the parallel universe film Sliding Doors, the version of the protagonist who catches her boyfriend cheating gets an Important Haircut and blonde dye job, while the other version stays with the boyfriend and keeps her long dark hair. Throughout the film, this is how we tell which universe it is.
- In Spider-Man 3 when he is being influenced by the alien goo/Venom symbiote, Peter Parker restyles his hair into a side-parted style with bangs falling over one eye. This is often referred to as his "emo" look, quite getting for the character as the idea of eye-obscuring "emo hair" being self-effacing and semi-pathetic.
- Bizarrely averted in Star Trek: Nemesis, when we are shown an old photograph of Jean-Luc Picard from his academy days and he is seemingly just as bald (actually even balder!) than his older self. This despite it having been mentioned and shown in the TV series that Picard used to have a full head of hair. This was supposedly done to make it simpler to understand that the fully-bald Shinzon is really his clone.
- Star Wars:
- After not having a beard in The Phantom Menace, Obi-Wan has his familiar facial hair ten years later in Attack of the Clones.
- Anakin has short Padawan hair in Attack of the Clones, matching Obi-Wan's haircut in Episode I, whereas Obi-Wan has grown what's popularly known as the "Jedi Mullet" (even though it's long all around, meaning it's more of a "Jedi '70s Mane"). In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin's hair again looks like Obi-Wan's from the preceding film and has grown out significantly, whereas Obi-Wan now has a much shorter haircut reminiscent of the one he had/will have in A New Hope when played by Alec Guinness.
- After she falls into water in a cave on Ahch-To, Rey wears her hair down and in a single bun instead of the iconic three-bun style she wore through the entirety of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Since she wore the latter as a child in flashback, the change symbolizes her finally giving up her hope that her parents will return for her.
- In The Wall, you know Pink has gone off the deep end when he emerges from his hotel bathroom with his messy hair slicked back and his eyebrows shaved off.
- In What Dreams May Come, Annie's hairstyle changes throughout the flashbacks which helps the viewer to keep track of the timeline. Annie has long hair when she meets Christy and all through the happy family times, gets a Traumatic Haircut after the kids die, has a stylish bob cut four years later when she has recovered.
- In Wicker Park this is used subtly to indicate what time period we're watching. When it's two years ago, Matthew's hair is messy (and he wears casual clothes) while in the present it's tidy (and he wears suits). Lisa's hair is curly in the past and straight in the present. Alex's is kept up and dowdy in the past but she wears it down and pays more attention to it in the present.
- In The World's End, we first see Gary King as a teenager, with obviously dyed but pretty cool-looking black hair. When we next see him at 37, he noticeably still has dyed black hair even though it doesn't suit him anymore or match his blond beard, reflecting his Disco Dan-levels of obsession with The '90s, as well as how he acts like a teenager despite being almost forty. This is his look for the rest of the movie, and his personality is what ends up saving humanity from the Network. However, when we see him After the End, the offscreen change in his character is signified by how he now has a clean-shaven face and his natural blond hair colour - as well as how he's asking in a Bad Guy Bar for a glass of tap water.
- X-Men Film Series:
- Storm begins with hair which is long and loose in X-Men and it later becomes a more practical pixie cut in X-Men: The Last Stand as everything around her and the other X-Men goes From Bad to Worse. Her hairstyle gets even shorter in X-Men: Days of Future Past because she lives in a Crapsack World where mutants are being hunted down to extinction.
- X-Men: Apocalypse: James McAvoy's Professor X is finally bald, which means that his transformation into Patrick Stewart's character is complete, albeit with a few tweaks to his personality because his experience in the Alternate Timeline is quite different.
- In X-Men, Rogue has brown hair, but when she's trapped inside Magneto's forced-mutation machine, the device's draining properties give her the iconic streaks of white that her comic-book counterpart has always possessed. By the next film, she's taken to dyeing the streaks blonde, signifying her acceptance of them.
