Old Magnificent Bastard thread
Welcome to the Magnificent Bastard proposal thread! This is the thread where new Magnificent Bastard examples are vetted, approved, and written up. If you're looking for the general cleanup thread (for cuts, rewrites, expansions, and the like), please go here
Important: Before suggesting any new examples, please read the Frequently Asked Questions and Common Requests List; if you have any questions, the odds are high they are answered there. Additionally, please check here for the earliest date a work can be discussed (usually two weeks from the U.S. release date) and whether the work has already been reserved by another user.
Here is how the process works:
- If you have a candidate to propose, you can simply come right in and propose them! If the character's run is brief, such as a single issue of a comic book, then a simple summary of their actions and any potential mitigating features will be enough; for longer-running candidates, an effortpost (EP) might be helpful for organizing the proposal. An EP is not outright required, but please be mindful that if a post becomes too clunky and unorganized, it can be very hard for other people to follow.
- After the proposal, there will be a 72-hour discussion and voting period, where people may ask questions and vote on the candidate. The number of upvotes must outnumber the downvotes by at least five for the character to be considered "approved".
- Three days after the proposal has been made, if the character has been approved, you may post the writeup (the text to be posted on the trope page itself) on the thread and send it to the drafts page. Your candidate will soon be added to the MB subpage. If the work has a page, you should add your candidate to the relevant YMMV page. Voila! It's that simple!
Outside of this process, we do have a few ground rules:
- To keep the thread moving at a reasonable pace, there are some restrictions on when a proposal can be made. There should only be a maximum of four EPs posted both per page and per hour to ensure that nothing gets lost in the shuffle; additionally, each individual troper should only be proposing or writing up characters from a maximum of three works at a time (from initial proposals to end of their voting period). If your proposal would fall outside of either of these guidelines, we'd like to ask you to please wait until they would fit within; feel free to type them up on an outside document, and then when the time comes, you can just copy, paste, and post!
- No plagiarism of any kind. This is a very serious matter site-wide, as the website could get in actual legal trouble over this; as a result, this can very quickly lead to mod intervention. This can take many different forms:
- Direct plagiarism, i.e. wholesale copying. This is not only the easiest to find, but is also the most likely to warrant quick moderator intervention. To be clear, quoting in some places is perfectly acceptable, but it has to be very clear you're quoting from something else and it cannot be anything longer than a sentence or two - if you're quoting an entire work summary from Wikipedia, no one is going to believe you've actually consumed the work, so even if you cite your source, your candidate will be downvoted anyway.
- Self-plagiarism. Even if you can prove that you wrote the same text in both places, the site itself can't contain any of the duplicated text. If you already wrote something once before, it's not too hard to write it a second time.
- Using another site's work as a template for a proposal. Just because you don't copy and paste something directly doesn't mean it's any harder to detect if you're basing parts or all of your proposal on text someone else wrote. To be clear, this doesn't violate site rules and won't lead to mod intervention, but just like if you directly plagiarize, no one will believe you've consumed the work if you're clearly basing your proposal on something else. This thread largely operates on the honor system, and tweaking someone else's work to pass it off as your own is one of the fastest ways to lose trust.
- Don't delete an EP unless you intend to swiftly repost it. We know that there are reasons why you might want to delete an EP, especially if it's being downvoted - rejection is hard, even in a low-stakes environment like this. However, deleting it renders the current discussion null and void, makes it impossible to reference the discussion in the future and can confuse tropers who didn't read it before the deletion. If the issue is temporary (such as formatting problems or a post getting overlooked as the thread moves on), then deleting and quickly reposting the EP is a valid option, but to fully retract an EP, please use the [[strike:]] markup instead.
- Votes must be for specific candidates, meaning no blanket voting (i.e. "yes to everyone I missed").
- If you are the first person to downvote a candidate, please provide an explanation of why when you do so. We're here for discussions above all, and a hit-and-run downvote doesn't facilitate anything.
- If a work is already reserved by another user, please don't comment on the work or any potential characters worth discussion before the discussion date. We know how exciting it is when a work has a keeper that you're waiting to talk about, but it's not fair to the person who reserved the work who is just as excited to lead the discussion to see the discussion getting spoiled before they get to do it. On the other hand, if the reservation only has one name attached, shoot them a PM - they may be down for a collaboration, which will get you in on the fun as well!
- Please keep the thread on-topic. While discussing the trope is fun and we encourage people to enjoy it, questions like "who's your favorite MB" are off-topic and can lead to thumps. That's the kind of question to take to people's PMs if they're willing. Similarly, while we encourage friendliness and familiarity with other users, posts should always have some kind of thread-relevant purpose; for instance, if you want to wish someone a happy birthday, feel free to, but if it's the only thing in the post, it's off-topic and needs something else alongside it. Again, though, while we strive for a friendly atmosphere, this is not Facebook; life updates are fun, but unless they have some kind of impact on your thread participation, please do not bring it here - we have Yack Fest
for that.
- Please refrain from asking anything along the lines of "How Did We Miss This One?" In almost every case, the answer is simply "No one thought about it before". This Is a Wiki where everyone has different interests, and the fact that people missed a particular candidate, even one that seems like a textbook example of a trope or a character who is particularly iconic in pop culture, means absolutely nothing. The question is disruptive, has a simple and consistent answer, and provides nothing to any discussion.
- If you are suspended from other parts of the website, it is still possible to participate!
- For users who are suspended from editing the wiki, you still have full access to this thread. You can propose candidates and write them up with no issues whatsoever; while you will have to ask someone else to post the entry to the relevant pages once it is done, all write-ups are considered thread-approved - as in, done by consensus - and thus doing so does not violate any rules regarding meatpuppeting.
- If you are suspended from the forums, your participation is limited but not impossible. It is still possible for a forum-suspended user to assist in creating the write-up for a character who has already been approved; as previously mentioned, write-ups are inherently considered a consensus-based edit and thus not tied to any one particular user. However, you can not assist in the proposal of a character; as a proposal is based around the forum rather than the wiki, doing so with a forum suspension qualifies as meatpuppeting.
- Please keep all discussions "in-house".
- What other wikis use for MB equivalents is irrelevant here.
- Please be wary of using other wikis, Fandom or otherwise, as sources of information. They are just as fallible as a site like Wikipedia in regards to accuracy because they can be edited by any user, just as this site can.
- Do not attempt to force a communication with an author in an attempt to gather evidence or settle a debate; besides the fact that this is a YMMV trope and thus author intent has variable weight depending on the circumstance, doing so may cross the line into drama exportation, which is prohibited site-wide.
If you would like to use an EP for your candidate, here's the general format. This format does not have to be followed exactly, but these are the main topics that need to be covered:
What is the work?
This is a brief summary of the work you're going to discuss. We don't need a full plot summary here, just however much we need to understand going into the discussion — it can even be as simple as quoting the summary on the work's page.
Who is the candidate and what have they done?
This is essentially the character's biography — who they are, their story, their goals and methodology, and, preferably (though not required), what happens to the candidate at the end. It does not have to include every single thing they ever do — for some characters, we'd be here all day if that was the case — but it should include the highlights of their journey.
How are they Magnificent?
This is the point where you highlight the character's brilliance. How to they convey their intelligence and charm to the audience? What makes them stand out among the crowd? What are their goals and how do they go about accomplishing them? This part welcomes a lot of creative thinking — not everyone has to be a Machiavellian Diabolical Mastermind to be worth considering here! This is also the time to showcase how the character can think on their feet if it's necessary.
How are they a Bastard? How are they not too bad?
What kinds of moral lines is this character willing to cross for the sake of their goal? Are they willing to let innocents die? Start wars? Commit crimes? The character has to show some kind of unscrupulousness in order to count as a "Bastard". Notably, this character does not necessarily have to be the villain, and an Anti-Hero can cross the line if they're immoral enough, but they have to be immoral somehow.
This is also the section where you then state your case for why they're not too bad. Perhaps their good intentions help mitigate their crimes. Perhaps others are shown to be much worse than them. Perhaps they're prone to Pet the Dog moments or are even fighting on behalf of loved ones. Whatever the case, there are certain lines that an MB can't cross, but as long as their villainy is reasonable for their goal, they can be considered.
Final verdict?
This is where you post your final conclusion on the character in question. You can continue elaborating on your reasons or even just say a simple "yes" or "no"; at this point, we've heard everything we need to hear.
And that's everything you need to know. Welcome to the thread!
Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 12th 2024 at 3:34:22 PM
to TFP!Megatron.
Next up from Red (2010):
Who is Marvin Boggs? What makes him a candidate?
- Played by John Malkovich, Marvin Boggs is a former CIA agent who has been driven completely batshit nuts by the government secretly slipping him LSD, daily, for years before his "retirement" into seclusion and paranoia. Thing with Marvin? He's Properly Paranoid, a completely hilarious lunatic who's proven to know exactly what he's doing.
- Marvin has evaded government spying for years, hiding in a secret lair until Frank tracks him down to team up and discover the truth behind RED agents being picked off. Marvin agrees, keeping his eyes and ears peeled at all times and repeatedly being proven to be right most of the time when he suspects helicopters are spying on them, or a civilian is "following" them; he keeps ahead of all of their pursuers and personally kills an assassin by firing a bullet at her mid-flight rocket launcher-powered missile and exploding her.
- Marvin contributes greatly to all of Frank's team and their schemes, such as sneaking into the VP's gala by ambushing and stealing the disguises of various employees, then tricking the VP into running a certain direction by wearing a suicide vest, shrieking crazily and running at the VP and his security
- In the sequel, Marvin discovers that Frank's team is being spied on again, and so fakes his own death so expertly that it fools even Frank himself. He later helps spring Frank from government capture with a surprise attack, and kidnaps a government official and subjects him to days of drugging and psychological torture to extort information on Frank's team being targeted for death in the Nightshade bomb project.
- Marvin works with Frank's team for the rest of their outings, helping them break into the damn Kremlin and an Iranian embassy, ultimately stopping the villainous Bailey from using Nightshade to destroy London and ending the film continuing on another adventure with Frank.
Is he magnificent?
Lol yes, Marvin is paranoid and out of his gourd but it's in a hilarious way that is often proven right and his conspiracy, survival preparations always pay off to help the team time and time again. He personally susses out various enemy forces following them, he fakes his own death to later stage a rescue of Frank, and he's always quick to concoct a new plan if things go wrong.
Is he a bastard?
He immediately is ready to kill Sarah and repeatedly asks Frank if he wants her eliminated as a potential spy, he helps Frank's team harm and even kill innocent guards or a random limo driver who they blow tf up lol, and Marvin personally kidnaps a random governmental official and puts him through psychological torment that leaves him extremely terrified and willing to talk.
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!I’m downvoting McClane too. The EP is thorough, but he just doesn’t have any major bastard points, especially compared to the actual mass murderers he regularly fights, and his worst actions seem to be from callousness or misguidedness.
Also,
I think this must have been a mistake, because killing a few people is less evil than killing a lot (if not by much).
Well it got thumped so I can't tell what's going on atm with Sky.
Abstaining on Mc Clane until Sky remakes his effortpost.
Marvin
Also, a reminder that there's a Pending Dates page- just noticed because some of you haven't been using it a lot.
Edited by Siegfried1337 on Aug 28th 2023 at 5:01:26 AM
Eh, good enough.Full disclosure, I ran this through a summarizer, then edited the results. I am not shortening anything else if I don't have to, because these factors are details I do not want to leave out.
In any case, Christmas is supposed to come early this year.
What is the work?
The Die Hard Film Series is a series of Action Genre films starring Bruce Willis as everybody's (or at least my own) favourite New York City Cop as he somehow manages to fight his way out of dangerous situations he didn't plan on getting into in the first place.
I've tried to truncate to the best of my ability but there's a lot to unpack here.
Up for discussion (specifically from the theatrical cuts of each film, to the best of my knowledge, since those are what I watched) is the Cowboy himself…
Who is John McClane and how does he operate?
Detective John McClane, Sr., is a seasoned NYPD Officer who frequently has to extract himself from various situations and save lives in the process, albeit, not always avoiding collateral damage.
When John initially tries to find Holly's name on the directory, he discovers that she is using her birth name professionally, which he later gets into an argument (which John berates himself for) about.
Unbeknownst to the partygoers, a gang of thieves posing as terrorists (from now referred to as gunmen) are driving into Nakatomi Plaza and intend to take the building hostage.
While John is clenching his bare feet and calling Argyle to discuss plans, the gunmen led by Hans Gruber take over the building, forcing John to initially evade them while barefoot.
John discovers that the phone lines are dead, so he looks for other means of seeking help, until stumbling upon Hans murdering Nakatomi executive Joseph Takagi when the latter doesn't tell him the vault code.
LAPD Sgt. Al Powell arrives as John leaves the vents.
While waiting for more police to arrive John breaks a window, intending to get Powell's attention, but is interrupted by two more gunmen, Heinrich, and Marco.
Realizing Powell intends to leave, John drops Marco's corpse onto Powell's cruiser to get his attention, risking Powell's injury, and prompting the gunmen to try to shoot Powell.
When the police reinforcements arrive, John tells Powell as much as he can about the hostage situation under the pseudonym "Roy".
When John realizes the LAPD intends to go in against the gunmen, he concludes that the LAPD have disregarded his warnings.
Hans kills a hostage who betrayed John, then threatens to kill hostages until he "get[s] to someone [John] do[es] care about", an offer John impolitely rejects.
John listens over the radio as Hans demands that Deputy LAPD Chief Dwayne Robinson obtain the release of several international terrorists and a helicopter for the hostages in 2 hours. John predicts to Powell that Hans's demands are a ruse.
While Hans inspects his explosives on the roof, John crosses paths with him and plays along while Hans pretends to be a hostage named "Bill Clay", handing him an unloaded gun for good measure before Hans calls for reinforcements in the computer room.
Despite having to walk through broken glass because of Hans, John manages to escape and neutralize several gunmen in the process but drops the detonators. As the FBI cut the power and the gunmen open the vault, John asks Powell to leave a message of contrition and affection for Holly, before concluding that Hans intends to detonate the roof.
Interrupted before he can report to Powell, John gets into a fight with Karl, fighting dirty and using psychological warfare to his advantage, seemingly choking Karl out by suspending his neck from a chain. John then scares the hostages inside before jumping from the roof into a window.
John finally confronts Hans (who is holding Holly hostage) near the vault, having taped his own Beretta Handgun (with his remaining two bullets) to his back and using the hidden Beretta to shoot Hans before loosening Holly's watch and dropping Hans to his death. John and Holly walk out of the building and narrowly avoid an unexpectedly alive Karl shooting them when Powell shoots him.
Holly and John drive off with Argyle (but not before Holly decks Thornburg).
Two years after the Nakatomi hostage crisis, John, now a Lieutenant with the LAPD, goes to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., intending on retrieving Holly after her plane arrives.
Unbeknownst to John, the treacherous Colonel William Stuart intends on seizing control of the airport and freeing General Ramon Esperanza, the corrupt dictator of Val Verde, who is in transport as a prisoner.
After getting off the phone with Holly, John bumps into Stuart, who narrowly avoids being recognized.
The reporter Sam Coleman mentions Colonel Stuart when they share an elevator, and John realizes that he recognized Stuart.
Once that is cleared up, Marvin and John look at a floor plan of the airport, and—having heard that the engineer Leslie Barnes intends to use an unconstructed terminal's antenna to reach the stranded planes—realizes that an ambush has been set up at a terminal under construction.
When Stuart realizes that John is at Dulles, Stuart makes a cryptic threat. John, upon realizing that Stuart intends to sabotage a flight landing by misleading them about the altitude, tries to light two impromptu torches to guide the plane to no avail.
When a team led by Major Grant arrives at the airport, John works with Marvin to get access to the pilot's briefing room when he discovers that Marvin found a transmitter belonging to the mercenaries.
After making his way to Esperanza's plane, John gets into a fight with Esperanza, followed by a firefight with the mercenaries, narrowly escaping due to using the ejector seat.
After John is chewed out for his interference, Barnes shows John some underground airport maps which lead to a suburb near Dulles, and the abandoned church where the mercenaries have set up shop.
After spotting a mercenary by the church's rear, Barnes calls Lorenzo while John goes closer.
As John and Captain Lorenzo attempt to drive to Stuart's escape plane (complicated by Dick Thornburg's broadcast generating pandemonium), John hitches a ride with Sam Coleman's news crew.
After engaging Grant in CQC ending in the latter's demise, and being pushed off the plane's wing by Stuart, John lights a trail of fuel leaking from the wing on fire, combusting the plane, allowing the other planes to land using the fire trail.
After a bomb is detonated in a New York department store, a man introducing himself as "Simon" forces the NYPD to enlist the currently suspended (and hungover) John to fulfill Simon's demands in a "game" of "Simon Says", threatening to detonate further bombs if John is non-compliant, starting by making John wear a racist signboard in Harlem.
When confronted by shopkeeper Zeus Carver, John explains the situation before trying to feign insanity in front of several gang-affiliated assailants who take umbrage towards the content of the sign. When the gangsters assault John and Carver, the latter holds the gangsters at bay with John's revolver before hijacking a cab with John and going to Police Plaza, where John hears of a laboratory robbery connected to the bombs.
Then Simon contacts the NYPD, John and Carver, instructing John and Carver to make their way to the 72nd and Broadway subway station to await further instructions.
When Carver is reticent to continue his involvement, John falsely claims that Simon's bomb was found in Harlem to motivate him.
After a bit of a mind-game involving a lie about a bomb, Simon reveals that the bomb is really on a train headed towards Wall Street, and John and Carver must get to the Wall Street pay phone before 10:20am, only 30 minutes later.
John, having hijacked a cab with Carver, drives through Central Park's pedestrian walkways in an unorthodox means of avoiding traffic, narrowly avoiding pedestrian casualties.
A bit later, John jumps into a subway tunnel and onto the train, while Carver keeps driving to Wall Street.
While Simon is robbing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, John and Carver must disarm a bomb in a park when John accidentally activates it. Then, John intercepts a couple of adolescent thieves, and when one of them points out the absence of the police, John realizes that due to Wall Street's lack of proximity to schools, Simon has misdirected the NYPD to enter the Federal Reserve.
While Carver hands the disarmed bomb to cops (Simon’s subordinates), John walks into the Federal Reserve, where he recognizes an NYPD officer as an imposter wearing an NYPD badge belonging to a fellow officer, then gets into a firefight in the elevator.
Next, John and Carver try to track down the dump trucks filled with the loot, before splitting up, realizing that one of Simon's earlier questions ("21 of 42") was presidential trivia.
John and Carver then use a cable from a car stolen from Simon's subordinates to sneak onto Simon's boat, only to get captured and tied to explosives and "gold".
While Simon flees, John hands fragmented cable to Zeus so the latter can get them both freed while revealing that he had bluffed about the Harlem bomb.
Furthermore, John reveals his suspicions that Simon is faking the gold disposal based on his encounter with Hans.
After debriefing with the NYPD, and before he can complete a phone call to Holly, John notices that a bottle of aspirin Simon left him was bought at a Canadian truck stop, where he takes on Simon and defeats him by shooting a power line into his helicopter.
While the FBI HQ is hacked, and several of the hackers are killed, John intervenes when it appears his estranged daughter, Lucy, is apparently about to be molested by a suitor. After a brief spat where Lucy calls him out for his overprotectiveness and surveillance (with John then going into his car and moping about how he alienated Lucy), John is sent to escort the hacker Matthew "Matt" Farrell to the Hoover Building in Washington, D.C..
When their vehicle gets into a traffic collision caused by Gabriel's sabotage of several transportation networks, John surveys the scene before fleeing with Matt on foot.
After Gabriel sets up a false anthrax alarm to evacuate several federal buildings, John and Matt arrive at a temporary FBI office, where the duo sees a video threat from Gabriel while the latter commits financial sabotage. While John and Matt are being driven by an FBI escort to Homeland Security, Gabriel's mistress and second-in-command, Mai Linh, impersonates a dispatcher to try to sabotage their drive.
After Gabriel attempts to block John and Matt in with a traffic jam and have the helicopter finish them off, John drives the cruiser into the chopper, jumping out before impact, with the sole survivor of the crash believing Matt and John dead.
A bit after, while Gabriel's forces are invading Woodlawn, when John and Matt leave a police station, they realize cell communication is compromised, with John temporarily stealing a cell phone to contact FBI Deputy Director Bowman and inform him that all his personnel have been assassinated.
During the call, Gabriel's personnel interfere with broadcasting and falsify the detonation of explosives at the Capitol, with John quickly realizing that they have been had and informing Bowman.
While Matt connects to an alternate signal due to Gabriel's personnel interfering with cellular, Matt and John realize that Gabriel intends to start a direct takeover of a West Virginia energy plant responsible for powering the Eastern United States. John initially tries to hot-wire a car, but Matt interferes due to the car being remote start, and Matt fakes an emergency when road assist is activated by the airbags.
After Matt sabotages Mai's hacking, and John engages Gabriel in psychological warfare by rubbing Mai's death in Gabriel's face.
When the Warlock hacks into Gabriel's Woodlawn operation, Gabriel video-calls, and John pushes Gabriel's buttons further, only for Gabriel to reveal that he knows Lucy's location and posing as a 911 operator to lull Lucy into a false sense of security while John is unable to intervene. When they get there, once Matt hacks Gabriel's system, and trips the alarm to alert Bowman to the breach, John gets into a fight with one of Gabriel's goons ending with the other guy falling downstairs.
As John continues to make his way towards Lucy, he gets into another fight with another goon, spraying him with liquid nitrogen before the latter drops into machinery. Once John realizes Gabriel has captured Matt and Lucy, John hitches a ride atop one of Gabriel's trucks before shooting the driver and hijacking it. While driving, John gets the Warlock to connect his radio frequency to the FBI by explaining that his daughter (Lucy) is in danger.
After narrowly surviving an encounter with a jet pilot who was misled into firing on him, John makes his way to the warehouse where Lucy and Matt are being held hostage, shooting two of Gabriel's men before being shot himself. John still tries to drag himself towards Gabriel, who pulls a gun on him, only for John to shoot Gabriel with his own gun through his own body, while Matt finally grows a spine and kills a different henchman.
In the aftermath, the FBI arrive, John, Matt and Lucy get first aid, John thanks Matt for being a hero, and expresses joking disapproval towards Matt and Lucy's mutual infatuation to each of them.
While Chagarin plots against Yuri, CIA Operative John "Jack" McClane, Jr., performs an assassination in a nightclub and is arrested.
When John hears about Jack's predicament, he decides to go to Russia to try and rescue his son due to believing Jack won't survive Russian prison.
While John is on the plane, Jack seemingly makes a deal to testify against Yuri.
John, still believing his son a fugitive, hijacks two cars to follow Jack, knocking out the second driver when the latter confronts him after hitting him.
To continue following Jack, John drives over several inhabited cars, apologizing when he hears a scream. When the mercenary Alik attempts to kill Jack, John intervenes, ramming the vehicle.
Once John realizes Jack's CIA affiliations, he makes a joke about Jack being "007 of Plainfield, New Jersey".
After Yuri seemingly makes a deal to save his daughter, the safe-house is attacked, and John ends up having to go with Jack while protecting Yuri. While Jack surveys the place which keeps the key to the place where the file is (the file supposedly being in Pripyat, Ukraine), John and Yuri bond over how their work ethics affected their respective parenting, only Jack eavesdrops.
Alik beats John and Jack up, only for John and Jack to free themselves before grabbing guns and fighting back. While ducking for cover, John attempts to remind Jack of the last time they talked, Jack brushes it off and gets John to focus on fighting back, and both McClanes shoot out the skylights so they can disable their attackers and kill them.
While John and Jack recuperate, Jack reveals that Komorov and Chagarin caused the Chernobyl disaster by pilfering weapons-grade uranium. John convinces Jack to follow Yuri's captors after they deal with Jack's injuries.
At Chernobyl, John apologizes for interfering in Jack's mission and tells him he loves him and has his back, which Jack reciprocates.
After making their way into the vault, John and Jack realize that Yuri has been stockpiling uranium, and that the file was a sham.
As John and Jack try to escort Yuri out of the plant, Irina interferes with heavy weaponry. John and Jack then jump into a reservoir to avoid Irina's attempt to kill them after Yuri dies.
As they leave the wreckage, Jack and John wonder if John looks for trouble, or trouble finds him.
John, Jack and Lucy reunite at the airport, and walk off into the sunset.
Charisma, intelligence, and moral flexibility?
John is a wisecracking, cunning, underhanded combatant throughout the series.
Notable demonstrations of charisma include:
- Socializing in a friendly manner with service workers.
- Engaging in banter with enemies.
- Trying to get the hostage (Ellis) who betrayed him to save himself by the latter dissociating himself from John (who Ellis had only met that night).
- Being a fairly relatable character (inasmuch as he expresses hopes, fears and desires that almost anyone can relate to).
- Caring about his family deep down.
- Recognizing his own failures as a husband and father and attempting to fix things.
- Trying to save lives despite the difficulty it brings him.
Notable demonstrations of intelligence include:
- Contacting and alerting Emergency Services Personnel through unorthodox means.
- Engaging in physically underhanded combat and psychological warfare tactics.
- Using evasion tactics and stealth.
- Improvising in terms of combat and survival.
- Bluffing a phony dispatcher into revealing she was a faker by asking about what turns out to be a code for flashers when his charge recognizes the faker's voice.
Notable demonstrations of moral flexibility include:
- Fighting dirty on a regular basis.
- Dropping a gunman's corpse on a police cruiser, resulting in other gunmen firing at the driver while John makes a sarcastic comment.
- Using improvised explosives to neutralize two gunmen, covering several police personnel in broken glass in the process.
- Telling Hans to "Go fuck [himself]" when the latter threatens to kill more hostages until he kills "someone [John] do(es) care about" if the detonators aren't returned, implicitly considering risking the deaths of a few more hostages to be less evil than risking mass death. (Considering Hans's actual intentions for the detonators, it becomes a moot point).
- Subjecting custodian Marvin to an Implied Death Threat if he doesn't give him the radio the latter found (I'll level, can't tell if Marvin was joking about the $20 price point, but regardless, threatening someone with death would be excessive either way if not for the circumstances, and perhaps even considering, since a more straightforwardly heroic character would arguably either brush it off as a joke, pay the $20, or just explain that people's lives were at stake).
- Trying to get a news crew to block a jet full of mercenaries (even if he ends up settling for landing himself on the wing when they refuse to block the plane themselves).
- Bluffing Carver into believing that the bomb was found in Harlem, thus motivating Carver to further assist him, putting the latter in danger (even if it was to save lives).
- Driving on pedestrian pathways in Central Park, since pedestrians were endangered even if it was for a good reason, as well as joking that he "maybe [meant to injure] that mime" when a pedestrian is injured in the background.
- Misleading an emergency vehicle's driver with a fake emergency so he can follow it.
- Spying on his own daughter in a misguided attempt at protecting her.
- Threatening a hacker (who I'm counting as a civilian because he doesn't endanger anyone as far as I know) with death if the latter doesn't reveal/try to find information about Thomas Gabriel.
- Hijacking 2 cars, then driving atop several inhabited vehicles to follow his alleged fugitive son.
I'm not holding Harry Ellis's death over John's head, since he did what he could to try saving Ellis, and Ellis brought his demise on himself.
Nonetheless, contrast John's willingness to risk the other hostage lives rather than risk mass death, with the first draft screenplay incarnation, who stalls for time instead of refusing to negotiate outright:
McClane: I need twenty minutes, maybe half an hour to get there.
Hans: Five.
McClane: Look asshole, you can shoot the whole goddamn floor—it can't make me move any faster. My feet aren't in the best shape anymore and it's a long way off.
Hans: (beat) Twenty minutes. But don't try anything or we will shoot someone else...perhaps this time a woman.
Vs.
McClane: (In a level and deliberate tone of voice.) Go fuck yourself, Hans.
Before anyone dismisses him as insufficiently morally flexible, last time I checked, the requirement was that the character had to be morally flexible at all for the work, not necessarily using others as a point of comparison.
Competition and other factors?
John has faced off against two *exceptional* thieves, and a brilliant tech wiz and assassin and beat them using his wits and combat skills. Sure, Hans exploits his lack of shoes, but realistically, extra time spent on looking for shoes on dead gunmen is time not spent trying to survive, and as shown with Tony, it's pointless if the shoe doesn't fit. Furthermore, while John's son, Jack, ends up being no slouch himself (if someone wishes to discuss him), John's skills end up complementing those of Jack's, even if they initially clash.
As for other factors, John acknowledges his initial chauvinism regarding Holly's job a bit after the argument, makes amends. When one of Lucy's suitors later makes a misogynistic comment after a confrontation between the three, John glares at him disapprovingly. John also eventually comes to terms with his mistakes as a parent and reconciles with both of his kids.
John makes a few off color jokes about cross-dressing in "Vengeance", but they appear to be portrayed as jokes as opposed to bias. In fact, one of the comments is an Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking comment ("What did I bring you in for? Shoplifting? Purse-snatching? Cross-dressing?"). Likewise, he makes off-color jokes about Mai Linh's death (joking that she was "smokin' hot" because she died in an explosion as a form of psychological warfare against Thomas Gabriel). Not much different from antagonistically telling Simon Gruber that his "East German all-stars" are dead, or antagonizing Karl Vreski by rubbing the death of the latter's brother, Tony, in his face.
What John lacks in technological savvy, he more than makes up for in sheer competence in other areas.
John is formerly afraid of heights, but conquers his fear in the fourth movie when he is shown to have been taking helicopter piloting lessons.
I'm not faulting him for unintentionally compromising a CIA mission, because he firstly wasn't in contact with Jack for years, and secondly, he isn't really in a position that you'd expect him to know CIA operatives and the agency's inner workings. Furthermore, even though Komorov's file turns out to be false, John had no way of predicting it would be, and when he finds out, he still manages to sabotage Yuri's plans along with Jack.
Verdict?
Do I really think Mr. Cowboy himself stands a chance against the likes of Hans, Simon, and Mai?
Yippee Ki-Yay, Motherfucker!
*Beat*
Seriously though, I do think he is entirely worthy of discussion.
Edited by SkyCat32 on Aug 28th 2023 at 8:44:06 AM
