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The
Top Ten Coolest Movie Characters of All Time
by James
I was having a debate with someone recently, about the movie City of God
(Cideud de Deus), the Brazillian movie that everyone for some reason, seems
to think is the new Goodfellas. After telling him to EAT MY ASS, we went on
to have a reasonable discussion about why I think it failed.
I came to the conclusion, that had the main character 'Rocket', been a
gun-toting, one-liner handling bad-ass instead of an introvert camera-man
who loses his virginity to an UGLY HAG, the movie would have held
universally more appeal. My theory is that a movie has to have a character
that we can either relate to/sympathise with, or wish we were him/her, for
it to be great.
Anyway, whatever.
10. THE DUDE (JEFF BRIDGES - THE BIG LEBOWSKI)
 Ah the dude.
The man whose lifestyle I live by.
Intelligent, sarcastic, and FUCK LAZY. It doesn't get much better than that.
Well alright it does, but it's pretty cool just the same.
I guess it's a little unfair just to list the Dude alone though, since it's
his laid back dynamic with his best friend Walter Sobchak played by John Goodman that makes the Big Lebowski the master-piece that it is.
Defining Line: "Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not Mr.
Lebowski. You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You
know, that or uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not
into the whole brevity thing."
9. HENRY HILL (RAY LIOTTA - GOODFELLAS)
 To be honest, the character is not really THAT awesome, it's just all about
how bad-ass he is when his girlfriend tells him that her neighbour tried to
come on to her. Picture the scene.
She calls his place crying, tells him that the guy living opposite her had
pushed himself on her. He says "ok", drives over, picks her up, drops her
home, walks over to the neighbour's house where he washes his car with his
friends. He says "You got a problem?", Henry says nothing, takes a gun out
the back of his trousers and proceeds to SMACK THE FUCKING LIFE FROM HIM in
front of his friends.
Other than that, he's just generally a cool guy, a gangster and a thief,
nothing special, but the aforementioned scene steals it.
Defining Line: "I always knew I wanted to be a gangster."
8. JOHN MCLANE (BRUCE WILLIS - DIE HARD I, II and III)
 How can the same shit happen to the same guy not, not two, but three times?
Well it would usually be gay and redundant, if that guy didn't happen
to be the original bad-ass, Bruce Willis. No one can be bare foot ninety
percent of a movie and still come off an action master-class like John
McLane.
When Die Hard came out, thus began the revolution of new action stars, and
it was Bruce Willis who can be accredited with starting it all off, smartly
ditching the bag of shit movies he had been frequenting, like The Story of
Us.
And if I'm not mistaken, Die Hard IIII is in the works.
Defining Line: "YIPEE KAI-YAY MOTHER-FUCKER!!"
7. AGENT SANDS (JOHNNY DEPP - ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO)
 The one and only positive note in the otherwise unholyly dire Once Upon a
Time in Mexico.
Johnny Depp brings himself to a character who was turned down earlier by
George Clooney and Nicolas Cage, and just owns it completely. We even for a
minute, forget how stupid it is that his eyes are gouged from his skull,
because he's just that cool.
Robert Rodriguez dedicated years to building a trilogy revolving around El
Mariachi, when he should surely have spent it writing more movies about
Agent Sands and his killer one-liners.
Defining Line: "You know that withholding vital information from a
federal officer is a serious offense. Especially when that officer has paid
handsomely for it and wouldn't think twice about ripping that patch off your
eyehole and skull-fucking you to death."
6. THE TERMINATOR (ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER - TERMINATOR II)
 Time and time and time and time again, it has been proven that Arnold
Schwarzengger is only a good actor when he isn't talking. So thank god for
the Terminator trilogy, which turned him from B-movie Hercules, to action
megastar and somehow into governor of California.
It's probably the dead-pan that makes his character cool. Oh, no, sorry,
it's probably the fact that he's a time-travelling, unstoppable doom-train
of death with a killer Harley and a double-barrel shotgun.
Defining Line: "I'll be back."
5 CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW (JOHNNY DEPP - PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN)
 We all know that Johny Depp was robbed, ROBBED of his academy award for best
actor at the last Academy Awards. Perpetually drunk and chock with
one-liners, he's definitely one of the funniest if not coolest characters
for a pretty long time.
Granted, Johnny Depp could probably make Reese Witherspoon's character in
Sweet Home Alabama look cool, and pretty much every single role he plays is
inherently Johnny, but I think that most would agree that Sparrow was at
least the most interesting role he's under-taken in a while.
In pre-production for the movie, he wanted to wear gold caps on his teeth,
but the production company didn't want him to. So he gold capped pretty much
ALL HIS TEETH, so that he could bargain with the production campany. In the
end he only had to take out half the caps he had. AWESOME.
Defining Line: "When you marooned me on that god forsaken spit of
land, you forgot one very important thing, mate: I'm Captain Jack Sparrow."
4. JULES (SAMUEL L. JACKSON - PULP FICTION)
 His dialogue before blowing away Brad in the first chapter of Fiction,
is so famous, millions of people now know it verbatim, and it's now the key
element of the Miramax cinema advertisement.
Jules is probably the most popular of Tarantino's characters, with the
exception probably, of Mr. Pink and Mr. Blonde, but where Steve Buscemi and
Michael Madsen had Tarantino's dialogue to power them, Jules had that plus
the awesomeness that is Samuel L. Jackson.
Defining Line: "Well I'm a mushroom-cloud-layin' motherfucker,
motherfucker! Every time my fingers touch brain I'm "SUPERFLY T.N.T", I'm
the "GUNS OF THE NAVARONE". In fact, what the fuck am I doin' in the back?
You're the motherfucker should be on brain detail. We're fuckin' switchin'
right now. I'm washin' the windows and you're pickin' up this nigger's
skull. "
3. RANDALL 'MEMPHIS' RAIMES (NICOLAS CAGE - GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS)
 I don't know why people hate this movie so. It's so damn good. There's not a
boring scene in it, which is more than can be said for a lot of other
movies. Nicolas Cage is always cool, and this is probably his coolest
character that he's played so far.
Greatest car thief of all time, his girlfriend is Angelina Jolie, and his
best friends include Robert Duvall and Vinnie Jones. Does it get much cooler
than that?
Watching him and the gang listen to "Low Rider" is second in coolness only
to his boosting of the elusive Eleanor.
Defining Line: "I am a baaaad man."
2. TYLER DURDEN (BRAD PITT - FIGHT CLUB)
 If you don't like Tyler Durden then you are insane.
Think about someone who doesn't give a shit about anything, lives in a
run-down ramshackle house, makes soap in his spare time out of fat stolen
from a liposuction clinic and commands an army of 'space monkeys'.
The most philosophical person on the list and probably responsible for
changing more people's lives than anyone else on the list.
Defining Line: "All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look
like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and
most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not."
1. ACHILLES (BRAD PITT - TROY)
 When I think back over Troy, I realise that the storyline was at best, good.
But when you add in the character of Achilles, it makes the movie absolutely
fucking spectacular for me.
He is so. fucking. cool.
The ten minute period of the movie between Achilles standing alone in front
of like a billion Trojan archers and the highest walls in the world,
shouting HECTOR (GET DOWN HEAR YOU MOTHER FUCKER), to him tying Hector's
feet to his chariot and riding back to camp is probably the coolest fucking
fight scene I have ever seen.
The greatest warrior ever? Biggest bad-ass the world has ever seen? Alright
in Homer's original story he was half god and had Hephastus' mighty armour,
but hey, he was still by far the coolest character ever in a movie.
And for those people saying that Brad Pitt's performance was weak? How about
no. It was played to perfection. OH MY GOD SO BAD ASS!!
Defining Line: "I want what all men want. I just want it more."
Ok, now as a bonus, I'm going to throw in the top ONE GAYEST MOVIE
CHARACTERS OF ALL TIME:
1. PARIS (ORLANDO BLOOM - TROY)
 Oh god, so much gratification. Thank you Wolfgang Peterson for casting
Orlando Bloom as the role of Paris. As if seeing him get the absolute shit
kicked from him by an old fat guy with no shield was not awesome enough, we
also got to see him crawl, beg and grovel for his life to big brother Bana.
I loved seeing blood all over his face. It was tantamount to how cool the
movie had been thus far.
Way too good. Until he became our generation's Hot Rod by killing Achilles,
coolest character of all time.
Good job kid.
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