Top 7 Supporting Characters (Who Should have been the Leads)

Sometimes the hero of a movie is so powerful and charismatic that he makes the entire film revolve around him. Sometimes it's the reverse, and the main villain is the character remembered by the audience once the movie is finished, such as the Joker from Dark Knight. Other times, however, it is neither the hero nor the antagonist who takes center stage. Sometimes the character who we remember the most is one of the sidekicks or henchmen - supporting characters who are more memorable than the main cast. These characters stick out in our memories, and deservedly so. And so, without further ado, the Top Seven Supporting Characters (Who Should have been the Leads)

#7: Scrat, Ice Age

I think just about everyone who as seen any installation of the Ice Age Trilogy remembers the antics of Scrat, the... saber-toothed squirrel? Man, I don't even know what he's supposed to be, but boy is he a load of fun.

The makers of the Ice Age series really knew what they had going for them with Scrat. Even in Ice Age 2&3 (the plots of which were nowhere near as interesting as the original), the movies were both tolerable and entertaining thanks to the wordless mini-plot of Scrat going for the acorn. It's a lot of fun to watch, and has you in stitches the whole time. I could watch an entire movie just about this little guy, which is something I couldn't say about any other single character from the Ice Age series.

#6: Captain Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

"You'd best start believing in ghost stories, miss Turner. You're in one!"

Man, I love this series so much. As I mentioned in my review of Sorcerer's Apprentice, Pirates of the Caribbean was one of the best received live action movies that Disney has ever produced, and though Dead Man's Chest was a bit of a let-down, At World's End brought back a good amount of the entertainment provided by the original. One of the reasons for this, in my opinion, is the inclusion of Captain Barbossa.

Though he was the antagonist of the first movie, Barbossa makes a return in the third as a helping (if somewhat less than trustworthy) hand. With the less than stellar talents of Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly, it would take a lot more than just the formidable talents of Johnny Depp to save this film. Fortunately, Geoffrey Rush's performance as Barbossa was more than enough to redeem the third installation of this epic nautical adventure series. Despite the presence of Depp working at his side, Rush manages to make his character even more engaging, entertaining, and interesting.

#5: Jacob, Ink

"One, two, three, four..."

Have you seen Ink yet?

If the answer is no, then you have some serious problems. WATCH THIS MOVIE. Because, seriously. Damn.

It's hard for me to talk about this movie too much here, because there's so much about it that I don't want to give away. One thing I can talk about, however, is one particular character. I made a reference to him in my Ink review a few weeks back as a crazy blind man called a Pathfinder. However, this simple sentence does not manage to get across the awesome that Jacob has to offer. To say that he steals the show is similar to saying that The Beatles were popular - no matter how you phrase it, it's an understatement. The most awesome thing about him is that he's played by a complete unknown, yet manages to score a performance quality up there with Michael Caine or the aforementioned Johnny Depp. He blends humor with engima brilliantly, and it's a treat to watch.

#4: Gollum, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

"My own... my love... my Precioussss..."

I don't think anyone in the world saw the portrayal of Gollum coming in the second film in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. All of us in the know about the film's plot knew he would play an important role, but nobody in the world could have predicted the mastery of his portrayal. But holy damn was it there.

Ever since watching Two Towers, I have held the position that Andy Serkis is a genius. He managed to turn what could have been a rather annoying, slimy character into one of the deepest personalities in the entire trilogy - and he did it without ever appearing on screen. More than anyone else, it was clear that the actor behind the character had spend days upon days working on his character, perfecting the mannerisms and the movements. Gollum is terrifying and pitiful, loathsome and tragic, ruthless and guilt-ridden... he is a mass of interwoven conflicts that create a fantastically deep and engaging character, and he all does it through a face made of pixels and animation.

And speaking of animation...

#3: Kronk, The Emperor's New Groove

"Riiight, the poison, the poison for Kuzco, the poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco's poison.... That poison?"

As you probably gathered in my Top 7 Movie Villains List, I really like The Emperor's New Groove. It's among my favorite of the Disney Overmind's animated features, featuring some truly excellent comedic minds both behind the script and the acting. However, the one who takes the cake (and probably bakes it, too) is Patrick Warburton as Kronk, the less than perfectly enbrained henchman of the film's antagonist.

I... I don't know how to start. Every time he's on the screen you're at the very least chucking if not full-on screaming with laughter. While every other character has moments of brilliance over the course of the film, Kronk's entire performance is the moment of brilliance. I've seen this move many times, and each time I leave disappointed that there isn't more Kronk in the movie.

Now, Disney tried to make some spin-off movies that focused more heavily on this character, and unfortunately these attempts just didn't work out. Judging by that, Emperor's New Groove might not have been improved by a shift in character focus to Kronk. However, I can still dream that if it had happened, it would have been incredible.

#2: Han Solo, Star Wars Trilogy

"Never tell me the odds!"

I hate Luke Skywalker. While I have really liked Mark Hamill in his various voice acting performances (Batman and Avatar: The Last Airbender among them), I think that he was wholly unconvincing as the hero of the original Star Wars series. I like to think that George Lucas - who at this point had not yet gone batshit insane, which would lead him to make the prequel trilogy - realized that Hamill couldn't carry the performance along on his own, and so he went on a mission. That mission: create a supporting character so awesome that nobody would notice that his lead was falling behind. That character was Han Solo.

I don't think there's a single person reading this blog who hasn't seen at least one of the original (read: real) Star Wars movies. Normally I'd pick just one of the series to list in the title, pointing out the film in which he gave his best performance. But after reviewing my material, I honestly don't want to choose. Harrison Ford is such an incredible actor, and he was given an incredible character. Solo is also notable as the best written character in the series. Why? Because Han Solo's line were written by a different writer than the actual script: Harrison Ford. The vast majority of the time, Ford simply improvised his lines because, frankly, his ideas were better. For someone making up his script on the spot, he still managed to pull out some incredibly memorable lines.

And as we're on the topic of memorable lines...

#1: Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Interesting story about this one - Inigo Montoya started off as #5 on this list. Then, over the course of the past few days, he continued to gradually move up the list until he finally surpassed Han Solo earlier this morning. The reason for this is because every time I started writing for the next person in line who would come after Inigo, I realized that I liked the dashing, Spanish sword master better than the character I was writing about at the time.

Inigo Montoya is one of those characters who gets an entire plot arc within a film to himself. The cast of The Princess Bride seems almost like a party of D&D characters - each one an important cog of the party, each with their own goals and backgrounds. Inigo Montoya would be the character played by the guy we all wish we could be. He's the perfect combination of kind, sympathetic, funny, and awesome rolled into one package. There's nobody in the world who doesn't root for Montoya - he's so likable that you want him to win simply on instinct. He has complete, easy control of the scenery, which makes him easily the most memorable character of the film. If that doesn't make a character deserve the title of Best Supporting Character of all time, then I don't know what does.

Top 7 Greatest Movie Villains

I've reviewed a lot of the big summer blockbusters now, and have actually reviewed all the movies (big or otherwise - I'm looking at you, Ondine) that I have seen in theaters since I started this blog. In an optimal world, I'd be reviewing Predators right now - but I have yet to see this film. Now normally I would be game for a challenge - I might even be okay with making stuff up - but that would be wrong.

Speaking of people doing things wrong (check out that awesome segue!), I want to talk about villains. I love villains so much - I see them as the heart of almost every story, as heroes can only truly be measured by the enemies they face and the challenges they overcome. Great villains stay with you forever, helping define a person's view of evil. Because of this, good villains are often the things that people remember from movies more than anything else. So grab your black cloaks and practice your evil laugh, this is TheFaceGuy's top 7 Movie Villains.

#7: Dolores Umbridge, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

"Because deep down, you know you deserve to be punished. Don't you, Mr. Potter?"

I just want to say, before I get any further, that I love Harry Potter. I grew up with the books, and followed them loyally through both good times and bad. It's not great literature, but it's still something that I treasure. I've read each book multiple times, and enjoy them all to some degree. My least favorite of the book series is the fifth - Order of the Phoenix. Not only did we deal with ANGST Harry, but they killed my favorite character in the series. So how how is it that the film adaptation is my favorite of all the Harry Potter movies?

I love this movie, and one of the biggest reasons that I love it is the pink-laced queen of honeyed poison herself, Professor Dolores Umbridge. I have always been a fan of villains that are the sadistic tools of the government, following the ideals of the ends justifying the means. Dolores Umbridge is just that - a disturbingly cheerful psychopath who turns a beloved, magical sanctuary into a fascist prison camp.

...So basically, she turned it into high school.

#6: The Joker, The Dark Knight

"Why so serious?"

If you remember my last top 7 list, you might recall my opinion of this film. I do really love this movie - it may be seriously overrated, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad film. And the biggest reason that this is a great movie is The Joker.

There's not much more that I can say here that hasn't already been said time and time again about Ledger's spectacular performance as The Joker in Dark Knight. He manages to pull off one of the most difficult kind of villains imaginable - the villain whose motive is evil for evil's sake. He's given no backstory, no motive, and no real character development beyond how completely psychotic he is. And yet despite all of that, my God is his character fascinating and engaging. He's the best part of Dark Knight, and boy do we remember him for it.

#5: Hannibal Lecter, Silence of the Lambs

"Hello, Clarice."

Of all the people on this list, only one of them has managed to actually give me nightmares. That man is Hannibal Lecter: the cannibalistic socialite. And by God is he creepy. He's one of those villains that excels at getting into people's heads. For almost the entire movie, he is behind bars - simply talking to Detective Clarice Starling. And yet, despite the fact that he is behind bars throughout most of the movie, he is still absolutely terrifying. He uses his words and charisma to screw with people's heads - even to the point where he convinces a fellow inmate to swallow his own tongue.

... and the fact that at the end of the movie he butchers his way through half-a-dozen police officers certainly doesn't hurt his villainy cred, either.

Bottom line? He's charming, charismatic, creepy, terrifying, and one of the most purely evil characters to ever grace the silver screen.

#4: Yzma, The Emperor's New Groove

"First, I will turn him into a flea. A harmless little flea..."

Not all bad guys are to be taken seriously, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't worthy of being labelled as great villains as well. My favorite example of this is Yzma.

Like just about all Disney villains, Yzma's motives are relatively simple - revenge and thirst for power. But unlike most other members of Disney's rogue's gallery, Yzma manages to be both entertaining and threatening at the same time. She and her henchman, Kronk (voiced by the incomparable Patrick Warburton) provide some of the most adult and genuinely amusing comedy that Disney has ever brought to the table. However, at the same time she also manages to be genuinely frightening - even when she is transformed into a small pink kitten. Anyone who can pull THAT off deserves to be considered great.

#3: Darth Vader, Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

"You have failed me for the last time."

If you're like most geeks, then you probably associate Darth Vader as the face of evil. While this character may have been castrated by George Lucas and Hayden Christiensen in the past few years, Vader was once one of the coolest and most frightening villains in cinematic history. I listed Empire Strikes Back specifically because, more than any of the other films, Vader is at his best here. Starting off with a brutal and effective assault on (and victory over) our heroes, continuing on to casually murder his own officers, and finally toying with Luke in their horribly one-sided duel - Vader never loses a tick in his long line of incredible villainy.

Don't get me wrong, Vader is awesome in Episodes 4 and 6 - and he even has the occasional moment in the prequel trilogy. But in Empire Strikes Back, Vader was at his mostcool, terrifying, and threatening, which makes him eternally memorable

#2: Nurse Ratched, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

"If Mr. McMurphy doesn't want to take his medication orally, I'm sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way. But I don't think he would like it..."

If you've ever been in the hospital for more than a day, you know that nurses are scary, scary people. Even more so, if you have ever dealt with health care professionals in mental health wards, you know that these people are even more terrifying. The reason they are so scary is because these people have a tremendous amount of power over people when they are at their most vulnerable. Knowing these things, Nurse Ratched is one of the scariest characters that I have ever encountered on film. Why?

Simply put, it's because she is one of the most accurate depictions of a mental health professional gone wrong that I have ever seen. She doesn't care about her patients - instead only cares about maintaining order and control in her ward. She hands out medication to her patients at her own discretion, and resorts to barbaric treatments simply as retaliation for bad behavior. Well written female villains are hard to come by, but of all of them that there are, Nurse Ratched takes the cake, making her the Queen of All Villainy.

#1: HAL 9000, 2001: A Space Odyssey

"I'm sorry, Dave. I just can't do that."

Of all the villains in all the films in all the world, none of them come anywhere near as impressive as the computer system known as HAL 9000.

The world has seen a lot of movies about Artificial Intelligence taking over the world, being evil, and generally going not according to plan. One of the biggest examples of this is Skynet, the defense system responsible for the Terminator movies. While Skynet has indeed become a more recent icon for when computers go bad, it does not hold a candle to its predecessor.

Compared to HAL 9000, Skynet - and its army of Terminators - is a whiny, pathetic little wuss. HAL 9000 was terrifyingly intelligent, coldly logical, and murderously callous. It was omnipresent and - within the confines of the ship on which the film takes place - omnipotent. There has never been a villain so powerful, terrifying, and memorable as the little red eye on the wall who is sorry, but he just can't let you do that.

Top 7 Most Overrated Movies

There are a lot of movies in the world, and a lot of them are good. A great deal more of them are bad. There are some, of course, that are not nearly as good as their reputations proclaim them to be. Now, not all of these movies are bad - I've listed several movies that I actually do really like. But just because they're good does not mean they deserve the massive amount of hype and popularity that they have managed to claim. And so I present my top 7 overrated movies.

#7: The Dark Knight

"But Faceguy, you shining beacon of unadulterated manliness!" you're asking yourself, "The Dark Knight was a great movie! You yourself have said so!"

I freely admit that I love this movie. It is easily, in my opinion, the best comic book movie around, and has the elements of an absolutely fantastic film. So why do I have it on this list? The Dark Knight got a huge amount of publicity from the incredibly unfortunate death of Heath Ledger, and the fact that he gave an incredible performance as the Joker threw fuel upon the fire. Because of that, we managed to mostly ignore the poor performances delivered by most of the rest of the cast, as well as the mediocre writing and plot.

And yet despite its flaws, people throw titles on it such as "piece of art" and "masterpiece". The Dark Knight is good, but frankly does not deserve that much acclaim. It's a great movie, but still manages to be highly overrated.

#6: Saw

Now, there are a number of people who would disagree with the fact that Saw has that much in the way of publicity. "Au contraire!" say I! You don't get 5 bloody sequels off the ground if you don't have some popularity - in fact, you need a lot. Only a few other series' have 6 movies in their arsenal - Star Wars being the first that comes to mind. Comparing the first movies of each series, does Saw even compare to Star Wars? If you said yes, please post your address in the comments so I can come and BEAT SOME SENSE INTO YOUR HEAD WITH A ROCK.

I liked Saw, but it's not a good sign for a franchise when the director wanted to stop after the first of six.

#5: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

And now we get to the part of this list where I start bashing classics!

Steven Spielberg has a tendency of making some seriously strange projects. While I do have to give him serious props for being the mind behind Animaniacs, the best animated TV show of all time - even the future, he has also made several movies that make me wonder just what it was he was smoking at the time.

One of the most unexplainably overblown films that he has ever made was this Sci-Fi... adjective. I really don't know what genre this falls under beyond Sci-Fi. Drama? Mystery? Comedy? Romance?

Close Encounters is just strange. Truly chicken-on-face bizarre. From people who make massive replicas of Devil's Tower out of mud in their living rooms to spinning, glowing, flying top things, it's just one extended "What's going on?" moment. The weirdest is as the very end, which is about 10-15 minutes of no dialogue as people mill about among aliens before the aliens fly away. Yet despite the fact theat by the end you are bored and confused, look at the bottom of the poster. "One of the most spectacular movies ever made"??? WHAT?!?

Maybe it's because aliens stole my brain, but I just don't get it.

#4: Ben Hur

I know movie posters are occasionally biased, but to boldly claim that what you are advertising is "THE GREATEST STORY THE SCREEN HAS EVER TOLD" is going a little far.

I'm not going to go too deeply into this one, because it's one of those few movies that leaves me with such a small impression that I am relatively speechless. Ben Hur is long - probably one of the longest movies ever made. We're talking 212 minutes, which translates into just over three and a half hours. I think that director William Wyler mistook quantity for quality, which would explain a lot.

The thing that really gets me is how the movie claims to be "a story of Christ." That's a lie! Most of the movie focuses on this Judah Ben-Hur guy, with Jesus showing up once every half hour or so to say "Hey, look at me, JESUS!" before vanishing into his own (much more interesting) story.

In short, Ben Hur is long, relatively boring, and hideously overrated. If it weren't for Charlton Heston, I doubt anyone would know this movie even existed.

#3: The Matrix

I'm just going t0 say this once, alright? Okay, here goes... No science-fiction movie -especially one starring Keanu Reeves - should ever... EVER... start it's own cult/religion.

The fact that so many people seemed to take this movie seriously makes me seriously concerned for the human race. Even today, I hear people seriously considering that we all might be inside a giant machine to create energy and, even worse, that THE MATRIX WAS A DESPERATE MESSAGE FROM THE REBELS TO THE REST OF US TO SPREAD THE MESSAGE OF THE TRUTH. I think my faith in humanity just died a little.

Nutshell time. The Matrix (Note: ONLY THE FIRST ONE) was a decent movie AT BEST, and most certainly not a message to humanity from more humanity that we need to start resisting reality. End of nutshell, moving on.

#2: Titanic

... I take it back. Can I go back to Matrix? Please? No? Shit...

Alright, here we go. Titanic told the story of the sinking of the Titanic in a more dramatic and personal way then had ever before been attempted. Captained by James "Mad As A Hatter" Cameron, this movie could have been an absolute masterpeice...

... If it weren't for the fact that it would have been better if written by a 12 year old. The writing on this movie is absolutely painful, and the poor acting only serves to highlight the agony. When the movie isn't being overdramatic and badly written, it's deviating from the main plot by showing us a bunch of nerds playing in a submarine.

The worst part, though? The bit near the end where Rose goes on for what feels like an hour of promising that she'll never let go of Jack... RIGHT BEFORE SHE DOES JUST THAT.

I'm not saying it's the worst movie ever, but... It's pretty bloody close.

#1: Avatar

Oh... oh God... no, please, don't make me - Oh, Jesus, put down that gun! No! AHHHHHH!!!

As you might be able to tell from the above passage, I have a certain reluctance to touch this movie with so much as a ten foot pole. You may have also noticed that there's a theme from the last two movies? Can you tell? Here's a clue.

Titani-er, Avatar told the story of the sinking of the- um, environmentalist Smurf things in a more dramatic and personal way then had ever before been attempted. Piloted by James "Deja-Vu" Cameron, this movie could have been an absolute masterpeice...

Catching on?

This movie suffers from many of the same problems that plague Titanic, except for the fact that it wasn't even a remotely original plot. It's Dances with Wolves. In Space. With Smurfs. And it cost some 400 million dollars to produce. Okay, yes, it was one of the most gorgeous things I've seen on film, but the rest of the movie was BALLS and the fact that it's as popular as it is fills me with RAGE.

So that's the Top 7 Most Overrated Movies list. I hope you enjoyed it, and thank you for reading.