Charles Purcell's Blog, page 17

The day my local video store closed

Overheard in my local video store …

“You’re not going to rent that, are you? Because I’ve seen it. It’s shit.”

“I heard it was OK.”

“Nah, it’s shit.”

“Margaret and David gave it four stars.”

“Four stars for being shit.”

“Why is it shit? Does it contain traces of Adam Sandler?”

“No, mate. It’s just … well, it’s just shit.”

(Fortysomething man scuttles to front counter with video still in tow) “Err, I might just get it anyway.”

Me: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Because it’s shit.”

Such amusing conversations are to become a thing of the past now that my local video store is closing this week. It is a sad day for all concerned, particularly as I have spent many years perusing those shelves and getting to know the people behind the counter. Indeed, when I have not been warning customers of watching “shit movies” – some of which I actually saw before giving out such startling, strident, unsolicited advice – I have rented hundreds of surprisingly watchable movies and series therein.

Let us spare a thought for your local video store impressario, for they are both curator and counsellor. They alone can deal with such requests as “do you have that movie where Ewan McGregor shows his willie? I just mention his willie as a point of reference” and “I want to hire that movie where Eva Green is completely nude – not just partially nude or topless, but completely starkers – yes, I just mention the nudity again as a point of reference”.

They alone can tell by the look on your face that you’re in the mood for some baffling Middle Eastern film starring a depressed camel. Or perhaps pluck that “feelgood” Ken Loach film out of your hand as a poor choice for “date night” (“But any film with ‘Joe’ in the title MUST be funny!”).

They can find the movie you remember watching at 1am with the tagline “Chuck Norris IS action!” They know why you can’t get Gremlins wet, the origins of “the Truffle shuffle”, what “sweep the leg” means and the movie where Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall first met and fell in love.

They can steer you in the direction of that cult TV series that everyone will soon be talking about, giving you bragging points for being the first to spot its greatness.

Now that the store is closing, I feel deprived of both human companionship and interaction … as well as vital pop-culture information.

Now how can I check up what Steven Seagal is doing? How will I follow hot trends in Young Adult vampire literature? Who will tell me which of the Olsen twins can actually act? Will I never see Dolph Lundgren’s increasingly tired and embarrassed face on the front cover of another straight-to-video movie? Or stroll down an aisle of DVDs simply entitled “Cate Blanchett”?

I will miss the friendly phone call from the store, wondering why I haven’t returned “the film with Ewan McGregor’s willie in it” yet, despite having it for four weeks. Or the reminder that “the movie where Eva Green is completely nude” is now available for rent.

It’s a sad day to realise that you will never see Eric Bana in your local video store again  … although I did interview him years later after my sighting, incorrectly describing his movie Romulus, My Father to him as a “feelgood movie” based on briefly seeing the cover of it alone.

Now I will have nowhere to rent Romulus, My Father – with its misleading cover image of a young child gambolling in the foreground as Eric Bana rides a motorcycle – to correct such mistakes. More mistakes are sure to follow. I may even describe The Omen as a “teenage coming-of-age comedy” or Meet The Spartans as “surprisingly watchable” without such a resource.

Yes, I will join the rest of the bargain hunters on Saturday to snaffle up some classics cheap, Ryan’s Daughter and the original Day Of The Jackal already purchased and added to my collection.

And yet, as I come across that movie featuring Ewan McGregor’s willie in the “for sale” bin, part of me will weep.

My ebook military thriller, The Spartan, is now available on Amazon.

Happy birthday, George Costanza!

ACTUALLY, it’s Jason Alexander’s birthday, but you get the idea. I had the pleasure of talking to him in 2008 and found him a very different, far more confident person than George from Seinfeld. Check it out here.

FYI: Duckman, the excellent animated series which features the voice of Alexander and which I refer to in the interview, is now available on DVD. It’s great … go out and grab a copy.

My ebook military thriller, The Spartan, is now available on Amazon.

I called it 10 years ago – Ryan Reynolds to play Deadpool

TEN years ago when I interviewed Ryan Reynolds for Blade III, I mentioned how he’d make an awesome Deadpool. (Here’s the full interview here.)

Now comes news that the Deadpool movie is coming in 2016, with Reynolds tipped to play Pool. Apparently fans were blown away by the leaked test footage.

That’s one movie I’m looking forward to.

- Charles Purcell

Invisibility suits are closer than you think

My friend Nigel just sent me this article about “digital metamaterials” hastening the development of devices such as invisibility cloaks.

Teresa Vasquez, special forces soldier and the heroine of my novel The Spartan, wears such a device (OK, so it’s an invisibility suit, but close enough). More proof that yesterday’s previously unimaginable technology can become today’s accepted marvel.

And if an invisibility suit sounds too “magical” to exist, just remember what Arthur C. Clarke said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

My ebook military thriller, The Spartan, complete with invisibility suits, is out now on Amazon.

“Charles, top 10 Bond villains … go”

With the passing of Richard “Jaws” Kiel – aka the 7’2’’ dude with the metal teeth that menaced James Bond in Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me – it’s time to name the top 10 Bond villains.

And here we go.

Alec Travelian (Sean Bean)

Before he was “Stupid Ned” on Game of Thrones, Bean was the backstabbing 006 who (spoiler alert!) betrayed Bond in Goldeneye … which, incidentally, also became an awesome videogame.

Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya)

Mostly for the novelty of seeing her try to kill Bond using a flick knife in her shoe … a move the Joker stole in The Dark Knight.

Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera)

You could never accuse this over-the-top SPECTRE agent from Never Say Never Again of modesty. As she instructs Bond at gunpoint: “Now write this: the greatest rapture in my life was afforded me on a boat in Nassau by Fatima Blush. Signed James Bond, 007.”

Tee-Hee (Julius Harris)

Because having a hook for a hand – and a weapon – is classic Bond in Live And Let Die.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld

The head of criminal organisation SPECTRE was played by a variety of actors, but we mostly remember him for the white cat he would stroke in his lap, a supervillain trope that has stood the test of time.

Nick Nack/Scaramanga

Bit of a double act this one. Herve Villechaize brings us the laughs as Scaramanga’s sidekick in The Man With The Golden Gun, while the superfluously-nippled Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) brings us the chills as the killer who only ever needs one bullet to kill his quarry.

Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe)

A ridiculous villain ripe for sending up in Austen Powers’s Goldmember, Auric’s outsized evil included wanting to irradiated the entire gold supply of Fort Knox and trying to dissect Bond with a laser. Oh, and he also killed someone by covering them entirely in gold paint (which would work, apparently)

Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen)

Love Mads in Hannibal (and if not, why not? It’s a great show)? Then try him as card-playing, blood-weeping villain Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, the definitive relaunch of the Bond franchise.

Oddjob (Harold Sakata)

Because any former Korean wrestler turned haberdashery-throwing killer is too cool not to include.

And No.1 … Jaws (Richard Kiel)

Naturally.

My ebook military thriller, The Spartan, is now available on Amazon.

Taking the law into your own hands: why every true hero does it

“Liam Neeson takes the law into his own hands in Among Tombstones,” read the tweet.
And just in case you missed the whole taking the law into his own hands thing, the accompanying image features a dour-faced Neeson next to the words “he’s beyond the law”.
So not only is Neeson’s character transcending the law, he’s also taken it upon himself to re-interpret and rewrite a legal system steeped in hundreds of years of history and tradition. The message could only be clearer if he took a pile of legal manuscripts, wrapped them in feces, set them on fire and threw them on the steps of the High Court. Then maybe drove a monster truck over the remains.
Yet Neeson’s ex-cop is perhaps merely voicing what all heroes must be – above the law. Their journey requires them to be above the law, to do the sort of mighty, dangerous, socially unacceptable feats we ordinary mortals can only dream of. In fact, heroes must be their own law, a law unto themselves, law breakers, the Outlaw Josey Wales. Or, in Judge Dredd’s case, “I am the law.”
And, of course, Neeson is not alone. Just go to the local video store and you’ll witness a cornucopia of heroes and heroines who are either above, beyond or somewhat perpendicular to the law, driving their metaphorical monster trucks over our entire legal system’s delicate interplay of checks and balances.
Every hero or heroine worth his or her own salt must come to grips with one ultimate truth – that the law is only meant to shackle the ordinary person who can’t escape its net. The law (or, as a hero would say, with sarcastic air quotes, “the law”) doesn’t apply to the figure of destiny with the strength to take the law into their own hands.
Laws are made by men, not the heavens, and, as such, may be defied by heroes. As any burnt-out cop/maniac in a mask/aggrieved family man with a headful of bad memories and nothing to lose would tell you, usually at fist or gunpoint, only by bending justice can one ensure “true” justice. (In this case, true justice is whatever brand of justice the hero believes in: this can range from a vigorous de-pantsing followed by a daffodil placed between the offenders’ buttocks to an enforced swan dive from the top floors of the Nakatomi Plaza.)  
Ask any cop turned secret vigilante: laws are for people who still have faith in the “revolving door” justice system (more heroic air quotes there), where drug kingpins are back in the streets 24 hours later because the “Commish” won’t extend the wiretap one more day due to budget cuts. Laws are for cops afraid to use “unorthodox methods”.  Laws are for “shysters” paid by the hour to get their scumbag clients acquitted when everyone knows they’re guilty despite a lack of “evidence”. Laws are for “fat cats” who get to “skate” because they’re “juiced in” with “City Hall”.
So what’s a hero to do? The usual answer is: step outside, above, beyond or into a universe parallel to the law.
Hence, Batman operates outside of the law. Spider-Man skates around the law. Superman defies the laws of gravity. Aquaman enforces the law of the sea, whatever that is. Wolverine stabs people with knives in his hands, violating the laws of cutlery. Hit Girl operates outside of the law of profanity by using the “c-word”. Rambo only follows the laws of the Vietnam jungle. Liam Neeson’s character from Taken operates outside of EU regulations. Dirty Harry bends the law according to his own quasi-fascist philosophy.  The bald dude from The Shield would keep the streets safe for decent folk if only “the brass” would get off his back about his “unorthodox methods”.
The hero’s particular form of kryptonite is politics. Every hero needs a Commissioner Gordon-type figure to not only explain the hero’s actions but to protect him from political repercussions. Every celluloid or comic-book champion requires a boss like that dude in Beverly Hills Cop, who protects Eddie Murphy from having a chunk taken out of his arse by the Mayor’s office. Even my own hero, the Spartan, has his mentor, Colonel Garin, to protect him from censure and to keep him unencumbered to do what he does best on the battlefield. And maybe to protect his arse from a having a chunk taken out of it by the mayor’s office.
The hero is also vulnerable to another law: our approval. If they don’t have that, they won’t get their lucrative TV show/comic-book deal/movie blockbuster. And the best way to win our approval? To be above the law … and look cool while doing it.
Only I’d still like to see a movie where Liam Neeson “stays within the normal boundaries of the law” just for a change.

My ebook military thriller, The Spartan, is now available on Amazon.

An Open Letter To The Creators Of Dark Souls II

Hey, guys. How are you going? Just thought I’d pen this letter to say how much I’m enjoying Dark Souls II. I’m 20 hours in and I’m still getting killed by giant rats … and loving it.
But I do have one tiny gripe. Well, a big gripe actually. I’m tired of getting pulled into fights with other players. I’m tired of being summoned into someone else’s world so they can lie in wait and hack at me with a +10 Bastard Sword of Glee or whatever. I’m tired of being some 19-year-old from Arkansas’s punching bag. Like a former European great power whose days of glory are over (but who still wears ridiculous pointy helmets), I’m tired of being dragged into private, unnecessary wars that cost money, prestige and treasure.
Because, as a mature gamer, every hour is precious. Gamers of a certain age don’t have hours upon hours to spent exploring dark dungeons, looking for obscure items of treasure that would take a cheat sheet or several days to find. That’s for younger folk with time on their hands. You never see 40 years olds in the news dying after playing Diablo 3 for 40 hours straight, at an internet café, forgoing food, sleep, the bathroom and the company of one’s fellow man in the epic quest for more levels. Locking oneself into a room and playing Starcraft until one loses one’s job, girlfriend and possibly their own life is not for us. We have passed the age of gaming addiction. Gaming is a cherry on the cake of life, not the entire cake itself.
So when I do enjoy a bit of downtime in the dungeon, I don’t want to have to slink around like Archduke Ferdinand, wondering if some loon is going to jump out from the shadows and assassinate me, thus providing the catalyst for World War I. OK, maybe the Archduke Ferdinand analogy is a little extreme. We’re not starting World War I here. But I am being dragged into someone else’s agenda. Someone else’s little war. Someone else’s quagmire. Someone’s Vietnam.
You see what I’m getting at here, creators of Dark Souls II?
Such duels are not like being dared to take the Ice Bucket Challenge: that would be fun. There’s no winner in these fights … just a reminder of the futility of war, of man battling man. Cue the theme music from Platoon and Willem Dafoe collapsing in the jungle just as the rescue chopper flies overhead.
I do understand your motives for including that ability in Dark Souls II. I’m aware that there are millions upon millions of gamers who are deeply into multiplayer games, who love nothing more than wasting their opponents with guns, knives, sharp sticks and harsh words. After a while fighting against a computer loses its appeal – you want to hunt the greatest game of all: man.
I was young too once. I relished the chance to waste some over-the-hill 40-year-old dinosaur with my teenage gaming reflexes. I loved hunting noobs during Counterstrike games (ha … noobs). I loved sneaking up behind the less agile for some critical backstab damage. There was something almost Darwinian about it.
And the rush … ahh, the rush. Defeating another in combat will give that to you. I can’t deny that. I also can’t deny the pleasure of defeating the summoner, to remind them of the consequences of unchecked aggression. Like Conan once said, when asked what was best in life: “It is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”
But I like to think as Conan got old, he would have a different approach. He might realise that there were better things in life than to crush your enemies. I imagine the ageing barbarian would back my stance on the whole Dark Souls II thing. And he’d probably backpedal on the whole “lamentation of their women” thing. That kind of belongs in the era of Genghis Khan, where he stole his quote from, anyway. 
Now that I have become the dinosaur – the ageing chimp, as it were, confronted by younger silverbacks who want my position – I find I don’t have the taste for one-on-one combat like I used to. Even if I win, I regard it as a time waster. Besides, it takes away precious time from completing main quests during games.
And frankly, I find people invading my game … well … rude. If Emily Post was alive today and writing a book on modern manners (gamer edition), she might even suggest that it was the height of incivility to enter another’s Dark Souls sessions and disrupt their campaign to kill a rat king.
So I would like to think that you include an “opt-out” button in Dark Souls 3. For gamers who want to invade other people’s worlds and games for battle royales, fine. More power to them. But for the gamer of a certain age, there should be a box you can tick so that your private gaming world becomes just that – private. And without having to resort to some finite magical resource to protect your own domain.
Anyway, thanks for the hours of fun – and I look forward to your next instalment with keen interest.

My ebook military thriller, The Spartan, is out now on Amazon.

Come back, Arnie, all is forgiven … or “where did all the action heroes go”?

The Terminator. Indiana Jones. Conan. Rambo. Ash. Dirty Harry. Rocky. John McClane. The Punisher. Deckard. The ‘80s and the early ‘90s were a golden era for action heroes. Arnie, Sly, Dolph Lundgren, Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis and more were delivering the goods in the multiplexes, mowing down the bad guys while delivering killer quips. For a while it seemed as if the action hero genre would never die out.
And now … where have they all gone?
I felt a tug on my soul for the old-school action hero after watching – to my mind – the rather excellent Sabotage. It was a treat watching Arnie get his gun on as the head of a corrupt DEA task force. It made me nostalgic for the good old days, when Arnie and Sly were the templates for action heroes, where they would take on entire armies of South American or South East Asian rebels, possibly taking time out to throw a steam pipe through a man’s chest and then quip “let off some steam” in the process.
What impressed me about Sabotage is that there was an agreeable grit and edge to Arnie and his comrades in the film … they swore, they drank, they had tatts, they had a laissez-faire attitude to regulations and body counts.  
Because there is just something too neat and smooth about the current crop of action heroes.
Case in point, Chris Pine. Chris Pine is great as Captain Kirk – one expects the future to be all smooth and gleaming and polite and free of all the grime of daily life – but he was all too disappointing as a young Jack Ryan in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. He struck me more as the sort of dude who should be serving my morning cappuccino that a dreadnought who could go toe-to-toe with the Russians. (For crap’s sake, is he wearing a skivvy on the movie poster? No action hero wears a skivvy when they can wear a singlet instead.)
I can’t picture this Jack Ryan storming the beaches at Normandy. I can’t picture him keeping his composure as Vietcong torturers go to work on his body with clubs. I can’t imagine him pummelling a side of beef with his bare fists until they are raw and bloody. I can’t see him screaming “Adriaannnn!” (He might text it, though.)
And there are all too many Chris Pine-esque action men out there. Orlando Bloom. Leonardo DiCaprio. Guys who look like they were born with a silver spoon in their mouths rather than being born in the gutter. Guys who would apologise profusely after belting a suspect over the head with a phone book rather than quip “your call is important to us”. Guys in stable, nurturing relationships rather than burnt-out maniacs on their fourth marriage, with their current wife already walking out the door with the kids.
I’m not thrilled about the attempts to “hand over the baton” to the next generation, either. For a moment in 2008 during Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull it seemed as if Harrison Ford was about to hand over Indy’s whip and hat to Shia LaBeouf … until someone must have decided that would be a terrible idea. (That was a bad idea even before the days when LaBeouf walked around in public with a paper bag over his head.) 
John “Bruce Willis” McClane shares screen time with his son in A Good Day To Die Hard, but no old-school action fan wants to see Willis hand over the mantle to Jai Courtney – we want to see Bruce Willis keep making Die Hard movies like the Police Academy films until they near double digits and become parodies of themselves.
I miss the days when Arnie would throw the Joker into an industrial-grade thresher and then quip “next time, try to blend in more”. Of course, that never happened. But if it did, it would be awesome.
And why exactly does no one deliver one-liners any more? Well, actually, they do, but they’re usually written by Joss Whedon and they’re so self-aware and conscious of their cleverness that they lack the bad-ass drama of, say, “I’ll be back” or “hasta la vista, baby”.
It was interesting that Hollywood had no good candidates to cast as the man giant Jack Reacher in the movie of the same name. The Reacher of the Lee Child books is a 230-pound plus behemoth, with the type of raw physicality you’d have to go back to Arnie or Sly to duplicate. In the end they went with Tom Cruise. Not a bad choice – Cruise has the acting chops and the intensity to pull it off – but I can’t really imagine Child’s character as written in Cruise’s rendition.
Vin Diesel is perhaps the best contender to the Arnie/Sly throne we’ve seen in a long while. His anti-hero Riddick from Pitch Black was a revelation: brooding, deadly, dominating the screen. Unfortunately we are yet to see a movie that does Riddick justice … but I’m still hanging out for it. (The Fast and Furious franchise, while not exactly to my taste, is going strong, too).
The other actor who nails the whole action hero thing is Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. You’re so taken with his interpretation of Wolverine – complete with abs so sharp you could grate cheese with them – you forget that the character is supposed to be only five-foot-three and Canadian.
I’m also hoping to see Karl Urban play Judge Dredd again.
Jason Statham and the Rock both come close to Arnie/Sly excellence, but I can’t point to any of their films as “must-haves” for any action-man DVD collection.
Hollywood is aware that there is some kind of “action hero deficit”, which is why we have Red and Red 2, as well as the ongoing Expendables series, starring just about every action hero of yesteryear. They’re up to No.3 right now, but any more instalments and they’ll enter the Steven Seagal/Police Academy parody category as well.
Yes, we do have action heroes, but more and more they’re part of an ensemble like in the X-Men or the Avenger movies. Iron Man and Captain America are more in the modern hero in touch with his feelings rather than the invincible Neanderthal of yesteryear who has to be sent to Sensitivity Training by head office for calling his boss an asshole. Captain America mouths off about how the world has changed for the worst, but I can’t see him ever gunning down a suspect he knows is guilty and then throwing his police badge into the river afterwards during a scene that will haunt you long after you’ve left the cinema.
That’s why, when I created my hero the Spartan, I looked to the past to create him. Actually, the very distant past – some 2000 years ago. A man with a foot in both the ancient and modern worlds. A bad-ass soldier just as comfortable as using a sword as a Squad Automatic Weapon. A proper action hero, in other words.
Or maybe I just miss the ’80s.

My ebook military thriller, The Spartan, is now available on Amazon.

The death of the pun

There was a golden time in journalism when the art of the pun reigned supreme … when journalists competed with each other to create magic such as “why I stuck a cracker up my clacker”, when food editors printed “let’s be friands” in 16 point type, when Mrs Slocombe’s naughty pussycat was in literary vogue and “show me the Monet” in an arts supplement was considered high wit worthy of the royal salon of the Sun King.
For generations of journalists raised before the eventual domination of the internet, the headline itself was a chance not only to capture the readers’ attention, but a chance for subeditors toiling in the background to excel. For it was often the subeditor – not the editor or the writer – who was responsible for such words of wit. It was their chance to shine, another tool in their tool belt apart from knowing the correct way of using the Oxford comma and how to police layouts for “orphans”, “widows” and “DOCS children” (OK, I made up one of those).
The racy English tabloids were often the leaders and inspirations for the punning competition. While it is technically not a pun, “Freddie Starr ate my hamster” is perhaps the gold standard of a clever headline … funny, intriguing, bound to attract the reader’s attention. It is perhaps the one headline all newsfolk know.
In Australia, the NT News has become famous (infamous?) for its extremely clever and punnish headlines. In the Walkley Awards, under the category of three best headlines, Paul Dyer of the NT News submitted three crackers: “Eyeful tower”, “Dogs of phwoaarr!” and the world-famous “Why I stuck a cracker up my clacker”, justly walking away with the top prize.
The NT News pushes the envelope in ways that some institutions fear to tread. I would have to go back to my days on ACP’s P-mags to get away with headlines such as “why I stuck a cracker up my clacker”. (Mind you, “phwoar” was an oft-used word on the P-mags. “Phwoar – what is it good for?”, “Man O Phwoar”, “Phwoar King and Country” … the list is endless.)
Mind you, not all puns are great. The current vogue of puns on Game of Thrones (Game of Phones just being one of the most obvious) is tiresome. Some publications have more bad puns than a Kathy Lette novel. And every hack at some point has probably tried (and failed) to get an original pun out of the phrases “the spy who loved me”, “the spy who came in from the cold” and “sofa so good”.
Yet while journalists on the more highbrow mags dream of writing clever headlines like “how do you solve a problem like Korea” or “headless body in  topless bar”, the arrival of the internet and search engine optimisation has put a crimp on the whole pun craze. Funny but non-specific words such as “cracker” or “clacker” would not automatically take the online reader to the NT News story (unless, in this case, it is already world famous), whereas something more boring and specific such as “Darwin man ends in hospital with a firework up his buttocks” might. And type in “eyeful tower” into Google and the first reference you get is for a pun-happy optician in the UK.
Thus, treats for the subeditor to write – such as “Thai me kangaroo down, sport”, “Thai fighter” or “Thai me up, Thai me down” – will not draw as many hits as “local Thai restaurant wins food award”. Amusing japes on ’80s songs such as “Wake me up before you go go” will lead online readers to Wham fanpages rather than your lifestyle article about sleep cycles.
The time of headlines proclaiming “bigger than Ben-Hur” are almost a thing of the past .. “local sports arena ranked among nation’s biggest” have sadly taken their place. “Let’s get physical” has been replaced by “neighbourhood gym attracts customers with spin class”. The whole subgenre of puns of Thai restaurant names is in peril. You will never pick up a daily broadsheet and see the headline “for he’s a jolly good phallus” or “wangs for the memories” any more.
Yes, the puns will continue to sneak in due to the efforts of proud subs, but facts and functionality rather than fun has become the order of the day.
And somehow, the language of headlines is all the more poorer for it.
Although we can all live without puns about Mrs Slocombe’s cat.  

My ebook military thriller, The Spartan, is now available on Amazon.

In praise of the coward in pop culture

AS the author of an action thriller called The Spartan, I do indeed, as Homer says, “sing of arms and the man”.

My heroes and heroines are men and women who put themselves in harm’s way for a greater cause. I praise special forces soldiers for their willingness to go anywhere, do anything, to get the job done. The ultimate villain of my Spartan books could be classified as a coward.

And yet, I have a sneaking soft spot for cowards in popular culture.

I was reminded of such while watching Sharknado 2 today. There was a dude on the street holding up a sign that read “the end is nigh”. While he’s not exactly the cowardly type – he wasn’t fleeing the Sharknado, just asserting his beliefs that the end was indeed nigh (and why don’t we see those guys on the street any more? Is the end not nigh?) – he’s just the sort of stand-on-the-sidelines type of dude you know something bad is going to happen to.

It’s the heroes that always seem to survive in the end. Woe be unto the blubbering teenager who tries to hide in the broom closet when the masked killer goes on a rampage. Or the civilian who runs from shelter, unable to take it any more, only for a missile (or shark!) to land on their head to the delight of the audience.

And yet … there is something about cowards on screen that is strangely appealing.

Thinking about Hudson from Aliens always brings a smile to my face, the way he goes from hero to chicken, his voice cracking as he says, “Game over, man … game over!” Isn’t “game over” the appropriate response in the face of an alien menace with acid for blood and whose progeny bursts out of the human stomach during birth?

Doctor Smith from Lost In Space turned cowardice into an art form. Say what you like about his behaviour, he’s the one character most people remember from the show … along with lines like “bubble-headed booby” and “oh, the pain, the pain”.

Tricky Loki stabs his macho brother Thor in the Avengers movie. But just watch Tom Hiddleston walk into a Comic-Con and recite a few Loki quotes and you’ll see which brother they love more.

Or even George Costanza on Seinfeld, who knocks over small children in an effort to escape a fire. Are we going to attack the loveable George? Is he not entitled to “the Summer of George” rather than your scorn?

Shall we bag out Shaggy and Scooby for being inveterate cowards? Scooby’s a dog, for Christ’s sake – he’s not equipped by nature to take on ghosts or abandoned themepark owners. And Shaggy’s a quiet soul who probably just wants to find a quiet corner and blaze one up. It’s almost cruel to expect more of him and his terrified pooch.

And we can’t expect C3PO to take on hardened battle robots. He’s just a protocol droid after all, locked in passive-aggressive relationships with R2-D2 and Han Solo.

In a certain light, even Trevor Chappell’s famous underarm bowl against New Zealand in 1981 has a cowardly charm.

For a change I’d like to see a movie like Sharknado kill off all the heroes one by one, only leaving the most cowardly individual alive at the end.

I admit, the audience would probably have a tough time warming to such a movie. But just once, wouldn’t you like to see Hicks, Dr Smith, Shaggy, Scooby and Loki “win”? Why shouldn’t the grand piano fall on the lead man’s head every once in a while? Why shouldn’t Wile E. Coyote blow up the Road Runner? Wouldn’t you like to see Tom chow down on some Jerry ratatouille? Or Scratchy eat Itchy? Why hasn’t Hollywood given us The Lord of the Rings: The Gollum Cut, where Gollum emerges victorious over those thieving “hobbitses”?

Food for thought.

My military thriller, The Spartan, is now available on Amazon.