Sheep Shearing

6 Groups Who Don't Work as Movie Bad Guys Anymore

18digg Share Romantic comedies can get away with the protagonists fighting their fear of commitment. Puzzle games can have you fighting against the lack of vowels in your Scrabble hand, but a good shoot-em-up in any medium needs some properly villainous bodies to be shot at. One of which should always be played by Alan Rickman. The problem is that current events and the audience's craving for novelty are drying up everyone's go-to staples for villainy. It all started with: #6. Russia The fall of the Soviet Union caused a lot of problems -- such as political and economic disarray, missing nuclear weapons, runaway crime, that sort of thing -- but probably the worst thing about it was that moviegoers lost maybe the best bad guy country we'd ever had, aside from Nazi Germany. James Bond used to be a lone man taking on a massive evil empire with just his wits and lovemaking skills. Then one day in the 90s he finds himself fighting newspaper owners. Oh no, he's going to write something mean about you! In War Games, a young whippersnapper hacker found himself almost accidentally starting (and then stopping) a war between two superpowers that would have annihilated the earth. Now movie hackers just blow up people's computers and change traffic lights. Red Dawn was scary in addition to silly because, you know, maybe they weren't going to invade us exactly like that, but you still actually worried they might invade us. By cloaking themselves behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy (almost like a veil, or curtain, made of some kind of metal) Russia freed America's imagination to fill in the many blanks with details that were 10 times worse than reality. According to the movies, Russia was ahead of us on everything -- space, missiles, sexy women spies, you name it -- and at any moment they were poised to burst out and destroy us. Or break us, as the situation may require. When they tore down that wall, as Reagan had asked them nicely to do, it was a huge letdown to find out our invincible adversaries had been basically eating their shoes to keep from starving. Shoes they had to wait in line to buy in the first place. Let's see love shoe shopping now, ladies. Now, the good news is that Russians are just as nostalgic for the old days as action movie lovers (because at least then they had shoes to eat), and have been moving further and further toward old repressive Soviet policies. Not coincidentally, Russian bad guys have started to pop up again in movies like Iron Man 2 and games like Modern Warfare 2. The actual country still isn't back in top villain form though (where they'd have a massive army of soldiers wearing instead of eating their army boots), which means movie and game makers usually have to go with rogue Russians or Russian mobs. #5. Middle Eastern Terrorists With fictional Russian villains bailing on us, fictional terrorists stepped up to fill the gap. It made sense. Terrorists were always bad. They blew up innocent people. You could easily shoot 50 of them in a movie without anyone having to feel guilty. Or tie them to a missile or whatever. The only problem is that you could only have about 50 of them. Terrorists were evil, but they were little roving gangs of evil dudes, sneaking around, using whatever weapons they could piece together. You couldn't have an epic war with them or anything. Bring a horde of missile-equipped helicopters to fight a bunch of guys with homemade explosives strapped to their riding lawn mowers and YOU start to look like the bad guy. Oh yeah, giant missile birds. Those are fair. When we went to war in Iraq, and then Afghanistan, and then Iraq again, movie producers wet their pants with excitement because they were no longer just stuck with small-time terror cells, but actually had real life bad guy armies they could use for big old movie battles. Sure, the factual ties between Iraq and terrorism were a little shaky, but the important thing was that audiences basically saw these enemy armies as the big military side of the characters that blow up planes. And if you're watching something like Hot Shots!, you're not thinking too deeply about the moral ambiguity of the Gulf Wars. But while it was a little easier to play the first Gulf War as bad vs. good, by the time we went back again, it was a lot more complicated. So at this point, you can't tell any kind of war story in the Middle East without accidentally making a political statement. Even the cartooniest action flick is going to be interpreted as "pro-war" if you set it in the Middle East without saying anything about the complexity of the situation. Nobody ever brings up the legitimacy of Nazi zombie claims to land. After all, as a wise cartoony action flick once said, "Shit just got real." It's hard to ignore how real and current the situation over there is, so almost all Middle East war movies nowadays are gritty and complex and try to make sense of war. It's not really any territory for people who just want to make your average bad-guys-good-guys action fest. #4. China In the real world, China is the rising new star on the Western world's international threat matrix. They're poised to economically dominate the world, and their military is not too shabby either. All those World War III-genre screenwriters who went dormant after Russia collapsed are now being revived from their cryogenic chambers to start writing China-threat scripts. The best example of China becoming the new Russia is Red Dawn, the iconic Cold War invasion movie, which was recently being remade with China literally replacing Russia. Unfortunately they ran into a snag: While we had a "Cold War" with the Soviet Union, our differences with China are more like a "Passive-Aggressive Catfight." We're not actually physically fighting China anywhere in the world, and neither country seems to even be thinking about it. Instead, we're duking it out with snide comments and aggressive economic policies. And a little bit of lead poisoning. We're actually talking to and trading with China, and although we have a lot of arguments about that trade, nobody wants to see it stopped. So pretty much anyone that likes making big money in the global economy can feel the squeeze when they want to talk shit about China. Including movie studios. That's why the new Red Dawn is being hurriedly edited in post-production to remove all references to China and change the bad guys to ... North Korea. Whoever his agent is, he deserves a raise. Considering that North Korea doesn't even have the boats to send an invading army over here (or the shoes to feed them), the movie's marketing is also being changed from action to comedy. It's not just Hollywood that's scared. The new game Homefront also caved under pressure to switch its baddies from China to Korea, but at least they had the sense to have the two Koreas unite in the game's alternate reality, so only half of our invaders are starving to death and would defect the moment they saw a Dairy Queen. If these were North Korean troops, they'd be inside already.

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Line-O-Rama: Charlie Sheen

He's not bi-polar, he's bi-winning! Let's takes a look at the avalanche of verbal, viral insanity from one Carlos Estevez.

A week and about 100 Cafe Press t-shirts and Zazzle mugs later, ex-Two and a Half Men star (and ex-highest paid actor on TV)Charlie Sheen seems to be slowing down from his psychotically awesome rant schedule. Who knows, though? I still think he's got four interviews set up tomorrow where he'll give us all new insane, fantastical gems to mull over. Of course, a few days in now, they're all variations on a theme. And what theme is that exactly? 








Sheen (a.k.a. Carlos Estevez, a.k.a. "Man Formally Tethered to Reality") has been on a blitzkrieg tear ever since Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre said the following regarding Sheen's most recent "rush to the hospital because he decided to devour a 12 lb. crack rock" episode: 


"I exercise regularly. I eat moderate amounts of healthy food. I make sure to get plenty of rest. I see my doctor once a year and my dentist twice a year. I floss every night. I've had chest X-rays, cardio stress tests, EKG's and colonoscopies. I see a psychologist and have a variety of hobbies to reduce stress. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do drugs. I don't have crazy, reckless sex with strangers. If Charlie Sheen outlives me, I'm gonna be really pissed."


Well, that comment -- plus the decision to put Two and a Half Men on hiatus for a few weeks while Sheen cured himself of all his ailments using the super-galactic power of his own mind -- sent Sheen on a crazy train tirade/media tour ("It's been a tsunami of media and I've been riding it on a mercury surfboard"), providing us with some of the best quotes since Mark Twain kicked Oscar Wilde square in the balls! Sheen just started calling up radio shows and booking TV appearances, unleashing his batshit craziness all over our poor, tortured mundane lives. To be fair, Sheen himself has basically come out and said that most of this precious audio-swill is purposefully designed not to make sense. He's basically just putting us all on, making us chase our own tails by feeding us a bunch of intensely irresistible nonsense:

"I don't know. All these words just sound cool together. They come from my grand wizard master."

But let it also be said that this is in no way the first time that Sheen has been accused of being an unhinged anti-semitic sociopath. He's got a stack of past-restraining orders standing so tall they could ride the Viper at Six Flags Magic Mountain. So let's get to the WINNING! Man, there's so much to choose from here. Let's head into the gaping maw of hell and check out Sheen's best quotables. 

FACT 1: Charlie Sheen is a Supernatural Being

"You're dealing with a Vatican assassin. Sorry. I'm a high priest Vatican assassin warlock."

"I closed my eyes and made it so with the power of my mind. I cured it with my brain, with my mind."

Yes, Sheen is that crazy guy who claims that we're the crazy ones. That guy. We think he's off the wall because... well, we're just not as evolved as he is. He's not just on a different level, he's on a higherlevel. He's a trained killer with mystical powers who can summon dark forces to strike out against his enemies. And we're all blessed to be a peripheral part of his existence. Sounds about right.

Oh, and he can't die. Not from drugs. Not from anything. "Dying's for fools," he claims. That's right. Sorry anyone who's ever died ever. You made the wrong choice. 

FACT 2: Charlie Sheen is not of this Earth

"You borrow my brain for five seconds and just be like, 'Dude. Can't handle it. Unplug this bastard.' It fires in a way that is, I don't know, maybe not from this terrestrial realm. When you've got tiger blood and Adonis DNA, it's like, get with the program dude."

"The last time I took drugs I probably took more than anyone could survive. I was banging seven gram rocks because that's how I roll. I have one speed, 'Go!' I have a different constitution, a different brain, a different heart. I got tiger blood man."

"That was an old brain. I have a new brain. I have a 10,000-year-old brain and the boogers of a 7-year-old. That's how I describe myself."

Not only is Sheen the perfect male specimen, but he's not even from our dimension. Which might be cheating. Not sure. I have to check. He's got the genetic make-up of ancient Greek legends, the steaming blood of a predator and a brain that is able to recognize dark matter. He's basically the Serpentor of Hollywood. 

FACT 3: If normal people interact with Charlie Sheen, the results can be catastrophic

"I am on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available because if you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body."

"The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards, all of them look like droopy-eyed, armless children."

"I'm tired of pretending I'm not a total bitchin' rock star from Mars."

The sooner we all realize that Charlie Sheen is here to make all of our horrible, ugly lives better simply by him being alive and breathing the same air that we do, the sooner we'll be able to open our hearts and fully accept him as our Supreme Warlock Adonis Overlord of Winning. No need to bow, though. An "exploder fist-bump" will suffice. 

FACT 4: Charlie Sheen has great friends

"Pete Rose, Colin Farrell, Sean Penn, Mel Gibson. They didn't give me any advice. Within that there's great advice. There's just love. Just seeing what's up."

Only Charlie Sheen could list off the names of disgraced celebrities and have us lap it up like they were the celestial moons of Jupiter. What's that you say? The violent, misogynist anti-semite offered his support? And so did the gambler and the drug addict? And Punchy Fandango said he loved you, too? Wow, King Sorcerer sure keeps a golden entourage by his side. With friends like those, who needs Deatheaters? 

FACT 5: Charlie Sheen is an all-weather carrier-capable strike fighter jet

"I'm an F-18, bro, and I will destroy you in the air and deploy my ordnance to the ground."

Although he kept it secret for many years, it was recently revealed that when Charlie Sheen isn't curing crippling drug addictions with his brain, battling trolls with his fire-breathing fists or bi-winning, he's actually a supersonic airplane that specializes in the suppression of enemy defenses and aerial reconnaissance. He must be a Transformer. Like those robots who transform. But not like that pussy-punk Bumblebee. 

FACT 6: Charlie Sheen was born dead, bringing it

"I was born dead. Hit on that one for a second. Yeah, the umbilical cord was like floppy baby, the whole thing, yeah it was bad. My dad was trying to bring Catholicism into the room, and the Dr.'s like, 'Shut that bible, get over here and do your job while I do mine.' It was radical. He just beat the hell outta me, and finally this voice emerged and just said, 'I'm alive. Bring it.'"

That's right. Not only was little baby Charlie born without a heartbeat, but he was also born snorting lines of coke off a porn star's bruised ass. It only makes sense now that a kid who, technically, "should not be" lives each day like it was his last. Or like it was our last. 





We know. There are scads and oodles of Sheen gems that we missed here. What are your favorites? Let us know on the boards below...

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