10 Movie Protagonists Who Were Hard To Love

10 Movie Protagonists Who Were Hard To Love

People often think of movie protagonists as relatable and likable, but that’s not always the case. Here are ten main characters that are hard to love.

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The mark of a compelling movie is a protagonist who isn’t easy to love.

Sure, there are plenty of great movies out there with heroes who are easy to get behind i.e. Rudy, To Kill A Mockingbird and Titanic. And sure, there are plenty of great movies that are also compelling movies. But the movies that sit with audiences long after the curtains have swung back across the screen are the ones that challenge the viewers to stick with a protagonist who makes hard choices, the choices that leave viewers imagining which direction their own moral compass would’ve swung had the protagonist’s choice been their own to make.

Thus, here are ten movie protagonists who made the hard choices, protagonists whose hard choices the audience understood, protagonists who also understood that they didn’t need anyone, let alone an audience, to understand or approve their hard choices:

10 Wikus Van De Merwe – District 9 (2009)

In Neill Blomkamp’s sci-fi epic District 9, protagonist Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) works for munitions corporation MNU, Multi-National United, in South Africa to “engage” The Prawns, aliens who’ve been living in a militarized Johannesburg ghetto after crash-landing there in 1982. But when van de Merwe smiles pretty and hams it up at the sight of the MNU-orchestrated apartheid and genocide of The Prawns it’s clear that “engage” is merely a watered-down public relations term and that Van de Merwe is nothing more than a heartless opportunist.

So, it’s a testament to Blomkamp’s writing and Copley’s acting that the audience sticks with this shirt-and-tie mass murderer who finally gets his bell rung when a chemical exposure turns him into that which he’s been hired to exterminate.

9 Mal – Serenity (2005)

In Joss Whedon’s big-screen continuation of his Firefly television series, Mal (Nathan Fillion) is the charismatic captain of rebel space pirates who cruise the universe and loot cash from a sinister authority called the Alliance.

While Mal’s crew is on a job, a swarm of intergalactic psychos known as ‘Reavers’ touch down to ambush the score, forcing Mal and his crew to flee on a hovercraft where Mal shoots down a local man who tries to jump aboard. Sure, Mal’s decision to kill the local did save his crew; the man would’ve weighed down the hovercraft. But Mal’s refusal to admit he could’ve dumped the payload instead of leaving the man behind is what makes Mal so hard to love despite the charm that makes him so easy to root for.

8 Mother – Mother (2009)

Writer-director Bong Joon-ho’s Mother follows the film’s title character (Hye-ja Kim), an overbearing mom who can’t help but infantize her cognitively-challenged twenty-eight-year-old son Yoon Do-joon (Won Bin), so much so that in one early scene, she actually feeds him a bowl of soup while he urinates on a wall in a public street. Yikes.

That being said, Yoon oddly enough lucks out in having such a Norma Bates of a mom when he’s charged with the brutal killing of a local girl. Why? Because Mother will stop at nothing to clear her son’s name — whether it’s lies, torture or murder.

7 Rick Deckard – Blade Runner (1982)

In the year 2019, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a Blade Runner, a breed of law enforcement officers tasked with hunting down and executing runaway androids, also known as “replicants,” on sight.

Deckard knows the replicants only want to survive. To go their own way. To be left alone. It weighs on his conscience, hence his alcoholism and his reluctance to even do his job. But if Deckard’s willingness to gun down replicants who are just desperate to live on their own terms makes him hard to love, his shame and his willingness to change are what make him even harder to hate.

6 Tom Ripley – The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Screenwriter-director Anthony Minghella pushed the envelope in terms of what he asked the audience to forgive Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) for while still sticking with him to the end of the film.

A wannabe rich kid with delusions of grandeur, Ripley manages to surprise the audience with his cunning by duping millionaire industrialist Herbert Greenleaf (James Rebhorn) into thinking Ripley was chummy with Greenleaf’s spoiled playboy son Dickie (Jude Law), who Ripley’s never met, while at Princeton University, which Ripley’s never attended.

Despite loads of lies, betrayal, murder, and more lies to follow, the audience can’t help but relate to Ripley’s search for personal identity and share Ripley’s heartbreak when he realizes the only thing that distinguishes him from everyone else is an insatiable drive to be anyone but himself.

5 Maya – Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

The less the audience knows about Maya, the better.

Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal, and actress Jessica Chastain convince the audience to stick with Maya on her obsessive hunt for Osama bin Laden despite her questionable methods.

Insubordination. Bullying. Coercion. Torture. She does it all. Nonetheless, even if the audience doesn’t always believe what Maya’s doing is right, the audience does believe Maya believes in what she’s doing. Most importantly, Maya’s oft-selfish actions at the expense of others are ultimately grounded in admirably selfless dedication to catching bin Laden, throwing her own reputation and well-being to the wind.

4 Detective Park Doo-man – Memories of Murder (2003)

In yet another Bong Joon-ho crime procedural, small-town Detective Park Doo-man (Kang-ho Song) is almost as much of a handful as the serial murders he’s investigating.

Doo-man’s determined, funny, and charismatic. But he’s also arrogant, violent and out of his depth as a homicide investigator. Every time Doo-man catches a lead, he prioritizes his nonexistent instincts over hard evidence and indulges in shoddy theories, witness harassment, and suspect torture, making him quite hard to love but also illustrating an internal conflict between what’s right and what’s necessary.

3 Michael Sullivan – Road To Perdition (2002)

After Michael Sullivan Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin) witnesses his father Michael Sullivan Sr.’s (Tom Hanks) involvement in a mafia shooting, Sullivan Sr. takes Sullivan Jr. on the road to outrun the assassin (Jude Law) hired to kill them both on behalf of Sullivan Sr.’s boss and surrogate father John Rooney (Paul Newman).

Along the way, Sullivan Sr. robs banks, evades the law and kills people who don’t deserve to die.

But in doing so Sullivan Sr. realizes his son is more like him than he cares to admit, which compels him to atone for the sins that have made him hard to love by creating a better future for his son, thus making him even harder to hate.

2 Ellen Ripley – Alien (1979)

Alien protagonist Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is easily one of the greatest protagonists in science-fiction films.

Initially, Dallas (Tom Skerritt) is positioned as the hero, but (spoiler alert) when Dallas meets his end just before the final act of the film Ripley takes on the protagonist role in an incredibly unexpected yet welcome pivot in the story.

At first, Ripley’s painted as a cold rationalist, illustrated when she doesn’t let Kane (John Hurt) back onto the Nostromo after an alien latches onto his face, which paves the way to ultimately reveal her as a misunderstood yet dynamic leader, one whose willingness to prioritize logic over emotion for the best of the crew makes her hard to love but even harder not to respect.

1 Wendy Torrance – The Shining (1980)

Initially, Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) is almost too fragile to be a compelling protagonist, always polite at the expense of her own feelings and always submissive at the expense of her own self-esteem.

But as The Shining unfolds, Wendy’s naivety is revealed to be the quiet desperation of a wife helpless to stop her husband Jack (Jack Nicholson) from being seduced by The Overlook Hotel and following in the murderous footsteps of its former caretaker.

So, how does Wendy, ill-equipped to even speak her own mind, survive a homicidal, ax-wielding psycho of a husband, let alone survive a homicidal, ax-wielding psycho of a husband while trapped by a raging blizzard in a haunted hotel located in the middle of nowhere during the dead of winter? Watch one of the greatest horror movies of all time to find out.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/movie-protagonists-hard-to-love/

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