Exyle

The 100 Greatest Movie Characters

Back in October, Empire created a list of the 500 Greatest Movies of all time, and now they have created a similar list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of all time.  Now, I definitely have to say that I don’t agree with this list - given, I haven’t seen all the movies referenced on the list, so I can’t attest to all the entries - but, the order of some of the characters is definitely questionable.  I do have to applaud them however.  They definitely did not use the box office impact of the movie the character was in as a proxy.

Below is the list of the Top 25:

25. Yoda (Empire Strikes Back)
24. Ash (Evil Dead)
23. Harry Callahan (Dirty Harry)
22. Red (The Shawshank Redemption)
21. Michael Corleone (The Godfather series)
20. Forrest Gump (Forrest Gump)
19. Jules Winnfield (Pulp Fiction)
18. Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver)
17. Hans Gruber (Die Hard)
16. Neo (The Matrix trilogy)
15. Ferris Bueller (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)
14. The Terminator (The Terminator series)
13. Gollum (The Lord of the Rings trilogy)
12. John McClane (Die Hard series)
11. James Bond (007 series)
10. Vito Corleone (The Godfather I & II)
9. Ellen Ripley (Alien quadrology)
8. Captain Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy)
7. The Dude (The Big Lebowski)
6. Indiana Jones (Indiana Jones series)
5. Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs)
4. Han Solo (Star Wars trilogy)
3. The Joker (The Dark Knight)
2. Darth Vader (Star Wars series)
1. Tyler Durden (Fight Club)

Now that you’ve seen that much, what do you think?

Now, don’t get me wrong, Fight Club is easy in my Top 10 favorite movies of all time, and Tyler Durden is one badass character, but number one?  I unfortunately have to disagree.  I mean, is he really better than James Bond or Indiana Jones?  I think not.

Though there are some movies that had more than one character on the list (e.g. Star Wars with six characters), I don’t necessarily disagree with this.  I don’t agree with the idea that a character should be left off the list to make room for other movies just because a movie is heavy with great characters.  However, as much as I like Boba Fett (one of my favorite Star Wars characters), I find it hard to justify putting a character on the list - the greatest movie characters of all time I remind you - that only has something along the lines of 5 minutes of screen time in an entire trilogy.  Maybe that attests to the impact of the character in some weird way, but personally, just including a character because he looks cool (I don’t care what they say)…give me a break.

Lastly, there are definitely some characters that were unfortunately left OFF the list and should have been on it without question - at least in my opinion.  Below are just a few that I thought of:

1. Willy Wonka (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)
2. Khan (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)
3. Dr. Evil (Austin Powers series)
4. Mad Max (Mad Max trilogy)
5. John Rambo (Rambo series)
6. Superman (Superman, Superman II)
7. Gordon Gekko (Wall Street)
8. Yojimbo (Yojimbo, Sanjuro)
9. Colonel Kurtz (Apocalypse Now)
10. Jake Gittes (Chinatown)
11. Mr. Miyagi (The Karate Kid series)

Well, that’s my rant!  Let me know what you think.