The TV Addict 

HEROES

Saul (James Franco) and Dale (Seth Rogen), PINEAPPLE EXPRESS
It’s always fun and/or thrilling to see regular dudes thrown into the deep end of a live or death situation in a wrong man type of scenario. It was a particular pleasure to watch Saul and Dale – as unassuming as anyone can probably get – constantly scramble to find themselves out of their situation. It was distinctly relatable while still being utterly absurd and hilarious.

Tony Star/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), IRON MAN
Tony Stark is classic hero in the sense that he starts off as anything but, discovers his conscience, and then decides to do the right thing. It’s a solid, well established heroic trajectory, yet what made Stark somewhat refreshing is that in his transformation he is never saccharine. Afterwards he still maintains that devilish rogue charm and cocky swagger that made him such a fun and appealing character. He’s a hero, but never a square. That’s exactly how Stark would have it.

Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE
See? I do have positive things to say about THE X-FILES movie. Aside from Anderson being more gorgeous now than she was on the show (okay, that has nothing to with her character being a hero), Scully was the highlight of the film for me. She was sensitive and engaging, and her noble (and heroic) struggle – medical, emotional, moral – to try and help a terminally ill child almost made the film worth the price of admission. Almost.

WALL-E (Pixar Guys?), WALL-E
Not only was the little guy so darn adorable you couldn’t help but root for him to succeed, like most of our greatest heroes (whether literary or cinematic) he risked everything for the grandest, most dramatic emotion of all: love. The fact that along the way he inadvertently both inspires and facilitates the saving of humanity from its own slothfulness, well, that just makes him all the more heroic.

Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), HANCOCK
Every anti-hero or person bound for heroism must at some point discover their conscience, usually thanks to an outside influence. You could then argue that he who inspires the hero therefore must be himself a hero. In HANCOCK that guy was Ray Embrey, an anti-commercialism, do-gooder (I mean that without any patronization) who genuinely believed in improving the world around him. He was also of course infused with great charm and common-sense, compliments by the fantastic Jason Batemen.

Po (Jack Black), KUNG-FU PANDA
Who hasn’t at one point or another aspired to be something more? While that moral is often reduced to eye-rolling levels of lacking sophistication in children films, in KUNG-FU PANDA that isn’t the case. Po is such a lovable fella with a lovely infectious spirit that you’re with him every step in the way. When it comes to the point of the film that he realizes all he had to do to become a hero was train hard, not change who he really is, and just believe himself, it comes as a surprise to him but not us. We knew he was a true hero all along.

VILLAINS

Matheson (Craig Robinson), PINEAPPLE EXPRESS
Matheson may be the funniest hit man I’ve ever seen in my life, and undoubtedly one of the most off-the-wall and hilarious parts of the film, thanks in large part to “The Office” Craig Robinson.

The Joker (Heath Ledger), THE DARK KNIGHT
I’m going to cheat and simply recall what I wrote in my review of the film: “The Joker … may be one of cinema’s greatest villains, not only because of his truly uncaring anarchic motivations to completely subvert any form of social order, but because we can get such perverse pleasure from seeing him do it. He is truly, as he himself says, ‘an agent of chaos,’ hell-bent on probing society’s cracks, weaknesses, and hypocrisies, blowing them open and then violently nudging its crippled shell on a path to destroy itself… He propels the film along with the sheer force of his nature, while causing a domino effect that makes every character, every institution, and every symbol in the film question themselves.”

Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY
Despite the pretty warm critical reception the film got, I’ve noticed a lot of negative vibes against the film all over the net. As an admirer or the film though, I have to say one of the more intriguing parts for me was its villain, Prince Nuada. Though he did often fall into typical villain stereotypes, what I found so engaging was the fact that the film made the effort to convey that what Nuada was fighting for wasn’t so horrible or even wrong (in fact, in some ways I found myself wishing he would succeed), even if his methods were. It made him a morally complex villain where often filmmakers wouldn’t have bothered. Also, he was a bad ass fighter, and that’s always cool.