The REEL Addict 

HEROES

Jason Tripitikas (Michael Angarano), THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM
It’s really nothing against Angarano, whom I’m a great admirer of, but I have to moderately resent any character that is chosen as the hero of a film that also stars Jet Li and Jackie Chan. That being said, there was also the fact that he was basically The Karate Kid just thrown into Asian and kung-fu mythology, who has to learn how to defend himself to save some guy called The Monkey King (yeah…) and teach greaser bullies that even the Jets and GREASE boys would have been embarrassed by.

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE
One the biggest disappointment of the X-FILMS film was that it took one of my favorite television protagonists who was always dour, but always full of sarcastic humor and kooky passion, and turned him into a big whiny bore. That’s kind of ironic too because when the show was on that’s what I thought about Scully.

The Fearsome Five, KUNG-FUN PANDA
Though they were not meant to be the central heroes of the film, they were hyped up to be, well… fearsome. For supposed kung-fu legends they were barely in the film, and when they were they acted like petulant children. There’s also something to be said about the fact that all five of them couldn’t beat the bad guy, but Po did with his pot belly and a funny word (“Skadoosch”).

Moe, WALL-E
Seriously, the guy spent the entire film just cleaning up WALL-E’s dirt.

VILLAINS

Kenneth “Red” Parker Jr. (Eddie Marsan), HANCOCK
Red would have worked as a one off for the hostage scene, but then the filmmakers had to go ahead and designate him a criminal mastermind (off-screen on a television news report no less) and try to turn him into some archnemesis with a harebrained revenge scheme. What kind of mastermind not only fails to realize a rather obvious way for a superhero to steal a detonator out of his hand, but then makes the same mistake … again? He was an entirely pointless character who was solely there as a narrative device, and proved to be a poor – and moronic – one at that. Then again BATMAN & ROBIN screenwriter Akiva Goldsman contributed to the film so I probably shouldn’t be surprised.

The Abomination (Tim Roth), THE INCREDIBLE HULK
I’m torn about putting The Abomination on this list. He’s meant to be just a big violent brute that can go toe-to-toe with The Hulk, and in that sense he works perfectly. But that’s all he is. He’s little more than a punching bag, thinly sketched out to have a superficial narrative arc to make you forget that fact. So I do think he’s not a great villain, but he does work for the film. It’s just that after superhero villains like Dr. Octopus and The Joker, I feel I should expect more.

Janke Dacyshyn (Callum Keith Rennie), THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE
I know, I know. I swear after tomorrow you’ll never hear me rag on the X-FILES movie again. It’s just in this case there’s another example of one of the central things that made the film fail: a non-compelling villain. I appreciate their wanting to rely on the awesome Callum Keith Rennie (Leoben from “Battlestar Galactica”) but he was nothing more than a henchmen. You know what makes a bad central villain of a film? A henchmen.

Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
The villains of INDIANA JONES films have never been particularly deep ones, but they’ve never been boring until now. Irina Spalko lacked any sort of energy, any sort of menace, anything remotely resembling something worth becoming invested in. She was also grossly underdeveloped (which is saying something) and was basically forced to chase after Indy for the entire film. Vague references to being psychic, some fencing skills, and a goofy haircut did little to help matters.