Fun Is Good, Part I: The Badass Factor
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 6:00AM in J.D. Rhoades by J.D. Rhoades
Did you ever fly a kite in bed?
Did you ever walk with ten cats on your head?
If you never did, you should.
These things are fun, and fun is good.
-Dr. Seuss
There are a lot of things that go into making a great book: plot, pacing, characterization, dialogue, etc. Today, I’d like to talk about another, often-overlooked factor: fun.
Not a lot of people talk about what makes a book fun to read. That’s probably because it’s such a hard thing to quantify. But if a book is fun to read, people will keep coming back to it, and they’ll anxiously await the next one.
For purposes of these posts, I’m not just talking about books being funny. Certainly a book that makes you laugh is fun. But there are some “serious” works that are just a sheer hoot to read and/or watch. In my next few posts, I’ll be talking about some of the things that make a book or movie fun (to me at least).
First, we’ll talk about one of my favorites: the badass factor.
From Beowulf to Jack Reacher, we do love our badasses, those unstoppable, unkillable guys and gals who take a licking and keep on kicking, right up till the end when l they either triumph, or in the case of badass villains, go down with their guns (and sometimes themselves) blazing.
One of the things, for example, that makes Jonathan Maberry’s zombie-driven thriller PATIENT ZERO so much fun is that its main character, Joe Ledger, is a serious badass, and he knows it. It’s right there in the book’s dynamite first line: “When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, there’s either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there’s nothing wrong with my skills.”
That passage illustrates one of the things that makes a bad-ass a bad-ass (and thus adds to the fun): an extraordinary self-assurance, born of an uber-competence in the fields of crushing enemies, seeing them driven before them, and hearing the lamentation of their women. Robert Crais' Joe Pike, for example, adds a huge fun factor to the Elvis Cole books by simply being the absolute best at disposing of bad guys without hardly breaking a sweat or even taking off his shades. And the books featuring Pike (there's a new one out-YAY!) are, yes, serious fun.
The writer should be warned, though. There's a very fine line between the type of confidence that tickles the reader's fun center and the kind that stimulates the eye-rolling nerve.
Another form of bad-assery is the Sheer Stubborn Endurance kind, exemplfied by Bruce Willis' John McClain in the frst DIE HARD movie. Blown up, burned, feet cut to ribbons, he just keeps coming after the bad guys. Another example: Inigo Montoya in THE PRINCESS BRIDE, who, though badly wounded, gets up, raises his sword, and delivers his signature line, over and over, until he finally does in the man who killed his father, after this classic exchange:
Inigo Montoya: Offer me anything I ask for.
Count Rugen: Anything you want...
Inigo Montoya (runs Rugen through): I want my father back, you son of a bitch.
Which brings us to the Badass Moments, in which a character’s true awesomeness is exhibited, often through a single line or gesture. Example: the moment in the first episode of the TV series FIREFLY when Captain Mal Reynolds comes striding up the ship’s cargo ramp into the middle of a tense standoff, sees one of his people being held hostage, draws, shoots the hostage taker dead without breaking stride, and moves on to getting the ship flying.
Another type of Badass Moment comes when someone who’d previously been the hunted turns into the lion and starts whomping the snot out of bad guys right and left. Example: the moment in ALIENS when the hangar door opens to reveal Ripley, driving that giant exoskeleton and snarling “GET away from her, you BITCH!”
Rule of thumb: Any moment that makes you want to leap up, pump your fist in the air and holler ‘Hell YEAH!” increases the fun factor exponentially.
LORD OF THE RINGS, (the book version) is fun, in large part, because it’s chock full o’badasses and badass moments, like: Aragorn standing on the walls of the surrounded Helm’s Deep and telling the million or so nasties teeming about below him that no one's ever taken that fortress and that the ridiculously outnumbered defenders will let them live if they run away now; Theodens' pre-charge speech and the Ride of the Rohirrim, and my favorite, when Eowyn, after being warned by the Nazgul that no man can kill him, whips off her helmet and gives her “No man am I” speech (a Badass Moment if there ever was one). And let's face it, when it comes to Sheer Stubborn Endurance badassery, the name's Gamgee. Sam Gamgee.
So tell me: who are your favorite badasses? And for future posts: what makes a book not just good, but FUN?
Next time: The Audacity Factor, or Oh, No, He Did NOT Just Do That!
Fun 
Reader Comments (37)
Others that come to mind are Lincoln Rhyme (you can't really beat a quadriplegic badass) from Jeffery Deaver and Travis McGee from John D. MacDonald.
And, although not normally my cup of tea, Janet Evanovich does a great job with her no-holds-barred bounty hunter Ranger in the Stephanie Plum series.
Not exactly a badass scene, but since you took mine with Die Hard...Shawshank Redemption, the scene where Andy walks into the bank to transfer the money. Exhilarating moment of triumph.
I have to add my fav scenes from Die Hard include, "Now I have a machine gun. Ho, ho, ho." and Alan Rickman's departure from the building! This however is my all time favourite. The terrorist who is put into the body bag, not only alive, but with a machine gun!That's so seriously f'd up in the best kind of way.
Now: Spenser, Painter Gray from David Rollins' books (as well as Commander Crow), Travis McGee, Lucas Davenport, Greg Rucka's Atticus Kodiak, Reacher...
Why has nobody mentioned a certain Jack Keller...? In addition to those mentioned so far, what about Stephen Hunter's veteran sniper Bob Lee Swagger? Or Lord Vetinari from Terry Pratchett's DiscWorld series? Or Crow from the Robert B Parker Jesse Stone series.
I could go on.
I think Alan Rickman's baddie in Die Hard is the standard by which all others are set, but Tommy Lee Jones's bad guy in Under Siege runs him a close second ;-]
As good a definition of badass as I think you're likely to find.
Yeah, how come?
Derek Stillwater, OTOH, is a great name for a badass.
And speaking of female BAs....Charlie Fox, baby. Charlie Fox. Talk about someone who just will not be deterred...
That scene and that movie are so much fun, I'd seen it three times before I went, "hey, wait a minute..."
But the all-time badass line is actually a villain's. From Leon, The Professional, he's just wiped out a whole SWAT unit, and the corrupt cop (Gary Oldman) finds out about it downstairs, and says:
"I told you. Manny? Bring me me everyone."
"What do you mean, 'every--'"
"EV-RY-ONE!!!!!!!"
"You're a Mozart fan. I love him too. I looooove Mozart! He was Austrian you know? But for this kind of work, he's a little bit light. So I tend to go for the heavier guys. Check out Brahms. He's good too."
That's a great badass on badass movie.
But what is it that makes The Outlaw Josey Wales such huge fun and Pale Rider (which is almost a remake of the same movie) not as much?
Anita Blake in the EARLY books of that series.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome?from=Main.CrowningMomentOfAwesome
(The opposite, BTW, is a "crowning moment of suck".)
One of my favorites: Molly Weasley (plump middle-aged mother of Ron Weasley and multiple other red-headed children in Harry Potter's orbit) getting her inner Sigourney Weaver on in a final, climactic battle with uber-vixen Bellatrix LeStrange: "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!"
Badass begins and ends with Inspector Harry Callahan. Everyone remembers "Are you feeling lucky, punk?" and "Make my day," as his best lines, but his best line by far actually came in DIRTY HARRY.
The Scorpio killer has hired a street thug to beat the living crap out of him so he can lay the blame on Harry for reporters in the hospital, and the Chief is buying it and giving Harry hell as they watch a replay on TV. Harry pleads innocent, then, as he's leaving the room, glances at the Scorpio killer's bloody and bandaged face on the TV screen and:
HARRY: Besides. Anybody can see I didn't do that to him.
CHIEF: Yeah? Why's that?
HARRY: Because he looks TOO DAMN GOOD, that's why.
Now THAT is BADASS!
Other bad asses include Bobbie Faye (or maybe she’s just nuts); Jane Rizzoli; Hawk (Spencer was mentioned); Virgil Flowers(John Sandford’s other series); Harry Dresden; Rachel Morgan from Kim Harrison’s series; Kitty Norville from Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty series; Pug and a whole bunch of others from Raymond Fiest’s Magician and Krondor series; Gabriel Allon; Isaac Bell, yes it’s a series by Cussler, but it is his best and Bell is so bad ass, if you haven’t read it pick up THE WRECKER; John Corey (Nelson DeMille); V.I. Warshawski.; Mercy Thompson from Patricia Briggs’s series. Did anyone mention Harry Bosch? Can’t forget Lisbeth Salander. There are so many more.
I’ll toss in one movie reference, Martin Riggs from the Lethal Weapon movies.
One of my all time favorites is from GI Jane. Demi Moore as the first female in SEAL training. When they go off for their SEER training, she's taken prisoner by her commanders, and Viggo Mortenson kicks the beejesus out of her to make a point to the MEN what happens when a WOMAN is in combat with them, and how they can be used against them by the enemy. He rolls her out in front of her comrades, tells her to seek life elsewhere, and she, bloody, beaten and handcuffed, gets up on her knees, stares him straight in the eye and says "Suck. My. Dick!"
Crass, yes, but damn effective. She wins the respect of the whole cast of characters with that one line.
Books...
Repairman Jack...F.Paul wilson
Louis and Angel.....John Connelly
Agent Pendergast.....Preston and Childs...'a friend calls these "Pentergasms"
Earl Lee Swagger....Stephan Hunter (PALE HORSE COMING)
"Bob the Nailer"....Stephan Hunter (Black Light)
Movies:
Sunshine ....Remember the Titans( *On the Quaterback???!!!) when the opposing coach suggested a penalty.
Axel F....Beverly Hills Cop ( sheer fun, and brings out the ya-hoo in people around him.)
Riggs.....Lethal Weapon (also, for the sheer fun of it ......taking down the glass house, having DG's charactor flap his arms and act like a chicken, shooting the guy with DIPLOMATIC IMUNITY, biting the dog's ear)
Eve Dallas and Roarke, both bad-asses at times, in JD Robb's series. Eve Dallas is probably my favorite female fictional character.
I totally agree with those who mentioned Clint Eastwood in the first DIRTY HARRY, and Bruce Willis in DIE HARD (my favorite Christmas movie, after the original GRINCH WHO STOLE CHRISTMAS ;)
Sark from Alias had his bad-guy bad-ass moments.
He starts off as muscle, the only muscle who agrees to leave with the rest of the rabbits when fiver, who has visions, says they need to leave. And then he almost gets strangled alive in a rabbit trap, and keeps on kicking. And then he challenges a fox, and outruns the fox, and uses the fox to take out a bad-guy (though it's debatable whether that was on purpose). Then, there is an all-out rabbit fight, and he's bleeding in several places, with the rabbit equivalent of broken limbs, I think an ear's torn off, and he stares the bad guys in the face and almost mocks them. I love Bigwig.
For that matter, I also love Hazel, whose plan is, 'Facing a force of rabbits ten times larger and more prepared than ours? Great! LET'S LURE OVER A DOG!' I was in awe of that.
I think it's even better when it's coming somewhere unexpected, though. Half the reason this story's so great is, you don't expect badass rabbits. But they are.
Reminds me of the killer rabbit scene in 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'. All you need is a holy hand grenade of Antioch...;-]
Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien, "Why don't you just fuck off?"
And of course Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme... too obvious, but heh.
I also would include Peter Temple's Jack Irish as Australian bad arse.
This is from BLACK TIDE
"The woman doctor who cleaned the wound looked like Ava Gardner in Bhowani Junction. She wasn't impressed with the injury.
'Call this a gunshot wound?' she said. 'I've seen worse from knitting accidents.' She pointed at my old scar. 'Now that's a gunshot wound. Are you a dangerous person?'
'This blaming the victim.' I said.'The people who shot me are dangerous."
Hans: 'No...I'm an exceptional thief.'
Making notes of more books to read...
Wolverine from the X-men movies. Hugh Jackman with muscles and an attitude....
Dirk Pitt and Al Giordano from Clive Cussler...oh, those one liners and kicking butt.
James Bond!
Havelock Vetinari, DEATH, JIm Kirk from Star Trek. Candice Fusco from the Psychic Eye mysteries by Victoria Laurie. Eddie G. and Jerry from the Rat Pack murder mysteries by Robert Randisi.
This is fun.