Slasher Cast-A-Thon!

Wendell Ottley is hosting an exciting event for Halloween, The Slasher Cast-A-Thon wherein we get to put together our own casts for a slasher movie. Apparently the "slasher" has already been cast (though Wendell won't say who it is as of yet), and the way it works is that I'm supposed to put together a group of characters I hate. The one exception is the character I pick to fill out the role of the "final girl", which should naturally be a character I like. I really, really wanted to use R.J. MacReady but the catch is that the characters we use cannot be from a horror film.

So naturally this is a perfect opportunity to vent on movies I hate. It's time to get my revenge on several characters who for one reason or another have pissed me off. Unfortunately it seems a lot of the people I hate are men, so there might not be as much gender diversity as I'd like. Also, I have no idea what all these guys would be doing in the woods together.

James Bond (Sean Connery version)

You should all know my thoughts on the Bond franchise by now. If you're following my blog and you don't you're obviously not paying much attention. Connery's James Bond is a sexist, racist, homophobic, perverted, sick, twisted human being that gets away with all kinds of horrible acts. To him, women are just things to have sex with and then discard, so naturally if the typical slasher formula requires that people who have sex be killed... Bond would be the perfect choice for that role. He can finally be punished for that one time he raped a girl and tried to cure her of being gay. Whatever happens, as long as Bond lives I'm rooting for the villain.

Mr. Conductor (Thomas and the Magic Railroad)

Consider this my revenge for this man almost single-handedly ruining one of the greatest shows of my childhood. He stole the spotlight in a movie based on a series about talking trains and turned it into a confusing series of events involving magical gold dust or some other absurd rubbish. I don't care what this man says. The Island of Sodor is NOT an alternate dimension, and I think the Fat Controller can handle the railway just fine without him.

Brian MacAffrey (Backdraft)

Brian MacAffrey serves as the lead to one of the best examples of everything I am fighting against. Backdraft is an offensive and sexist film that despite being made by a man who should know better proceeds to enforce the (false) notion that firefighting is a man's job. Perhaps taking out the lead of a well-known movie like this could serve as a warning to other filmmakers interested in making firefighting films that they'd better put a strong female firefighter into the main cast.

Jar Jar Binks (Star Wars)

Even in my days as a Star Wars nerd I never really liked Jar Jar (although I tolerated him slightly more). At the time I took it to being more closely connected with my tendency to relate better to human characters (same reason I was never fond of Chewbacca, either). However, as I later learned the real reason I never enjoyed him was because he was an annoying and poorly-written character who didn't really add much to the story. His only real contribution to the narrative (providing exposition about the Gungans so we know who they are during the climax) could easily have been handled without him and we already had comic relief in the form of R2-D2.

Billy Madison (Billy Madison)

Technically any Adam Sandler character would fit right into my list, but this particular one stands out as one of the best examples of why I don't get excited about going to see his movies. Meet the whiny, immature idiot who couldn't even pass the first grade, not to mention he is completely useless in every regard and might be a bit delusional. Whoever our mysterious killer is, Billy Madison won't stand a chance because he'll probably be too distracted chasing an imaginary penguin to even notice the impending danger.

Admiral Harriman Nelson (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea)

This was a ludicrous movie in itself, but the obvious insanity of this one man certainly didn't help. This is a guy who saw the Earth get engulfed in a giant fireball and despite having none of the qualifications to know how to deal with it he concludes the only way to prevent disaster is to get to the deepest part of the ocean by the end of the month and fire a single torpedo. Seriously. By total luck it worked, but odds are against our mysterious slasher he'll have an equally nonsensical plan to deal with his situation, and this time he might not be so fortunate.

Michael Jennings (Paycheck)

This whole movie was one big insult to the dignity of Phillip K. Dick, but it certainly didn't help that Ben Affleck's protagonist completely missed the point of his literary counterpart who, incidentally, ended up in a much better position (in the original story, he gets back into Rethrick Construction as a partner with the implication that he will eventually take over; in the movie he just blows everything up and then goes on to run a plant shop with his girlfriend). Jennings might be the best reverse engineer in the business, but how good are those skills going to do him when he is up against a psycho with a chainsaw?

Lemmy Caution (Alphaville)

This was a bad movie, yes. It was a lazy, terrible, poorly executed mess of a film if ever there was one, but let's look at the main character of Lemmy Caution. He's the most unsubtle superspy the universe has ever seen. He walks around with an extremely conspicuous trenchcoat and fedora waving a camera around in places most definitely not taking pictures that could be useful for espionage purposes. Against our mystery killer his incapability to be subtle would ultimately be his undoing. He would easily stand out and be eliminated.

Final Guy:

David Bowman (2001: A Space Odyssey)

If anyone has a shot at surviving against our mystery killer, it's this man. He is a rational-minded professional who knows how to stay calm even when facing the most dire of situations. While most of the other guys here would be freaking out, distracted, unsure of what to do, or just completely insane, David Bowman is the one man who would keep a level head and rationally work out a solid plan to deal with his situation. He has been through life or death scenarios before in even more confined environments and even faced against a murderous psycho so I think he can handle it.