Good Guys Who Are Not as Good As We Think.

In my last post I discussed bad guys that are not quite as bad as we think they are. So for my second post I decided to write on the opposite side of the spectrum of good and evil characters with good guy/girl characters who can not get enough of, but are not really as good as we think they are. So, here we go:

(Character and Image © New Line Cinema, Nicholas Sparks)

Noah Calhoun ~ "The Notebook" (2004):

The notebook is a movie that makes just about everyone who watches it break down into tears by the end of it. I have seen so many people cry while watching this movie, even people I had never seen cry before had cried at this heartfelt story about an old man in a retirement care home telling an old woman resident with Alzheimer's about a young couple (Noah Calhoun and Allie Hamilton) from different backgrounds and ended up together in the end (duh). *Spoiler Alert*. In the end it is revealed that the old man is actually Noah and the old woman with Alzheimer's is actually Allie who has forgotten all about Noah and their past. She has brief moments of clarity and remembers apparently and in the end Noah sneaks to her room, she remembers him and their life together and they die peacefully together.

Why We Love Him:
Noah is the poor guy with a lot of love and a romantic side. He goes to great lengths to get Allie Hamilton's attention and to get her to go out with him. When they are forced apart he rebuilds a house that they had discussed remodeling and living in and can not bring him to sell it. Later on when she returns he lets her make the decision of whether she should be with him or the fiance she had acquired thinking Noah was no longer in love with her. And of course finding out the couple stayed together until the end and he kept by her side despite her no longer remembering him or their past.

Why It's Undeserved:
Yes, Noah does seem to be a good guy and apparently has a nice romantic streak going throughout the film. However, if you actually think about the situations around the romantic acts, all of that breaks down and we are left with a crazy guy who actually only cares about getting what he wants. Now before you hit the "send" button on that hate reply or e-mail, let me explain. First of all, The ending is great, and even I have cried at it before. However, the main problem is that the events when they were younger actually lessen the romantic effect if you consider them with an unbiased outlook. For example, Noah rebuilds that house for Allie and can not sell it because it reminds him of her right? Yes, he is unable to sell the house because it reminds him of Allie, but he did not rebuild that house for Allie. He had already decided to rebuild the house and eventually live in it before he even met Allie. The only reason it reminds him of her is because they almost took the next level of their relationship there just before they break up. Which is fine, but the gesture we see of him rebuilding the house is actually something he was going to do even if Allie had never showed up in his life.

Also, the guy is actually really crazy. When the first met he climbs out of a ferris wheel seat to hang off the ferris wheel in order to THREATEN to commit SUICIDE if she did not say yes to going out with him. He even let's one of his hands go so he is only hanging on with one arm. Then it is implied that he waited for Allie when she never responded back to him, but he started playing lover to a widow who lost her husband in the war. On top of that, he does not care at all for anyone involved with the two so long as they can be together. Which is romantic right? Maybe, when it doesn't involve innocent people who are actually nicer than the heroes of the film. He does not tell the widow that he and Allie got back together until she shows up at his door with dinner in hand to Allie opening the door half-naked. Also, he knows about Allie's fiance since they are socialites and it was in the newspaper and still makes a move on her, while he also was seeing someone. Both of the people who were hurt by them getting together were not bad people, they actually seemed pretty nice and both were nice about the whole being cheated on and even being broken up with. That is not even the first time there was someone else involved. During the meeting where Noah went crazy on the ferris wheel, he jumped on the ferris wheel in between Allie and the date she was there with. Allie does seem to show guilt and concern for her fiance and the widow when they hurt them, but Noah shows no guilt about the whole thing so he obviously does not care about anything else as long as he gets what he wants, and he is obviously crazy with his threat to kill himself in order to get the girl's to say yes to a date.

(Character and Image © Walt Disney Productions)

Tinkerbell ~ "Peter Pan" (1953):

I went through a brief run down of the plot to this movie between Peter Pan and Captain Hook so I will just go over the plot as far as Tinkerbell goes, which is actually pretty short. Tinkerbell is a pixie or fairy who is Peter Pan's best friend and she uses her pixie dust to help Peter and some of the other characters to fly. She gets jealous of Wendy Darling and Peter and gets duped by Captain Hook into helping him and he traps her and tries to kill her by using the fairy kryptonite words of "I don't believe in Fairies". She of course survives and helps Peter, the lost boys and Darling siblings in the end.

Why We Love Her:
Well to be honest, I really do not know. I am sure if anything it has to do with the fact that she is a magical creature who, despite showing jealousy to the sort of female lead of the film, helps the good guys out a lot. She also can fly and help the others to fly and as a kid there were plenty of us that really wished we could fly because it sounded SO COOL. So there is that. There must have been something more than that to make her such a beloved character because over the years there has been so many little girls dressed as Miss Tinkerbell for Halloween and even for fun. She even was bumped up to a lead character with her own tv and movie series set with the fairy world and friends she grew up with. She actually talks in the tv shows and movies though.

Why it is Undeserved:
Honestly, the fact that there is little I could say about the character really does not help her case. Just going by the movie "Peter Pan" the character is completely unlikable. She does not speak only jingles and makes angry faces. Sure it could be because she is so tiny and no one can hear her, but it works against making the character likable, especially considering the other things that makes her unlikable. She has apparently laid claim to the boy who never wants to grow up and gets jealous when Wendy Darling and Peter Pan meet in she and her brothers room at the beginning of the film (Which is a whole mess of creepy in itself). She constantly plays pranks on Wendy through out the movie, many of which almost get her killed. One prank in particular had Wendy almost drown with the help of the mermaids who apparently also have a thing for Peter Pan (More creepiness). When Peter tells Tinkerbell off for being so mean to Wendy, she actually goes to Captain Hook, who happens to be Peter's nemesis, and allies with him. She did get tricked, but she was all for the plan when it involved only kidnapping Wendy and her brothers. For her revenge against Wendy, which also only had basis AFTER she was playing pranks on Wendy resulting in Peter Pan feeling bad for Wendy, she let Hook into the lost boys hideout where he kidnapped not only the darling siblings, but the lost boys too(who were also her friends). She knew that Hook was not above betraying her but took the chance anyway just because she was jealous. So the character is jealous and homicidal considering she almost gets just about all of the kids killed, including herself.

 (Characters and Images © Walt Disney Productions)

Snow White ~ "Snow White" (1937), Cinderella ~ "Cinderella" (1950), Aurora ~ "Sleeping Beauty" (1959):

I will explain the reason why I chose to put these 3 in the same category later. For now the summaries. Snow White's stepmother hates that she is prettier than her so repeatedly tries to kill her only to be thwarted in one way or another because of Snow White's innocent beauty. She takes matters into her own hands and gives the girl a poisoned apple only to accidentally kill herself and all of her effort goes to waste when the prince kisses Snow White goodbye only to break the curse and awaken her. The get married and live happily ever after. Cinderella is the daughter of a nobleman who married a gold digger with 2 daughters. Her father dies and the step-gold digger and her daughters treat Cinderella as their own personal slave, forcing her to sleep in the dusty old attic and tend to their every needs. The prince has to get married and so a ball is thrown, everyone but Cindarelly go and a fairy godmother appears to help Cinderella look good and go to the ball seemingly unrecognizable. The prince and her hit it off but midnight hits and the spell is about to be broken so she has to run. The prince goes searching for her, her step-leech locks her in the attic, Cindy's mice friends help her out so she can meet the prince and they get married and live happily ever after.

All the fairies/witches of the land are invited to the celebration of Aurora's birth except for Maleficent. Maleficent is very unhappy with this so she crashes the party and warns everyone that Aurora will prick her finger on a sewing spindle and fall into a deep sleep for ever. So the King freaks out, bans sewing spindles and sends Aurora off to live in a small cottage with 3 of the fairies. Meanwhile a prince from another kingdom must get married! The two meet in the forest but Aurora ends up getting caught and tricked by maleficent to prick her finger, causing her, the people of the castle, and the people in the surrounding castle to fall into a deep sleep and roses and thorns grow and cover the entire kingdom. Maleficent transforms into a dragon, the prince kills her and kisses Aurora which breaks the curse on everyone and they get married and live happily ever after. The end.

Why We Love Them:
All of these women end up having to live in poverty for some reason or another, something that a lot of people who love these characters have in common with them. So when they end up marrying a rich handsome prince we all ended up imagining how great that would be to be rich, a princess and have anything you ever wanted. People in general like to put themselves into positions of characters in the movies and all 3 of these princesses end up in great positions. Of course where they end up earlier in the movies or in the middle is not great at all, but the end result of being married to the rich and handsome prince and being a princess is a dream that most little girls have. The girls from lower classes and poverty wish to be rich, and girls of any wealth wish to be princesses, and even girls who are princesses want to live happily ever after. So essentially we like them because we want to end up rich, happy, and married to handsome/pretty people. All about the narcissism is what I am saying here.

Why it is Undeserved:
People focus on the being beautiful women married to the rich handsome princess and living happily ever after, which is fine it is a dream many people have. The problem is that with all that comes having little to no personality and being incredibly useless. All three of these princesses do absolutely nothing for getting out of their situations. Sure all three end up having to clean and cook for people (Cinderella's step-family, Snow White's Dwarves, and Aurora had to help out the three fairies with taking care of the cottage), but that is the extent of what they do. Cinderella gets help from the mice and birds to make her original ball gown dress, and then when it gets destroyed the fairy godmother sets her up with a nice gown, shoes and a carriage to get there. Then when Cinderella's step-mother locks her in the attic it is the two mice (Jaq and GusGus) who steal the key from the step-mother and climb all the way up to unlock the door. Snow white is helped by the huntsmen that can not bear to kill her because she is just too pretty and then the dwarves (also because she is just too pretty) let her stay in their house which is barely big enough for them in order to help hide her out, and then the prince breaks the curse. Birds and squirrels get Aurora and her prince together (though by accident). The prince destroys Maleficent and then kisses her to break the curse. The fairies also try to help protect Aurora by hiding her away. So really all any of the three of them did in their own movies was sleep or cry. Also, none of them really seem to have any personality. Sure they all seem like they are nice except that none of them speak all that much and when they do it is to sing or scold the animals that help them. So we have glorified moving dolls that can only sing, sleep for eternity, or cry.

(Character and Image © Warner Brothers, J.K. Rowling)

Honorable Mention: Professor Severus Snape ~ "Harry Potter Series" (2001-2011):

Professor Snape goes back and forth in terms of whether he is good or bad through out the series. Ultimately it is discovered that he was really working with Professor Dumbledore the whole time and had to keep up the illusion of loyalty to Lord Voldemort. The reason I considered putting him on this list was actually the little things he does throughout the series to the hero trio (and other characters). He constantly berates anyone who is not in the Slytherin House (his house). In the books, Hermione gets cursed by Draco Malfoy with a curse that makes her teeth REALLY big (as she has really frizzy hair, big buck teeth in the books up until about the 4th book). When she tells on him to Professor Snape, the guy actually tells her basically that he doesn't see anything changed. The guy kills Dumbledore and had originally been right by Lord Voldemort's side at the beginning of his trying to take over the wizarding world.

Despite all this, people really seem to like the character. Personally I think it has a lot to do with Alan Rickman who somehow is likable despite doing such terrible things as the character. The reason I could not bring myself to put him on the list was mainly because he was trying to masquerade as a loyal servant to Lord Voldemort by request of Professor Dumbledore. It is likely that many of the things he said and did was to keep him from being suspected so he could keep spying for Dumbledore. Also, though it is still very wrong, Harry Potter bares a striking resemblance to his father who bullied and tortured Snape back during their school days. So the guy seems to inadvertently take things out on Harry for that. I still am including him as an honorable mention though, specifically because the guy did originally join the death eaters until it was learned that his first love (Harry's mom) and her son would be killed, and then ends up taking his anger at Harry's father out on Harry.

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~ Amanda ~
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