I saw a movie hero

Context
I saw X-Men 3: The Last Stand yesterday and Mission Impossible 3 today. The first X-men movie is among my all-time favorites, and I think Mission Impossible gets better each episode. Spoilers for both movies abound in the commentary below, so if you haven’t seen either of them and you’re interested in them, you might want to give this entry a bye.

Commentary
I didn’t care much for the latest X-men movie. It wasn’t a total wash, but I had a lot of problems with it. On the other hand, I loved Mission Impossible 3. I think some of my reactions to both movies hinge on what I think of as the “hat theory of heroism and villainy.” The ideas in this theory are not new, but I think the hat colors might be.

Anyway, I think of movies as having two types of villains, black hat and navy blue hat. Black hat villains are just plain evil. They have no redeeming qualities; you know exactly where they’re coming from; they’re bad people and they do bad things. Navy blue hat villains don’t necessarily look like villains at first blush. They sometimes talk a good game, or they have some lofty principle in mind, but after a while you realize that hat is actually pretty black after all. I tend to prefer navy blue villains, although I can admire the acting craft behind a good black one.

The X-Men series of movies has a pretty good navy blue hat villain in Magneto. You can almost believe those crocodile tears he sheds over having to hurt people in pursuit of his noble cause. But in the end, he’s just rotten. That principle remained in place in the The Last Stand, and I liked that. Mission Impossible 3 had an outstanding black hat villain and a somewhat unconvincing navy blue one. Oh well, nothing’s perfect.

Heroes also have two potential hat colors, white and dingy. Your white hat hero believes in something and fights for whatever that thing is without compromise. In fact, he’s pretty anal about it. Your dingy hat hero is usually on the right side of the movie conflict and ends up doing good things, but not because he has any particular lofty ideal in mind. He spends the majority of the time looking out for himself, and if pressed, a small circle of friends.

I think a lot of the best movies have one of each type of hero. For example, in the original Star Wars trilogy, Luke Skywalker has the white hat, and Han Solo (who really did shoot first, no matter how much George Lucas tries to change “history”) has the dingy hat. In the original Battlestar Galactica series, Apollo wears the white hat, while Starbuck wears the dingy. If you’re around my age, I think you can tell a lot about yourself by which of those characters you prefer. I’m a white hat lover myself.

X-Men 3 started off with a white hat and a dingy one, then killed off the white hat in the first few minutes of the film. And no, it wasn’t Professor Xavier. So the film pretty much lost me early. Mission Impossible 3 was much more straightforward: one hero, very white hat, good triumphs over evil in the end.

If it seems odd that I prefer my villains somewhat shaded and my heroes straightforward, perhaps I can muddy the waters even further by saying that I like my villains to be realistic and my heroes to be true. Realistically, I believe (and I think I have plenty of evidence on my side) that people don’t think of themselves as villainous. They put on that navy blue hat and say, “I did what was necessary for the greater good.” “You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.” Or my personal favorite, “the ends justify the means.” Not to put too big a burden on my entertainment, but I appreciate seeing this kind of villainy because I think it helps me recognize it better in real life.

On the other hand, I don’t want heroes to reflect what I see every day. I want them to show me there’s something transcendent to strive for. In Christian terms, reality tells me that this world is mired in sin. The ultimate truth, however, is that good always triumphs over evil, and never needs to compromise in order to do so.

What did you see today?