Extras

Favorite Moments: The World’s Luckiest Background Cop

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We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.

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The Video Game: 2014’s, ‘Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’

The Scene: The Collapse of the Golden Gate Bridge (Vulgar language warning)

Why It’s Great:

We’ve all seen it before in countless disaster movies: Something terrible happens: the building starts collapsing, the ship starts sinking, the ground opens up as a 15.0 earthquake rages, and nameless background characters start dropping by the dozens, their lives sacrificed to show the audience just how dangerous things are and the stakes that the main character/s are facing. These scenes almost always end with just the main character and his or her companions left standing.

But not always.

At 1:05 in the video, a helpless police officer slides down the collapsing Golden Gate Bridge. As expected, Mitchell – the player character – manages to grab hold of the poor man, who will struggle for his life and beg Mitchell not to let him go, only to tragically fall to his death, leaving Mitchell to raise his arms to the sky and an uncaring God, yelling that the cop will be avenged, just like Luthor and…

Wait. What’s this? The officer… survives? He gets pulled to safety? A random, nameless background character actually survives a catastrophic event?!

When the fate of a city or the world – or even existence itself – is on the line, a protagonist would be forgiven for letting someone die to save the many. But when they take the time to save one person, it shows us that they aren’t willing to let innocents die if they can avoid it. That makes the rare occasions when a nameless, background character who normally exists just to die is saved all the more heartwarming.

The Best Background Characters: Don’t Bring A Stick To A Swordfight

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Every story has a cast of characters that we follow and watch and come to love… but what about the background characters? The nameless masses who rarely get our attention? This column examines my favorite background characters who deserve a moment in the spotlight.

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The Movie:

‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’

The Character:

A Rohan swordsman who chose a strange weapon when fighting for his life.

The Scene:

(The swordsman in question appears at 4:08 in the upper left corner)

Why He Deserves A Moment In The Spotlight

The climactic battle at the Black Gates is a gripping scene, filled with tension, drama, and the fate of all Middle-Earth hanging in the balance. Victory here means that Sauron will be defeated forever, and failure will mean not only death for the combatants, but the enslavement of Middle-Earth until the end of time. All the soldiers and warriors who volunteered to go on this dangerous mission no doubt took their time to carefully select the best weapons they could find to protect themselves… including the guy who thought that bringing along a stick was a good idea.

What distinguishes this background character from all the other swordsmen and warriors in the battle is that he’s wielding a stick. A stick! I’m not versed in the art of armed combat, but I doubt a long, thin, piece of wood is going to do you any good when facing swords, axes, clubs, arrows, and spears, which makes me wonder about the story behind such an odd choice for a weapon; did the warrior want two weapons for the upcoming battle, but he was too late getting to the armory, and just grabbed a stick for lack of anything else?

In any case, aside from wielding a stick in the most important battle of Middle-Earth’s history, Stick Guy’s only other distinction is that he’s the sole spectator to Aragorn’s battle with the troll. Judging from how he jitters in place, it’s amusing to imagine him thinking if he should help Aragorn, only to realize that while his sword might help, his beloved stick wouldn’t do a thing against steel armor and troll hide.

The takeaway from Stick Guy is that, when doing battle scenes, it’s logical for the participants to have lots of weapons, but when someone brings along an oddball weapon, it’s an opportunity to show how desperate the situation is by having characters resort to fighting with anything they can get their hands on, no matter how ludicrous they might be. Not only is it funny, but the audience will find themselves rooting for them, whether they wield a stick, an old sword, or a cactus.