6 Impossibly Cool Movie Characters
Some characters waltz across the movie screen oozing charm and tossing off the kind of witty retorts we mere mortals would only think of an hour too late to be relevant. They have signature drinks, perfectly coiffed hair and when they get five different love interests in one movie we just shrug because yeah, that makes perfect sense. Why wouldn’t everyone love them? We should hate them, but then they flash a devil may care grin at their current leading lady/man and we realize resistance is futile–they really are just that awesome.
The six characters below are wildly different: they are secret agents, wealthy socialites and one of them routinely faces off with some pretty scary aliens, but the thing they all have in common is they’re not just cool, they’re impossibly cool.
Who else could be number one? He’s Bond, James Bond, it doesn’t get any cooler than this guy. Full disclosure: I never quite understand the charm of Mr. Bond until Daniel Craig arrived on the scene and sauntered out of the ocean wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks.
His steely resolve combined with his ability to quip mid-torture finally made me realize why everyone loved the iconic secret agent so much. Sure, Craig’s Bond doesn’t have a preference for his martini just yet, but he could charm his way out of any situation…and if that didn’t work, he would just pull out his guns. Gruff, sexy and deadly– Bond is the guy your boyfriend daydreams about being.
Okay, so her hair isn’t perfectly coiffed and she’s more likely to rock a tank top than an evening gown, but are you going to tell Ripley she’s not allowed on this list? She’s a whole different kind of cool, she’s a warrior who kicks alien ass, saves the kid and still lands the guy (let’s all just pretend Alien 3 doesn’t exist, it’s better that way, I promise). She’s the kind of action hero that gives other action heroes inferiority complexes.
Any character played by Humphrey Bogart automatically gains extra cool points. There is a reason why Woody Allen made an entire movie about Bogart being his manhood muse. But Rick is especially enviable. He’s a cynic, an expat and a bar owner with a tragic past who effortlessly commands every room he stands in (or near).
Basically, he’s human catnip for the ladies. When he tells Ilsa she would regret it if she stayed with him at the end of the movie it’s hard not to scoff.
Shosanna is born out of tragedy, but anyone who alters the course of history has more than earned the moniker of cool. Beautiful and resilient, like most Tarantino ladies, Shosanna is out for revenge, but it’s how she exacts her revenge that makes her special. Trapping a room full of Nazis in a theater and then splicing her own image into the film to inform them of their impending doom is a feat of epicness that will no doubt go down as one of the coolest moments in cinematic history.
Millionaire playboys are supposed to be insufferable, but Tony Stark plays by his own rules. He breezes through life using his charisma and brilliance to ensure he always gets his way. Oh, and he’s a superhero. Not an angst-filled, woe-is-me kind of superhero, but the kind of superhero that happily declares his “secret” identity on national television.
Tony and his portrayer, Robert Downey Jr., are bringing back some of that old school Hollywood charm to the movies and the fact that they’re doing it in a blockbuster franchise only makes them more appealing somehow. If all superheroes suddenly decided to stop whining and start enjoying the fact that their lives are actually pretty extraordinary, we would all be better off, but since that’s unlikely to happen any time soon at least we can sit back and appreciate Tony in all of his glory.
In one movie three men fall madly in love with Tracy and it seems completely plausible. Maybe it’s because she’s played by Katherine Hepburn, or maybe it’s just because she really is that charming. Personally, I think it was her wit that drew them in. Hepburn talks fast and quips fast in The Philadelphia Story; she manages to make Tracy seem vulnerable and mature, two qualities that would seemingly contradict each other, but in fact work together to make Tracy’s appeal evident.
Jimmy Stewart’s lovelorn reporter sums it up best when he tells Tracy, “There’s magnificence in you … a magnificence that comes out of your eyes, in your voice, in the way you stand there, in the way you walk.”
Now that I’ve shared my favorite impossibly cool characters, I want to hear from you. Who would you add to the list? Tell me all about it in the comments!
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