BMCOAT - Quarter Finals, Bracket 1 of 4

Randall Patrick McMurphy (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest)
http://i330.photobucket.com/albums/l...allpatrick.jpg

Darth Vader (Star Wars)
http://i330.photobucket.com/albums/l...darthvader.jpg

McMurphy

Come on, get your hands up Chief!

I am your father.

Mcmurphy, and I hope he chokes that bitch of a nurse to death. Ratchid must die.

Hadda go with Vader, but I too hope he chokes Ratchet to death!!!!

LOL

:excited::excited:

McMurphy

mcmurphy! no other choice:rose:

McMurphy!

Someone get me a fucking wiener before I die.

McMurphy!

How in the blue hell does that crazy jackass get votes over the baddest bad guy in the fucking universe??

Huh? HOW?!?

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Originally Posted by Sam

How in the blue hell does that crazy jackass get votes over the baddest bad guy in the fucking universe??

Huh? HOW?!?

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Beats me. McMurphy is a GREAT character, no doubt, but Darth Vader is Fucking Darth Vader!!!! An Iconic character if there ever was one, no?


Edit: You know, for what it's worth, I think a lot of "performances" are getting muddled with "great Character's" in these voting's. Just my humble opinion. To be fair, its a very 'gray" area in this respect.

In my opinion there are much cooler characters from the Star Wars saga. Han Solo for one.

i voted vader. you ask anybody who vader is, and they answer without hesitation. even the most incompetent of people know of him. mcmurphy on the other hand, unless you've seen the film, you don't know him. don't get me wrong, mcmurphy was a GREAT character, but vader is a legend. both on and off the screen

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Originally Posted by IWasSentWest

i voted vader. you ask anybody who vader is, and they answer without hesitation. even the most incompetent of people know of him.

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I have only the vaguest idea who he is. I watched Star Wars once, and slept through most of it, sorry...

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Originally Posted by IWasSentWest

i voted vader. you ask anybody who vader is, and they answer without hesitation. even the most incompetent of people know of him. mcmurphy on the other hand, unless you've seen the film, you don't know him. don't get me wrong, mcmurphy was a GREAT character, but vader is a legend. both on and off the screen

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If we are judging this on pure name recognition.......I move that we disregard the polls, and name the winner as Jesus from The passion of Christ.

:lol:

Yeah name recognition is not equivalent to being a great character. That is comparable to equating fame with talent. If this were the case Britney Spears would be the pinnacle of musical talent...and I refuse to accept this. :lol:

Also if an actor is doing their job there can be no distinction between a great character and a great performance because for the length of the film (at least) the actor becomes the character.

bah! hum bug...

when i typed it out, it seemed logical....lol

So the novel doesn't count at all?

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Originally Posted by Brice

:lol:

Yeah name recognition is not equivalent to being a great character. That is comparable to equating fame with talent. If this were the case Britney Spears would be the pinnacle of musical talent...and I refuse to accept this. :lol:

Also if an actor is doing their job there can be no distinction between a great character and a great performance because for the length of the film (at least) the actor becomes the character.

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I agree with you Brice. Name recognition doesn't make a great character. Neither does a great performance I would like to add. Take Nicholas Cage's performance in Leaving Las Vegas. That was a great performance, but the character itself isn't. In fact, the character got lost in the performance itself.

What makes a great character is memorabililty, longetivity, and making people CARE about the character. Love or hate, the audience cares about great characters long after the film is over. Take Connor or Duncan McLeod, Indiana Jones, George Bailey, or even Kikuchiyo from Seven Samurai. Those are great characters that people think of years later. True, the actors portraying them did good jobs, but it takes more than a good or even great performance to make great characters.

Vader has that, in my opinion. George Bailey has that, as do Vito Corleone and Indiana Jones and Snake Plisken (sorry, watching Escape From L.A. right now). I'm NOT saying Jack Nicholson's character from OFOTCN isn't a good character, he is. Not saying his influence isn't felt even today, it is. I'm just saying that I felt, and always will feel, that Vader is a much, much stronger character than Jack.

phfft!!!! at least you get to see mcmurphy expression and face

vadar is to me and always will be a pantomime villian in a mask

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Originally Posted by Brice

:lol:
Also if an actor is doing their job there can be no distinction between a great character and a great performance because for the length of the film (at least) the actor becomes the character.

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Hugo Weaving in V for Vendetta is a great example of this. Vader...well...not so much. I like Vader though. I'd even call him a great character; just no where near as great as McMurphy. I would not have said that Vader was great before the last three films came out though. This is part of the reason that I voted for McMurphy. The greatness of that character only took one movie to establish. Vader had to be developed over six movies.

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Originally Posted by Sam

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Originally Posted by Brice

:lol:

Yeah name recognition is not equivalent to being a great character. That is comparable to equating fame with talent. If this were the case Britney Spears would be the pinnacle of musical talent...and I refuse to accept this. :lol:

Also if an actor is doing their job there can be no distinction between a great character and a great performance because for the length of the film (at least) the actor becomes the character.

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I agree with you Brice. Name recognition doesn't make a great character. Neither does a great performance I would like to add. Take Nicholas Cage's performance in Leaving Las Vegas. That was a great performance, but the character itself isn't. In fact, the character got lost in the performance itself.

What makes a great character is memorabililty, longetivity, and making people CARE about the character. Love or hate, the audience cares about great characters long after the film is over. Take Connor or Duncan McLeod, Indiana Jones, George Bailey, or even Kikuchiyo from Seven Samurai. Those are great characters that people think of years later. True, the actors portraying them did good jobs, but it takes more than a good or even great performance to make great characters. ...

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All of this I agree with, totally, but it doesn't change my vote. I do love Jack Nicholson, but it is McMurphy that I'm rating high here; the great thing is that I was indeed made to CARE about him. Using the same standard that I applied in the last round to Lecter/Indy -- McMurphy (a) has more depth and (b) is more original. Anyone ever notice the resemblance between Vader (1977) and Dr. Doom (1962) ?

Matter of fact, I think that, at this point, McMurphy is my pick to win this whole contest. A truly great character.

This one's in the books, so here's my opinion. My HONEST opinion.

I'm a Star Wars fan so naturally, I prefer Vader. Nonetheless, it is fact that audiences actively hissed when Vader walked on screen for the very first time. He was hated right off the jump and never needed six films to develop.

Randall McMurphy is a forgetable character for me, and here's why: he's eclipsed by the actor that played him. I saw the film and remember the character, but until this contest (and two months after it too I'd wager) I didn't remember his name. I remembered him as the guy Nicholson played in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Was he well played, yes; was he memorable, yes; was he a great character, not for me. I don't even know his name. And I remember details about films that are minutia to most others.

But I am biased. I'm a Star Wars fan, like I said. Jack Nicholson isn't the great actor people believe him to be. In nearly every film he's been in he plays the same character, Jack. He's not as bad as John Wayne, but his best damn role I've seen him play was in As Good as It Gets. It's the only time I've seen him come even close to not being Jack (and he was still Jack, but more neurotic). Granted, the older he gets the more stuck he gets in his acting, but I don't care about that. I saw McMurphy as Jack playing Jack, just a little more crazy. His Joker was Jack playing Jack, just a little more crazy. A Few Good Men, Jack playing Jack with a uniform on.

Vader was Vader. Sure James Earl Jones lent him his voice, sure David Prowse made him move, sure you couldn't see his face (but you knew his intent), but he WAS Vader. The same way V was V (a MUCH better acting job than either of these two examples in my opinion by a far superior actor) and not Hugo Weaving.

My opinion: Vader should have won this one, but as it is Jack won it. Jack, not McMurphy.

I've been thinking about what you said for a few minutes now, Sam, and I have to say that I agree with you %110.

I agree too, especially on the Jack N. not being a really great actor (and As Good As It Gets being his indisputable top) part, but I still can't dismiss McMurphy (the movie McMurphy, I didn't much care for the book) as - well, as less worthy of being the BMCoAT than any Star Wars character...

Sam,

I agree that McMurphy was Jack being Jack. I also agree that he's overrated as an actor. BUT...

With McMurphy Jack being Jack fit the bill and fit it perfectly. Jack's personality fit McMurphy like a glove. It was a perfect marriage of actor and character. I don't think anyone else...even a "better" actor could have played McMurphy as well as "Jack being Jack" did. And, as you can see, to me he isn't a forgettable character.

About Vader

Spoiler:

How is being hated character development? There's a million and one movie villains that were hated right off the bat. All we knew about Vader at the beginning of New Hope was that he was a bad guy. All we knew about Vader by the end of New Hope is that he's an evil Jedi that "killed Luke's father" along with the rest of the Jedi. That's it. In New Hope, if it wasn't for his lightsaber, force powers, and wicked cool appearance he'd be a garden variety villain.

Throughout the next two movies we learn a little about his history and, at the end of Return of the Jedi we find that he actually is decent deep down but we still don't see much development beyond that. This character is not fully developed until the very end of Revenge of the Sith and this was Lucas' intent. To say that he didn't need the six movies to develop makes no sense to me because all of Star Wars is pretty much about Vader's "development".

Actually, this is the very reason I like him and think of him as a great character. To my knowledge there is no other character in filmdom that has had that kind of development. Star Wars is all about his journey of change from an ingenious little boy that's amazingly strong with the force, to becoming the greatest of all Jedi, to becoming a Sith, to, finally, his redemption upon his death. Even if the focus was shifted to his son in the latter half of the saga it still remains that Luke ends up making redeeming his father his major focus and, with Luke's help, Annakin fulfills the prophesy of destroying the Sith.

So there. :dance:

I will retort with this one idea. Great characters don't need much development to be great characters. Over several films they do or the character becomes stagnant, but in a single film the development can be minimal and still leave a great character.

You are correct about Vader's lack of character development in the first Star Wars film, but there was little character development of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.

Conceded. Lector was not that well developed. I think it was Hopkins that made him great. And, if you're just looking at Vader's function as a villain in A New Hope, he was as developed as he needed to be to fulfill his purpose. He was always a cool bad guy...especially to an 8 year old kid sitting in a dark theater. This I would never dispute.

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Originally Posted by Sam

I will retort with this one idea. Great characters don't need much development to be great characters. Over several films they do or the character becomes stagnant, but in a single film the development can be minimal and still leave a great character.
...

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:orely:

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Originally Posted by Sam

... I love Chaplin's work as well, I simply think that the character is a little more one dimensional than people want to believe he is.

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coz: I very much agree with you about Vader.

I voted for McMurphy, not Jack...though I think you are wrong about Jack.