Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, recently spoke at a PaleyLiveTalk after the premiere of CNN’s The 2000’s: A Look Back at the Dawn of TV’s New Golden Age, and he posed the idea that Hollywood should consider once again featuring heroes that are purely good, and bad guys that are purely evil. Here is what Gilligan had to say.
“I watched a lot of TV growing up, a lot of ’50s and ’60s re-runs. Back then, the order of the day was you had folks wearing white hats and you had folks wearing black hats. There were good guys and bad guys. But real people are various shades of grey. With Walter White, and loving The Sopranos and The Shield, maybe now we’ve got so many of them that maybe it’s time for heroes again.”
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Gilligan continued:
“I don’t know if we can ever go back to characters who are all good or all bad, but maybe around the corner are more characters who are flawed and yet work very hard to do the right thing and want to be good, even when they’re not,. Even when they try and they fail.”
True, the world used to be much more wholesome place. Many old western films had heroes and villains such as the ones Gilligan is referring to, the lines were clearly drawn. However, for me personally, I think the anti-hero provides for better storytelling, because in most settings, it’s simply more believable for a character not to be perfect, and makes it easier for the viewer to relate to the character. A villain with a purpose, especially one they believe to be noble, can also draw sympathy from a viewer, a good and recent example would be Thanos.
Captain America is pretty close to an all around old timey hero, I mean he is an old timey hero, but he isn’t the Golden Age Captain America. I think you could throw Wonder Woman in that category as well. I also think one could make a case for Colussus, as he is very much a goody-two-shoes.
Do you want to see a resurgeance of the classic hero from times gone by? Let us know in the comments down below!
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Source: Variety