Home News
Reviews The List
NYTS Links
Ramblin' Man Gallery
Arnold. Stallone. Bruce Willis. Bring out the testosterone and the GIANT gun to blow-up the bad guys! You too can hold an M-60 with one hand while repelling down a mountain using dental floss! You laugh, but that's not much of an exaggeration. How many times has this trio survived explosions, crashes, and cauterizing their own wounds with gun-power? (That scene from 'Rambo III' still makes me wince!)
It's time to celebrate the Geek Hero! Now don't get me wrong, the usual action hero is still a lot of fun, but how about someone who knows they can't fight? Who can't hit the side of Mt. Aetna with a rocket launcher? But give them a PC and their brains... oh boy.
1. Stanley Goodspeed. 'The Rock'. Can he shoot? Barely. Can he fight? Well, the TRIES at the end. What Stanley does so well is disable a bunch of missiles carrying lethal chemicals while they're guarded by Navy SEALS and convince a reluctant Sean Connery this is a battle worth fighting for. And along the way sticks an 8" needle into his heart to keep from dying. Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang... suddenly cauterizing your own wound with gunpowder isn't THAT bad.
2. Angus MacGyver. 'MacGyver'. Ah, the one who started it all on TV. Remember the episode where the stops a leak in a reactor with chocolate? No, I'm not kidding. Sure, things were far-fetched but the wonders he could do with his mind, weather improvising a bazooka with a muffler and the knob from a steering wheel or building a lie detector with an alarm clock, were endless. He was a horrible fighter, he HATED guns, but his mind ALWAYS worked.
3. Willow and Giles. 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. Ok, so Buffy, Angel, and occasionally Spike had the butt-kicking part down pat. But how effective would they be if Willow and Giles weren't around to go over volumes and volumes and VOLUMES of information? Too bad all of that stuff can't be found through a Google search. Hey... there's an idea...
4. Fox and Scully. 'The X-Files'. Ok, ok, so Dana could shoot better then Rambo (Seriously, she probably could.) but it was never her gunplay that saved the day. It was the brains of two cops, one a skeptic and one a believer, that always saved the day.
5. Indiana Jones. 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom', 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade'. Yeah, yeah, he had the whip and the gun, but it was the way his mind always thought 20 steps ahead that won the day. Remember the classic closing scenes from 'The Last Crusade'. Indy has to get the Holy Grail to save his father. Does he shoot his way out? Nope. Does Sallah manage to smuggle a tank into the ancient temple. Uh uh. Instead, Indy solves a riddle that is thousands of years old and snags the most important artifact in history, all without firing a shot or even using his whip.