I think its great to see the flaws of men. In old westerns, white hat and black hat were the flavors of the day. Plain good and bad is just boring, unless your Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader and even then if Luke feels anger, he can fall to the darkside creating a whole new character arch.

The examples you give, Dexter, The Dark Knight, Casino Royale and House M.D. are all great examples and some of my favorite movies and shows. We love human complexity wrapped in a simple story.

Interesting. I'd say it's because that's one way to make a familiar character different but the same.

Star Trek is a great example. Same characters, situations, slightly different personalities, backgrounds.

I for one am not into "too cute and sanitized" nor "too dark and depressing" so it's not a bad thing.

Scott, isn't this really what they called anti-heros back in the 50s and 60s. Paul Newman in "Hud" comes to mind. Flawed, imperfect heroes, some of whose actions are morally reprehensible. Not necessarily likeable but compelling and worth following. The sympathy vs empathy distinction I've seen McKee write about. More modern than post-modern actually.

In my opinion, the protag’s negative flaws rise and fall inversely with the broader societal sentiment of anxiety, i.e. the less anxiety, the more negative flaws. Negative flaws are those that have some sort of social stigma – i.e. serial killing or drug addiction. Positive flaws are those we like to see – i.e. shyness, self effacement.

Until last year, the threat of terrorism had waned and financial soundness seemed assured. As a result, majorly flawed protag’s rose to the top, as they did during other eras of perceived calm relative to the stresses of the world.

When those stresses were very real, such as leading up to and during WWII, and in the couple of years following 9-11, movies either had totally animated heroes (Bambi and Shrek) or the heroes were larger than life (Sergeant York, a pacifist who happened to be an incredible sharp shooter and Spiderman, granted imaginary and originally animated, but an otherwise ordinary man with extraordinary abilities).

This last batch of films with negatively flawed characters were those that were in production or post production prior to the negative events of the last several months, hence upcoming releases like Robin Hood. As the release schedule goes further out, a surprising number of more positively flawed heroes wait in the wings.

@cfan: You may be right, it could just be semantics. But I think of anti-heroes from the 60s-70s, my mind runs to Bonnie & Clyde, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon. I think what my friend was going at with the phrase "post-modern heroes" is conventional heroes done in starkly unconventional ways. But as I say, it could all be semantics.

@Tom: "positively flawed heroes." Interesting phrase. Perhaps heroes whose flaws arise out of them realizing too much of their core essence, what we would typically perceive as being a 'good' quality, but when overdone, it turns into a character flaw.

To put this discussion into perspective, when I was at Banff this summer and heard a TV exec with AMC, who works on Mad Men and Breaking Bad, he said that when they read spec pilot scripts (all from established TV writers mind you), one of the upfront things they ask is this: "What is the Protagonist's flaw?"

Off topic: Is it just me or does every movie starring Russell Crow have the same tone and pacing? It feels like I am seeing the same movie over and over - Gladiator, Master and Commander, etc...I long to see him do something different. Is this a lack of talent or a lack of desire to stretch as an actor?

Ant-heroes and flawed protagonists have always drawn our attention because they remind us of our own flawed selves. They also offer the greatest payoff when they finally confront their flaws in order to overcome them.

Great positively flawed protagonists:

Rocky Balboa - he thinks he's just another bum from the neighborhood throughout most of the film. He literally fights with that perception and confronts it in the ring against Apollo Creed. And although he lost the fight, he won. He isn't a bum.

Neo - he doesn't believe in his own greatness, his own ability to save the ones he loves and destroy the Matrix. In the end, he does.

Phil Connors - a loathsome guy, really. Full of himself, arrogant, cynical. He learns the error of his ways via his curse of Groundhog Day and overcomes his flaws.

Hamlet - some argue he's nuts. Some argue he's faking it. He has a dark, mysterious personality, and he's difficult to read. Is he a true hero or a dark protagonist? He's conflicted and he varies his tactics for avenging his father's death. Some we understand, some we don't.

What about negatively flawed characters?

Kevin Bacon as Walter in THE WOODSMAN - the guy's a convicted child molester, yet we sympathize with him. We get behind his POV and some of actually empathize with him ... the life he now has as someone dealing with his inner demons.

MacBeth - We meet MacBeth and see him as a great warrior who's told he'll be King soon ... and with the help of Lady MacBeth we see him commit horrible acts ... and Shakespeare manages to get us to like MacBeth because of what we see when we first meet him ... and he manages to make Lady MacBeth sooo unlikeable, we can't help but root for MacBeth despite his horrific actions.

William Munny - in UNFORGIVEN you could make the argument that outside of the context of the plot, William Munny's the bad guy who deserves his comeuppance after a life of drunken, cowardly, and horrific acts. The guy killed women and children. Little Bill is just doing his job. Enforcing an ordinance and getting information (not that torture is "positive") from Ned. Ned dies from it, but at least Little Bill didn't intend to kill him. But who do we see as the bad guy? Little Bill ... even though William Munny has done far worse. In the context of the story, Munny's the good guy. Amazing.

Nicolas Cage as Ben Sanderson in LEAVING LAS VEGAS - I mean the guy's entire mission in the film is to drink himself to death. And his foil is a prostitute. But it's a great story, and we love the characters. We sympathize, we empathize with them.

Audiences gravitate toward flawed characters because we see ourselves in those characters. And I think you'll see more negatively flawed characters in the years to come: characters who murder, deal with drug addiction, lie, commit adultery, etc.

Why is Tiger Woods saturating the media? Audiences are increasingly fascinated with characters with deeper and deeper flaws because each one of us has done something arguably horrible in our lives. How many of us have betrayed a spouse? How many have dealt with addiction? How many of us purposely harmed someone emotionally or physically out of retaliation or even pre-emptively or because something inside us was broken and we couldn't help it (or we thought we couldn't)?

What's fascinating to audiences is the context for those choices. Why did someone do what they did? How did they learn their lesson from it? How did they meet their end tragically because of their blindness to the consequences? How did they get off scot-free? How did they reinvent themselves as a result of their transgressions?

(the rest of my ramblings...)

In the end, from the examples I gave, you can clearly see that the more negative your "hero" is, the less $$$$ your movie will make. Awards? No problem. Critical acclaim? If it's done right, it gets plenty of it. But what I think we're finding is that the more "middle of the road" your protagonist is, the greater the response you'll see. Rocky, Neo, Anakin Skywalker, MacBeth, Hamlet, Phil Connors (!) ... we crave characters who are deeply flawed, are capable of doing painful things ... but in the end are forced to confront the good and the bad within them to make a choice that makes things, in the end, better.

That's all we do on a daily basis. We commit the actions necessary to make us feel better. Hate going to work? We listen to music or grab some coffee to cope. Tired of the kids? Put in a movie or bury ourselves in a book to feel better. Dealing with an emotional trauma from the past? We eat, we drink, we inject ... we do whatever we can to self-medicate. Sometimes what we choose to do is constructive ... sometimes it's destructive. Sometimes it's perceived as evil, sometime it's perceived as greatness. For each of those actions, though, that person in the exact context of their life thinks that their actions, whatever they may be, are the only thing they can do to feel better.

That's why humans do what they do. Good and bad. Positive and negative. We do it to feel just a little better. And it makes every one of us feel better to see flawed heroes who possess good and bad just like us.

As our culture sees and hears more it's hard to connect with and believe a hero who doesn't have a dark flaw. Can we believe in a batman or a robin hood whose perfectly balanced between selfless and selfish?

It could be that we've acquired a taste for humanesque hero's instead of godlike.

And in terms of the new Robin Hood...I'm not sure why there is angst against it feeling like gladiator. Gladiator is great. Why does everything have to be a 180 degree difference. Scott and Crowe have an awesome brand and I would love to see them remake as many old style stories into their tough gritty storyworld.

I think the era of the metrosexual has given birth to the era of the badass manly man.

To me, two of the most interesting things about a protagonist (hero) are the journey and the arrival.

(citing two recent examples)
Bruce Wayne training to overcome his fear to embody the Dark Knight.
Rough around the edges James Bond breaking rules to get results.

And then, along the way, we see important instances that will eventually make them who they are going to be.

Bruce Wayne embracing his fears, surrounded by bats in the cave.
James Bond receiving his ‘first dinner jacket’ from the woman he will eventually fall in love with and who will eventually betray him

With TV, the thing that makes people like House and Don Draper interesting, is that they are still on that journey. They haven’t arrived yet – and who knows what they will eventually become.

Someone mentioned Luke Skywalker, and I’ve been revisiting those movies with my son and my god, it’s like watching them for the first time. Seeing Luke go from the dreamer, to fighting against his urges to give in to resistance to achieve his goals, and then eventually, a confidence – it really is remarkable plotting (and I have to give major kudos to Mark Hamill who get too bad of a rap for his performance – but that’s a whole other blog entry)

Anyway, we enjoy seeing the dull clay being formed into the perfect figure. That’s what makes these protagonists interesting to watch.

Erin
3rd grade