Henchmen, Goons, and Mooks: Hollywood's Selective Empathy

Comments · 1.3K

• MR

  @mrsporadicsporkguy5481 · 4 months ago

  That's why Goons, Henchmen, and sidekick must unionize.

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• LE

  @leftygurl · 4 months ago

  i feel like the most striking instance of this dissonance is finn in force awakens. like, he’s a stormtrooper, who breaks away because he sees another stormtrooper die, and then he spends the rest of the trilogy after that point cutting down his former colleagues without any recognition of their humanity, and it has never felt right.

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• PH

  @phangkuanhoong7967 · 4 months ago (edited)

  the first Austin Powers movie satirizes the henchmen trope quite effectively. not only do the murdered henchmen get names, their family gets informed of their deaths, and we get to see their reactions.

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• HA

  @HaliaArtisan · 6 months ago (edited)

  The Yakuza games are a perfect example of this. Kiryu has &quot;never killed anyone&quot; yet you the player are smashing people with motorcycles and shooting down helicopters.<br><br>In contrast, Metal Gear Solid 3 (the og I don&apos;t know about the remake) gives you the option to go through the entire game defeating* the goons non lethally. If you DO kill, they make you face it by walking down a hallway with each person you killed showing up, making the walk longer.

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• GR

  @grzegorzswist · 4 months ago (edited)

  The &apos;kill henchmen, spare boss&apos; trope is actually very old and historical.<br>In the middle ages knights were seldom killed in battles. They were too valuable. They could serve as hostages and you could get ransom for them. <br>Meanwhile common footsoldiers couldn&apos;t count on any mercy.<br>Edit: sometimes it work the other way around. The officers are executed, while simple soldiers are allowed to live. Case in point: Katyn massacre.

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• DA

  @daanstrik4293 · 4 months ago

  For some reason I always saw myself in these faceless men.<br><br>Specifically the one scenario where the bad guys break into a science lab, and gun down some random lab worker. Either because they refuse to work for them, as an example, or simply a result of the chaos.<br><br>Like… that was always the most relatable character in such movies to me. And they die. Unmentioned, their heroics forgotten.<br><br>Its strange. Especially in movies that end with them sparing the bad guy.

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• HO

  @hosvet_animation · 4 months ago

  I love the moment in Once Upon A Time In The West where Frank leaves a bunch of goons to hold Mr Choo Choo prisoner, and he immediately bribes them because there&apos;s no way Frank pays them that well. Lovely subversion of this kind of trope.

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• MU

  @mumbojumbo123 · 5 months ago

  Ill do you one better, the dog in john wick is a person, the henchman not.

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• NA

  @nalathequeen2186 · 4 months ago (edited)

  I always liked Terminator&apos;s take on this, specifically the second movie. The original T-800 in the first movie and the T-1000 in the second movie kill indiscriminately whenever something gets in their way. But in T2 when the good T-800 tries to kill a guy who was threatening John, John is clearly very distressed and stops him, then scolds him for it. Later when Sarah decides it&apos;s better to murder Dyson than to allow him to create Skynet, John drops everything to chase her down and stop her. It all culminates in one of the biggest action sequences in the entire movie, when they&apos;re trapped in the Cyberdyne building by basically the entire police force of LA, and the T-800 goes to &quot;take care of it&quot; and reassures John when John again reiterates that he doesn&apos;t want anyone dead. The result is the entire police force in shambles, cars blown up and all their equipment destroyed by a freaking minigun... and zero casualties. The contrast between the massive body counts of the evil terminators and the body count of zero on the side of the good guys (from what I remember anyway, it has been years) is enormous and in some ways the entire point of the movies. Not only that but almost every death that occurs, the narrative makes sure to humanize, even with something as simple as showing a guy joking with his coworkers and getting some coffee before he&apos;s murdered. And all this in one of the best action films of all time!

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• GI

  @gillianjohnson1122 · 4 months ago

  &quot;It was Sam&apos;s first view of a battle of men against men and he did not like it much. He was glad he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man&apos;s name was, and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies and threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would have rather stayed there in peace.&quot; JRR Tolkien, The Two Towers <br><br>They give a very similar version of this line to faramir in the movie. Either way. It came to mind when watching this. Great video!

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• TW

  @twipameyer1210 · 4 months ago

  It always bothered me when Star Trek captains say &quot;We leave no one behind&quot; and then several red shirts die on the rescue mission but it&apos;s seen as a total success

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• FE

  @fellen_ · 11 months ago

  This was interesting, it gave a name to something that I was subconciously aware of but hadn&apos;t put into words. Like when our heroes go to save one of the team but a bunch of people die along the way and they don&apos;t seem to notice. I wonder if that guy liked putting slippers on at the end of the day and watching a film like I do..

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