Top Ten (Fourteen) Movies

1.  Jurassic Park

Because Dinosaurs, because Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm, because the special effects still hold up today, and because Dinosaurs.

2.  Monty Python and the Holy Grail
I love British Comedy, it has a joke density like almost no other movie, and the Killer Rabbit.

3.  Top Gun

I love the 80's, and this movie still defines what I think is the epitome of cool.

4.  2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick is a god among men, and the ending creates a sensation in me like no other movie.

5.  Memento

It tells a unique story and it tells it in such a unique and perfect way.

6.  Shaun of the Dead

More British Comedy, and so much foreshadowing that you have to watch it multiple times.

7.  Die Hard

It is THE action movie. Bruce Willis is my favorite action star, and Hans Gruber is my favorite villain of all time.

8.  The Blues Brothers

The way that they take every crazy occurrence in stride is one of the most stupendous things that I have ever witnessed. Also the car crashes.

9.  Revolver

Guy Ritchie, you don't know what's happening until the end, and it is very cerebral and philosophical.

10.  Seven Samurai

Akira Kurasawa is amazing, I love Samurai, and I even like the remake of this movie.

11.  The Road Warrior

The defining post apocalyptic movie, Australians, and Wez.

12.  American Psycho

80's yuppie culture, and an excellent ambiguous ending.

13.  White Men Can’t Jump

This movie taught me everything I know about taunting in basketball.

14.  Return of the Dragon
Bruce Lee and all the bad-ass things that he does.

Bad Assery – A Fundamental Physical Force?

                I propose that if a person possesses a sufficient quantity of stupendousness, it has the ability to affect the physical world. This is typically in the form of changing probabilities and outcomes. Basically, if you are cool enough, things will just go your way. This “Bad-Ass Field” helps keep the individual from harm, helps their actions succeed, helps them influence others, and helps overcome the fields of other competing bad-asses. I have a few sources of evidence for this (mostly fiction based).

                How can the hero just traipse into a room full of henchman without getting shot? I believe he is either able to alter the trajectories of the bullets, or alters the probabilities so that all the gunmen miss, and this is why all the shots hit railings or streak along the ground to either side, leaving the hero unscathed. In the reverse, the hero gets to spray his bullets indiscriminately, without any effort to aim, yet his shots hit their mark. I haven’t confirmed this, but this force may also keep a gun full of ammo, or just help conceal reloading. Being outstanding also helps you achieve things like hacking computers and preforming car stunts with much less effort than it would take a normal person. Additionally this force affects people around its creator. This can range from providing them with the fields protective qualities, making them join forces with the bad-ass, or making them irresistibly attracted to the field’s source. There’s not a lot you can’t do when you have this kind of influence.

                There are a few things that can be done the increase the intensity of the force. You can cock your gun, crack knuckles, utter a witty one-liner (often works in both temporal directions), let out a bad-ass yell, or probably the most powerful, have a montage. These techniques and others can be used in those clutch situations when you just need a little more superbness to tip the odds in your favor. Other factors that can add to the field’s magnitude include revenge, being a loose cannon, having nothing left to lose, and being a last best hope.

Having hair is not important

                The really interesting thing about these fields is when two of them interact. I have written most of this from the perspective of the hero, but the villain usually has a bad-ass field of their own. All the good villains are exceptional in their own way. This is why villains can gather vast evil empires, execute complex plans for world domination, and are equally as hard to kill as heroes. These intense antagonists are really the only reason that the protagonists are needed. Ordinary means could never overcome their ability to alter the outcome of events, so you need a counter field to nullify their powers. These conflicting forces are also why these enemies never attempt to kill each other by normal means. The only way to kill a true bad-ass is in a way that is so bad-ass itself, that it overcomes their power to resist it. The primary way of doing this seems to be dropping them off stuff.

It's how they finally got Dumbledore

                Women play a strange role in this interplay of forces. In many cases women exhibit typical bad-ass behavior, but every once in a while comes a women who doesn’t need to play by those rules. They can basically circumvent the whole process, and get the job done while still having genuine emotions and vulnerabilities (like real people). Sure some of my characters get turned into stereotypical action heroes later, but their early abilities to overcome their adversaries with their own unique strengths are, I've got to say, pretty bad-ass.

Big hair is also pretty bad-ass

                You may think that I am just using this to give a logical reason for the ridiculousness of many of my favorite action movies, but I have a historical example as well. George (Wood Teeth) Washington! Not only did he bad-ass his way through two wars, but he also the U.S. President which all other Presidents are judged by. Action hero credentials… achieved. I also think that he had the ability to alter probabilities because he had two horses shot out from under him and four shots go through his clothes, but he was never actually wounded, was a successful military commander, and was unanimously picked to be the first President. The dude had something going for him (or he did a lot of montaging). I’m sure other historical figures have similar stories, but being born in the U.S., you write what you know. Who is to say that this bad-ass force isn’t a real thing?

The guy was also a surveyor, who are pretty much the coolest people ever