Top Ten "Big Red" Characters
Thursday, March 10, 2022 at 12:01PM by Nathaniel R
Red is currently a hot color in Hollywood and not because they've all become Almodóvar acolytes (if only!) Consider what's happened in just the past six months. Red gooey Carnage got titular billing in October's superpowered hit Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Then in early November, personality-free Celestial "Arashem" bossed the Eternals around on the big screen and the very next weekend Clifford the Big Red Dog joined them in theaters. 2022 also wants in on the fun and Pixar's Turning Red hits Disney+ tomorrow March 11th.
Because we're feeling silly, it is absolutely time for a list of TOP TEN BIG RED MOVIE & TV CHARACTERS. There was a lot to choose from in film and tv history even if there were too many devils. Why it always gotta be satanic? Red gets a bad rap on the colorwheel of personality...
The trickier part for this list was deciding what "big" meant. Some characters we jettisoned because though they're definitely red, they don't quite qualify as oversized such as "Darth Maul" from The Phantom Menace or "Anger" from Inside Out who is tiny enough to fit inside a little girl's brain.
TOP TEN "BIG RED" CHARACTERS
10 CARNAGE - Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Red is the new black. This symbiote looks exactly like Tom Hardy's Venom only he's red. Yes the Venom movies are stoopid. But, in their defense, unlike the bulk of hero movies these days they dont take themselves too seriously at all, and they're not quite as smug about their jokey nature, as, say, Guardians of the Galaxy. We have no objections to great actors joining super-franchises (as long as they continue taking other more human roles) but it is a real shame that so many of them end up having their expressive familiar faces (aka the reason they get hired!) hidden from view, behind masks or CGI. Still, beneath Carnage's red goo is Woody Harrelson in full-ham mode. He occasionally gets to peek out, so there's that!
09 HULKBUSTER - Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
There's such a steady avalanche of new superhero content that it can be difficult to remember the excitement of seeing characters come to life for the first time. One of the big action-movie rushes in the past decade was the brief appearance of Iron Man's Hulkbuster suit. This big screen fight with actually legible choreography and narrative 'beats' (imagine that) as well as funny beat-downs was so fun. It's one of the rare superhero vs superhero battles (a frequent fanservice trope, like smashing your action figures together) that made narrative sense onscreen.
08 THE RED BULL - The Last Unicorn (1982)
Ah the power of mystery in fantasy. Not everything needs a backstory, contrary to Hollywood's mindset in the past 30 years. We thankfully can't see into the mind of the fiery beast in The Last Unicorn. We know only that it is an enemy to the unicorns, and that it seems sentient despite being a non-corporeal shape-shifting fire elemental.
07 RUDOLPH / GOSSAMER - Looney Tunes
This furry triangularly shaped monster -- rumor has it he's entirely made of hair -- is less fearsome than he looks. Despite pulling off wickedly funny hunter poses with claws out and back hunched ready to pounce, he's a softie. Bugs Bunny easily throws him off course with beauty salon treatments. When we first meet him in his first short Hair-Raising Hare (1946) he looks scary until the promise of "Spider-goulash" spreads a childlike blissful smile across his face and he races off innocently to do his master's bidding. He appeared in four classic Looney Tunes shorts from 1946 to 1980 and was then renamed "Gossamer" and became a much more frequent player in various Warner Bros animated shows and movies including last year's Space Jam: A New Legacy.
06 HELLBOY - Hellboy (2004 and 2008)
Ignore the reboot (never mind -- everyone already did) the true Hellboy is Ron Perlman in Guillermo del Toro's two freaky adaptations of Mike Mignola's amazing comic book about a demon conjured by Nazis who rejects the forces of darkness to become an unlikely hero. The Academy hadn't yet fallen for del Toro when the original premiered but the second feature arrived post Pan's Labyrinth and scored a well deserved Best Make-up nomination. We've always liked Hellboy because in addition to overcoming his evil origins, he's a crazy cat lady. Relatable!
05 "BIG RED" - Bring It On (2000)
Listen, "Big Red" (Lindsey Sloane) is a cheater so we'll cheat, too, and include her on the list though she stands at just 5'4'. This amoral cheer captain, who steals her award-winning routines from a rival squad, does dress in red and her nickname is the very definition of this list. Her crimes seem small to her but they have a huge ripple affect on two schools, and many girls lives. Despite multiple unrelated sequels that have brought down its reputation, Peyton Reed's nimble, smart, fully ahead-of-its-time Bring It On remains one of the greatest high school comedies and one of the greatest sports films ever made.
04 HIM - Powerpuff Girls (1998-2005)
We almost included Satan from South Park: Bigger, Longer Uncut (1999) but decided it was too similar. South Park's gleefully anarchic spirit, pitching Satan as a lovelorn gay hot for Saddam Hussein, feels purposefully offensive (though it was hilarious at the time). Meanwhile the arch-enemy of the Powerpuff Girls is just transgressively queer instead, referred to only as "Him" which is either a punchline or a rebuttal given the high heels, tutu, long lashes, and femme voice. Him is not the butt of the joke but the joke itself, punctuating their evil with a deranged mocking helium laugh.
03 VISION - Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
The billions in box office, the mass cult audience devotion, and all the critical hosannas afforded the MCU can't disguise the fact that modern superhero movies with arguably rare exception are wildly uneven; They're better judged by setpieces than as whole films (since few of the films are truly "whole" anyway, given their episodic nature). In that respect, the 'birth of the Vision' sequence in this unwieldy but visually thrilling installment is easily top five from anything that Marvel Studios has produced. Thankfully Paul Bettany had the acting craft to back up this awe-inspiring entrance and even scored an Emmy nomination for exploring the character further in WandaVision. Even if Bettany weren't 6'3" and floating in the air, The Vision would be a towering example of the best kind of superhero movie culture thrill: weird, wonderful, surreal, and relatably human despite being wholly engineered.
02 MEI LEE - Turning Red (2022)
In terms of personality, Mei Lee, the heroine of Pixar's latest delight, is the most fully rounded Big Red character we've ever seen. She's anxious but self-aware, smart but obtuse, funny though not always intentionally, stubborn but obedient, and boy-crazy but confused about it. In short she's a 13 year old girl experiencing puberty and learning who she is apart from being a dutiful daughter. In a stunning example of Pixar's gifts with character design, she's super emotionally flexible even in red panda form, out of control dangerous when she's angry but cute enough to inspire the kind of goo-goo eyes she makes at boys and kittens.
01 DARKNESS - Legend (1985)
The black-horned red-skinned sunshine-hating devil had to top this list. Though Ridley Scott's 80s fantasy epic wasnt a success in its 1986 US release it collected a cult following on home video and cable. Darkness is an expertly calibrated and Oscar-nominated example of makeup artist Rob Bottin's gifts and the visual precision of his whole team -- every detail is perfect from how wet his skin always looks (ick!) to the long black fingernails (yikes), hooved feet, and those killer horns; We'd be angry about the Oscar loss but for the fact that the winner is unimpeachable. Aside from the towering iconicity of the design he comes fully alive via Tim Curry's inimitable screen presence. It's the most Tim Curry Performance of all Tim Curry Performances this side of Rocky Horror's Frank-n-Furter, a witty, creepy, and scary star turn, fully legible from underneath lbs of prosthetics.
Is red your favourite color? Which of these characters do you love?
Reader Comments (10)
not even an Honorable Mention for JESSICA RABBIT??!! Shame on you Nathaniel! lol
David S -- i guess i didn't think of her as "big" ;) but i guess she towers over her husband.
What a fun list! It's the good kind of silly, as opposed to the bad kind of silly that's happening with the Oscars, haha.
Would have loved to see Te Ka from Moana on this list!
No Elmo from the classic Sesame Street episode Elmozilla?
This is the “biggest” robbery since Brink’s.
What about... Peggy Bundy?
JAMES -- great call. ugh. she would have been perfect for this list.
Okay I looooove both Darkness and Big Red herself, so I love this - and Gossamer was a fun inclusion too.
The BRING IT ON love and inclusion is why this site is one of the best.
no joan from mad men? wasn't she overlooked enough in the 60s?!?
^^^^Good one!