Uncovering the Ancient Origins of Epic Action Movie Quips
By Andrew M. McClellan, San Diego State University
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At one point in the James Bond film, “No
Time To Die,” the henchman Primo has the upper hand on 007. But Bond
has a wristwatch that can trigger an electromagnetic pulse keyed to local
circuitry. Primo, conveniently, has a biomechanical eye, so when Bond activates
his watch next to Primo’s head, it explodes.
Bond’s gadgeteer, Q, radios in, and Bond delivers the
rhetorical goods: “I showed him your watch. It blew his mind.”
The Long History of Action Film One-Liners
This sort of witty quip after killing someone isn’t unique
to the Bond franchise. From “Dirty Harry” to “Django
Unchained,” they’ve become staples of the action film genre.
Audiences might assume action films invented these
one-liners. But as I’ve demonstrated in my work researching
ancient Greco-Roman epic poetry, the origin of this sort of rhetorical violence
goes back thousands of years.
The witty one-liner is a calling card of the James Bond film
franchise. Credit: Danjaq, LLC and United Artists Corporation
A Perverse Eulogy
The one-liner is in many ways the calling card of action
films. The motif took off in the 1960s and peaked in the mid-1980s and early
1990s. Today you’ll see occasional nods to the tradition in films like “No Time
To Die.”
Earlier James Bonds also delivered post-kill zingers. In “Thunderball,”
Sean Connery’s Bond spears a foe with a harpoon gun, then jokes: “I think he
got the point.” After “Live and Let Die” villain Dr. Kananga
balloons and explodes from ingesting a gas pellet, Roger Moore’s Bond gloats,
“He always did have an inflated opinion of himself.”
The Golden Era and Schwarzenegger’s Reign
These one-liners had become de rigueur by the 1990s. In “Universal
Soldier,” Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Luc Deveraux kills Andrew Scott by
feeding him through a woodchipper that hurls bits and pieces of his corpse
through the air. Deveraux’s companion asks where Scott is, to which Deveraux
laconically replies, “Around.” And after killing Screwface in “Marked
for Death,” John Hatcher, played by Steven Seagal, discovers there’s
another Screwface – or, rather, that twins have been running the criminal
organization he’s fighting. Hatcher then executes the second Screwface in one
of the most violent, prolonged death scenes in film history.
Hatcher catches his breath, before muttering, “I hope they
weren’t triplets.”
But Arnold Schwarzenegger, who rose to fame during the golden
era of action films in the 1980s, was the king
of one-liners.
“Commando” ends with John Matrix, played by
Schwarzenegger, impaling the villainous Bennett with a massive metal pipe that
travels through Bennett and, inexplicably, into a boiler. The blast of steam
travels back through Bennett and out the end of the pipe. Surveying the
carnage, Matrix quips: “Let off some steam, Bennett.” In “Predator,”
Schwarzenegger’s character pins an enemy to a wall with a knife, inviting him
to “stick around.” And in “The Running Man,” he chainsaws his
adversary Buzzsaw vertically, crotch up.
When asked what happened to Buzzsaw, he reports: “He had to
split.”
The quips literally add insult to injury, defaming the
victim immediately after their demise, emblazoning the death with a caption,
like a perverse eulogy. Film heroes deliver the best taunts because their
rhetorical skill is linked to their physical prowess.
This might seem incongruous. But the link between martial
and rhetorical skill goes back to Western literature’s beginning.
Ancient Influences on Modern Cinema
Ancient epic poems are, in many ways, the antecedents to
today’s action flicks; they were the violent, thrilling blockbusters of their
era.
Homer’s heroes in the “Iliad,” written sometime between 750 and
700 B.C., are not just deft fighters but also adroit talkers. Achilles, for
example, is lauded as both the best fighter and the best speaker among the
Greeks at Troy.
The parameters of ancient epic duels mirror action film
fights. When two warriors square off, they taunt each other. When one warrior
wins, typically the victory is punctuated by a witty defamatory “vaunt”
that signals the champion’s prowess and the loser’s now-verified inadequacy.
In Virgil’s “Aeneid,” Turnus avoids damage from a spear
cast by the young warrior Pallas thanks to his thick shield. After hurling a
spear of his own that pierces Pallas, Turnus boasts of the performance of his
weapon by comparison. The taunt is soaked in sexual innuendo: “See whether my
weapon can penetrate better.”
Turnus later sneers over the slain Eumedes, whose throat
he’s severed: “Hey, Trojan, the Western land you hoped to conquer, measure it
with your corpse.” Since Eumedes sought to colonize parts of modern-day Italy,
he would have surveyed the land for settlements; Turnus sardonically suggests
using his dead body as a measuring stick.
In the “Iliad,” Polydamas spears Prothoenor in the shoulder.
He falls and dies, whereupon Polydamas jokes that the spear will be useful to
lean on “like a staff when he descends to the underworld.”
At another point in the “Iliad,” Patroclus kills the Trojan
charioteer Cebriones by smashing his face with a stone. The force of the strike
ejects Cebriones’ eyes from their sockets; they hit the ground, and Cebriones
follows them headfirst onto the battlefield. The bizarre situation elicits
Patroclus’ zesty bon mot: “What a spring the man has! Nice dive! Think of the
oysters he could come up with if he were out at sea …”
In this vaunt-cum-metaphor, Cebriones’ eyes, which he
“chases” into the sand, have become precious pearls in the oysters he’s
imagined to be hunting.
The Deeper Significance of Cinematic Taunts
What value does wit hold in genres defined by brute
strength?
Never mind the fact that a corpse is hardly a suitable
target for clever punchlines. The jokes are for the audience, and it’s as close
as the genre gets to breaking the fourth wall. Viewers are attuned to these
witticisms not simply because they are funny, but because they’re
self-consciously ridiculous. They help distance
the audience from the often horrific levels of violence on
display.
Epic poetry has traditionally held a highbrow status in
literary criticism, while action films are regarded as puerile and brutish.
These designations collapse at the level of rhetorical violence. In truth,
epics like the “Iliad” skew more “action film” than most literati would like to
admit, and vice versa.
The larger-than-life heroes from John Matrix to James Bond
are ultimately the silver screen progeny of warrior-poets from antiquity.
Written by Andrew M. McClellan, Lecturer in Classics and
Humanities, San Diego State University.
Adapted from an article originally published in The
Conversation.