Lethal Weapon 4K 1987

I won't even mention that Lethal Weapon gave us the image of polar opposite partners who are completely different in every way, which to this day is mercilessly exploited in all genres (take Shrek and his donkey, for example), nor that Gibson created the prototype for a multitude of psychopathic heroes with a clear anti-social attitude (the most recent being Heath Ledger's Joker), nor about the special sense of humor, nor about the incomparable music. Enough has been said about all this, and you know it all very well without me. I am interested in something else.

But first, I would like to talk about action movie heroes in general. About their evolution. So, the mid-1980s. Worn-out videotapes, passed from hand to hand, bring the first American action films to our convex TV screens, in which we (then still children) see the “Big Three” — Arnold, Sylvester, and Jean-Claude — for the first time. The heroes of our childhood, role models. Watching the Terminator shoot a laser-guided pistol, Rambo sew up his own hand, and the kickboxer do an aerial split, a whole generation grew up. Our generation.

All three were unique, but at the same time very similar in their most important asset—their appearance. People with such physiques had never appeared on the big screen before. Mountains of muscle, their every movement, every step was monumental, imperturbable. Confident, invincible, they destroyed hundreds of enemy populations.

There was not a shadow of doubt in their minds about their own righteousness, nor any fear. They felt no pain, shot weapons of any caliber without missing, and never ran out of ammunition. But time passed, and their grotesque invincibility gave way to the vulnerability of the heroes of a new type of action movie. They no longer boast watermelon-sized biceps; they are capable of feeling, even crying (in this sense, Stallone's hysterics at the end of Rambo seem to me to be more of an exception to the rule than confirmation of it).

Now, the vulnerability and realism of the action hero has become the norm. And so, wounded and exhausted, John McClane in Die Hard fights for his family, not for universal justice, while Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible wins not with a frontal assault, but with the power of his mind and cunning.

It is difficult to say what caused such a radical change in the direction of development, but I am inclined to believe that the starting point was Martin Riggs' suicide attempt in Lethal Weapon. In this scene, Mel Gibson showed the world a Hamlet that made us all gasp and believe that an action hero is capable of feeling something more than primitive childish attachment and an insatiable thirst for revenge, that he can doubt the necessity of what he is doing, suffer from unhappy love and loneliness, search for the meaning of his life, and ultimately be afraid.

Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon revealed to the world a new action hero — not an ancient god of war with a bare chest, but an ordinary person, just like you and me, just as imperfect, and therefore so real. That's the thought I wanted to share with you.