This Green One

A thought occurred to me earlier today as I was glancing over some new marketing releases for the upcoming game Assassins Creed 2.  The protagonist, Ezio Auditore de Firenze, looks like such a badass in that game in such an awesome kind of way.  He just looks like such a cool character.

It’s not enough to just create a badass character though.  No.  They also have to have a coolness about them and the guys down at Ubisoft have a knack for making these badass characters feel awesome.

Suddenly, it dawned upon me. It was hoods.  The most awesome badass people and characters always seem to wear hoods! I started googling around.  It seems no one so far has caught on to this explosive secret, save for George Lucas and the guys at Ubisoft.

Let’s examine the evidence:

Darth Vader

Sith lords are badass and none are badder than Lord Vader himself.  Everybody knows this, it is a fact.  But before Obi Wan scorched the flesh from his cranium, rendering him helmet dependent and unable to adorn his kick-ass sith hood any longer he looked like this.  The biggest badass in the old republic.  And it was all thanks to the hood.

 

Darth Maul 

Before Vader however, when Anakin was still a child, there was Darth Maul.  I remember about 10 years ago just before the film was released when there was much pant soiling amongst the nerd fraternity over how awesome this particular character promised to be.  When The Phantom Menace finally came out, this badass was the coolest thing in it, despite his few and infrequent scenes.  The likelihood of Darth Maul pioneering the dual-bladed lightsaber is somewhat diminished if his appearance is degraded by the absence of his badass hood.

 

Darth Revan

Ok some of my readership may begin to see a pattern here, but I did disclaim that George Lucas is one of the select few to have picked up on the badass hood phenomenon.  For anyone who played Knights of the Old Republic, this badass was without doubt the most awesome Star Wars protagonist ever to grace any entertainment medium.  If you haven’t played it, I won’t spoil it.  Go get a copy though.  This guy was awesome personified.  Hang on I think I may have just spoiled it…

 

Altair

Perhaps Ubisoft picked up on the hooded character game from their Star Wars connections? Who knows.  But this brings us out of the Star Wars domain and square into the assassination game.  And no one gets it done better than our next hooded badass, Altair.  If the dual-bladed lightsaber is the coolest weapon of all time, then the hidden blade comes a close second.  Just another of the many reasons I could list why messing with Altair is a bad idea.  He is awesome though.

 

Ezio Auditore de Firenze

This agile little bastard might look a lot like Altair, but rest assured he is not.  Believe it or not, this hooded badass assassin wields two hidden blades as he leaps and maims his way around renaissance Venice.  How cool is that?

 

Alex Mercer

Once done with the Star Wars and Ubisoft guys, I wondered to myself who else was out there that could substantiate my bold claim.  I didn’t have to look far, as I had just finished the game Prototype, and lo and behold the main man of this game was one huge hooded badass mofo.

It’s difficult to imagine any previous (or future) character being as powerful or as capable of as much wanton destruction as the sociopathic Alex Mercer.  This hooded shapeshifting freak is directly responsible for causing enough trouble to erupt in Manhattan that the authorities decided their best bet was to nuke it.  Nice going.  The enormous axe like blade his arm morphs into wouldn’t be nearly impressive if it weren’t for his choice of stylish headwear.

 

Aragorn

By now you’re probably wondering if I have any evidence outside of video gaming to back all this up.  I do, so we’ll now jump from the video game screen to the silver screen.  What better badass to start with than the slayer of orcs, goblins and dweebs than the Lord of the Rings hard-nut, Aragorn.  Notice the hooded disguise as he stalks his prey.  He’s definitely about to strike with unstoppable fury…

 

Dexter Morgan

Speaking of unstoppable fury, there are few people you’d want to get on the wrong side of less than Dexter Morgan, Miami Metro’s resident serial killer.  If you do happen to piss him off though, there’s no use calling the cops – he is one.  But I’d rather have this serial killing badass cop on my bowling team, or bringing me a morning donut, or even a poisoned piece of pecan pie than any other I can think of.  And it’s all thanks to the slick headwear.

 

Robin Hood

The classic badass.  This guy could pick you off sitting on the other side of town hungover on a Sunday morning with unmatched precision, before or since.  Not only does this bow-and-arrow wielding badass wear a hood for extra badass effect, it’s also part of his name.

 

Jason Bourne

This bond-like badass shirks the wit and charm of his British predecessor in favour of a icy and dark facade only an aimless, identity-less trained assassin could pull off.  Improvisation and showy assassinations are the name of the game for this badass.  Grossing about a billion dollars at the box office world wide over three films suggests this particular badass was pretty popular too.

Conclusion

So there you have it.  The evidence is irrefutable.  My advice is to heed it if you plan on writing a book, producing a film or developing a video game.  Badass protagonists are awesome.  But they must wear a hood to back it up.