the bad guys in movie always have the distinguished but complicated personalities or backgrounds where always turns out to cause all the contradiction in the episodes.
By Xiaohan Wu 110307126 class 3
breaking bad
Today, people seem to get bored with classic hero protagonists, as there exists such a factory producing the same characters in an assembly line following the same routine. Surprisingly, bad guys often get the best lines and got sculpted into various shapes to make them more vivid, it’s easy to write different bad asses in multiple ways and attract the audiences to seek the their minds.
Then “Anti-hero” idea was introduced into many episodes naturally when needed. Just as people would get tired of seeing saintly Melanie Wilkes 100 more times than selfish Scarlett from <Gone With The Wind>. And a upright Edgar is always more vivid than his brother Edward in any version of <King Lear>. Our protagonist here, Mr Walter White, is a typical “Anti-hero” when we put him under the telescope observing the growth process of his evil deep inside.
In breaking bad, what’s worse could his situation be? A 50 year old man with no money, and plus he teaches chemistry in high school; a man with the pregnant wife; a man with the disability son; a man got diagnosed bad lung cancer. With nothing to lose but a family to support, he risks to cook with desperation. At first, he sacrifices himself for the whole family. But as his ambition goes bigger, the motivation has changed. Once, after his wife Skyler found out his business and started to worry about his safety, he however told her that he wasn’t in danger cause himself was the danger. The beast had been waken up once he found out how brilliant he was as a meth cook instead of teaching a bunch of kids that don’t care in high school, and dealt with tons of disasters that he had to go through. And moreover, his friend who lives a good life has taken the academic finding he could’ve made million with by his intelligence away. Every piece of under the satisfaction in reality plus the cancer adds up together leads his way of drowning down with even faster pace.
I remember 3 scenes that Walter White has became a totally different person that everybody knows and it shocked even the audiences: after the meeting of Walter White Junior’s high school meeting, they had pretty wild sex in the car, Skyler asked why it felt so good, “Because it’s illegal.” Said Mr White; when he got a lot of cash in selling his pure meth, he straight went to buy a Chevrolet Camaro later to drift around with a twisted good feeling face; At his birthday party, he forced his own son to drink pure vodka shots after shots while Hank nearby kept telling him to stop. They all came from one reason: he wants to control his own life; he wants to be the man.
It also reflects on how he fought with another intelligent business drug dealer Gus. They both wanted to come to power and use everyone who is still valuable, targeting on the goals accurately and executing the process perfectly to keep in balance. Once they are useless or the balance he created was broken, they became brutal by any means. Gus killed his own trusted man without blinking the eyes; Walter was unsatisfied with working under the dominance of Gus and finally murdered Gus. Afterwards, his came to power and he became the men he wanted to be rather than becoming the father that he ought to be.
It was the death of his D.E.A brother-in-law Hank Schrader reminded him who he truly is. Even though he did all the crazy things and still thought he did that for his family until then he witnessed his own family member’s death personally even though “Anti-hero” doesn’t want to; he started out the whole thing but got every thing out of control. Finally his family faded away and that’s when he realized his credo collapsed, all he did before was just to fulfil his own desire. At last, we saw him telling the truth to Skyler through the phone that he did it for himself because he was good at it and he liked it after claiming 100 of times that he did it for the family.
Therefore, the ending sounds reasonable: he died for his own will instead of a normal pathetic mid-age man dying of cancer. Somehow he controls his own fate. “It felt right and satisfying and proper to us that he went out on his own terms; he went out like a man,” Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan shared in a recent podcast, describing the death of Walter White in the series finale.
