DISCLAIMER: This is not a series dedicated to proving men shouldn’t cry, or to suggest ONLY women cry and are therefore inferior. The goal of this series is to dispel the pre-established (yet flawed) notion that being “manly” and being disconnected from your emotions go hand-in-hand. Even the most macho of men enjoy and even shed a tear at films, and the sooner we can admit that the sooner the concept that one sex is better than the other can go away. While the approach to these articles is one of light-hearted comedy, the emotional core is valid. While men might be more hesitant to admit it, movies often times have the potential to make us cry, for example:
“Character Overreacting”
We can all empathize with someone who’s having a bad day. Perhaps a monumental disaster plagued someone, or perhaps it was a series of small yet compiling issues. Whatever the cause, this can create a ticking time bomb of a human being, ready to snap at the very next thing that doesn’t go their way. Below are a selection of films that showcase that “very next thing” and without fail, the issues are trivial. Insignificant. Issues that (had the character not just had the worst day ever) would have slid right off their plate into obscurity. Alternatively this list could have been labeled Characters that suffered a severe case of ‘straw that broke the camel’s back.’
And since it’s so easy to emphasize with someone snapping at something insignificant due to being fed up with all the more significant issues prior, we as the audience can share in the emotional outbursts that follow. Perhaps even shed a tear or two.
1. The King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters
This is a documentary about the small community of video game enthusiasts and their quest to have the high score at Donkey Kong. Don’t judge them until you see the film, it’s really quite engaging. In the film (as well as real life) Billy Mitchell was the reigning world champion in Donkey Kong, Jr. and all things related to douchbaggery. It’s not enough for Billy to be good at the game, he has to have the title and prevent anyone else from even competing. When the film’s underdog Steve Wiebe attempts to grab the thrown, Billy poops all over him (metaphorically).
Mike submitted a video recording of him playing Donkey Kong in his garage and getting his high score. Billy the jerk says tapes don’t count and you have to play at this one arcade while observed live. So Mike travels all the way to this arcade, and Billy the Butt doesn’t even show. Mike plays live and beats Billy’s high score … until Billy the asshole mails in a VHS of HIM getting an even higher score. You or I might think having someone beat you at a videogame is not reason for a grown man to cry, but damn it if we don’t all tear up with Mike as he has his short-lived title taken away by a hypocritical jerk. Luckily Mike eventually beat Billy, but only after the documentary was completed.
2. Cast Away
Immediately you know what scene I’m talking about. Perhaps the king of all overreactions to trivial things, Tom Hanks loses a volleyball that he’d pretended was a person for the last four years and totally falls apart. And we fall apart with him.
What started as something to keep his mind sharp ended up fully transforming into anthropomorphizing a ball into someone Hanks bawls his eyes out when he loses it/him. For heaven’s sakes, he built Wilson (the ball’s name) his own little crow’s nest on the raft. Resources were limited and Hanks could have left the ball/friend behind. Instead, he was planning on keeping that ball forever I guess, but the fates had other plans. The scene when Tom is reaching out for Wilson as the tides separate them further and further…the feels.
The tears from this movie are more tears of admiration. A manly tribute to a little boy who had been pushed too far. Ralphy wanted a toy that his parents wouldn’t give him, his mom made the same meal every night, his dad was cold and brutal, and his neighborhood was plagued by bullies. At a certain point, a man can only take so much.
A snowball to the face is all it took. Nothing to commit murder over, and certainly nothing to pick a fight with someone bigger and older than you for either. But ol’ yellow eyes picked the wrong day to throw a snowball at the wrong face. We stand up and cheer as we watch Ralphy lose his freaking mind and start pummeling his would-be bully until blood is gushing out the victim’s nose. Who knows how far he would have gone had his mother not intervened. Let that be a lesson to all bullies: sometimes you step on a landmine.
This movie was funny, but becomes less so if you can identify at all with Simon Pegg’s character. The point of this person’s existence is to stay firmly in the past, and he ridicules all his friends for moving on with their lives while he pretends he hasn’t aged or even has the need to. While they have families and responsibilities, he has the same jacket he had in high school. And when aliens start to body-snatch the entire town, his love of nothing changing is thrown into a hard contrast with a force offering just that.
The person who actually loses his shit is Bill Nye, or at least the alien intelligence that Bill voices. Simon Pegg realizes that despite the allure of being young and unchanging, he would be falling in line and taking instructions from someone, anyone, and that doesn’t sit with him. While he makes some good points about humanity not wanting to be subjugated even if it’s for our own good, ultimately he just argues until Bill Nye gives up. OK, fine, no harm no foul. BILL NYE BLOWS UP THE ENTIRE PLANET!? Plunging humanity back to the dark ages? OVERREACT MUCH?! It was just a frustrating argument by one human, way to overgeneralize.
5. Elysium
Not the best movie, but interesting concepts and effects. One of which is the all-in-one medical bed that not only diagnoses any and all diseases, but fixes them too! Throw nano-bots and genetic scanning around all you want; it’s basically a magic bed. And Matt Damon wants one or he dies due to radiation poisoning. Perhaps the rest of humanity would appreciate one too, but they’re dirty…so who cares?
Preventing Matt from magically healing himself is Kruger (Sharlto Copley), a cybernetic-augmented crazy person who works for the richies on the space station, but lives on the dirty cardboard box that is Earth. He chases Matt for a while, and then takes a grenade in the face, but magic beds rebuild him. Then something very weird happens: Kruger looks at his new scar-less face in the mirror and goes bat-shit insane. He decides he should be running the space station for no reason and starts killing everyone. WHY?! Because he wasn’t put together right? Because he couldn’t rectify the psychological damage that was done with his now pristine face? Because it was a sloppy movie? Whatever the reason, this dude was pushed just a little too far.
Like what you see? Secure enough in your masculinity for more? Check out more Guy Cry Cinema or watch Dan on No Right Answer, the weekly debate show that knows what’s really important: Pointlessly arguing about geek culture.
