You know a movie is doing something right when it elicits a truly emotional reaction from you. Often that might be tears welling in your eyes. Sometimes it’s a feeling of elation when a hero succeeds. And sometimes it’s the desire to punch somebody right in the face. You’re supposed to hate the bad guys and want them to get defeated, but sometimes the person who needs a smack is the hero.
A thread on Reddit recently asked fans what protagonist they would most like to punch in the face, either because they were whiney, generally annoying, or just an actual terrible person. And there are some choice answers here. It turns out that a fair number of heroes need a decent smack.
There are plenty of characters in the Harry Potter cast worthy of a smack, but one is one of the main three heroes. Harry’s buddy Ron Weasley is a popular choice for a human punching bag that people who want to just beat the hell out of. A lot of people think that, especially in the later films, he ends up perpetually stupid and jealous and he just needs to get over himself. It doesn’t make him a good friend to the people he’s supposed to be friends with.
Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky in the Transformers movies is another popular choice. Maybe it was the fact that the movies focused so much on his character, while most people watching the movies just wanted to see the giant robots, that made him so completely annoying. Maybe that’s why the Transformers franchise seemingly killed him off. It’s certainly true that the best Transformers movies are generally the ones he’s not in.
One choice that is perhaps controversial is Ferris Bueller. While Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is an incredibly popular comedy, there is a contingent of people who see Ferris as a spoiled, entitled ass, and think that maybe what Ferris needs is a good ass-kicking. While I don’t necessarily agree, I can see why some people feel that way.
There are some cases where even though a movie character is ostensibly the protagonist of a film, you’re not necessarily supposed to like them. Adam Sandler’s character in Uncut Gems comes up in the discussion. He certainly has a pretty bad life for the duration of the film. Of course, that’s all because of the choices that he makes, which makes you want to wring his neck. This is by design, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
If a movie makes you want to punch the hero in the face, there’s an argument that the movie still works, that you’re invested enough in the story for the character’s actions to make you want to smack them. In many cases, this does mean that a character you were supposed to like is one you don’t, but as long as you weren’t bored, I guess that’s something.