Best and Worst Movie Sidekicks: Now Disc. Best: Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Iron Man

"Despite being smarter, stronger and faster than wealthy ne'er-do-well Britt Reid, Kato is, for some reason, the sidekick to Reid's Green Hornet. This dichotomy is endlessly explored in Michel Gondry's new movie about the heroic duo, and raises a question about what makes a good sidekick. Can they hold their own in a fight? Do they complain a lot? Do you constantly have to rescue them? These are questions you need to ask yourself before you grant someone sidekick status. In honor of Kato, arguably the most bad-ass sidekick who ever kicked a dude in the side, we thought we'd call out some of the best and worst. -- Zach Oat"

 

Well, there's your answer. If you're paying for it, you're the boss.

 

Jar Jar Binks was a pretty kewl sidekik. I tend to think Spok > all of teh star wars sidekiks.

 

I thought this thread would be about the Chuck Norris movie Sidekicks. I am disappointed.

 

Impeccable logic. And it holds true especially when the boss has a wussy name like Britt! More testimony to the power of money!

 

Maybe Kato just wants someone to look good, be stupid, pay the bills, draw the fire, and not interfere.

 

Kato is such an awesome sidekick that in Asia, The Green Hornet was called The Kato Show. Therefore, the Green Hornet is actually Kato's sidekick.

 

Best: Hit-Girl (Kick-Ass)

"If possible, train your sidekick from birth to be your partner in crime. Educate them in the most lethal fighting moves, give them butterfly knives for their birthday, and teach them the most colorful language you can, since it'll allow them to better demoralize their enemies. Add a purple wig, and you've got a tiny assassin you can fire at a target like a bullet from a gun."

 

Stupid character. There's all this nonsense about "Gee, wow, it's a little kid doing all this stuff," but she can basically do everything that an adult can do. And she does everything that an adult can do. At no point in the movie does the fact that she's a little girl actually impede her actions. Moretz' performance didn't overly impress me either - a lot of faux-badassery that is only (supposedly) funny because "Hey, it's a little girl!" The joke wears thin quick.

 

Worst: Robin (Batman & Robin)

"Never hire circus folk as your sidekick. They're not used to staying in one place for too long, so you won't even make it through two movies before they start to rebel against you. After you save them from being killed by Two-Face, they have the balls to quit? Over a woman? Cut your losses, Bruce, there are plenty of orphans in the orphanarium."

 

I'm just saying Dick Grayson is an awesome name, he could do porn with that name.

 

Robin was conceived in 1940 or so, when kid sidekicks were felt to be appealing to the audience, who were mostly that age. But I agree with whomever said that today he's deeply camp, and the original Batman franchise doesn't recover from his introduction. I doubt they'll make the same mistake twice.

 

Yeah, but you only feel that way because you've (apparently?) never read a good Batman and Robin comic book, Like A Death in the Family or Prodigal, and perhaps you only know the character from his ridiculous Schumacher/O'Donnel conception.

 

The Schumacher Robin at least looked kinda cool (even if O'Donnell can't act), normally Robin looks really lame and unimpressive next to the mighty Dark Knight.

[image=http://img.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/no-robin__oPt.jpg]

 

Except now Robin IS Batman, and Batman's son is Robin, and the other Robins are costumed vigilantes who dig the color red.

 

That sounds...bad.

Best: Chewbacca (Star Wars)

"When your job requires you to walk into shady bars, and you've got a price on your head, there's nobody you'd rather have in your corner than a seven-foot-tall grizzly bear with a bowcaster. We don't even know how a bowcaster works -- Are there arrows? Is it just a weird laser gun? -- but Chewie could be brandishing a wiffle bat and we'd still be scared to pull a gun on Han Solo."

 

well, bruce was "killed", so someone had to take his place since batman can't die.

anyway, love chewie. easily one of my fav sidekicks out there.

 

Chewie is a great sidekick, especially when we get lines like "Wookies are known to pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose."

 

I've always loved Chewie. After my grandmother took my sister and me to see the original film in 1977, she raved: "I just loved that dog!"

The first 12" inch Kenner action figure I got was Chewbacca, for my 10th birthday at the end of '79. His bandolier was removable along with each individual cartridge! What a great toy. He and my 12" Mego Ace Frehley used to have battles over Barbi, but that's another story.

Recently it was discovered through painstaking research that Chewbacca's look in the film derives, at least in part, from the cover of a 1970s sci-fi novel by George RR Martin. Originally, Lucas conceived of the Wookiee as looking like a large tarsier, with bat-like ears and weird, big eyes (you can read this description in the early drafts and see it in early Ralph McQarrie production paintings).

Then, after Martin's book was released, McQarrie began to paint Chewbacca more like the shaggy, dog-faced, earless man-beast seen on the cover. The resemblance is unmistakable.

(I had a thread on this over in CT. I'll try to find a link in case anyone's interested.)

 

I thought Batman was porn.


Chewbacca alternates between sidekick and straight man; compared to someone like
Tim Conway in McHale's Navy, though, I'd bump the walking carpet way up the list.

 

Too bad we never got to see the Wookiees actually do that against the battle droids in ROTS.

 

Chewie's awesome in the movies. I just wish that he had been better used in most of the Bantam-era books.

 

Worst: Lobot (The Empire Strikes Back)

"Lobot had one job. One! Make sure the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon gets repaired. Is that so difficult a task? Apparently so, because it's up to R2-D2 (an occasionally kickass sidekick in his own right) to make it work. What's the matter, Lobot, do your high-tech hearing aids need new batteries? Hello? Hellooooobot?"

I like Lobot, so *there*!

 

I think the sole purpose for lobot was so that fans who couldn't afford a Vader, stormtrooper
C3PO or Jedi costume might still find something cheap enough to wear at conventions.