Of course, all the Arnie movies are exempt from this classification. He gets a category all of his own. Or else.

I wouldn't call myself a film buff in any sense of the term - I haven't seen anywhere near enough of them to draw anything more than the most rudimentary conclusions about the art form as a whole. Luckily, rudimentary conclusions are what these essays are all about, so let's forge ahead regardless with a few sweeping generalisations!

It seems that scriptwriters are often cursed with the shocking inability to write about interesting heroes. Pick a film at random, and you're fairly likely to find that the hero character is just not that compelling as a person. Whatever qualities they may have, they're frequently overshadowed by the other characters. The fact that the other characters do manage to draw you in is particularly interesting, as it shows that the problem isn't an inability to write interesting character parts. As far as I can make out, the scale goes something like this.

I apologise for the rather poor image quality...haven't quite got the hang of illustration yet. Anyway, this scale applies to a surprisingly large number of films. Consider some of the best-known films around, for example the original Star Wars trilogy. Luke Skywalker is the epitome of the dull hero, from his sensible haircut, through his clothing choice (he is literally a beige character), right to his incredibly complicated motivation (MUST...KILL...VADER). Even the poor stormtroopers whose only role is to be hilariously bad shots are more interesting. Up one more point on the scale, we reach characters like Wedge Antilles, who actually manages to defy his classification by not dying sacrificially to save the hero, thus unfairly raising the audience's hopes of Luke being picked off instead.

Up again, and we reach characters like Han Solo and Yoda, who manage to be ethically or intellectually dubious (respectively), immediately giving them a bit of depth. Yoda also has the advantage of not being human, which is a shortcut to more entertaining characters if ever I saw one. Immediately above them we have a slight difficulty, as although Emperor Palpatine is technically the main villain, ranking above Vader, he's functionally the sidekick in terms of the storytelling. Personally, though, I reckon that technical ranking wins the day, giving us Palpatine's evil chuckling and ability to shoot lightning from his fingers (pretty darn cool) and Darth Vader's heavy breathing, voice, great dialogue and awesome chokey-thing (SERIOUSLY cool). You'll notice that I haven't included a mention of the comic relief characters in here so far, basically because mention of "comic relief" and "Star Wars" will inevitably lead to mentions of C3PO and Jar Jar. And no-one wants that.

The same classification applies to a lot of other movies, in part if not completely. Take a Bond movie - let's say Tomorrow Never Dies. Bond's always been a bit 2D, with his mission (Go! Save the world in another slightly different way!) not really changing between films, and his womanising, sharp-shooting, heavy-drinking character serving as little more than a plot device and an object for the audience to cheer about. His sidekick, though - in this case, Wai Lin, as portrayed by Michelle Yeoh - has a lot more going for her, especially as her character is considerably deeper than the carbon-copy Bond girls who usually get classified under "non-bit-part cannon fodder". But even she pales into insignificance next to Elliot Carver, as you've got to love the idea of a man starting a war and a military coup over broadcast rights, and he likewise isn't half as much fun as his evil assistants, Stamper, Gupta and the criminally underused Dr. Kaufman ("SCHTAMPAAAAAA!").

Or we could spill over into books. A number of fans (yes, I count myself among them) have been hoping for quite some time now that Harry Potter would just get on with whatever he has to do and then simply shut up so that we can watch more of the hilarious antics of the Weasley family, with particular reference to the as-yet rather undeveloped Ron-Hermione pairing. This has, admittedly, largely been sparked by Harry's discovery of teenage angst, particularly as it applies to LIBERAL USE OF THE CAPS LOCK KEY, back in Book 5...even so, the character simply doesn't have as much going for him as does pretty much anyone else around.

Harry Potter does show, though, that certain elements of the scale can be inverted or confused for better effect. Fred and George Weasley, for example, are very well-written comic relief characters, and Snape, with his evil/good/evil/good character, is rapidly becoming a far more interesting figure to watch and consider than almost anyone else. Or we could go back to the world of films to see other examples - Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep shows that it's entirely possible for the main character to absolutely ooze coolness, even if Lauren Bacall is trying her very hardest to steal his scenes. Even Disney has subverted the normal order to good effect in The Lion King, by making Scar a very cool yet intensely evil main villain, way above the only characters that could even remotely be considered his sidekicks. Similarly, that film has blended the comic relief characters with the hero's sidekicks in order to create Timon and Pumbaa, to great effect.

So if films are better for abandoning elements of this plan, why is it - or at least much of it - still so prevalent? I was talking about just this question with a friend the other night, who suggested that it's because we like 2D heroes, we like having a simple good-vs-bad storyline, and that it's just easier to root for the hero if he doesn't come complete with complexities. I think there's something in that. Eric Burns suggests something similar in the genre of comic books, as a reason for why comics don't sell anything like as many copies now as they used to. And yet, Burns acknowledges in that essay that complex characters and dark storylines are more interesting, from a literary as well as an intellectual standpoint - the story is better, and it engages your brain.

I'm not going to claim that it's necessarily a bad thing for films and books to go down the simple route - as much as anyone, I get times when I simply want to switch off my brain and be spoon-fed entertainment. I do think, though, that the mechanics of popular entertainment, where profit is the main concern, can lead to writers taking this soft option too often. Just remembering that there are fascinating things that can be done by changing a few underlying structures can reap great benefits - let's hope that we get more people willing to take the risk.