50 GREATEST FICTIONAL BADASSES

#8 – SERGEANT MARTIN RIGGS from the Lethal Weapon series.

I was ten or eleven months in when it hit me my best friend was dead. I was working up in Prince George, sitting in a hotel room that smelled of caked-in cigarette smoke, when the wall of denial came tumbling down. I was the kid in Pet Sematary with the truck barreling down on him, that’s how fast it came — too fast to get my defenses up, too big to put back in the box. So in came a revelation, and there that demon made his home. And the funny thing about demons — as anyone who struggles with depression and self-doubt can tell you — is they don’t come alone. 

Truth is, up until that point — even before my friend’s death — I wasn’t the happiest beaver in the dam. We all know what a slow-erosion pessimism, depression, negativity and self-loathing can do over time. I had walked with depression a lot, but what I experienced in that hotel room and the weeks that followed, could only be termed an Offensive.

That was the one time I was very close to Mel Gibson’s character at the beginning of Lethal Weapon, and why his character and the arc he takes over four movies is so captivating and necessary. 

Plus, he has no scruples pulling some asshole’s house down to the ground using a 4×4 truck.

With how cool Gibson plays him, it’s hard sometimes to see the world of hurt Riggs is in. He can’t cope with his wife’s death, he sleeps in an ashtray, he’s a not-so-secret alcoholic. When he reveals to Murtaugh his proficiency with killing, we are in awe at his bad-assness, but it’s pretty apparent it’s had repercussions. “You sleep with that thing?” Murtaugh asks pointing to his Beretta 92F. “Yeah, if I slept,” Riggs answers.

They did the right thing with his character in the first one: they didn’t give him a love interest and they didn’t make him all better at the end. What they gave him was something he really needed: a friend — someone stable, someone to honestly say “I trust you.” 

As the series went on, he received a surrogate family, a circle of friends, a girlfriend turned wife and finally a baby boy. A badass often forces himself to live on the fringe; happiness makes him vulnerable and only gives his enemies targets. And sometimes, we fans want our heroes to remain forever on that fringe too, to fight the endless war against evil over-and-over again, to never grow from the first time we bonded to their dark nature. 

But I also believe sometimes it’s important to let the wounded heal and ride off into the sunset, their hearts filled and their demons defeated. Sometimes that’s better than seeing someone beat the living shit out of Gary Busey. Not by much, but enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvAvNfCbQJk

“I don’t make things difficult. That’s the way they get, all by themselves.”