Sometimes a person just doesn’t get along. In films, it can be the other characters that don’t mesh, or sometimes it’s the audience themselves who just can’t stand a single idiot character that won’t go away. I believe the term is “Jar-Jaring” or, if you’re referring to television, “pulling a Lori.”
Last year I gave you a pretty okay list of characters that achieved excellent redemptions for their wrongdoings. Today I want to explore those who did not. These are the asshole characters that tried and failed, or simply didn’t try at all.
Hey spoilers!
12. Dr. McCallister in Deep Blue Sea
Susan McCallister is supposed to come across as passionate about her work with sharks – therefore justifying the decisions she makes along the course of the film. Instead she just comes off as a selfish sociopath, opting right away to save a giant-brained shark from shotgun death despite it biting a guy’s arm off. After that she continually defends the ridiculous plan of making sharks super-smart in the middle of the ocean in a underwater observatory that can apparently be destroyed by a small metallic gurney. Not to mention that they appear to be keeping all their flammables huddled together on the surface deck.
Her demise is an honest-to-god attempt at redemption, jumping into the water to distract the last killer shark from escaping into the ocean through the flimsy-ass fence they decided to put up. However, she also causes the hero shark wrangler to jump in the water. At least she got eaten.
The Low Point: Risking her life in the midst of the action to retrieve her research.