In March of last year, we held a Movie Madness tournament featuring a bracket of 64 film icons to identify cinema’s truest badass. In the end, Darth Vader kicked everyone else’s butt. Now that we know the baddest person in movies, let’s tackle the world of TV action stars to see who will win in that realm.
Here’s the thing, though. Movies are a tad different than television. There’s more turn-around in television. Shows and characters we may have forgotten might fit perfectly into our bracket. I won’t pretend to know each and every action star from television that deserves a spot. It was hard enough to pick 64 movie characters, and most of them were iconic or ingrained into our pop-culture DNA.
So I’m asking for your help here. I have a few obvious choices in mind like Jack Bauer, Vic Mackey, Sydney Bristow, and maybe even Fox Mulder. Still, I need more names. Suggestions from you, our readers, would be very helpful. Which characters would you like to see compete in the Television Tournament o’ Death?
Remember that this tournament is a fight to the death. No matter how great a show like ‘Seinfeld’ was, we’re not picking anyone from there (except maybe the Soup Nazi), because those characters would all get dismembered in the first round. What we’re looking for are TV’s resident badasses, grizzled characters who know how to take a punch, and better yet, know how to give one right back.
This tournament will feature another 64-character bracket broken down into quadrants. After we have a sufficient number of suggestions in the form of comments to this post, I’ll randomly pick the first round matches, and off we’ll go.
Thanks for helping out. I’m looking forward to finding what characters Bonus View readers come up with. Let’s make this a memorable tournament.
Ed, Watertown MA
Raylan Givens of “Justified” casts a pretty big shadow, especially at High Noon.
Aaron Peck
AuthorIndeed he does. He’s on the list.
Josh Zyber
I’d like to see a face-off between Raylan Givens and Seth Bullock. It’d be meta-tastic!
Other suggestions:
Men:
Al Swearegen (Deadwood)
Worf (Star Trek: TNG)
Jayne Cobb (Firefly)
B.A. Baracus (The A-Team)
Robert McCall (The Equalizer)
Bruce Banner (The Incredible Hulk)
Clark Kent (any of the countless Superman/Superboy TV shows over the years – The Adventures of Superman, Lois & Clark, Smallville, etc.)
Women:
Emma Peel (The Avengers)
Cameron (Sarah Connor Chronicles)
Sarah Walker (Chuck)
Catwoman (Batman)
I’m sure that I’ll think of more later.
We should probably restrict this to live-action TV shows, huh? It wouldn’t be fair to throw someone like Optimus Prime into the mix. 🙂
Aaron Peck
AuthorActually, Prime would be at a disadvantage since his robotic conscience wouldn’t allow him to kill humans.
Megatron on the other hand…
Josh Zyber
Some more:
Col. Steve Austin (The Six Million Dollar Man)
Michael Knight (Knight Rider)
Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Xena (Xena: Warrior Princess)
Shayne Blakeley
I’d take Data over Worf personally.
EM
Data would have the same disadvantage Aaron mentioned vis-à-vis Optimus Prime, “The Most Toys” notwithstanding. Now as for Lore…
Vinnie
I definitely agree with Raylan Givens.
How bout the Man in Black from Lost?
And are you guys including TV characters who later were in movies (Ethan Hunt, the A-Team, etc.) or are they excluded from this tourney?
Aaron Peck
AuthorThe only requirement is that they were in a television series.
For example Captain Kirk was in the movie tourney, but will also appear in this one too.
Aaron Peck
AuthorAlso, those characters you’re talking about were played by different actors which creates a different character even though they have the same name. Does that make sense? That’s why in the movie tourney we had to narrow down the exact Batman and the exact Bond we were going to use in the tournament.
Evan Withrow
He wasn’t the main character in his series, but I think Benjamin Linus from LOST would put up a pretty good fight against (and defeat) a lot of different characters.
StarMenace
Cordell Walker – Walker Texas Ranger, it’s Chuck Norris, if he’s in the bracket then it’s an automatic win.
JM
Charlie from ‘The West Wing.’
Ron Butterfield, secret service, and Mike Casper, FBI, were pretty badass too.
JM
David Carradine’s Kwai Chang Caine from ‘Kung Fu.’
JM
Adrian Pasdar’s Jim Profit from ‘Profit.’
JM
James Spader’s Alan Shore from ‘Boston Legal.’
JM
Alexander Skarsgård’s Eric Northman from ‘True Blood.’
Shayne Blakeley
Good call, seconded!
JM
Dexter Morgan, as played by Michael C. Hall.
JM
Dennis Haysbert from ‘The Unit.’
HuskerGuy
Michael Westin from Burn Notice. Master spy.
HuskerGuy
Sgt. Rick Hunter of the Hunter TV show. That guy will kill anything.
Shayne Blakeley
Buffy
Angel
Spike
Cameron (Sarah Connor Chronicles)
Echo
Captain Malcolm Reynolds
River Tam (Yes I’m a Whedon geek)
The Doctor
Captain Jack Harkness
Walter White
Darkwing Duck
Bender
Agent Dale Cooper
Bear Grylls
Do made for TV movies/mini-series count? If so, Pennywise and Randal Flag.
HuskerGuy
Damn, forgot River as well. Nice call.
HuskerGuy
Josh already nominated Sarah Walker from Chuck, but I think John Casey should be considered as well.
I know Josh already put Adam Baldwin in as Jayne from Firefly, but I almost think his Chuck character would be a better as there is more history to draw off. That said, Jayne would likely get more fan support with the Firefly love.
This brings up another questions, suggestion, why not Malcom Reynolds from Firefly. He was just as much a killer as anyone else on the show.
DisraeliGears
McBain of course
Shayne Blakeley
HELL YES. HELL. YES.
Shayne Blakeley
Shane from The Walking Dead
Hypnotoad
Manbearpig
Shayne Blakeley
Dr. Rick Dagless (Garth Marenghis Dark Place)
Shayne Blakeley
Voltron
Power Rangers
Captain Planet
He-Man and/or Skeletor
Sylar
John Locke
Shayne Blakeley
Holy crap I’m excited about this
JM
Lucius Vorenus from ‘Rome.’
Omar Little from ‘The Wire.’
Timothy Olyphant from ‘Deadwood.’
Maggie Q in Nikita.
Donnie Yen as Chan Zan in ‘Fist of Fury.’
Alex
How about Clay Morrow from Sons of Anarchy (good ‘ol Ron Perlman)?
JM
Alan Tudyk as Alpha in ‘Dollhouse.’
Mr. Eko in ‘Lost’
Vern Schillinger in ‘Oz.’
Walter White in ‘Breaking Bad.’
JM
Khal Drogo in ‘Game of Thrones.’
MacGyver
EM
To the Star Trek suggestions I would add Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct, Unimatrix Zero-One. Also Spock, at least in an emotional state.
Forgive me if I overlooked any Babylon 5 suggestions, but here are mine: Michael Garibaldi, Kosh (“We are all Kosh”), Alfred Bester, and Neroon.
I’d also like to suggest Anthony Fremont from the Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life” (also its 2003 sequel “It’s Still a Good Life”), but maybe he’s too powerful for this format. But it’s good that he’s too powerful—it’s really, really good!!!
And we should have Barnabas Collins, unless the matches take place by day.
Aaron Peck
AuthorAwesome suggestions everyone. You all really stepped up. I took a ton of characters from these suggestions, added in some of my own and now we have a bracket of 64 people who will battle for ultimate supremacy.
Next week you’ll see the bracket along with the first matches. Stay tuned.
Jared Chamberlain
Duncan MacLeod(Highlander)
Harley Quinn(Batman the Animated Series)
Gomez Addams (Addams Family)
Indiana Jones(young)
Starbuck (new Battlestar)
Sherlock Holmes(Sherlock)
Herman Munster(The Munsters)
William Henley
Dr Smith (Lost In Space),
Gal Du Kaut (DS9),
The Borg Queen (multiple Star Trek series),
The Duke Boys (Dukes of Hazard),
Simon Cowell (nuff said),
Que (multiple Star Trek series),
The Terminator (Sarah Connor Chronicles),
Majin Buu / Goku / Gohan / Trunks / Freeza / Piccilo / (Dragonball, Dragonball Z, Dragonball GT),
Sailor Moon (and the other Sailor Scouts)
Piers Morgan
Jesus (South Park)
Satan (South Park)
Saddam Hussain (South Park)
Mel Gibson / George Lucas / Steven Spilburg (South Park)
The White Ranger (Power Rangers)
Pikachu (Pokemon)
Captain Kirk / Captain Janeway / Captain Archer / Captain Picard / Commander Sysco
Syler (or whatever his name is from Heros)
Stewie Griffin (Family Guy)
Stan Smith (American Dad)
The Mexican Space Ship
Stringfellow Hawk from Airwolf
Conan O’Brien
Alf
Cody from Step by Step
Horatio Caine from CSI Miami
Cookie Monster
Wilfred
Spartacus
Betty White’s character from Golden Girls
Barney
Julian
Frank Drebin, Police Squad! Badass to the bone!