Movie Review

By Robert D. Grubaugh

Contributing columnist For The Edge

EDWARDSVILLE — Ugh, I’m going to write about masks this week.

It’s probably everybody’s least favorite topic right now. The president mocks us for wearing them and then begs us to put them on to show our patriotism (and improve his re-election chances). You’re tired of wearing them because they’re hot, and you can’t hear each other, and they keep steaming up your glasses. But they’re not going anywhere in the age of our great pandemic.

You know who else wears a mask who isn’t going anywhere? Some of our favorite movie characters.

In the three seconds it took this idea to latch into my consciousness, I was able to imagine a list of a dozen major film characters whose masks are either remarkable, indelible or downright horrifying to movie history.

Here is a quick list of (arguably) the three best films, in my mind, with masked characters (but there are so many more that you’ll probably love, too).

When I talk about movie “masks,” I mean literal disguises that hide an otherwise attractive or talented star. I can’t include the actual real-life appearance of an actor or special effects, because those are something purely different unto themselves. The “Star Trek” universe alone would take up an entire issue of this publication to highlight.

I also don’t mean a “metaphorical mask.” There’s no shortage of roles that turn a character into something manipulative with motives, which the viewer can’t always foretell. • Zorro — 11 feature films have been made about the masked swashbuckler over the last 100 years, and he has been played by the likes of Douglas Fairbanks, Tyrone Power, Frank Langella and Antonio Banderas. That’s a fair pedigree for the Californian folk hero who also was mocked extensively by George Hamilton in 1981’s “Zorro, The Gay Blade.” • Darth Vader — perhaps the greatest movie villain of all time existed only in the black-masked robotic suit that kept him alive during the course of George Lucas’ original “Star Wars” trilogy. We glimpsed his decrepitude at the conclusion of 1983’s “Return of the Jedi” and saw Hayden Christensen, a path into the early 2000s’ sequels, but the hissing, breathy delivery of James Earl Jones, is why the image survives in our collective mind’s eye now. • Hannibal Lecter — Lecter’s (Anthony Hopkins) somber Jack-O’-Lantern style of mask is not funny, and it quickly shows the true element of this character’s nature, as he comes rolling in on a dolly, straight-jacketed, in a mask that also alludes to “Friday the 13th’s” Jason Voorhees, who entered our conscience in 1980. Yet, still, other characters underestimate madness at every turn.

How good was Hopkins’ portrayal? I gave preferential positioning to “the mask” in this horror movie — above 1978’s “Halloween’s” Michael Myers, then Voorhees’ hockey goalie, “Scream’s” Ghostface and whatever you would call that abomination of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s” Leatherface.

Great opportunities of plot create cinema’s fantastic masked moments.

“Romeo and Juliet’s” central characters were at their most romantic wearing feathered masquerade masks.

The actual phantom of “The Phantom of the Opera” is identifiable purely by his mask in any version of his story’s promotional materials.

“V for Vendetta” is but a Natalie Portman-colored memory, to me now, of a Guy Fawkes mask.

There also are other anomalies.

Jim Carrey once famously acted in a movie called “The Mask,” which was ridiculous — and curiously beloved.

Tom Hardy, however, wins the award for “Most Masked.” He has famously kept his mug covered in four of his biggest hits: “Venom,” “Dunkirk,” “Mad Max” and “The Dark Knight Rises.”

How some struggle for their craft, huh?

Keep wearing your masks, too, my friends. We’ll get through this.

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