It’s funny how the word hero can mean so many things to different people. Hero was a movie we saw in class which shows this to be very true. Throughout this essay I will show three examples of the different types of heroes portrayed in the movie. The film has a few different moments to justify my viewpoints.
My first example of hero’s having different meanings to certain people comes in the character of Joey LaPlante. Joey is the son of Bernie LaPlante who is one of the main characters of the film. Now growing up I have yet to meet a kid who hasn’t idolized or aspired to be like one of their parents. I know that for me I wanted to be like my father as a child just for the mere fact that I thought he was “cool”. This is a common feeling for children and it’s shown in the movie by Joey. Now Joey might have wanted to be like his father for all the wrong reasons. That’s because Bernie liked to lie and stretch the truth a lot so that he could appeal to his son. There is a scene right after the plane crashes and Bernie saves all the people were he’s pulling up to his ex-wife’s house to see if he can still talk to his son even though he is really late. As Bernie is walking up to the house Joey is watching and observing him. He notices that he is missing a shoe. He must find this a bit strange because all throughout the film his father is always telling him to keep his shoes clean. A few days pass and right as he’s getting ready to eat dinner a news reports comes on. In the report it shows that the “Hero” that saved all the passengers from that burning plane is missing a shoe. Once this is said Joey starts thinking of that night and has the thought that maybe his father could have been the mystery person. As quick as he thinks of this thought his mother shoots the idea down saying that it’s so unlike his father to stick his neck out and risk his life for someone else other than himself.
Gale Gayley is a character in the film who is a news reporter. She was one of the victims on the plane that crashed. Her character really did play into the fact that in real life the media loves to sensationalize certain people and keep others out of the lime light due to stereo types. Once Gale is rescued she is immediately focused on turning this tragic event into a news story. It isn’t until she is in the hospital when she realizes that no one knows who saved all the people. She starts off by doing a news report from all the victims in the hospital. Once she returns to work the news channel she works for decides to run a huge campaign to find out who the mystery man is. Now once John Bubber comes forward they rush to get an exclusive interview and give him a reward and tons of free gifts. This just goes to show that the media instead of doing their jobs correctly and taking a little bit longer to find the correct person, would rather get an exclusive and boost their ratings in order to please the public. One scene of the movie which I loved was when the police officer was briefing her on her missing purse and telling him how Bernie LaPlante was in custody for stealing it. Now if she would have just taken the time to really think how in the world he could have stolen her purse when it was in a burning plane she would have seen the truth. A second example of Gale being blind and seeing just whatever she wanted to see is when they are reenacting the rescue for a movie they are doing. Now John Bubber has now clue on what to do but Gale is too caught up in believing that he’s the true hero. Even though she is basically walking him through how he rescued her. At one point she even says to him that you seem much taller than you did on the plane.
Now John Bubber may have come across as a jerk or a fake for his act in taking credit for rescuing the passengers off the burning plane, but he did have a few heroic acts in his own right throughout the film. The first sign of him being a hero came when he was leaving the restaurant with gale and was bombarded with all the media coverage. He felt very uncomfortable with this and it was very visible in the film. John was a man who previous to this was down on his luck and living out of his car and on the borderline of being homeless basically. Since he knew the feeling he simply asked the media and everyone who gathered around to bring a blanket to a specific street where there were a lot of homeless people who are very cold at night. Now while he wasn’t the true hero everyone made him out to be, the movie kind of shows that in his own special way he really is. His other heroic act came when he was doing a visit to a children’s hospital. Being in front of the camera always made him feel shy and nervous because inside he knew the truth but there was a kid who was in really critical condition with a coma and they said it was highly unlikely he would pull out of it. John made sure to turn off the cameras so that it was a true moment of compassion with the sick child. The next day it was shown that the kid pulled out of it and he was thanking John Bubber as his hero. This particular scene shows that he was kind of destined to be this hero even though it was due to the fact that he lied in the first place. In the ending when John and Bernie are out on the ledge of the building is when Bernie points this out to him and tells him that if he was in his shoes he wouldn’t have been able to do what he did for that child.
The ending of the film also helps me prove what I have been writing about also. When John and Bernie are both on the ledge of the building is when Gale finally realizes and when Joey can see the truth. The hero was and wasn’t who they thought it was all this time. So I hope that we can see that there is a hero in each and every one of us to a certain degree.
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