Feeling bad for the hench

Long before Austin Powers did the cutaway to the henchman's family, devastated by his loss after he couldn't get out of the way of Austin's steamroller, I had a weird thing for the fates of odd henchmen.

There was no rhyme or reason to it, I'd just be watching some 80s action film with a massive body count, and would feel inexplicably sorry for some more schmuck who got on the wrong end of the hero's Uzi.

Sometimes it would be some random guy in a flat cap during the massacre at the drug factory in Robocop, or one of the poor dudes dying on the manicured lawns in Beverly Hills Cop. I know I'm supposed to be cheering on the good guys, who can only make the world a better place by bathing the ground in blood, but it still seemed a little extreme.

After all, every life has such complexity around it, and it's unlikely that all these thugs deserved the instant execution. They couldn't all be purely evil, some probably got conscripted into it, or were doing it for their family or some other noble reason. 

Life was tough enough for henchmen who worked for the Joker or any of the James Bond villains - they stood a good chance of being murdered in some horrible manner for the tiniest of infringements - but they didn't stand a chance when an actual goddamn hero kicked in the front door.

It's still happening. I can't watch any of the John Wick films without wondering if one particular bastard really deserved a bullet to the face (especially when he has excellent facial hair). But I never let any of this odd empathy for nameless scum get in the way of enjoying the movie I'm watching, because while violence is a terrible thing, these films are fiction. They're not real.

Still, I don't think I was the only one to wonder about the hench, judging by the Austin Powers joke (which was weirdly deleted in the American cut of the film), or the way the thoroughly excellent Venture Bros has had a deep exploration of the henchmen mentality (its conclusion - they're all legitimately out of their freakin' minds, but that doesn't mean they can't be good people.)

And there have been plenty of movies and TV and comics and novels that have delved into the hench mentality, giving the faceless goons some humanity. It won't save them the next time Robocop kicks in their fucking door, but it gives their inevitable fates a bit more weight.