Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please! Let it be known throughout the sacred tubes that I, your humble reference librarian, have had the gauntlet cast before me by my beloved spouse to discover the origin of that obscure but oddly compelling bit of cheesy convention: THE VILLAINOUS NECK CRACK.
A bit of explanation. Earlier today, after I spent a pleasant moment amusing myself and annoying my honeybun by reciting at length a bit of Morpheus’ dialogue from The Matrix, she speculated aloud about how it started that the bad guy would crack his neck before a fight. Obviously, she was remembering Agent Smith doing same during one of his endless confrontations with Neo. But, as we well know, this bit of bad-guy action is now seen everywhere from Hollywood to Bollywood. How did this happen?
Now, your average person would stop, shrug, emit a noncommittal “Hmm, dunno,” and leave it at that. I admit I was tempted to do the same myself. But after I foolishly concurred in her questioning, the challenge was cast. I was ordered to go, run the origin of this convention to ground, and bring back its head. And so I set forth into the wild reaches of the Internet, seeking the Answer.
(Note: of course, this bit of idiocy is not limited to villains. Heroes do it too; one example that leaps to mind is Blade II. But we’re focusing on the villains here.)
One of the first stops at which Google drops us on our tour is a review of The Fifth Element, which states of antagonist Gary Oldman: “Though we never see his neck-cracking and pill-taking like in Leon…” Aha! Yes, I thought I remembered him doing that. Léon (also widely known as The Professional) came out in 1994. Pretty far back. Could this be it? Could this cliché have originated with the good Mr. Oldman, one of the most extreme and original bad guys in film? That would be nice.
But we shall not rest until we are sure, or until the trail grows cold. This I swear.
Next, I have the bright idea to look for sites on movie clichés in general. A moment later, while I’m trawling through The Movie Cliches List (which is surprisingly unhelpful, btw), my sweetie suggests to me that it might have originated with Kung Fu movies. This seems reasonable, so I start searching for various combinations of “kung fu”, “neck crack”, “movie”, and “cliche”.
After a few tries, this leads me to some gold: the Cracking Up page at Television Tropes & Idioms. This one points out that, indeed, Bruce Lee and other Kung Fu movie stars were fond of this move. Way of the Dragon, in which Lee royally kicked Chuck Norris’s ass at the Roman Colosseum, is mentioned. Came out in 1972.
I’d forgotten about Bruce Lee doing this–and, given his colossal influence on just about everything having to do with movie fighting, I think that’s about as good a place as any to end the quest. Of course, he probably took that particular bit of stretching badassery from Western boxing or weightlifting, or even from some Wing Chun showoff he saw in the fifties. But it would take a far more obsessed fan than I to trace his sources.
So, here the cinematic neck-cracking quest ends, with the baddest mofo who ever lived–Bruce Lee. I think that’s appropriate, don’t you?
And my sweetie was satisfied as well–which, of course, is all that matters.
