Bravado

Rango: Warning, this blog contains spoilers.

Rango is a film about a pet lizard lost in the wilderness. I suggest you go see it, and count the number of other movies it references throughout (I lost count around 30).

Rango is targeted as an outsider and a soft city-slicker type who will never survive in the harsh conditions of a desert. So he does the only thing he can think of – ill-advisedly, he lies. And the audience cringes, because this can spell nothing but disaster. Rango creates, off the cuff, a persona and an alias a lot tougher than he is, as a front to intimidate his tormentors. He bluffs. It’s all bravado, bluster, boasting. There’s no substance to it whatsoever. Is there?

But that’s the thing – we all become whatever story we hear about ourselves most often. He tells a convincing story about his heroics to a crowded bar, and is treated like the tough guy he pretends to be – is now expected to be. And so what can he do, but live up to it?

The word bravado implies empty boasts, bluster, a front. But there’s a place for it when we bluster ourselves into a corner from which only actual bravery can extricate us. And that corner, back to the wall, facing off with the villains and the monsters, is exactly where the great stories come from – at least, as far as Hollywood’s concerned.