Supporting characters are incredibly important to any movie. They add important context to the story and can help further explain the motivations of the main character. They are so important, in fact, that the Academy Awards started giving out a Best Supporting Actor/Actress award way back in 1937, at the 9th Academy Awards. These days, those awards are considered among the most prestigious Ocsars available, alongside the Best Actor/Actress, Best Picture, and Best Director awards.
In some cases, we can’t help but be captivated by the supporting character. We wonder what the story looks like from their point of view, as it’s often drastically different than the actual protagonist. In that spirit, we starting thinking about how some movies would have looked if the supporting characters were actually the lead. Just imagine the following 10 movies as completely different stories, if written from the perspective of the supporting roles.
Staff Sergeant Sean Dignam – The Departed
The Departed has tons of star power throughout, especially since Hollywood A-Listers Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio take on the starring roles, with the incredibly talented likes of Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and Anthony Anderson all having notable roles. However, we’re so much more curious to know more about Mark Wahlberg’s Sean Dignam, the man who heads up Boston’s undercover investigation unit.
Dignam is a short-tempered, foul-mouthed, no-nonsense kind of guy. Some of the movie’s most memorable lines come from his mouth (“I’m the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy”). He’s clearly very stressed, as his job is to organize and maintain those officers who end up in deep undercover roles, like DiCaprio’s character of Billy Costigan. Really, Sgt. Dignam might be the only guy who actually found out the truth after the brutal and deadly conclusion to the film. Watching him come to that realization would have made one helluva alternate movie.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/427912402065085576/ Via Pinterest