Whenever John Travolta Plays a Bad Guy He Looks Like a 1990s Executive in a Midlife Crisis

Why is it that every time John Travolta plays a bad guy, instead of looking evil and menacing, he looks like he’s a mid-level executive in the mid- to late-1990s experiencing a textbook mid-life crisis?

It’s always the standard play-by-play for how to enter your 50s in complete denial. He either shaves his head to try and play the baldness off as cool or grows it out too long in back while everyone else in the office is on Google Chat saying how much of an idiot he looks like. Then he tops it off with some retarded facial hair that he read about in Wired magazine when he’s really just hoping it will draw some attention away to the terrible decisions he made with the hair on top of his head. As though people will think the facial hair is so idiotic that they won’t comment on how stupid his hair looks.

Then he tops it off with overpriced sunglasses that he saw a character wear in a movie and some jewelry (because that’s what the kids do!) and you have movie after movie of John Travolta looking like a fumbling idiot instead of a menacing bad guy. Swordfish, Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 (the original of which came out three years before Saturday Night Fever) and the upcoming From Paris With Love, which will be out of theaters three days after it opens.

Which is why I don’t understand why they don’t make him a world-conquering bad guy who is motivated by his mid-life crisis. This would be the role of a lifetime for John Travolta. Let’s say you have a guy who finds out that all his coworkers say he’s the joke of the office behind his back (inciting incident, thrilling!). And to get revenge, not only does he leave his wife and then fail to pick up anyone without buying a fast car to trick women into bed with him, but he sets out to take over the world motivated by his desire to have people think that he’s cool.

What I’m saying is that John Travolta could engineer an entire version of The Matrix so that humans are all unconscious and being farmed to power this company while they’re all in a dream land that makes them think John Travolta is cool.

Finally we would have a role where his retarded goatees and bald hat and trying to look cool while being in a poorly-staged car chase would fit perfectly. Martin Lawrence co-stars as the wise-cracking friend who’s going through the same thing but approaches it with humor and appeals to the entire race of people that would never see a John Travolta movie. Gold.

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