Film's On-Screen Transformations
Characters Undergo Major Change, from Rocky to the T-1000 to GI Jane
Rocky vs. The Russian - Rocky IV (1985)
Everybody's favorite underdog came out of retirement (the first time) to avenge his best bud's death at the hands of The Russian. Getting back into fighting shape requires Rocky to dead-lift sides of beef, pull a log-laden dogsled through piles of snow, and jog through the frigid Russian countryside to the inspiring beat of Survivor's Burning Heart. Juxtaposed against The Russian's glistening, 'roid-injected rippling bod pumping away on state-of-the-art equipment, the Italian Stallion's old-school Cold War transformation warms our hearts time and time again.
Sarah Connor - The Terminator (1984) & T2: Judgment Day (1991)
With the bad guy turned good and a new technological terror on the loose, James Cameron's sequel to Terminator yielded many surprises, not the least of which was the total physical transformation of Sarah Connor. From mousy underachiever with jiggly body parts in the first film to hard-nosed mercenary with abs, arms, and ass of steel seven years later, the sight of Connor doing chin-ups on her overturned bed frame in the psych ward is about as impressive as the T-1000, without the aid of special effects.
The T-1000 - Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Speaking of the T-1000, it may quite possibly be the coolest bad guy ever, technologically speaking. Fluid as mercury, stronger than steel and faster than a Mack truck (literally), he was one mean morphing mofo. The seamless transitions from amorphous liquid metal blob to bad-ass cop to sword-arm wielding foster mom heralded a new era in special effects from one of the pioneers of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in film, director James Cameron, whose amorphous water tentacle in 1989's The Abyss marked the film debut of 3D digital CGI.
Ed Norton as Aaron/Roy Stampler - Primal Fear (1996)
Without any prosthetics, make-up, or special effects, Ed Norton transforms from meek & mild altar boy Aaron Stampler to knife-you-in-the-face-for-looking-at-him-funny Roy with such calmness, it's terrifying. He brings electric intensity to an otherwise run-of-the-mill suspense story and makes both characters equally fascinating. Norton won the Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor for the role, his feature film debut.
G.I. Jane (1997)
Demi Moore might not be the first actress who springs to mind when you think "action hero" but she sure pulls it off as Jordan O'Neill, the first female entrant in the Navy SEAL program. She transforms from a relatively fit naval intelligence officer into a lean, mean, fighting machine. In the hail of derision and abuse that rains down on her, O'Neill takes it like a man, persevering through the grueling, rigorous training where others fail. She gets punched in the face, she does one-armed push-ups, she shaves her head - in other words, she kicks major ass and looks awesome doing it.
The Transformative Nature of Film
From 1941's The Wolfman to 1981's An American Werewolf in London to this year's Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, make up and special effects have aided on-screen transformations since the beginning of film, and even earlier: published in 1897, the play Cyrano de Bergerac proved the power of the nose, from its own remake 90 years later as Roxanne (1987) with Steve Martin, to Nicole Kidman's virtual disappearance into Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002). Billy Bob Thornton is unrecognizable in Slingblade (1996), as is John Travolta in Hairspray (2007) and Eddie Murphy, long before the Klumps came to town, in Coming to America (1988).
Underneath all the movie magic, though, it's up to the actors to sell the story. Similar to Linda Hamilton's physical makeover in T2, Robert De Niro did it years earlier in Raging Bull (1980) and Ed Norton did it years later in American History X (1998). Sally Field shows many sides in Sybil (1976), Ellen Page goes from wide-eyed naïf to crazy-scary faster than you can dial the To-Catch-a-Predator hotline in Hard Candy (2005), and Jeff Bridges undergoes a Tony Stark-like transformation in The Fisher King (1991).
Movies are all about transformation, whether of character or circumstance. That's the beauty of film; regardless of genre, with or without effects, movies by their very nature transform us all, even if only for a few hours.
