Edgy Mentors

These guys are still mentors in the traditional sense, yet they have a certain edge to them. They are slightly imperfect if you will, as is usually the case with all things edgy.

The character on the top right is the mentor of the protagonist Mathematician in the film Pi. At the start of the film we learn that he was once searching for patterns in the number Pi, however the task became so great he went mad and suffered a stroke. Thankfully he since gave up the search and retired to a life of quiet study. Later on in the film similar misfortunes come his way. In this way we are presented with a highly talented character who is still nevertheless human.

D.J Professor K (bottom right) in the game Jet Set Radio is a different case. He is merely an experienced D.J and general ghetto dog who's seen a lot of things come and go. Whilst the rest of the game's main characters are running around enjoying their youth on roller skates, he is preaching a ghetto gospel in the form of fresh phat beats and pearls of hood related wisdom on his pirate radio station like a really gangster Stephen Fry.

Next we have Morpheus who needs no introduction unless you've been living an a cupboard-if he does need an introduction then I suggest you go find a cupboard, climb in and stay there. Although at the beginning of the Matrix trilogy he seems to be the all knowing man with all the answers he soon becomes a bit of a Maverick and seemingly less and less important and more of a vehicle for ushering in talent rather than actually coaching it. Still, despite his abilities eventually paling in comparison to numerous other characters he still retains a certain level of knowing and value that is of more significance than the overly obvious attributes of his co-evils.

Woody (top left) is a character in This is England who is the leader of a bunch of benign northern skinheads. At the start of the film he meets the film's protagonist-a twelve year old boy-who he cheers up through showing him a few somewhat mischievous yet perfectly innocent ways of coping with growing up in the unlucky half of Thatcher's Britain. Woody is a person who possess similar qualities to traditional mentors yet has aspects about him that make him more human than any of them and thus the viewer can identify with him more easily.