Motorbikes and bikers have been cool ever since they were invented, and people making movies quickly saw this and began making movies using cool bikers to make their movies cooler, even some movies just about cool bikers. The very coolest motorcycle riders in movies or TV all have one thing in common though, something that is gold dust for Hollywood scriptwriters and directors, that they are all cool.
Perhaps the original cool motorcycle rider is Marlon Brando at his menacing best in The Wild One, a 1960s melodrama where the young Brando and his motorcycle gang roll into a rural town and he falls in love with the sheriffs daughter, with dramatic consequences. His defiance of authority and willingness to disrespect his social betters means he is still cool today.
Cool bikers don’t have to be clean and tough though, a double act with designs on Brando’s crown came along in the two Easy Riders Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in the 1967 classic Easy Rider where they play two filthy hippies travelling across America on massive motorbikes carrying not only drugs in their gas tanks, but the idealism and freedom of the rainbow generation. They die at the end.
After the two hippy spokesman were killed by intolerant Americans, bikers took a different approach to being cool. Rather than portraying themselves as pioneering outsiders in the great American tradition, they came to resemble barbarian hordes taking their cues from German and Scandinavian marauders of the 14th and 15th centuries.
The culmination of this trend is arguably best symbolized by the Mad Max trilogy. The series depicts a world where resources are low and society is disintegrating with many of the roads controlled by sadistic biker gangs. The world of the movies allowed for insane tribes of bikers to develop and wage war on not only the road warrior, but anybody who was unlucky enough to be in their path.
An honorable mention should also go to Che Guevara, played by Gabriel Garcia Bernal in the 2007 adaptation of Guevara’s novel ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ which tells the true story of the revolutionaries travels around South America before meeting Castro. Although more about the man than the bike, he is still one of the coolest motorcyclists ever and the film is great.
The overall winner though has to be Marianne Faithful in the equally controversial and ridiculous art movie Girl on a Motorcycle where the star escapes from the eve of a wedding that she does not want to ride a powerful motorcycle around the highways of Europe while fantasizing about steamy sex scenes and wearing nothing but a leather jumpsuit. If you don’t know why that is cool, no one can tell you.
The biggest problem when deciding on the coolest motorcycle riders in movies or TV is the fact that there are so many. Popular culture is loaded with cool people riding motorbikes and there is probably a book with all of them in, this is just the tip of the iceberg that you are seeing right here.
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