Saturday, April 28, 2007

The Eternal Question: Bueller or McFly?

Who's "cooler," Ferris Bueller or Marty McFly? - IMDB Message Board

Think about it. At first, the question seems simple. But upon further investigation, the matter becomes quite thorny. Each character is "cool" in his own distinct way. Bueller may trump McFly in a certain department, but McFly will dominate Bueller in a separate department. After thoroughly dissecting the issue, I've concluded that there really is no definitive answer.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

My vote is for McFly - Buller is cool, but there's something about him that's always annoyed me. Maybe it's his cockiness or his I-can-get-away-with-anything attitude. Marty has a bit more of that everyman quality.

yoggoth said...

MCFLY


this is not even a contest

Unknown said...

McFly has the edge on skills for sure - not even sure what Bueller's skills are, but time travel, fighting and guitar prowess are all ticks in Marty's boxes.
Problems with McFly winning outright:
- he mostly hangs around with an old 'eccentric' scientist
- his mom totally hits on him.

But totally McFly wins anyway. Hello? Hoverboard? Anyone?

Anonymous said...

McFly, definitely.
Bueller is cool in that way that high schoolers think that the class clown is cool. He gets away with whatever he wants, fools the principal (who is an idiot), and makes his friends pay for most of it.
McFly is cool in more of a Jim Stark sort of way. He's a rebel, but you can still look up to him as an adult.

Little Earl said...

Before we just go ahead and hand the trophy to McFly, allow me to offer a few words in defense of Bueller. The guy spends his whole "day off" trying to give his (decidedly uncool) friend Cameron a good time, when he could basically be hanging out with anybody. McFly, on the other hand, can travel through time and change the course of human history for the better, but instead he spends all his time running around worrying about himself and the future of his own family. He messes with the time-space continuum in countless ways, and for what? To keep his parents together? Aside from the fact that Bueller never would have even got in that mess in the first place, the fact is that Bueller serves a noble function for his school: by being the guy that undercuts the social order, he offers hope for all the other students. "I'm still stuck in school," they might say, "but if Ferris Bueller can get away with stuff, then the system might possibly collapse someday."

Or as Grace the secretary says:

"The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude!"

Unknown said...

You're right Little Earl - Bueller is a little saccharine. Undercutting the social order is both cool and uncool. He could do with a bit more laconic anti-heroism.

yoggoth said...

But laconic anti-heroism is the new heroism.