Fictional Characters Who Came Face to Face with their Double [Random Pop Culture Top…something] – Part One

A little while ago I wrote about Fictional Twins (see here) and that got me thinking about all those other instances that were kind of like twins, but not really. And that’s led to this post, which is about all the different reasons that I can think of that characters in fiction run into apparent duplicates of themselves, and some of my favorite examples of each!

So the list here isn’t a countdown exactly–it’s in more of an intuitive order than a “worst to best” order. Each entry on the list is a reason why characters have exact doubles out there for them to run into (and there are a lot of reasons, it turns out), accompanied by one of my favorite examples for that reason.

And to be clear, we’re not just talking about stories where doubles of characters exist, but specifically where characters comes face to face with (it would seem)…themselves.

Almost Famous [50 New-Old Movies for the 51st Year #22]

Earlier this year, I turned 50 years old!  And to add to all the real life goals and challenges that that brings, I’ve created at least one as it relates to movies and this blog–watch a film I’ve never seen before which came out in each year of my life (thus the “Old-New” terminology), and then write a bit about it.  This is Post #22.  Spoilers ahead.  

A Most Wanted Man

A Most Wanted Man is apparently the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final film performance (although the next Hunger Games movies is still on its way), and certainly in it he doesn’t look at all well.  I have no idea how much of that is acting and how much (if any) is actually failing health, but from a film performance point of view it doesn’t matter, because Hoffman does a solid and praiseworthy job playing Günther Bachmann, the head of a small group of investigators operating out of Hamburg, where the 9-11 attacks were apparently planned, charged with the task of making sure that such a thing never happens again in that city.  When they become aware of the illegal arrival of a suspicious Chechen with a violent past, they see an opportunity to take down a respectable Muslim statesman who is secretly laundering money to terrorist organizations. 

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

There are friends of mine for whom this movie was the most anticipated film of the year – even more than Man of Steel, which I found incomprehensible.  But it turned out…they were right!  At least insofar as this was a better movie than the Superman reboot, or at least, less disappointing.