Johnny Worthington III

[pitbulllady]

I have to admit I felt a bit awkward starting this thread, lol, but I had to get it off my chest. I don't think that any character has ever caused me so much inner conflict as THIS guy has. I started out flat-out hating Johnny, especially when I found out how he treated Randall, using him and then kicking him out, for really no good reason, and ESPECIALLY knowing that one of the main reasons he even recruited Randall in the first place was to drive that final wedge between Randall and Mike, to hurt Mike, mostly. I can't say that Johnny is a nice guy, either, but now that I've seen the movie three times, I have a deeper understanding of why he is the way he is. As with Randall and Steve Buscemi, Johnny's voice actor, the incomparable Nathan Fillion, really was able to provide some remarkable insight with his personal take on Johnny's character and his thought processes and the world he comes from that really made me see Johnny in a much more sympathetic light, as someone besides a jerk-a$$ preppy with a lot of muscle who uses and discards Randall like last week's garbage.
By getting to know more about Johnny's family, we can get more inside HIS big ole' head, but it's a rather sad picture when all is said and done. Nathan described Johnny's father, who goes by the rather redneck-sounding nickname of "John-John", as an iron-fisted family "monarch" who raised his son with the mantra, "I do not tolerate losers and I will not RAISE a loser", basically instilling in Johnny not only an extreme sense of perfectionism, but a profound fear of failure. Johnny's dad's love is not unconditional; there are strings attached. He's had to EARN the love of his own father and work constantly at maintaining it, no matter what the cost, including stepping on others, and when you think about this, it's really sad to know that he's grown up with the understanding that any little failure or screw up on his part will result him being shunned and possibly thrown out himself by the people HE loves the most-his own family. That's a helluva lot of awful pressure for a kid to grow up with, for even someone who's still only in his early 20's, as Johnny is in the movie, to have to live with. Johnny basically treats others around him as his father has treated HIM, as "subjects" rather than as friends or equals, and they have to live up to HIS expectations in order to stay in his good graces. In a way, even though Johnny and Randall come from drastically different worlds, in terms of their socio-economic backgrounds, they are also very similar in their fear of failure and of losing, of being ridiculed, and they are both trying, in the limited way they know how, to prove their own value to the rest of the world and to themselves. Johnny's greatest mental strength is his uncanny ability to "read" people, to spot their weaknesses and their strengths and figure out what makes them "tick", and how to use that and manipulate that to his advantage. We see him doing that with Sulley, with Mike, and with Randall. He knows what Randall is wanting, what Randall's emotional Achilles heel is, and knows how to use this to control Randall and get back at Mike at the same time. He also knew that Sulley was a potential problem down the line eventually, that Sulley would have questioned and challenged Johnny's authority at some point. You can actually SEE Johnny carefully observing and assessing people he meets, sizing them up in ways that even Jethro Gibbs on "NCIS" would be impressed by! Makes me hope that at some point, he'll manage to shake off his family's negative influence and turn himself around and try to make ammends for those he's hurt, including Randall, because if there's anyone who will know that Mike and Sulley are lying about what happened to Randall and trying to hide something, it would be Johnny! He'll see through them like they're made of Cellophane!

I have to also confess that I do find Johnny to be an extremely ATTRACTIVE individual from a physical perspective, I won't lie about it! He's got a gorgeous physique, and a very expressive face, what can I say? NO, he won't replace Randall in that dept. but I'd be lying to say that I don't find him attractive! In fact, there were quite a few male characters in this movie who were quite handsome, including "Frightening" Frank McCray, and I don't think that Pixar didn't know this, either. Johnny's physique, though, is what makes him unique among his type of antagonist. Most of the rich, preppy types of antagonists portrayed in movies and on tv or comics tend to be all talk, no action. They are only a threat because of their financial status and standing in the "upper echelon" of society-who THEY know, in other words. From a physical perspective, though, they're wimps, weaklings; take away their money and connections and they have nothing. Johnny Worthington III is built like a line backer. He's all muscle, and you can even see the muscles rippling under two-three layers of clothing AND fur and the bottom of a well-developed "six pack" starting at the hem of that ROR sweater, so Johnny has plenty with which to back up his threats. He also has a temper, and that combo makes Johnny someone you definitely do NOT want to fudge around with! Randall's probably run afoul of this type of guy more than once in the past, with painful results, so it's easy to see how he'd both admire Johnny and be terrified of him at the same time. That scene where Johnny enters the Simulator room in his competition against Mike really emphasized that not only is Johnny physically powerful, but he's also very agile and quick himself, almost in contrast to his massive build, and he is quite comfortable moving either in an upright, bipedal stance or in "four wheel drive", so to speak, so he would be a very formidable opponent for anyone.

pitbulllady

[RandallBoggs]

I'm sure Randall would have something to say about somebody comparing him and Johnny heh heh. Let's just say, while I understand myself, for him...the conversation would be far from PG rated heh heh heh.

*shakes head* It's true...women swoon for a great bod...
What was the point of movies like Shadow Hal again? Heh heh heh.

[insomnia1993]

I really, really hate to agree with you guys, especially with how annoyingly arrogant he can be, but I'd be lying if I said he wasn't nice to look at... <///<;;;

[pitbulllady]

Crazy Diamond recently made a suggestion in a comment on a piece of art by a wonderful German artist over on DA that REALLY struck a chord and made sense to me. I'd had this thought in the back of my head that Johnny Worthington reminded me a LOT of one of my favorite TV characters-actally, TWO characters from the same TV series sorta rolled into one-but I didn't say anything because I figured it was too "out there" and no one else would get it. But that head-slap thing that he does with Chet, and presumably has done with other members of his team as well, immediately made me think of "Leroy Jethro Gibbs" on the "NCIS" tv series, which I love! At the same time, Johnny still has that immature, bullying, narcissistic "Anthony DiNozzo" thing going on, too, which I chalk up largely to him being still very young, having been raised in a privileged, sheltered environment but one largely devoid of love, especially from his father(both Johnny and Tony have some serious "daddy issues"). Johnny has a lot of potential REAL leadership skills, though, and like Gibbs, he has zero tolerance for slackers, he has his own list of "Johnny's Roles", he requires his team to put in 110%, he can assert absolute control over someone with just a couple of soft-spoken words, or no words at all, and-I'm not sure where I read this-he has and addiction a thing for coffee, which is probably where Randall picked up that habit. No one messes with Johnny's coffee if you want to live, lol. Something I REALLY noticed about Johnny, though, is his almost uncanny ability to "read" people. He does this almost constantly in the movie, if you pay attention. He's always watching others closely, scrutinizing and no doubt evaluating their words, actions, body language, etc., looking out for weaknesses and strengths, attributes that HE can use to his own advantage. He knows how to manipulate others, to play individuals against one another or to get unlikely partners to work together. I have no doubt that early on, Johnny spotted trouble in James Sullivan, although he also knew of Sulley's potential. He knew that somewhere down the line, Sulley would have challenged him, and would not have been an effective team player in the long run, so that was one more reason to let him go. Johnny also no doubt spotted real Scarer potential and team ability in someone that everyone else had overlooked-Randall Boggs, and probably played a role in Randall's more positive character development that most people conveniently ignore, and that's Randall having gained some degree of self-confidence. Too bad that Johnny's "Tony DiNozzo" side took over from his "Jethro Gibbs" side during and after the Scare Games, though. Still, the fact that HE approached Randall meant that he not only saw Randall's potential as a team player and effective Scarer, but that he was unable to spot Randall's insecurities, his fear, his loneliness and sense that Mike had rejected his friendship-all things that Randall was trying to keep hidden from everyone-and realized that he could use those things to get back at Mike, again, that "DiNozzo" side showing through. I can guarantee that with a bit more practice and self-discipline, Johnny would be a formidable force to face in an interrogation room, and he would not have to raise his voice or do much of anything at all to know exactly what you were thinking, what you were going to do next, and get you to confess everything. I'd love to see him get a job, after the Scaring field is blown apart by Mike and Sulley, investigating potential crimes and cover-ups and improprieties at various utilities factories like MI and his former employee, Fear Co. If ANYONE could get to the bottom of what happened to Randall and know that Mike and Sulley were hiding something, it'd be Johnny. And he'd be the CDA's worst nightmare, too.

pitbulllady

[mintygreen]

He's an interesting character although I'm not personally into him.

I actually rarely go for guys that are "built" and often prefer skinny guys.

[pitbulllady]

Well, that's the odd thing-I normally don't go for the big muscular guys myself, and I especially am not usually attracted to preppy guys, but there's just this "undercurrent" of...I don't know...something else going on with Johnny, that there's a lot more to him than that. Randall has certainly taught me that first impressions aren't always accurate and that you have to look a lot deeper than what you see on the surface. It would be easy to dismiss Johnny as just another snobbish spoiled rich kid with an attitude, just like it's easy for so many people to dismiss Randall as a jealous, mean d*** who just wanted to be in ROR because he thought he was better than everyone else, who'd abandon his "best friend"(poor St. Mike)to be "one of the cool kids".

pitbulllady

[lizardgirl]

Johnny actually really disappointed me when I finally saw MU. I already figured that he probably had a lot of pressure from his family to succeed at university and to maintain their reputation, and that in a sense he and Sulley had perhaps similar experiences growing up, with everyone around them 'expecting great things', so to speak.

And while I don't doubt that this is all true, and although it's great that Nathon Fillion has expanded on the character in interviews, I ended up thinking of Johnny as yet another missed opportunity in MU, yet another character that could've been developed to be just a little bit more than simply playing a role, but ended up being rather two dimensional (despite his charming manner). There aren't even any hints of that familial pressure that Nathon Fillion suggests, there aren't any hints of anything beyond Johnny being a bit of an elitist twerp. At least with Randall in MI, although he was clearly an antagonist, he hinted at the pressure he was under by certain things he said or did. In MU, its possible to give Randall the benefit of the doubt seeing as he was so nice to begin with, but it's also a perfectly acceptable interpretation that Randall WAS just being a bit of a richard (though of course that is not the interpretation I've gone with personally). As far as I could tell with Johnny, although it is likely that he was under a lot of pressure, if we base our conclusions purely on what happens in MU, there's not much to draw from and it ends up being (reasonable) conjecture more than anything else, just like it is with Randall. There's nothing wrong with character development not being obvious, but we had a lot more to work with with Randall considering he does change throughout MU and indeed into MI. With Johnny, we had a couple of scenes, a few lines, all of which were very consistently negative and did not, in general, give us much of a hint as to the pressures that he was under (even if it was likely that he was under those pressures).

However, one thing I DID like about him was that he wanted Sulley to achieve well academically and not just to rely on the family name. It shows that he himself values more than just the name, and this perhaps does reflect how he himself feels about riding on familial coattails.

I see more of a parallel between him and Sulley than between him and Randall, though. I mean, all four main characters (Mike, Sulley, Randall and Johnny) ALL have a fear of failure (even if it's failure in different realms- so for Mike, it's academic failure, for Randall, it's social failure, and so on) and all of them feel like they have something to prove one way or another. But Sulley and Johnny have that family name to live up to, have always 'succeeded' in the public eye, and feel the need to maintain the image they've got, rather than to create a new impression entirely. Mike and Randall, in contrast, aren't trying to maintain what's happened before, but instead feel the need to succeed in realms that they've failed in before. And they don't feel this need because of family expectations, but because of a desire that comes from within, and that in both Mike and Randall's cases probably originated from mistreatment by their peers.

So it's interesting that whilst Mike and Sulley manage to share and understand each other's fears, even though they are from different sources, Randall and Johnny are unable to do so. Similarly, Sulley and Johnny end up handling that familial pressure in different ways, and again, Mike and Randall go down two very different paths, as we know...

As for whether he's attractive or not, hmm, not my cup of tea- I'm with mintygreen, I like my guys thin and lean. However, I can see the appeal; that fur of Johnny's does look silky smooth!

[pitbulllady]

That's probably the best way to sum up MU-Missed Opportunities. There is so much more that they could have done with the character developments/insights of Randall, Johnny and many others, but I can see how doing that would have made the movie too long and lost the interest of the younger audience members, who can barely sit through a typical 23-minute tv cartoon. There are actually some descriptions by Pixar artists in the "Art of..." book, though, which also verify the pressure that Johnny is under and how he, like Sulley, is trying to live up to a family name, but UNLIKE Sulley, in Johnny's case, most of that pressure comes directly from his family itself, and his father especially. With Sulley, it was more like outside people(other than his family) were the ones who expected "great things" from him, while with Johnny, he had THAT, plus his own family. I never really got that impression that Sulley's family would have been extremely angry with him had he failed, just disappointed, while with Johnny, there seemed to be that undercurrent of "I'll never speak to you or OF you again if you fail". He DOES, though, as you pointed out, LG, value more than simply relying on a name, and perhaps that's a bit of rebellion on his part against his father, a push for independence. I can understand how Pixar would have simply used Johnny as a "static antagonist" though, not intending for him to go through any real development, because his primary purposes were to oppose Mike and "turn" Randall by acting as a negative influence on HIM. The main problem I have with MU is that it was so very about MIKE, that the other characters' struggles and emotions were largely left out because to MIKE, THEY didn't matter. This movie made so many people just absolutely love Mike Wazowski, but for me, it has cemented in my mind that Mike is most definitely NOT someone I would want to associate with at all!

pitbulllady

[mintygreen]

Jul 26, 2013 0:31:33 GMT -5 pitbulllady said:

Well, that's the odd thing-I normally don't go for the big muscular guys myself, and I especially am not usually attracted to preppy guys, but there's just this "undercurrent" of...I don't know...something else going on with Johnny, that there's a lot more to him than that. Randall has certainly taught me that first impressions aren't always accurate and that you have to look a lot deeper than what you see on the surface. It would be easy to dismiss Johnny as just another snobbish spoiled rich kid with an attitude, just like it's easy for so many people to dismiss Randall as a jealous, mean d*** who just wanted to be in ROR because he thought he was better than everyone else, who'd abandon his "best friend"(poor St. Mike)to be "one of the cool kids".

pitbulllady

Hmm...so do you think maybe Johnny has the image he portrays but that maybe when he's alone he's a bit more eccentric and perhaps has some hobbies that no one would think he has?

Imagine if as a child he liked art and liked to paint things and what not....but his parents told him he won't get anywhere doing that and his father was very harsh and forced him to be set into living life a certain way.

EDIT: Oh and yeah, I'm not sure I'd want to be around Mike either....he seems like a real stress-inducer somehow. Stressful for the people around him. He's kind of funny sometimes....but I generally feel like that's the only thing he really has going for him in terms of me ever wanting to be friends with him. Granted, I do try to give everyone a chance to be my friend.

[pitbulllady]

I definitely think that there's sides to Johnny that he doesn't show often, at least not while he's around his ROR brothers or other students. He's trying to maintain that image of someone who is sophisticated, but tough and in-charge at the same time. He acts like he's very secure with his place in the world, but to me, it's obvious that he ISN'T, not at all, and he knows that his house of cards is a fragile one at best. The sad thing is, how long can he keep that up? I have to also wonder how many genuine friends that Johnny has, and I mean those who'd stick by him no matter what, even if his rich-kid status were to disappear. How many of those willing to associate with him are really just riding his coattails for their own status and protection? I'm pretty sure, as much as many here won't like to read it, that Randall was one of those. I don't think that he ever considered Johnny as an actual friend, or vice versa, and cannot image them(as their college-aged selves, anyway) confiding in each other. Randall needed the security that hanging around someone like Johnny afforded; I mean, who is gonna mess with him as long as he's got THIS guy to (hopefully) defend him? Johnny needed that sixth team member, but that was the extent of that. Even Pixar has pretty much come out and said that Johnny's relationship with his own father isn't that great. He's PROUD of his old man, and looks up to him, but he is afraid that some day, he's gonna mess up badly enough that he is going to bring shame to his family and his father won't have anything to do with him anymore, and yeah, I can see his father discouraging him from doing anything like painting or playing a musical instrument, or from listening to whatever musical styles that aren't considered "tasteful" for someone of their status, like-Heaven FORBID-Country Music or something! The other thing is, Johnny mistakes other students deferring to him as respect, but it's more like they're just afraid to challenge him. You can tell that Big Red and the guy from Omega Howl were ticked off at him for barging in when they were trying to both recruit Sulley, but they gave way and didn't say anything. I think that deep down, Johnny knows that he can only hold onto that Alpha position for so long before others either leave him or some challenger comes along who can take it from him. He puts up a good front, but he's really just about got as many insecurity issues as Randall does. They just manifest differently.

pitbulllady