Someone Pointed Out How Movie Characters are Always Chomping on Apples When They Want to Seem Badass and Now You'll Never Unsee It

I have this thing. Call it a weird hang up. Call it OCD. Call it a character flaw. But once I catch onto something, I find it almost impossible to put it out of my mind. Like when I pick up on someone's verbal tic, like saying "At the end of the day" or something, I can't stop hearing it. Or movie and TV cliches like the Empty Coffee Cup Challenge I wrote about a while back. Once I detect one, it takes me completely out of the story and I can't watch it again. 

So it is with this trope discovered by someone other than me. Even though it's been right there in front of me and all of you, seemingly forever. But I never noticed how often it's used. Until now. 

Source - [W]hen I see someone eating an apple on-screen ... it’s far from a throwaway gesture. In fact, this simple act is a big, screaming, neon signpost of significance, usually demonstrating that the eater is a card-carrying villain, maverick badass or just super-arrogant.

Take Ajax from Deadpool. A straight-up sadistic brute of a heel, the British psychopath gnaws at an apple seconds before giving someone a casual throttling: textbook evil-apple-eating. 

… Harry Potter’s arch-rival Draco Malfoy is seen variously holding, eating and just plain admiring an apple in several films. If you want to go deeper into this one, there’s a popular fan-fiction theory about the romantic closeness of Draco to his apple, termed “Drapple.” …

Or how about Gerard Butler’s absolute unit of a king in 300: Leonidas isn’t the bad guy, but he sure is a violent fella — a badass, you might say. So unaffected is he by the spoils of war that the first thing on his mind post-battle is to crunch through a red beast. 

And it’s not just live action. There are tons of examples across animated works, from Family Guy to creepy anime series Death Note to Disney’s original Aladdin, where apples play a surprisingly big role, but are only eaten by certified bad guy Jafar. Apples are everywhere on both the big and small screen — just ask the movie-trashing minds behind the CinemaSins YouTube channel, who have a vendetta against them being eaten on film, as someone discovered when they started keeping a tally of all the hatred. …

There have been some clear screen nods to the biblical stuff, such as Pleasantville, when Marley Shelton rips an apple off a tree and tempts meek little Tobey Maguire, after which, things start to go sideways.

 Or Donald Sutherland’s stoner professor in Animal House, chewing an apple as he tries to explain John Milton’s retelling of the forbidden fruit faux pas in Paradise Lost, while leaning next to the word ‘SATAN’ chalked in caps on a blackboard. Subtle.

…

Harrison Ford didn’t let any of that stop him from sleazing it up in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, however. With a mouth full of citrus, he casually tries to seduce Kate Capshaw’s Willie Scott (who also takes a few bites, but seems to chew through it far more elegantly), laying the groundwork for the smug bastard side of apple-eating. 

Twenty-five years later, Chris Pine’s swaggering Captain Kirk perfects the art in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, demolishing an apple while nonchalantly crushing a seemingly impossible training simulation (he cheated, by the way).

Believe it or not, I kept this short. There is example after apple-y example in this piece that I didn't include. Mainly because it occurred to me part way through that I am a grown man obsessing over a character affectation in movies and it made me aware of the pointlessness of it. And really, the utter futility of my existence, since this is the kind of thing I get worked up about. But that doesn't mean it's not accurate. 

I'm hoping I can push past this and not drive everyone around me nuts by pointing this out every time I witness it from now on. But I know better. Personal history has taught me this will happen, as soon as I can watch movies around other people again. I just hope by that time, bad guys and characters trying to come across as badass by eating fruit will be the biggest problem the world faces. And I also know I'll never eat another one without pretending I'm one of them.