The Princess Bride Isn’t The Best Movie Starring A Professional Wrestler, It’s This Sci-Fi Cult Classic
Rowdy Roddy Piper's starring role as Nada in They Live makes John Carpenter's eerily relevant sci-fi film the best movie starring a wrestler.
Professional wrestlers have been trying to become actors for generations, but jumping from the squared circle to the silver screen has always been viewed as a bigger hurdle than headlining Wrestlemania. When people of wrestlers turned actors, the first name that comes to mind is Dwyane “The Rock” Johnson, a third-generation grappler that is now the biggest star on the planet, but none of his films are as good as one made 15 years before he went to Hollywood. In 1988, WWE legend “Rowdy” Roddy Piper hit the big screen in John Carpenter‘s They Live and starred in one of the greatest sci-fi cult movies of all time.
Roddy Pipper stars as Nada, a downtrodden construction worker that comes across a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see the world as it is: filled with subliminal messages about control and quietly overrun by invading capitalist aliens. Wearing the sunglasses turns colorful advertisements into monochromatic messages saying “Obey” or “Marry and Reproduce” while also revealing the fleshless face of the alien invaders. The plot is simple and easily explained, keeping with director John Carpenter’s typical high-concept movies, but the magic is all in the execution.
Fighting against studio executives that wanted the aliens to be cannibals instead of corporate suits, Carpenter filled They Live with anti-corporate messaging in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Case in point, the most famous scene in the movie and the best fight scene in Hollywood history, between Roddy Piper’s Nada and Keith David as his best friend, Frank Armitage (also Carpenter’s pseudonym as the writer of the film).
The scene starts very simply, with Nada trying to get Frank to put on the sunglasses so he can see the truth of their world, but Frank doesn’t want to get involved and starts punching Nada. What begins as a tussle eventually escalates to include groin shots and a belly-to-back suplex, but ultimately they are friends, so when weapons get involved, they get tossed aside, and the fists start flying again. Unlike modern fight scenes, there is no shaky cam, and unlike any film with The Rock, Roddy Piper gets his butt kicked by Keith David during the struggle.
Reading into just this one six-minute scene provides enough content to fill a regular movie. Frank’s fighting because he doesn’t want to see the truth, scared of what it might be, and Nada wants to rescue his friend, that doesn’t even realize he requires rescuing. From the way they talk to each other and, ultimately how they join forces, it’s no wonder this one scene is a classic. Even Saints Row 4, a video game starring Keith David, includes a parody of the fight scene when dealing with, again, aliens that have control of the population.
That is what ultimately makes They Live the greatest movie starring a wrestler: Roddy Piper plays a regular guy without superhuman strength and the same intelligence as everyone else; he wants to make the world right and wake up the human population to the insidious danger of the aliens. It’s easy to forget that Piper is, in reality, a larger-than-life character cast in the film after John Carpenter saw his grudge match against Adrian Adonis at Wrestlemania III.
Most people don’t even know that one of the most famous quotes in action movie history comes from They Live, when Nada says, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.” Improperly credited to the video game Duke Nukem 3D, Piper’s famous line was an ad-lib. One of the greatest talkers in the history of the WWF, of course, the insane Scotsman would be able to come up with a line like that when put on the spot.
From the amazing fight scene to the still-relevant plot and the ingenious alien concept, They Live is not only the single best film starring a pro wrestler but also one of the best sci-fi films ever. With all due respect to Andre the Giant, but it’s better than The Princess Bride.
