what do you think of bad cop in the piece of resistance?
Bad Cop definitely got a lot more character development in the movie compared to the script.
His role in the og script is really just an evil lackey who chases after Emmet the whole time. In the entirety of the script, we don't see him do anything outside of that.
Honestly, I think that if that script ended up being the final product, people may or may not have ended up ignoring him in favor of other characters.
Or not, I've seen fandoms go crazy making up lore for characters that show up like- twice.
Gcbc is literally a personification of the stereotypical good cop, bad cop trope in movies and tv shows. The og script just labels him as 'bad cop', which is probably just a way to say that he's a 'bad' cop.
It's a kids movie. Makes sense.
But script Bad Cop is just a bad cop. That's basically the only thing going on with his character.
Movie Bad Cop is 'Bad' because he has a 'Good' side.
In the movie, Business wiped good cop away with a goddamn Q-tip, destroying that part of the 'good cop, bad cop' dynamic. Right after that, Bad Cop kragled his parents because he was ordered to.
Script Bad Cop doesn't have any of this. He doesn't have a 'good side'. He doesn't have parents. He doesn't have to face the consequences of blindly obeying everything the villain says.
At first, gcbc opposes Business' orders. But that opposition is mainly because Good Cop is the one who's now seeing that the kragle is a bad thing, and that causes the non-stop switching between the two of them, which results in Good Cop being wiped away for being too 'soft'.
That scene, where a part of a character essentially gets murdered, before they're forced to paralyze their parents, is one hell of a thing to be put in a kids movie. Honestly, I can respect the choice to put it there. Maybe it's just me, but I don't often see people talk about it.
Sure, people do talk about the angst of having this whole part of you removed without remorse, and freezing your parents in place forever, but I'm really thinking about the psychological horrors of having someone who's been with you your whole life, the closest thing you have to a brother, just erased. Bad Cop 100% does get trauma from this.
This is trauma that the script doesn't give him. This one scene gives him a lot more depth and complexity than just being Business' lackey.
After Emmet launched himself from the top of Octan tower, the masterbuilders escaped, and that's when Bad Cop helps them.
Where Good Cop had the realization before, Bad Cop has his now. Because now he's seeing whole worlds of innocent people being frozen in the name of Business' idea of 'perfection'.
Scribble Cop is one of the first things he 'makes'. An attempt to get back the piece of him that was taken away. And we can talk about the implications behind scribble cop another time. That's another thing I have many feelings about.
At that point, he's done with Business, he sees that the things he's been helping Business do is wrong, and now he wants to atone for all that he has done.
SCRIPT BAD COP DOESN'T DO THAT.
HE JUST BECOMES IRRELEVANT.
HE IS A BACKGROUND CHARACTER THAT IS JUST THERE AS A NUISANCE.
AT LEAST MOVIE GCBC HAS MORE TO THEM THAN THAT.
