The 25 Most Important Characters of the Past 25 Years

Slate.com put together a list of the 25 most important “characters” from the past 25 years . . . so, dating back to 1994.  A lot of them are TV and movie characters, but a handful of them aren’t as straight-forward.

Here’s the Top 10, and why they made the list:

1.  Carmela Soprano, from “The Sopranos”, 1999 . . . Quote, “One of the finest performances in history applied to one of the best characters ever conceived.”

2.  Donald Trump, from “The Apprentice”, 2004 . . . “He was decisive.  He was feared . . . he was saucy and shrewd and glamorous and generous.  He was a serious businessman.  But he was fun.”

3.  Pikachu, from the “Pokémon” franchise, 1996 . . . “With more than 20 years of branding momentum, Pikachu is a kind of supercharged Mickey Mouse for our era.”

4.  Jay-Z, from the music of Jay-Z, 1995 . . . “No hip-hop artist has so deftly balanced a well-cultivated street authenticity . . . ‘character’ work . . .with such a virtuosic flair for corporate capitalism.”

5.  Hermione Granger, from the “Harry Potter” series, 1997 . . . “While Harry’s name adorned the covers, Hermione did all the work . . . she transformed over the series into one of J.K. Rowling’s most fully realized creations.”

6.  Jar Jar Binks, from “Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace”, 1999 . . . “When ‘Star Wars’ returned after 16 years, the movie’s klutzy, floppy-eared sidekick quickly became a symbol of its flaws and a lightning rod for criticism.”

7.  Miles Morales, from “Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man”, 2011 . . . “Miles was a compelling hero (reluctant, sensitive, eventually buoyant) whose story was not an imitation of Peter Parker’s but its own vibrant self.”

8.  Sarah Palin, from “Saturday Night Live”, 2008 . . . Tina Fey only came back to do Sarah because they looked alike, but, quote, “By the time the real-life Palin made an awkward appearance beside [her], the actual Palin seemed less real than her counterpart.”

9.  Willow Rosenberg, from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, 1997 . . . “[You] could not spit out a character more perfectly designed to be fiercely beloved than Willow, [who] grew from a nerdy teen into a self-actualized world-saving witch.”

10.  Hannah Horvath, from “Girls”, 2012 . . . “A truly pioneering antihero . . . willfully charting the outer limits not of criminality, but of likability.”

 

Check out the rest of the 25 here.