I love movies! I'm not sure I've ever really thought about the different (or lack of difference) of the personalities of the trucks that are featured in movies. After reading this guest post, I'm sure I'll be plagued with missing plot lines in the next few movies I see as I pay attention to the vehicles instead of the action that's happening on screen.
Stereotypes are the currency of any good Hollywood blockbuster, boiling down nuance and background into a few easy to digest bullet points that can then be painted across the screen as quickly as possible - preferably with a few explosions in the background for emphasis.
Pickup trucks occupy a special place in movie lore, having been rigidly assigned to play a few well-defined roles that crop up again and again across a wide range of different movies. Let's take a quick look at the three myths about pickups that Hollywood wants you to believe.
Pickups = Hillbillies. No Exceptions.
There was a very long period that began in the 1960s and stretched all the way to the 1990s where the mere act of driving a pickup truck onscreen instantly tipped the audience off that the character behind the wheel was either ignorant, simple or uncultured. In fact, they were probably all three, and probably also wore overalls and a greasy mechanic's cap to bed at night. You see, Hollywood decided early on that pickups were for hill folk or country bumpkins who had never before seen a building taller than a single story.
Towards the middle of the 80s, the list of movie characters that could drive a pickup expanded to include redneck survivalists (Red Dawn) and burnt-out homicide detectives (Lethal Weapon). Even movies from the past 20 years have done little to recast the pickup as anything other than a celebration of the vehicle's early typecasting: witness its role as a chariot for freshman-paddling high school seniors in Dazed and Confused, or the animated stand-in Mater in Cars who teaches our children all they need to know about the intellectual expectations associated with pickups.
Pickups = Unstoppable Transportation For Smart People. Especially If There's a Tornado.
Let's face it - if you're a world-renowned storm chaser barreling down the road as fast as possible trying to get out of the path of an oncoming tornado, you probably appreciate the fact that little is going to be able to stop your Dodge Ram. The movie Twister raised the IQ of pickups on the silver screen, but these types of roles are so few and far between that they do little to counteract the immense power of the established "trucks for dummies" stereotype. The fact that the "scientists" in Tremors also drove a pickup while evading giant man-eating sandworms probably didn't do much to help the cause, either.
Pickups = Killer Robots. Uh-oh.
Badass robots seem to have a thing for pickups, too - at least, the ones that make it to the multiplex each summer. Consider the fact that pickups were used to convey, avoid, or attempt to destroy killer robots in all three Terminator flicks
Not only that, but when the makers of Transformers needed an appropriately rugged vehicular avatar for Ironhide, the Autobot weapons specialist, what did they end up choosing? A Hummer? Nope - Ironhide assumed the form of a GMC TopKick pickup, so he could, um, "blend in" with all the other TopKicks that you see out on the road every day, just taking the kids to soccer practice while towing 25,000 lbs.
Pickups in Hollywood = Schizophrenic at Best
It would seem, then, that Hollywood's three most treasured myths about pickup trucks are contradictory or at the very least confusing when taken all together at once. Cheer up, truck fans - while it's unlikely that you'll ever see a movie starring a Harvard-graduate robot that transforms into a pickup truck smoking a pipe and quoting Shakespeare while it baby-sits a gaggle of cute little kids, at least you don't have to deal with the pressures the Herbie: The Love Bug put on Volkswagen Beetle owners. And don't forget to bring your pickup truck to a service shop for a windshield calibration, oil change and other routine maintenance! So if you want to Buy a Pickup Truck or a New GMC truck for sale, don't let these Hollywood myths stop you!
About the Author: When he isn't writing about killer robots, author Benjamin Hunting writes about trucks for TundraHeadquarters.com and TacomaHQ.com.