Hologram Man

Somehow, it's hard to take Slash very seriously as a villain, even when he's not giving people a taste of the back of his photons. Maybe because he looks kinda like if Fat Mac from Always Sunny finally got a shot at his dream of playing a big budget beefcake action star, but then he decided to fuck Anthony Kiedis and have a weird latex rasta baby with him instead. He's like watching half of a really uncomfortable white guy Milli Vanilli cosplay contest. He's like if Bob Marley threw away the bong and microphone and spent every day at the gym doing only upper body work. Also, this:

It's fine, though, because nobody in the movie takes him seriously either - least of all the proud members of LAPD's finest, who are supposedly trying to stop his crime ultra-spree, yet suspiciously good at making it a million times worse with their cartoonishly ludicrous blunders at every time. No matter how many of their bullets sail merrily on through Slash's hard, rubbery torso while he strolls casually through exploding buildings, their plan is always - and only - "QUICK, SHOOT THE GUY MADE OF FUCKING LIGHT SOME MORE!"

On the other hand, maybe the gross incompetence of the future cops is some kind of sneaky commentary on the decline of public education, or maybe the smog has finally just melted everyone's brains in future California. That would go a long way towards explaining some other questions we had, like "why is the Chairman's favorite hobby staring into his closed drapes with dark sunglasses on?" or "if the lead henchman is so sensitive about his eyepatch, why did he choose 'One-Eye' as his criminal underworld nickname"? Wait a minute, that doesn't explain shit - it can't be the pollution, since all of them live inside the terrible Paulie Shore movie from 1996 that the city built around downtown LA.

Ultimately none of this matters anyway, because Hologram Man is really just a love story - okay, more of a hate story, but those are just two sides of the same thing, right? Filling out the other side of the rippling, greased up "will they, won't they (brutally murder each other)" dynamic duo is a dude named Decoda: the standard issue renegade tough-guy cop cliche who shoots first, misses a bunch, shoots some more, misses some more, and asks questions never. He's not stupid, he's a street smart fish out of water in a world he never made.

Decoda is a firm believer in the power of lead slugs and repeated, indulgent use of the word FUCK to solve any actual crime that gets thrown his way, or just life in general really. This approach serves him well when he's foiling Slash's master plan to kill the governor, assuming you're willing to gloss over the giant pile of dead bodies that includes both his partner and the governor - a pile which Decoda himself would be featured in at least 40% of the kill-cams for, no less. By the way, the lead-up to Slash's capture features one of the greatest dialogue exchanges we've ever heard:

SLASH: Governor, it's time to give the city...back to the people!

GOVERNOR: What the hell does that mean? Who let Diet Jared Leto in here?

Great fucking questions, your honor. We're just glad Slash's reign of terror was brought to an end before he could kidnap the Queen of England and tea bag her while demanding that she relinquish control of Neo-Neo-Tokyo at long last. Case closed, he's gone for good. Phew, that was looking dicey for a bit there. A hardened criminal's reign of terror is over, and the public is safe, at long last.