A O Scott and Manohla Dargis

There are times, particularly during the summer, when the big screen seems overrun with the alpha and omega of contemporary masculinity: the big babies of comedies and the hard-bodied manly men of superhero fantasies. There are a handful of other types in play, yet even these represent a fairly limited spectrum, from the idealised to the abject. The movies may be male dominated, but images of men are surprisingly narrow: often missing in action is the regular guy who wakes up every morning, kisses his wife (or husband) and manages not to do anything especially silly or heroic in the course of his working day.

The male archetypes populating contemporary movies don?t line up with reality, yet they offer clues about what the men of our dreams look like, or at least what moviemakers are trying to sell us. What do men want? What does it mean to be a man? How does a man relate to other men? And perhaps above all, how does he relate to women, who increasingly occupy a separate sphere on the big screen even as they appear to have more room on television, for themselves and in their relationships with men? There are no simple answers to these questions, but following many grueling, air-conditioned, popcorn-fueled hours of research, we have assembled enough data to offer an abridged field guide to the Hollywood male animal.

THE BIG BABY

Today?s soft, squishy men with their jelly-bellies and superegos built for laughs and high jinks, may not be new, but their resurgent, nay, ballooning presence is food for thought. Some big babies are designed for family viewing, like smiley, sexless Kevin James, neutered and nice, while others, exemplified by Zach Galifianakis, skew edgier, crueler, with beards, R-ratings, mayhem in their hearts and even women in their beds. None are dignified fat men ? la Jackie Gleason, whose light-stepping physical grace belied his heft, but rather the sons of childlike anarchy and Lou Costello, that man-child with the adenoidal yelp. Other comic men, like Robin Williams and Tyler Perry, bulk up, sometimes even as Big Mama, hiding their penises under a strapped-on fat-lady suit.

Maybe these recent tubs of guts exist to reassure Americans of their own ever-increasing waistlines, are embodiments of the new infantilism or just a recycled familiar type. At the very least, their soft bodies tend to render these characters as sexually unthreatening and cuddly, redefining male sex appeal and shifting the burden of attractiveness entirely onto their usually hot female love interests.

THE BRAVE BOY

The heroes of fairy tales tend to be youthful orphans cast out into the grown-up world to fight evil and seek their fortunes, triumphing through a mixture of guile, courage and luck. In American literature the descendants of these princes include Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Horatio Alger?s characters and Holden Caulfield, and in 21st-century popular culture their paragon is Harry Potter. Harry?s education is now complete, and in retrospect we can see the essential traits that made him at once so heroic and so likeable. He was steadfast in his devotion to his friends, including his mentor, Dumbledore, but he was also defiant when necessary, breaking the rules, risking his safety and acting out of impulsiveness and anger.

Harry was often brooding and brash, traits that define Sam Witwicky, the all-American kid played by Shia LaBeouf in Michael Bay?s Transformers movies. Though he always has a hot girlfriend, his closest bond is to his pals and his toys, who are pretty much interchangeable. The fantasy he lives out is the classic preadolescent boy?s dream of defying adult wisdom, saving the princess and getting to make all the mess he wants in the service of a noble cause.

THE BACHELOR

Single guys are no longer coded as exclusively homosexuals, the fops and dandies of Tony Randall romps past but are instead one good woman away from being the Husband. Bachelors in comedies tend to party in groups that are alternately festive and comically, even flat-out pathetic. Single men who travel solo habitually do so because they?re on the road to coupledom, with the regulation family visit (Friends With Benefits, The Proposal) confirming that they?re not psychos and therefore mating material.

In comedies the Bachelor is desired by women who want him and men who yearn to have what he has, namely women who are neither wives nor girlfriends. (In a poster for the coming comedy The Change-Up Jason Bateman, the Husband, juggles two babies, while Ryan Reynolds, the Bachelor, is flanked by two babes. This kind of husband-bachelor bromance has become a minigenre in its own right, with examples including the raucous I Love You, Man and the relatively sober Crazy, Stupid, Love, with Ryan Gosling as the playboy and Steve Carell as the sad-sack homebody.)

THE HUSBAND

Marriage may be the happy ending of the conventional woman-centered romantic comedy. But by the time the Husband lands in a domestic comedy, he may be a patriarch in name only, his rule willfully sabotaged by his unruly family. Since the 1970s and women?s liberation the figure of the Husband has changed, and in today?s comedies of male sexual panic to be a husband is a more ambiguous state. Some of these hubbies are more like the Big Baby, with their wives as scolding, comforting, tolerant or impatient mommies. To be a married guy is to be henpecked and undersexed, but also to be protected from libidinous impulses.

Oddly, being a father, which is, technically, the result of heterosexual you-know-what and therefore, symbolically, proof of manhood, is looked at in movies as a state of emasculation. Becoming a husband and father turns a man into a baby or a woman, removed from the company of men by diaper duty and other antisexual domestic chores. Unless or until mommy takes off, either to a new man or the grave. Single dads seem to outnumber single moms in the movies, and widowers in particular are potent sources of pathos and sex appeal. A man rearing children in partnership with a woman is barely a man at all, but a man raising kids by himself is perfect.

THE HERO

The Hero is an evolutionary stage reached via one of the earlier archetypes, which often persists as an alter ego. Captain America, for example, starts out as Steve Rogers, a classic Wimp: skinny, dateless, more to be pitied than admired, loved or feared. Clark Kent and Peter Parker are also Wimps. Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark are Bachelors, while Thor starts out as a Brave Boy.

While the Hero?s relationship to evil is relatively straightforward, his relationship with women is ambiguous and almost definitively unfulfilled. In his world a woman is usually on hand to be rescued or avenged, and sometimes also to be wistfully, chastely kissed before or after the fight. But the Hero?s main bonds, brotherly or antagonistic, are with other guys. The nemesis, in particular, is a secret sharer??you?re just like me,? he says, in silky, seductive tones?with whom intense, sustained physical combat is a form of intimacy and release. Batman and the Joker, Spidey and the Green Goblin, Professor X and Magneto: these are surely among the great, tragic love stories of our age.

THE WIMP

Born to be mild, the Wimp exists to have sand kicked in his face and submit to wedgies and worse, or, like Woody Allen, to overcome adversity by being smarter and funnier than everyone else in the room. The Wimp?subsets include the Nerd, the Geek, the Nebbish and, often offensively, the Gay Guy?serves a variety of useful narrative functions as the sexually neutered sidekick, the nervous ninny or resident genius. Every tough guy has a Wimp to bounce off, sometimes violently, as does every Hero. Even so, the Wimp has been able to trade on his meekness to sometimes triumphant, even heroic end.

Jesse Eisenberg and Michael Cera, the reigning Wimps of current mainstream cinema, employ a singular repertory of vocal tics and gestural mannerisms: Cera has a wonderfully funny run, while the slightly more feral Eisenberg clocks more words per minute. Yet they?re also more alike than not, and each radiates intelligence and a palpable vulnerability that they work hard with their doe eyes. In the age of Bill Gates, the 97-pound weakling may own a Fortune 500 company or specifically Facebook, but as The Social Network indicates, he still may not get his happy ending. In American indie cinema, by contrast, the Wimp frequently triumphs because he?s a stand-in for the guy calling the shots behind the camera.