The Coolest Motorcycle Riders In Movies Or TV

By Kurt Santas


Motorbikes and bikers have long been iconic figures in movies, motorbikes have come to represent freedom and power, fitting well with the outsider role so popular in American movies especially. As well as romantic heroes in the cowboy tradition, some of the coolest motorcycle riders in movies or TV have also been bike gangs. In the 1970s and 1980s bike gangs appeared in all kinds of movies, usually terrorizing peaceful god-fearing American citizens.

The original motorbike anti-hero is perhaps Marlon Brando's iconic portrayal of a rebellious leader of a biker gang who clashes with small town America in the movie The Wild One. His defiance of authority and middle American morality became a symbol both of inspiration and fear. Never bowing to anyone or letting rules stand in the way of his beliefs he remains cool to this very day.

Cool bikers don't have to be clean and tough though, a double act with designs on Brando's crown came along in the two Easy Riders Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in the 1967 classic Easy Rider where they play two filthy hippies travelling across America on massive motorbikes carrying not only drugs in their gas tanks, but the idealism and freedom of the rainbow generation. They die at the end.

After the two hippy spokesman were killed by intolerant Americans, bikers took a different approach to being cool. Rather than portraying themselves as pioneering outsiders in the great American tradition, they came to resemble barbarian hordes taking their cues from German and Scandinavian marauders of the 14th and 15th centuries.

The culmination of this trend is arguably best symbolized by the Mad Max trilogy. The series depicts a world where resources are low and society is disintegrating with many of the roads controlled by sadistic biker gangs. The world of the movies allowed for insane tribes of bikers to develop and wage war on not only the road warrior, but anybody who was unlucky enough to be in their path.

One of the coolest people ever to ride a motorcycle must be Ernesto Che Guevara the Argentine revolutionary who liberated Cuba from corrupt American backed mafia puppets. His autobiographical novel The Motorcycle Diaries depicting his travels around South America on a makeshift motorbike was very faithfully made into a movie in 2007.

Girl on a Motorcycle is probably the coolest of all though. The movie does not have a plot as such, Marianne Faithful plays a young bride to be who is horrified by the prospect of spending her life in a stuffy and loveless marriage and she abandons the wedding to ride at breakneck speed around Europe fantasizing about filthy sex while completely naked under a leather jumpsuit.

Although there are not in fact a great deal of movies about bikes, choosing the coolest motorcycle riders in movies or TV can prove difficult because there are so many cool ones to choose from. Whether they are self reliant and rugged individualists chasing after the American dream in the footsteps of cowboys, or menacing domestic terrorists bringing anarchy to the US, bikers in films are cool.




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