Mini Essay of "xXx"

How does the title of "xXx" establish Zander as a rebellious hero?

The Opening of the film shows us the car of the senator which has a bumper sticker at the back that says "skateboarding is a crime". This immediately gives us the idea that this guy isn't the hero. This is further proved by the way he talks to the person taking his car. We could assume it’s just a random character; however the fact that we only get a mid-shot of the senator showing just the shirt of the hidden character could give us a hint that he is the hero. That changes when we see the close up of his wrist which is covered in tattoos, and then the camera proceeds to show us the extreme close up of the tattoo. The director chose to use an extreme up because this shot is mainly used to zoom in on a specific feature, which in this case if the tattoo "xXx". The director is trying to tell us from this shot that this is the main character.

When see the chasing scene where our main character Zander is telling the audience exactly why he is stealing the car. The mostly used in this scene is a close up/mid shot. These shots are used for conversations, thus the fact that he is videotaping his speech shows that he engaging with the people who will see this soon. Therefore he is doing this for the people making him a hero. Also the non-diegetic sound of the scene where he jumps off the bridge is very fast and upbeat and is the kind of music you would hear when someone does something heroic in the movie, this makes him seem the hero. However, when the car is off the bridge, it is put in slow motion, and is also a long shot. These two things show that the main character Zander is making sure the senator sees his beloved make its journey down slowly which would seem quite torturous for him. This makes him seem like a villain.  

Every movie consists of a hero and an evil person but Zander is quite unique. He seems to be both. He is voicing the wrongs of the senator and telling him that video games, rock music, and skateboarding are not crimes and that it is not "diminishing the intelligence of our youth". This makes him a hero of some sorts. Alternatively it makes him an bad person because of his ways of putting his point across which is also quite hypercritical because by doing the stunt and also filming is -making everybody including kids see it- is putting the message out that it’s okay to do such things, even when doing it for the public, ultimately making him rebellious.