Friday Eye Candy: Hot Adventuring Academics Edition

So the other day I reviewed the latest Dan Brown novel over at our sister shopping site, WeCovet, and I was bitching a little bit about the main character, Robert Langdon, when it occurred to me that my real problem with the character isn't so much that he's a preening, unlikable doofus with a totally made-up academic specialization, but that he's all of those things when he could have been so much more! I mean, really. The swashbuckling academic-slash-adventurer? The buttoned-up professor who all of sudden becomes a hero when he's compelled by some fascinating intellectual mystery or opportunity for world-changing discovery to become a bad-guy whupping hero? That guy (or gal, although there aren't many female versions of this character) is AWESOME.

Robert Langdon is not awesome. He's wishy-washy and totally bad at making decisions and is really no better at symbol reading or code-breaking than were the Hardy Boys. And he can't read Latin. Which, really, even if there were such a thing as Symbology as an academic field - which there's not - one wouldn't even get past the qualifying stage of one's doctorate without being able to read the language that is central to the field of one's study. (/academic rant.)

All of which is to say: LOSER. His adventures are cool; him, not so much.

But it got me thinking: who are the awesomest Professor-Adventurers in pop-culture history?

Well, duh.

His dad counts too, I think.

Sydney Fox, the only academically-inclined girl-adventurer I could think of.

Do Slayer-mentoring, vampire-slaying librarians count? I think they do.

And that was all that I could think of. Who am I missing?

Comments

[Kat]

Isn't Lara Croft supposed to be somehow academically qualified? Or is she just insanely rich and upper-class?

[Carrie]

Rachel Weisz in the Mummy!

[Suzanne]

Noah Wyle was a librarian adventurer in "The Librarian" movies -- apparently there are 3 movies, but I've only seen the first 2.

[Jessi]

Giles totally counts. Yummy, yummy Giles.

[Sarah Woodruff]

Alec Baldwin in "Hunt for Red October". Recent parenting and personality issues aside, he is still H-O-T in that movie. He's an academic/analyst....with a traumatic military past. Dimensions and depth and hotness so make it a win!

[Allison]

Hugh Jackman in The Fountain was a scientist, and in the past lives (or whatever that was) he was a conquistador, so that counts, right?

[Accidental Housewife]

K, granted she does end up kind of playing "damsel" but Elizabeth Shue in "the Saint"? Oh, and I'd like to vote in some of the scientists from CSI. Oh! And BONES! Temperance Brennan epitomizes this!

[ms martyr]

Okay, this is a very long stretch but how about Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby trying to get his dinosaur bone back?
Tia Carrere and not Sydney Fox in the picture of Relic Hunter. That was a goofy show. I miss it and Adrian Paul as Tracker.

[cindy w]

Harrison Ford = YES, please & thank you. That is all.

[Mouse]

I've only read Brown's "DaVinci Code," so that's the extent of my Langdon knowledge. But I wanted to scream at the book when I got to the puzzle with the answer "apple." The answer so would have been in Latin, not English!

[Somedayphd]

Wesley! Wesley! Wesley!

[Angela]

What about the nerdy librarian in the Mummy? She really rises to the challenge, with her hunky American bf (and then husband in the sequels).

And the librarian in The Librarian:Quest for the Spear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Librarian:_Quest_for_the_Spear

But definitely Indiana Jones is the epitome of this genre. *Swoon*