Joshua and Riggs as Doppelgangers Lethal Weapon (1987)
The structural insight that organizes Lethal Weapon's antagonist plot is that Mr. Joshua is not the opposite of Martin Riggs. He is the same man, with the same training, calibrated by the same self-mortifying lethality, with one variable removed — the dead wife and the partner with a family. The film's climax tests the protagonist's post-midpoint approach against the version of himself he might have become.
Same training, same war
Both men are ex-Special Forces. Riggs's dossier (read out by Captain Murphy at beat 8) names the unit and the timeframe — the same cohort that produced Shadow Company.b8 The film does not stage Joshua's biography in dialogue, but the visual cues — the Special Forces tattoo on his arm referenced by the six-year-old witness Alfred at beat 19, the unit insignia visible on his Shadow Company fatigues, the cold-open butane demonstration's specific provenance in unit hazing rituals — establish the doppelganger frame for the audience as soon as Joshua enters the picture.b19
"Mr. Joshua and Riggs are the same character split in half. The film is built so that the audience can tell which is which only by the haircut and the partner. Take away the family man and the dead wife and Riggs is Joshua. The lawn fight is the film letting the audience know that the protagonist knows." — Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com retrospective (2017)
Both calibrate lethality through self-mortification
The introductory scene at beat 10 — McAllister applies a butane lighter flame to Joshua's bare arm; Joshua does not flinch — is the antagonist's structural rhyme with Riggs's introductory beat, the suicide attempt at beat 4.b4 b10 Both men prove their lethality on themselves before they prove it on anyone else. Riggs eats his own gun. Joshua takes the flame. The film cuts between the two introductions across the first thirty minutes — Riggs in the trailer, Joshua at the pool, Riggs at the Christmas-tree lot, Joshua taking the flame — without ever putting them in the same frame. The visual rhyme is the work.
The self-mortification motif recurs across the picture. Riggs dislocates his own shoulder at beat 31 to slip the wrist chains and free Murtaugh and Rianne; Joshua, in the lawn fight at beat 35, takes a sustained beating without flinching.b31 b35a Both men have trained their bodies to absorb damage without registering it. The structural work of the motif is to make the lawn fight readable as a duel between two specimens of the same trained body, with the only meaningful asymmetry being the moral one.
The casting decision
Donner (in Lethal Weapon) and Joel Silver have said in multiple interviews that the casting brief for Joshua was: an actor who could match Mel Gibson physically without being a copy. Gary Busey (see also), a serious bodybuilder in his early forties, met the brief. The peroxide-blond hair was Busey's choice and gave the visual rhyme its asymmetry — Riggs's dark mullet against Joshua's bleached crew cut. The film cuts between the two looks repeatedly across the second half.
"We needed Joshua to be Riggs's reflection but not his twin. Gary's blond hair against Mel's brown was the visual answer. They are the same body. They are not the same man." — Richard Donner, The Hollywood Reporter (2017)
The variable is the wife
The thematic content of the doppelganger frame is the dead wife. Riggs is Joshua plus Victoria Lynn, minus Victoria Lynn. The trailer scene at beat 4 establishes the loss without naming it — Riggs cries over a wedding photograph and lowers a gun.b4 Joshua, by structural contrast, is given no equivalent loss. The film stages no mourning, no flashback, no photograph for him. The absence is the point.
The film's argument is that the difference between a lethal man who kills for protection and a lethal man who kills for the work is the existence of someone to live for. Riggs has had Victoria Lynn and is in the process of acquiring the Murtaugh family. Joshua has McAllister and an organization. The lawn fight at the climax tests which state holds.
"The lawn fight is the film's thesis statement: lethality requires a context. Take the family hearth away from Riggs and Riggs is Joshua. Give the family hearth back to Riggs and Joshua loses. The fight is brutal because the structural argument requires the body to confirm the choice." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1987)
The release names the structural answer
Riggs releases Joshua's chokehold not because he refuses to kill but because the test of the post-midpoint approach is whether the killing is for someone or for the killing.b35b When Joshua snatches the LAPD officer's revolver in beat 36 and the family is in the line of fire, Riggs and Murtaugh fire together.b36 The duet is the structural answer the doppelganger frame has been building. Riggs has not refused to be Joshua. He has refused to be Joshua in the absence of someone to live for. With the family at the door, Riggs is the man who fires the shot Joshua would have fired alone.
The First Blood comparison
The doppelganger frame in Lethal Weapon is in dialogue with First Blood (1982, Ted Kotcheff) — the John Rambo film that established the Vietnam-Special-Forces-veteran-as-protagonist register that the next decade of American action cinema would mine. Riggs and Joshua are both First Blood descendants — both are the figure Sylvester Stallone made legible in 1982. The structural innovation in Lethal Weapon is to put two of them on opposite sides of the law and let one of them have a partner. See Vietnam Special Forces Villain Tradition for the broader lineage.
"Riggs is Rambo with a partner. Joshua is Rambo without a country. The doppelganger frame is the film's way of doing both readings of the figure at the same time." — David Edelstein, Vulture retrospective (2018)