Best. Villain. Ever.
POSTED BY: MikeyMo
UPDATED: Monday, December 16, 2024 19:59
VIEWED: 36074
PAGE 8 of 14
Well, if you wanna throw in likeable bad guys you just wanna root for ?
Mel Gibson, wanting his $70,000 back.
(forgot the title ? payback ?)
Cap't Jack Sparrow!
Tank Girl!
All technically, "bad guys" but you really wanted them to win, didn't you ?
-F
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oooh, that complicates matters... JAck Sparrow a bad guy.... see, this makes life much harder...I will need to think on this one, maybe other people can think for me as my brain hurts.
The Blob! That was a villain, but a real one not a nice or sympathetic one.
The alien queen in Aliens is a sympathetic villain.
Boromir, where does he fit?
Can I also be a bit controversial and say God/Allah/Yahweh is a bit of a villain? This is on the assumption that he/she/it is a character and no offense is intended but he is a bit villainish. One of those complicated Angel/Spike types.
extremely dimensionally transcendental
Temporarily amended to read...ALAN
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I think the difference I was striving for in the Evil or Scary distinction would be that Evil is about moral decision.
For example, our favorite ALIEN. No real moral compass. Simply kills & eats because it is a creature. Scary as the dickens you betcha, but I'm not moved to call it Evil. Replicators, scary, but not evil. It's the choice, to go against the moral compass that makes one truly Evil.
When one doesn't know any better, can it truly be considered evil?
Once again, sadly left open to interpretation. However, in the case of humainty, there is a moral compass, which would make humans who go against that moral compass evil.
In the case of many of the creatures, the question of moral compass to violate is left wide open.
movie
Select to view spoiler:
This will be an interesting thread to revisit in regards to the Reavers. But I don't want it to get spoilerish.
Wow I can hear the worm can opening now. Please do not open this to a "religious" discussion. This is not a right & wrong, or right & left thread. We're just talking "characters"
"We had ties that could not be broken, except by the passing of time. Like a rock. A broken time rock. And you're very special to me, my broken time rock people." - Nathan Fillion
Stillshiny's Shop - I'm thinkin we rose again
http://www.cafepress.com/stillshiny
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Not trying to hijack the thread sorry. I seem to recall this one being a list of the Best Villain's Ever.
"We had ties that could not be broken, except by the passing of time. Like a rock. A broken time rock. And you're very special to me, my broken time rock people." - Nathan Fillion
Stillshiny's Shop - I'm thinkin we rose again
http://www.cafepress.com/stillshiny
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I don't think you can really include Jack Sparrow or other "anti-hero" types as villains. Otherwise, you might need to include our BDHs.
I think that intellectually, you CAN'T want the villain to win, but either emotionally or maybe just that little devil that sits on your shoulder is thinking, "Yeah, man! Eat that dude's brain!"
Finn - Lex Luthor! How did I not remember! I absolutely loved Lex. Never really liked Superman that much, Lex was just great. I always wanted to see a comic from his point of view: he is this really smart guy who keeps on getting foiled by some alien superman. So I guess there's at least one person that thinks Lex is sympathetic. Or maybe I'm just a bad man.
StillShiny - I just adored that post. And I completely agree, that a villain needs to make the decision to be evil, even if (especially if!) the evil is justified in his mind. Scorpius comes to mind here, since his actions were all directed toward the purpose of defeating the Scarrans, which he deemed important enough to justify anything he did to John or the others. The Aliens, although more intelligent than they're usually given credit for, ARE usually just interested in eating and replicating (aren't we all ). It's pretty hard to see a biological drive as being evil (and here, I refuse to make any sort of religion cracks).
See, we're still kinda on-topic!
Serenity spoilers follow
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Which is why I consider the Operative to be an excellent villain, but I don't really count the Reavers. The Operative's little speech about how he knows he is a monster but that he's trying to create a better world, one that wouldn't have a place for someone like him... Good stuff. The Reavers are kind of hard to pin down intellectually, but we know from the movie that they didn't really have a decision in their Reaverness. Even that poor bastard in Bushwacked didn't have a chance.
"Be ashamed to die before you have scored some victory for humanity." -- Horace Mann
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Quote:Yes, they were bad guys, but they weren’t villains in the literary since. Just as villains can be ‘likeable,’ so heroes can be ‘bad.’ Porter in “Payback,” or my favorite: Smith from “Last Man Standing,” were bad guys in ever concept of the term, yet they weren’t villains, and in fact were the Heroes. It’s all in the context of the story.
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Well, if you wanna throw in likeable bad guys you just wanna root for ?
Mel Gibson, wanting his $70,000 back.
(forgot the title ? payback ?)
Cap't Jack Sparrow!
Tank Girl!
All technically, "bad guys" but you really wanted them to win, didn't you ?
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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Quote:Well, I guess there will always be a certain degree of subjectivity in defining a sympathetic/unsympathetic villain. The degree to which that determination can be made is not independent of the reader. If a particular reader finds the specific examples used to define an unsympathetic villain (wanton cruelty, for instance) to be positive traits then it is likely that reader may find sympathy for many widely held unsympathetic villains. In that particular case, finding sympathy for a truly evil villain might actually make you a bad guy, or at least suggest you might be a little scary.
Originally posted by MikeyMo:
Finn - Lex Luthor! How did I not remember! I absolutely loved Lex. Never really liked Superman that much, Lex was just great. I always wanted to see a comic from his point of view: he is this really smart guy who keeps on getting foiled by some alien superman. So I guess there's at least one person that thinks Lex is sympathetic. Or maybe I'm just a bad man.
But I’m of the mind that villains (and heroes) cannot be separated from the specific text. So depending on what text you read, Lex Luther may indeed be a sympathetic villain. The new Superman show on TV, which I don’t watch very much, but I think that it depicts Lex Luther in a very sympathetic light, which may be quite different from the way in which he is depicted classically in some of the comic books.
Many people have told me that Darth Vader is a sympathetic villain, and while Lucas may have been attempting to describe him that way, I don’t see it.
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
It’s all in the context of the story.
DING DING DING!
We haaaave a winnner!
I was hopin someone would pick that concept up.
-F
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What it really seems to come down to is that we all have different ideas of villain/evil/bad/anti-hero and so on. When the context of the story is added to the mix it becomes all the more confusing.
Personally, I can never work out why the Alliance are so bad (I haven't seen the BDM) and keep trying to ignore this nagging doubt I have that the BDH are the villains.
I had the same in Star Trek, I always thought the Federation were the bad guys but then again I like the Psi-Corps (Babylon 5) so I must be pretty twisted.
This thread has done nought but confuse my poor little brain! I like it
extremely dimensionally transcendental
Temporarily amended to read...ALAN
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