Best. Villain. Ever. by MikeyMo

Quote:
Originally posted by Emma:
I can't even think about the best villains because people have called Jaime Lannister and Holtz villains -NOOOOOOOOO

Holtz is never a villain, merely misguided. He was always trying to do the best, Angel was a vampire guys! Grrrrrr (I love Angel but he was never anything other than a bastard whether human, vampire or vampire with soul!)

Sorry, I gotta disagree. Holtz wanted to kill the Vampire. He wanted justice, but he lost sight of his quest for justice and sought vengence. Vengence can never be satisfied and can never lead anywhere good. His blinding thirst for vengence took away his humanity & made him nothing more than another monster. His death is all about one thing hurting Angel more & everyone around him.

A very real thread of many of the Angel story arcs is all about redemption. Holtz never finds it. He dies in his vengence, and the only blood on his hands is his own. He was misguided till he knew the truth, Then he made a decision, at that point he became a villain.

Just giving my point of view.

"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 Firefly Fan Shop R.I.P --- I'm thinking we'll rise again.

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 4:46 AM

gorram it, that is such a reasoned argument it is hard to disagree with...but...(there is always a but)...

I suppose it is about your definition of evil. You see in my book somebody can only truly be evil if they have all their mental faculties and deliberately set out to hurt those who do not deserve it. I find it very hard to think of genuinely evil people (real or fictional), I try to see the good in everyone. (This is sometimes dangerous and is often best left unsaid.)

You see, Holtz was not only a bit cuckoo but Angel really did deserve it, when all said and done. Nearly everyone can be redeemed but only a few are given the chance.

extremely dimensionally transcendental
Temporarily amended to read...ALAN

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 5:50 AM

Holtz was evil in a very calculating way. He wanted to ensure that Angel felt the same pain that was inflicted on him. Because he could not forgive and move on, he became Angelus(sp?) It's all about the pain....

Angelus was pretty evil when he went bad and said all those awful things to Buffy after they had sex. That was every teenage girl's worst nightmare.

Okay, I digress. Top three:

1. Cruella Divil (she killed Dalmation puppies for Pete sake!)
2. Hannible Lecter
3. And from the Whedonverse, I'd have to say, Angelus, because he truely enjoyed inflicting pain.

NY/NJ Browncoats: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firefly_nyc

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 5:54 AM

Emma,

I like the way you think. It is all about definition. How interesting to note that more often than not villians are created from victims. I have enjoyed this exchange. This is what I love about FFF.net. It's not about "who's right & who's wrong" but rather what we think and why. Again, you have my respect & appreciation.

"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 Firefly Fan Shop R.I.P

--- I'm thinking we'll rise again.

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 6:33 AM

Ack! SHAME on me! SHAMESHAMESHAME on me for forgetting Hannibal Lector, and props to dietcoke for putting his name out there. He is the very essence of villainy.

I also tend to separate mere bad guys from VILLAINS. A villain, at least in my book, needs charisma and a lot of it. He needs to be someone who, although you know he's evil and all, you can't help but root for just a little bit. So Dr. Lector has just jumped to the top of my list -- OK, just under Scorpius. 'Cause I love me some Scorpy.

The sidebar as to whether Holtz is truly evil is very interesting. It's almost entirely a matter of timing, from my perspective: In Holtz's time, he couldn't be considered anything other than a soldier on the side of good. Motivated by something less than pure, to be sure, but there was no question as to what side he was on. But stick him and his lust for vengence 200 years into the future, and now he's "bad". I enjoy the fact that Holtz had a perfectly legitamite point of view, in which his actions were perfectly justified (well, up until the end of S3).

I guess I'd say that Holtz turned EVIL when he saw that he was losing Connor to Angel and pulled the old fake-out with Justine. That's pretty hard to justify. But I'll always remember something Connor said in Season 4:

"My fath -- Holtz was a good man. He just wanted to see you get the punishment you deserved."

"Be ashamed to die before you have scored some victory for humanity." -- Horace Mann

Edited to add: ALAN!

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 7:46 AM

MAUGWAI

A lot of the villains mentioned are scary, but you could still reason with them in some way or another.

The Alien, on the other hand, will eat you. If you try to fight back, it will bleed acid on you and then eat you. That scares the pants off me.

Pennywise the Clownwill rip your arm off and eat your soul. And also, clowns are evil in a general sense. So one that freely embraces his evil is just that much worse.

Okay, so Aku isn't really that scary, but he is hilarious. And he would be scary if you lived in crazy future Samurai Jack land.

"Dear diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy."

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 8:28 AM

Quote:
Again, you have my respect & appreciation.

Aww, shucks

You are definitely right about the villain as victim, all the best (and the worst) are!

extremely dimensionally transcendental
Temporarily amended to read...ALAN

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 9:27 AM

THEREAVER

What about The Thing from The Thing?

-----------------------
I'll rape you to death.
I'll eat your flesh.
I'll sew your skin into my clothes.
If you're very very lucky, I'll do it in that order - TheReaver

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 11:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by maugwai:
A lot of the villains mentioned are scary, but you could still reason with them in some way or another.

The Alien, on the other hand, will eat you. If you try to fight back, it will bleed acid on you and then eat you. That scares the pants off me.

Pennywise the Clownwill rip your arm off and eat your soul. And also, clowns are evil in a general sense. So one that freely embraces his evil is just that much worse.

Okay, so Aku isn't really that scary, but he is hilarious. And he would be scary if you lived in crazy future Samurai Jack land.

"Dear diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy."

What's even more scary is that impregnants you and grows inside you and then pops out of your chest. First time I saw that in the movie theater I got up right then and walked out. Tooooooo scary.

NY/NJ Browncoats: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firefly_nyc

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 12:27 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dietcoke:
Quote:
Originally posted by maugwai:
A lot of the villains mentioned are scary, but you could still reason with them in some way or another.

The Alien, on the other hand, will eat you. If you try to fight back, it will bleed acid on you and then eat you. That scares the pants off me.

What's even more scary is that impregnants you and grows inside you and then pops out of your chest. First time I saw that in the movie theater I got up right then and walked out. Tooooooo scary.

NY/NJ Browncoats: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firefly_nyc

Wife (FixedByFaith) & I watched it this past week under a unique set of circumstances.

I had never wanted to see these. But I was listening to an "old" interview with Joss, on my mp3 player in my car, with my wife. The interview was from right when Buffy The Series was released, and a big focus of the interview was Joss's work with the Alien series. One of the questions was what did Joss think of the first Alien movie. His response, "I found God". That was enough to spark my interest in it. I figured if Joss held it in such high regard it was worth checking out.

Progress two weeks. It comes time for my 8 yr anniversery. We go to Blockbuster and want to pick a movie. We walk around & find nothing interesting, my wife says, "Let get Alien, cuz I want you to see Aliens." Yes, folks for our anniversery we watched the first two Alien movies.

Now being commentary junkies that we are we are watching all these special features, in one they are talking about the design of the "Alien" creature. The physical look was based on a series of art from this artist whose name I cannot recall right now. Anyway, during the commentary it came out that the artist was quite the opium user. He also admitted that he was quite frightened by his own work.

Wow, did I ramble.

Another thought on villians, What makes a great Villain? Is it Scary or Evil?

"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 Firefly Fan Shop R.I.P --- I'm thinking we'll rise again.

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 12:46 PM

So did you find it as scary as I did? I was a teenager at the time, and a girl, and I made the mistake of seeing it alone..... You get the picture.

NY/NJ Browncoats: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firefly_nyc

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 12:50 PM

>>>>Another thought on villians, What makes a great Villain? Is it Scary or Evil?<<<

That's a good question. Cruella Divil is evil (making fur coats out of puppies.) The alien in "Alien" is scary.

What I like in my villians is a little comedy. That just makes them wicked fun!

NY/NJ Browncoats: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firefly_nyc

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 3:16 PM

DANFAN

I am assuming that villain, in this context, pertains to human (or something human-like) villainy, not a monster or animal placing humans in peril. For me, the answer to this question differs depending on the type of villain you are considering... I think there's different types.

For funny, I have to go with The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight. You have a love a villain with a split personality... both of them evil! And he never talks with himself during the show... he recaps previous conversations with himself when no one is around to listen! What a hoot!

For utterly unlikable, repulsive, true evil, I have to go with Frank Booth from David Lynch's movie "Blue Velvet." Watching this guy is like eating dinner from a full toilet. I don't EVEN want to know what Dennis Hopper was channelling when he played this character.

For just plain "creeps me out," I have to go with a real dark horse, because her character hasn't been all that villainous in the series. Or even consistently villainous throughout the miniseries. But in the first episode of the 2003 Battlestar Galactica miniseries, when Number 6 leaned over and choked the life out of an infant in its crib... in what she believed was a gesture of mercy! That just sent a chill all the way to my bones. When a villain shows that kind of alienness... that's creepy. You just don't know what to expect. Then they went and made her kind of ineffective and oddly charming in the series... they squandered that villainous moment.

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 3:23 PM

Blue Velvet. I'll have to check that out. I always thought it was a porn movie. Or is it?

NY/NJ Browncoats: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firefly_nyc

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 5:10 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dietcoke:
>>>>Another thought on villians, What makes a great Villain? Is it Scary or Evil?<<<

That depends on the type of villain, I think. There are basically two broad types of villains, sympathetic and unsympathetic.

When we think of villains, I think we usually think of the unsympathetic ones. These are the “Hitler-esque” and monstrous type of villains, and they run the gambit from mindless killing machines like the creatures in Aliens or the Terminator to resourceful, sinister and manipulative types like Darth Vader or Lex Luther. Most villains, particularly in genre tv, are the unsympathetic type; the sadists, the maniacs, the pure evil or unbridled killers.

But the one’s I really like are the sympathetic or “good” villains. And a good example is Laime Lanister from “A Song of Ice and Fire,” which I’m delighted to see several people have read. And the several people, who mentioned Ser Lanister, only had positive things to say about him. This is a guy who tried to murder a seven year old child by callously pushing him out of a window so that he could continue to have sex with his sister; he’s psychopathic; he loves to kill people. Yet he’s such a great guy! He’s got a good humored fearless, swashbuckling personality.

-------------
Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 5:15 PM

THATWEIRDGIRL

A great villain is evil. Anything or anyone can be scary, but true evil is terrifying.

I'm sticking with my three...even though someone said they needed to be human, I'm gonna keep hal on my list.

www.thatweirdgirl.com
---
"...turn right at the corner then skip two blocks...no, SKIP, the hopping-like thing kids do...Why? Why not?"

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 5:25 PM

I don’t know why a villain needs to be human. It’s all in the context of the story, really. Technically a villain doesn’t even have to be specific or sentient. A villain can be abstracted, like in a “Farwell to Arms,” the villain is war. It just depends on how deep you want the discussion to go, or how abstract you want to get.

-------------
Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 5:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by thatweirdgirl:
A great villain is evil. Anything or anyone can be scary, but true evil is terrifying.

I'm sticking with my three...even though someone said they needed to be human, I'm gonna keep hal on my list.

www.thatweirdgirl.com
---
"...turn right at the corner then skip two blocks...no, SKIP, the hopping-like thing kids do...Why? Why not?"

This a fun thread. What is evil? What is Scary? Let the games contintue!

NY/NJ Browncoats: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firefly_nyc

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Wednesday, August 3, 2005 8:31 PM

I agree with the distinction between sympathetic and unsympathetic. Although, the distinctions in my book don't necessarily equate to likeable.

Evil can only be unsympathetic but that makes for (generally) poor viewing/reading and there is very rarely a truly evil character in anything. Life would be dull if (some of us at least) didn't want the bad guys to win occasionally. The number of times I wanted Buffy to be killed is beyond count, although I am not so sure whether that is because I like the villains or don't like Buffy!

Just as an aside Geiger is the artist behind the aliens and he was very sick - there is a famous painting whereby he painted babies bottoms being penetrated by sexual organs (male obviously). The man was very sick but strangely interesting and a very beautiful artist until you actually work out what much of it is.

extremely dimensionally transcendental
Temporarily amended to read...ALAN

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Thursday, August 4, 2005 3:37 AM

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 ?

-F

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Thursday, August 4, 2005 3:58 AM

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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Thursday, August 4, 2005 4:46 AM

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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Thursday, August 4, 2005 6:22 AM

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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Thursday, August 4, 2005 7:03 AM

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

Select to view spoiler:

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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Thursday, August 4, 2005 9:02 AM

Quote:
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 ?

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.

-------------
Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Thursday, August 4, 2005 9:24 AM

Quote:
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.

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.

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.

-------------
Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Thursday, August 4, 2005 9:52 AM

FREMDFIRMA

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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Thursday, August 4, 2005 10:34 AM

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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Thursday, August 4, 2005 10:51 AM

PS I am feeling very guilty for being controversial earlier, I consider myself spanked and hang-head in shame

extremely dimensionally transcendental
Temporarily amended to read...ALAN

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Friday, August 19, 2005 4:03 PM

FOURTHTROIKA

So many to choose from. Vader seems to be the hands down favorite. But there's only one that ever pops into the top of my head when someone says "favorite villain."

The Penguin.

Why? At first because he's so striking visually. A chubby little guy with a big nose dressed to the nines and carrying an umbrella. And he's smart and sophisticated. But most of all, because of his background: he was tormented a lot as a kid and he had everything that he ever cared about taken away from him. He became so bitter and despondant that he turned to a life of crime. I can relate. There but for the grace of God go I. If a villain makes you think that, then they've got to be good.

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Friday, August 19, 2005 5:44 PM

HAVRAHA

BLAAAHhh. Vader was OKAY, but he wasn't scary. I don't know, maybe I had nerves of steel when I was 5 years old, but the only thing Vader made me do, was drape a blanket over my shoulders and try to have a deep voice. Scary? No. Menacing? Only to his inferiors. The only really good BAD GUY qualites was his ability to kill without remorse and his intelligence. The killing without remorse seemed more humorous than scary.

Whatever effect the combination of his two qualities had, has only be reinvented in exemplified and multiplied through Scorpius in Farscape, which quadruples all of Vader's villiany qualities with the intelligence of an evil Mr. Spock, and more cunning than them both. Tack onto the end that Scorpius actually thinks he's doing something good with his evilness, and you have a three-dimensionality to his characer not evident in Vader, only consumed with serving his master and the dark evil of the force.

Scorpius wins best villian ever, hands down. Vader was improved a bit in his ruthlessness in Episode 3, but Lucas' sheer inability to explain his way of thinking at the end of the movie, coupled with Hayden's inability to deliver the lines without sounding like an adolescent child, ruined whatever lasting improvements on the character the movie was making.

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Saturday, August 20, 2005 4:22 AM

Quote:
Scorpius wins best villian ever, hands down.

I absolutely agree, with this statement and the rest of your post. Except the part where you weren't scared of Vader as a kid. The bit where he chokes the guy at the Empire meeting ("I find your lack of faith disturbing") freaked the hell out of me. But now, post-prequels, all I see is a cool suit over a whining pansy.

My top 3 list (revised and definitive):

) Scorpius

) Dr. Hannibal Lector

) Lex Luthor

"Be ashamed to die before you have scored some victory for humanity." -- Horace Mann

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Saturday, August 20, 2005 4:58 AM

R1Z

You people wouldn't know a villain if (s)he sat on your laps.

1.)Snidely Whiplash, nemesis of Dudley Do-Right. You can't get eviller than tying Little Nell to the train tracks.

2.)Boris Badenoff with honorable mention to Natasha Fatale and Fearless Leader

Honorable mention to Cruella DeVille for the whole puppy thing.

And no, DIETCOKE, Blue Velvet is not a porno flick. Go rent it. You'll see.

To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks. --Robt. Heinlein

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Thursday, August 25, 2005 10:36 PM

REAVERINA1985RIVIERA

Quote:
Originally posted by Stillshiny:
Quote:
Originally posted by dietcoke:
Quote:
Originally posted by maugwai:

Now being commentary junkies that we are we are watching all these special features, in one they are talking about the design of the "Alien" creature. The physical look was based on a series of art from this artist whose name I cannot recall right now. Anyway, during the commentary it came out that the artist was quite the opium user. He also admitted that he was quite frightened by his own work.

His name is H.R. Geiger, and his work is VERY bizzare. But also cool (scary-cool)

---------------------------------------------
The real-life box droppin', man-ape gone wrong thing, now without the pesky falling boxes

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Thursday, August 25, 2005 10:49 PM

SIDAR

Favourite villians? Simple. Auric Goldfinger. Willing to kill MILLIONS just to become richer. He didn't care about anyone execept himself, and that's one of the requirements in my mind for a good villian.

Another one is from a book series. Andrew Warneke, from the book Honor Among Enemies, by David Weber. I mean, NUKING a CITY just to show that you MIGHT do it again, simply to show you have a BARGAINING CHIP?!?

And finally, Niska. I mean, seriously. You don't believe me? What about that scene when he chops Mal's ear off as a 'rebate'? That's SERIOUS VILLIAN STUFF there, people!

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Saturday, August 27, 2005 12:41 PM

the movie is not the Series. Only the facts have been changed, to irritate the innocent; the names of the actors and characters remain the same

Quote:
Originally posted by Sidar:
Auric Goldfinger. Willing to kill MILLIONS just to become richer.

Is that in the book? In the movie he (ordered) painted a girl to death, crushed a guy in a car, perhaps killed several other minor characters I don't remember, gassed the soldiers outside @Fort Knox, shot the soldiers inside, and left a small but dirty nuclear bomb to explode & be contained within the confines of Fort Knox. It wasn't even supposed to destroy the gold, let alone the fort, merely contaminate it. I remember hundreds, not millions. But I still support your nomination of him as a great villain.

Keep the Shiny Side Up . . .

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Tuesday, August 30, 2005 6:16 PM

OURMRREYNOLDS

Top Dollar in The Crow. By far. Without a doubt. I also have a soft spot for Skank the speed freak.
I'll Explain my love for Top$. He had no agenda. No plan or cause. He burned the city once a year for the fun of it! Art for art's sake. Becoming a kingpin was a side-effect. He would have shattered the world just to see if it made a pretty noise. And let's not forget his respons to the death of his henchmen "By all means, let's have a moment of silence for poor ol' Tin-Tin" ***SNORT*** Pure evil by temperment, not design.
Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!

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Wednesday, August 31, 2005 7:54 AM

ZEEK

The Return of the Jedi emperor hands down. He was so very evil. He not only would kill everyone in the Rebel alliance he even wanted to turn Luke evil. He'd even kill his right hand man in the process. And the way he just reveled in the evil deeds he did. He loved the horror on Luke's face when he heard about all his friends being in utter peril. He enjoyed cultivating the hate and fear in Luke. All his lines were perfect too. His Return of the Jedi performance is almost all quoatable lines of evily goodness.

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Wednesday, August 31, 2005 8:13 AM

Thought I'd see what folks thought on this one........John Locke from LOST. One of the greatest characters 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.spreadshirt.com/shop.php?sid=4728

Listen to "The Signal" www.serenityfirefly.com

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Wednesday, August 31, 2005 8:58 AM

TRALALAH

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
(3) - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight (from: The Tick)
Always loved this guy, incoherent rambling and explosives go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

-F

Hooray for the tick!

I think Scorpius was a great villain because he wasn't "evil". He was a fanatic. He had his reasons and felt completely justified in his actions. That they were morally questionable makes the character all the more interesting.
The best villains are the ones that have depth to them. Spike before his soul, Angel without his.

But for pure evil, just for evil's sake I've got to give it Sauron

A swhat?

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Wednesday, August 31, 2005 9:12 AM

OURMRREYNOLDS

A semantic point: to me a villian is sentient. They have the ability to think and out-think an opponent. Agent Smith, Vader, Palpatine, Pazuzu... villians. The Blob, Godzilla, zombies, etc. are MONSTERS. Was the tornado in TWISTER a "villian"? The T-rex in Jurassic Park? Not to me. Monsters and animals fall into the "forces of nature" catagory. Having not seen the BDM, just the DVDs I would be tempted to put reavers in this catagory because they operate solely on instinct, as an animal would. It's a subtle difference, but to me important. Also by the same token, a villian opposes the protagonist in a story, more or less all the way through. By that standpoint, Cap'n Sparrow, Mel Gibson in PAYBACK, Michael Douglas in FALLING DOWN... these are anti-heroes, immoral protagonists, or unsympathetic protagonists. Then again, I am probably over-analyzing the whole issue. But I would love to hear other sides of the debate.

I am planning on growing a big black moustache. I'm a traditionalist.

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Wednesday, August 31, 2005 9:20 AM