Reading Movies

My roomate and I were discussing movie villians earlier this week, which is surpising, considering we discussed.. without fighting!

Anywho, he felt that of all the villians that have been portrayed in movies over time, Darth Vader was the best of them. I admit, I'm not much of a Star Wars fan myself (never been able to sit through just *one* of them), but I believe there is a much better candidate.

"Well hello Clarice..."

Need I say more? Dr. Hannibal Lecter easily beats Darth Vader, simply because of the way he manipulates his victims. While I'm not speaking from experience here, Vader seems like a hack-n-slash kinda guy. Sure, he's got the breathing and the theme music, but who the hell needs theme music when you kill with.. for lack of better word.. elegance.

No one but Dr. Lecter could maul a nurse, tearing out her eye and eat her tongue, yet have his pulse remain steady at 85 beats a minute. Who else could be drugged and asked where he buried a victim, only to give the FBI a recipe for chip dip. I don't think Vader could persuade Luke to cut off his face with a shard of mirror and feed it to his dogs with just words. When is the last time Vader killed two cops while listening to Bach's Goldberg Variations?

Dr. Lecter speaks about his murders in a nonchalant manner, as if they were a night out at a 5 star restaurant.

"A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti."

Hope the wine complimented the dinner.

Aside from the, eh... elegance of his handiwork, Dr. Lecter masterminded one of the best villian escapes of all time. Dr. Lecter removed the face from one of the cops he killed, traded clothes, and waltzed out of Memphis, Tennessee in a tourists clothing. Bravo, Doctor.

I'm sure I'll get some contradictory replies to this one, so bring it on! Who is your favorite movie villian, if not Vader or Lecter? I'm curious.

(On a side note, my favorite comic book/movie villian would have to be Magneto. While not physically possible, pulling the iron out of your guards blood to escape is number one in my books. Seems I've got a thing for good escapes.)

"It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."

This post was edited by Jaz on Jul 09, 2005.

There is a villain who kicks orders of magnitude more ass than Vader, Lecter and Magneto combined: Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York. This guy is such a badass motherfucker.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

Sorry Jaz, but any villain who gets killed by Leonardo DiCaprio is automatically out of the running.

;)

"What you don't understand you can make mean anything." - Misty Wilmot

Sorry Jaz, but any villain who gets killed by Leonardo DiCaprio is automatically out of the running.

Damn it, you totally got me there. What was I thinking?

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

Vic's scarcastic movie humor for the win! ;P

"It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."

"You're empty."

"And everytime I smell it somehow I fear I've been infected by it. Repulsive, isn't it?"

"The future is our world, the future is, our time."

"No...."

"I'm going to enjoy watching you die, Mr. Anderson."

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

I'm with tetrazome here. A true bad guy has a purpose, one that almost makes you side with him. he is simply the bad guy. evil aside, he must be a worthy adversary. And you know what, Agent Smith was it. Way to go tetrazome... :)

Smith had purpose, he wanted to go to the real world. Lecter was a freak that ate people. Big fucking deal.

I should be ashamed of myself.

This post was edited by Aynjell on Jul 12, 2005.

I think different people have different tastes. Lecter is a very psychological bad guy. He represents thinking without any understanding or acknowledgement of other people or social consequences.

Smith, while having some interesting psychological basis (his drive to get out of the matrix, his obsession with purpose) he has more of an 'epic' feel to him. I like that in a bad guy.

And if we get into video games -- Sephiroth. PWNED! :)

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

Sepiroth indeed. He was teh deepest bad guy ever concieved. He makes satan himself look like a kitten.

I should be ashamed of myself.

I agree Tetrazome, everyone does have different tastes when it comes to what they like to see or feel in a bad guy to actually make him likeable, or admirable.

That's why I say...

The iceberg that sank Titanic for the win! (Hey Vic.. although al beit indirectly, it actually killed Leonardo DiCaprio!)

Seriously though, yes, after looking closely at my tastes in movies and such, Lecter is the best bad guy for me, if there were like a.. Bad Guys-R-Us or something, I don't know.

As for the "big fucking deal" comment, it shows a lack of understanding about the basic plot of the first movie, Silence of the Lambs. Jack Crawford tells Clarice not to let Lecter inside her head, which is exactly what she does, and Lecter makes her pay for it psychologically, especially in the sequel, Hannibal.

"It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."

This post was edited by Saqqara on Jul 12, 2005.

I would guess that I have to agree...with Saqqara. Dr. Lechter is pretty much the 'worst'[sic] villian that I have ever seen. Or well, you know, maybe the guy in American Psycho. But that would be my point. Psychopathic, sociopathic, and so far down the path of having no conscience whatsoever, that in my opinion, he is irredeemable. He doesn't even try to be compassionate, he just jumps into his lack of compassion wholeheartedly.

I've at least known some sociopaths/psychopaths who tried very hard to understand what compassion was about, and weren't driven to exploit their own lack of conscience and emotion. And others, who used it to rationalize their efforts at destruction. It seems motivation is the core, not the lack of conscience.

But then I have to ask myself: If I like the idea of getting rid of heinous people like that, then how much different am I from them? Especially when someone like Hannibal Lechter rationalizes so well... He's got a certain twist on Nietzschian philosophy that makes me shudder. I think of a recent comment in a film I watched: "It must be nice to believe in something, I believe in nothing." Dr. Lechter's sense of nihilism, his exquisitely overdeveloped philosophies of life using pure intellect devoid of any connection to the heart, is chilling. I'm sorry if I might sound insulting, but anyone who has absolutely no conscience and extreme levels of intelligence makes me wary. And to me, that makes them very scary. Extreme intelligence+Lack of consience = alarm bells going off. Seperate, they aren't so dangerous...together they are deadly. Being so smart that you can see how to manipulate the emotions of others, while you have none to restrain you from your actions is fucking scary. And digging into Pandora's Box like Clarice did, is fucking stupid. Not to say that I haven't done it myself.

To quote you:

Jack Crawford tells Clarice not to let Lechter inside her head, which is exactly what she does, and Lechter makes her pay for it psychologically...

She's too compassionate and heart-centered to be messing around with him. No business there. Being in the same room with people like Lechter when you have crappy boundaries -and being an empath means those boundaries are sketchy- can put you in a trancelike state. Clarice is an empath, and Lechter is an extremely intelligent psychopath. And an empath and a psychopath in the same room aren't a very good idea, generally speaking. His extreme intellect and the horror he perpetrates would be nothing without his charming charisma. If you have charisma and no inhibitions for using it, you will succeed at almost everything you do. Success draws most people...they are fascinated by it and want it for themselves. And then there are those who are fascinated by success based on amoral standards, who find themselves drawn to those who think that boundaries only exist to be crossed. That fascination in it's extreme has a goofy psychological designation: Hybristophilia.

On that note, I'd kinda tend to think that the female character in Natural Born Killers chills me even more than Lechter, because she is representative of the fact that this stereotype we have of women being such nurturers that they are incapable of being that heinous without being manipulated into it, is false. Her character was based on one half of the duo of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, and reading most commentary on the two makes it clear that Fugate was the instigator, generally speaking. She manipulated him, and we don't like to think of women doing that. And I don't think they ever made a movie about Karla Homolka, but man, she not only is at the outer reaches of villianery, but she managed to execute the ultimate manipulation of the system. And the fact that society is so blind to how much women can be villians like that, makes such a woman, for me, extremely frightening. She has an edge, that a man does not. She has many more faces she can hide behind, even from herself.

If they made a movie about her, I'd definitely say that she topped Lechter.

But then again, when you have a villian, such as Lechter, who can bring out the fascination with emptiness, and nurture it, and cultivate it, and make it bloom into a dark flower, and even find a way to make you believe, even for a split second, that what he is doing is justified; it not only makes a deep impression on me, it makes me wonder where the seed for that manipulation comes from. It seems to be in all of us, and we watch either with horror, or some amount of glee, or some combination of both, as someone like Lechter cultivates his little flower, while we keep it under wraps. I might ask: What really makes us fascinated with such heinous characters? Are they inside our psyches as well?

If mountain goats like living at high elevations, why do none live in high rise apartment buildings?

This post was edited by rosyxxx on Jul 22, 2005.

As far as actual facts go I don't know anything on the Real Starkweather case. Howver there was a movie recently released (direct to dvd of course) called "Starkweather" which is about the incident. It sas it's based on fact....but based is loosely interpretted. In that movie the only person Fugate really kills is her younger sister throughout the rest of the movie she's merely just tagging along. If Fugate really did have a bigger roll in the killings then the movie definately was way off course.

"Boredom is the Ultimate Gateway Drug"- Atheist_Uprising

A true bad guy has a purpose, one that almost makes you side with him.

Aynjell, Lector did have a purpose. He was disgusted with idiocy and foul manners of the majority of the people he came into contact with. And obviously he has something against rapists/molesters as he did off the guy that masterbated on Clairese and the patient he convinced to remove their face was a molester/rapist type. And really, I can easily side with the cause of getting rid of "rude bastards" and idiots.

--Jami

You fail it.

Aynjell, Lector did have a purpose. He was disgusted with idiocy and foul manners of the majority of the people he came into contact with. And obviously he has something against rapists/molesters as he did off the guy that masterbated on Clairese and the patient he convinced to remove their face was a molester/rapist type. And really, I can easily side with the cause of getting rid of "rude bastards" and idiots.

Actually, Jami is right here. Although it doesn't cover it very well in the movies, the reason Lecter became a cannibal was his sister, Mischa. The were ofted from their home during World War II, where Nazi refugees killed his parents and locked the children into a barn. When they got hungry, they would select a child to eat. Mischa was eventually selected.

Also, in Hannibal, when Clarice is visiting Barney concerning the x-ray Mason Verger received, Barney tells Clarice he knew Dr. Lecter would never come after him, because he was courteous to him while he was in prison. He said Lecter told him he prefered to dine on the rude, "free range rude" he called them.

"It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."

When a villain is really good you root for them more than the good guys. Which most it seems tend to do with Lecter. And although some people will call may call him an anti-hero my vote is for Mickey Knox- Natural Born Killers. This individual is pure evil and he does it with pizzaz. And alot can be said for pizzaz. Plus he has the great escapes locked down- who else escapes from a maximum security prison on the back of a stallion? No one. In it for pyschological kicks? Well in a matter of...days he turned a sweet young girl into a raving side kick killer and I don't even think he used his tongue. Truly a bad ass mo fo.

But then again I always liked Bram Strokers Dracula.

"Boredom is the Ultimate Gateway Drug"- Atheist_Uprising