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The best movie villains of the 21st century so far?


John

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He wasn't even a good villain in the very disappointing Air Force One. The villain in that film is the CGI plane crash.

21 hours ago, mstrox said:

The closest thing we got to a memorable horror villain in the last 18 years is Jigsaw.

Oh god no. The genre is the bad guy.

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I'm sorry but didn't you say that a silent, Terminator-like character such as Anton Chigurg is nothing more than a rolling rock or an angry bear while The Joker is chatty, smart and sane? Yes, there are no big moral thoughts behind an unstoppable nightmare character like Chigurg but he's smart too, without shouting it from the rooftops, explaining all the motives of his actions along the way. The Coen brothers usually deal with one simple moral theme in their movies that we simple people can relate to; You think you can get away with it, but you can't. And now you have to pay the price. 

 

BTW, no, The Joker doesn't appear "sane" to me at all.

 

 

 

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59 minutes ago, Fabulin said:

I just believe there are things far scarier than one's own death.

 

'Death' itself is the easiest part, but the anxiety we feel during the ordeal or the process that could lead to death is a primal fear we all share.

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I don't mind death. I just don't want to be there, when it happens.

We all know there's an afterlife, but the question is: how far is it from midtown, and how late does it stay open?

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Fabulin said:

I just believe there are things far scarier than one's own death.

Would you like me to put to the test, for you?

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You didn't speak about the ordeal/process of being stuck, trapped, not finding a solution, not being able to get wake up from a nightmare, the frustration, being confronted with one's helplessness. I think those things are different than death, pain or loss itself. The scary part is to find yourself in such a nightmare. It doesn't have to lead to death. Death is just one of our primal fears, something you think is nothing compared to the evil of The Joker, whatever that might be.

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18 minutes ago, Fabulin said:

 

You need to sort our little philosophical conundrum out for yourself.

 

Well, Fabulin, with your permission, I think I will. Apparently, you don't think highly of villains that speak to our primal fears. You prefer The Joker who is a terrorist that hates what our society AND Batman stands for. He wants to destroy what we have, what our values are. And if we don't stop him, we will lose, not only perhaps our lives, but also that what we have achieved as a community. I presume you find those things more interesting, more scarier than the bogeyman, but ask yourself, is The Joker really that different? In the end, both villains want to take away what we have. We will stand to lose something. However, in No Country, we have to oppose the villain ourselves, while in Batman, we have a caped hero to safeguard what we have.

 

Am I getting closer?

 

 

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28 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

It's safer to be scared of terrorists and evil geniuses with diabolical plans then for the evil that might dwell in the room next to you 

 

I agree. It makes fear and evil more direct and personal. It doesn't even has to have a reason (see Spielberg's Duel). But my guess is that The Joker's appeal lies in the moral games he's playing or the dilemmas he like to put us in.

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4 hours ago, Alexcremers said:

The Joker's appeal lies in the moral games he's playing or the dilemmas he like to put us in.

 

In some sense, the Joker is a similar villain to Hannibal Lecter: a character whose clearly highly intelligent, and yet does not believe in human morality. To a moral person (i.e. most people) the idea that our morality is a fallacy is quite unsettling; In our everyday lives, many of us deal with it by assuming that the immoral are the ignorant. Hyper-intelligent amoral people show us that's not the case.

 

The most clear proclamation of the Joker's motives isn't in the interrogation scene, its in his final scene: "You didn't think I'd risk losing the battle for Gotham's soul..." He doesn't theaten to kill everyone, as Bane does, he threatens to make everyone amoral, by showing them the supposed lack of reason at the base of morality.

 

To be fair to Bane, though, he's essentially trying to do The Joker's plan as well as trying to physically destroy Gotham. By revealing the truth about Harvey Dent he's essentially achieved what The Joker wanted. But actually that he intends to blow them all up kind of diminishes that. Its much more frightening to see Gotham corrupted beyond repair, than it is to see it blown to heck.

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10 hours ago, Koray Savas said:

Never understood the complaint about the final act. 

 

I understand the complaints but I also I understand the love for the final act. 

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22 hours ago, Obi said:

Vader in Rogue One.

One of the best villain scenes in the finale, yes. But he already owns the 20th Century, so it's not really fair.

 

Krennic, on the other hand, was quite interesting.

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55 minutes ago, The Illustrious Jerry said:

One of the best villain scenes in the finale, yes. But he already owns the 20th Century, so it's not really fair.

 

 Krennic, on the other hand, was quite interesting.

 

Yes, this is an ironic post :P Just for saying nothing better than Vader. (And I love Krennic, very good actor indeed)

In real I think the best vilain of 21st century is Woo-jin in Old Boy, freeking amazing. but also Captain Vidal in Pan‘s Labyrinth and The Amazing Amy in Gone Girl. Special mention to Heath Ledger's Joker and Hans Landa !

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OK, best villains, here we go.

Ledger's Joker

Anton Chigurh

Hans Landa

 

 

(and Hans from Frozen gets honorable mention as being most likely to be a great villain in a live-action adaptation)

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Going off on a limb, but it's relevant to villains in the cinema, albeit in the 20th century:

 

I feel what works with the Indiana Jones series, at least primarily with Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, is that the Nazis are the villains. Temple of Doom never really had the same feel as the other films, probably because the basis of the plot was on a localized problem in a small Indian village that Dr. Jones stumbles upon by happenstance. The villains are an estranged group of Indian men who form a peculiar cult. With Raiders and Last Crusade, the Nazis are already established as a universal villain- nobody's cheering for them and everybody wants to see them bite the dust. So in a way, I feel like when you deal with plots that require Nazi involvement, you've got you're main villain set and secure.

 

I remembering hearing how the never-seen yet powerful image of the hunter in Bambi signifies one of the greatest villains of all time- mankind itself. Yeah, think about that one.

 

Just some thoughts.

 

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What, people kidnapping children to be slaves and tearing people's hearts out is a peculiar cult and doesn't make you want to see them bite the dust? I do like that aspect how their villainy and full darkness is revealed gradually instead of throwing in generic cartoon nazis like in Last Crusade, or generic cartoon Russians in Skull.

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That's not the point. Whenever you bring Nazis to the table, the audience is already preconditioned (and rightly so) to hate them, even before they do anything villanous. The villain's backstory is in the audience's existing knowledge base.

 

8 minutes ago, The Illustrious Jerry said:

I feel like when you deal with plots that require Nazi involvement, you've got you're main villain set and secure.

 

Yeah, I always use the likes of Nazis and Communists (but feel free to substitute them for the odd Tamerlane or Genghis Khan) as the rallying answer as to why archetypal stories aren't so simplistic to the human condition.

 

There are some pretty bad dudes out there.

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47 minutes ago, Holko said:

What, people kidnapping children to be slaves and tearing people's hearts out is a peculiar cult and doesn't make you want to see them bite the dust?

Mola Ram...prepare to meet Khali- in hell.

47 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

That's not the point. Whenever you bring Nazis to the table, the audience is already preconditioned (and rightly so) to hate them, even before they do anything villainous. The villain's backstory is in the audience's existing knowledge base.

Well put. Exactly what I meant.

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