Who are your favorite villains?

[monkspider]

Sephiroth did have style, but you can't go wrong with a villain like Count Dracula who has dialogue like "What is a man, but a worthless little pile of secrets! But enought talk, have at you!"

Now that's true villainry.

[SnowFire]

Hehe. Just got through Castlevania Chronicles recently, actually- never came out in the States before, but a limited release for Castlevania fans, like my roommate (whom I borrowed it from). Ugh, the lady werewolf in the Clock Tower! Now she was NASTY! Along with Dracula, of course.

Symphony of the Night was the first one I played, which got me interested in the older ones. Actually found an old copy of Castlevania III for the NES, and managed to beat one path (still have the other one half-completed). Now THAT'S a hardcore game.

[Mr. Oobir]

The worst villains are actually...the ants!

Originally babbled by a guy on the radio in GTA3:
You can't kill them! They are like sheep. They are going to take over!

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by SnowFire
And whoever told you Seymour was a Sephiroth clone hasn't played the game very closely. There are several MAJOR differences between Seymour and Sephiroth- he's no more the same as Sephy as Sephy is the same as Golbez. I mean, just for starters... nah, don't want to spoil the plot of FFX.

Oh. Thanks. I was told this when my 'informant' hadn't probably played that much.
And thanks for avoiding spoilers - too bad my chances of ever playing the game are still somewhere in the ground between nil and zero.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by SnowFire
BG: Well, then it just goes to show how much characterization can do for you. My complaint with Javert, the musical Javert at least, was that I could tell we were supposed to find him this "noble villian" (as I can tell you do) but they didn't do anything, as far as I'm concerned, to back this up. He was just there to always be muttering about how he knew that Valjean was really evil (yah, sure, good job investigating Mr. Investigator!) and swearing off by the law to the letter.

No one is going to pretend the musical presents and adequate representation of the breathtaking way in which Hugo realized any of his characters in the book. It's just impossible to condense a story of that length into a 3-hour show and have it maintain the same weight or depth. All of the characters are somewhat dumbed-down into 2-dimensionality.

My major gripe with Javert in the musical is that they turn him into a religious zealot, akin to a fundamentalist. This is completely opposite of the novel, wherein Javert does not think of anything being higher than the law of man. He pays due reverence to the church because of its status, but he does not think of God at all until his 11th hour epiphany.

The musical also fails to make him very frightening, which is a shame. In the book, his terrorizing effect is well-drawn. He is a hulking, menacing man who jumps from shadows at his prey. He is a rather frightening depiction of a person swayed to do wrong by a system wherein those wrongs are the rules. He is the very personification of a merciless justice system.

What gets me about the book is that you can see a subtle shift in Javert's temperament over the years. He starts off the book as a zealous, angry enforcer of the law. When we see him in Montrieul-sur-Mer, he is the legal tiger who jumps from shadows. But when we fast forward 10 years to Paris, he has mellowed considerably, shows a good deal of cleverness and even a sense of dry humor (particularly in the arrest of the Thenardiers).

His capture at the barricades is another problematic part of the musical, as it shows him deliberately lying to the students to give them false ideas of the government's troops. This is again the opposite of Hugo's intent. In the novel, Javert is merely dressed as a commoner and observing the students, spying on them. When Gavroche points him out to Enjorlas, the students approach him and ask him who he is. He does not lie at all, and does not resist when they capture him. In fact, Hugo stresses how Javert adopts a self-righteous air of "one who has never lied." A little later, there is a great moment when Javert is tied to a table, and he looks up to see Valjean hovering over him. Now, he hasn't seen Valjean in years, and only suspects the man he rescued from Thenardier was him. All Javert does is lower his eyelids and mutter, "Of course..."

[SnowFire]

Congratulations BG, just from that short description, my opinion of Javert has improved considerably. My kind of guy who has enough dry humor to mutter at fate.

[Quixote's Ghost]

Aaron the Moor from Titus Andronicus.

Definatley.

Best Villian Speech ever.

[Alexander's Horse]

Re: Archibald Cunningham

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Who?

Why, it's Tim Roth's truly nasty villain in the movie Rob Roy! Perhaps the most hateable man in movie history.

I liked him a lot - a lot more than that highland w*nker.

And WHERE is the Alexander's Horse option in this poll

[ixnay]

Gah, this thread has returned from the dead!

[Andemagne]

can a character who's really Evil be anyone's favorite?

Hey! where's Takhisis, Queen Of Darkness from DragonLance?

WOW! 350 votes

ok had to go for Megatron the... öö..... Mighty... no... Merciless... no... mean... no... what's his title?

[Andemagne]

DinoDoc: where did you find those 2 pictures of Starscream and Galvatron?

Originally posted by Oerdin
That Starscream shot was from Transformers the Movie. The animation was much better in the movie then in the tv show.

no it wasn't. the moovie was animated the same way as the tv series. or I have seen other moovie than you.

[- Groucho -]

Another vote for Aaron the Moor. Best speech any villain ever spat out at his enemy:

LUCIUS: Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?

AARON: Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day--and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,--
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men's cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

[Tuberski]

"Am I the meanest?"

"Sho nuf!!"

"Am I the prettiest?"

"Sho nuf!!"

"Am I the bads mofo, no doub', round this town?"

"Sho nuf!!"

"Who am I?"

"Sho nuf!!"

"Who am I?"

"Sho nuf!!"

"The Shogun of Harlem."


nuff said.

[Godraz]

Hey nobony mentioned Harvey (Scorpius) from Farscape. He's like Darth Vader evil you know "ill destroy your planet if i dont get what i want" but still he and John have the funniest scenes in the series.

[Deathwalker]

Vader