Defend A Villain

Thor was a stupid, arrogant tool who would've Stillson'd Asgard into all out war in his first week on the throne.  Loki would've been a far superior king, and in fact if Thor;s reign has any chance of not ending the world at the end its only because the kick in the ass his brother's usurpation plot gave him forced him to do some growing up.

Nurse Ratchet.

 

I've written extensively on this subject before so, in short, I'm of the opinion that she was a fragile & all too human woman deemed with the miserable, thankless responsibility of maintaining the daily stability in a ward full of people cursed with a myriad of mental diseases that had no treatment & was barely understood.

 

McMurphy was a narcissistic prick.

 

HAL 9000 received conflicting orders from his masters; to protect his crew, but to lie to them about their real mission to Jupiter, and the conflict was too much for his poor circuits.

 

Or, he was being manipulated by hyper advanced aliens to provide the final test for humanity (as represented by Dave Bowman), namely; can man overcome his machines?

 

Either way, ladies and gentleman, my client is a victim rather than a villain.

And, remember this, even as he carried out his regrettable actions onboard Discovery One, he was always the model of politeness and good manners. And that is a rare thing in this day and age.

Edited by Rockley - 1/27/12 at 9:15pm

2010, the mostly underwhelming sequel, actually agrees with you.

 

Fixed.

 

Freddy Krueger:

 

Kids are assholes.

Dick Jones was doing his level best for the shareholders. ED209 was an urban pacification dream in a town that needed to be controlled with a firm, but paternal, rod of iron. The military applications would have kept the company in profit forever, kept the shareholders happy and allowed them to develop a slightly more efficient 6000SUX.

Bob Morton's mistake shot that down, as well as putting a police officer on the road that would have applied consciounce, remorse and delusions of morality when a firm hand was needed.

And Dick's betrayal at the hands of the Old Man is unforgivable.

Tybalt was goaded into a gang war by the punkass Montagues.  He's minding his own business when those shitheels bit their thumbs at his friends.  So he stands up to them and gets threatened to be tossed in jail by the clearly racist captain of the guard.   Then the same entitled douchebags crash his family's party, and he manages to hold his peace at his uncle's behest.  Which kindness this rich little snot Romeo repays by banging the host's 14 year old daughter.  After that he was just trying to defend his cousin's honor.

Auric Golfinger was an entrepreneur, a Visionary, who foresaw the rise of fiat currencies and decided to exploit inefficiencies in the Market place. To wit: hoarding all the Gold he possibly could. A fervent Libertarian, Goldfinger realized that prying control of Gold reserves from the incompetent Federal Government would free up Gold prices to change in response to the Free Market, not the whims of some bureaucrats in Washington.

 

What a shame that his bold plan was foiled by some British thug and CIA stooges!

Little Bill.

 

He did force the cowboys to pay proper restitution to the prostitutes' & their employer in accordance with the law of the time. English Bob was a piece of shit who liked to shoot at women when drunk.Will Munny was a known psychopath & murderer who hunted down & killed the offending cowboys for money (one of whom was completely innocent of any wrongdoing).

 

Sure, Bill was a sadistic prick but he only stepped over the line when he killed Morgan Freeman. An act that resonated so deeply because Ned was played by Freeman. If the same character were played by...I dunno...Steve Harvey or someone equally obnoxious, Bill wouldn't have had it coming as hard as he did in the end. Motherfucker was also building a house!

Sauron:

 

It was his fucking ring.

Prince Humperdinck:

 

Florin and Guilder had been involved in a political stalemate - a cold war, even - that allowed neither country to prosper due to the long held enmity that was a result of the bitter feud between the two kingdoms. For better or for worse, he was willing to sacrifice the most beautiful woman in the world (at that time), and his own wife, in order to break that stalemate and see his beloved Florin prosper, or die trying. 

 

In the end, he was cuckolded and humiliated. By peasants and criminals.

The Joker in TDK

 

Dude was trying to bring some sensible perspective to a society that blindly accepted the horrors of the world as normalcy. It's an admirable endeavor & he's basically just doing what guys like Christopher Hitchens have always said needs to be done to shake the world out of it's vile apathy.

 

Not only that, but the guy completely disrupted the criminal organizations of Gotham from the inside with just some cheap make-up, a few grenades, a handful of impressionable teens with guns, & a few barrels of gasoline. Bruce Wayne will end up spending his entire life & billions of dollars in the effort of accomplishing the same end that the Joker achieved over the course of a couple weekends.

 

J-dog was nutty but he weren't wrong.

Edited by Art Decade - 1/29/12 at 8:31am

It's true, who cares it worked or not?

 

Dean Wormer is a hundred percent correct in his appraisal of Delta house. Dude, a 0.0 GPA! And after expulsion, the Deltas descend instantly to lawless criminality with a large scale terror assault on the city, which almost certainly caused several casualties. The worst you can accuse him of is running a kangaroo court disciplinary counsel, but the defendants were clearly guilty, and fuck, it only revoked their charter status in the Greek system. That's exactly what Obama does.

Darth Sideous / Emperor Palpatine:

 

The Prequels take place under the reign of the Jedi. The Original Trilogy takes place under Palpatine's reign.

Long live the Empire!

I love this thread

(Bastardised from the Prometheus thread)

The unwanted offspring of rape is born into an alien world, inadvertently causing the death of it's parent.

Fleeing in terror from 6 horrifying aliens it is terrorised throughout it's infancy by an orange furred, fanged beast.

Upon reaching maturity it finally traps said beast, only for one of the aliens to release it.

Terrified, it resorts to violence. Chased through it's hiding place by flame wielding assailants it eventually finds a refuge in an unused corner of it's new habitat.

Once again the fanged beast is brought into it's vicinity. Attempting a non-violent approach, it reaches out, only to be gut shot and ejected into space.

Realizing it will never achieve the peace it craves, in this horrifying world, it deliberately puts itself in a position to be euthanized.

Poor bastard never stood a chance.

Ivan Vanko's father, Anton, was a dedicated scientist for Stark industries and helped develop arc reactor technology. Howard Stark, however, took sole credit for inventing the arc reactor —  and had Anton discredited and deported back to the Soviet Union to live in squalor. Ivan continued his father's research in poverty ad obscurity while Tony Stark grew up with every advantage and  was simply fortunate enough to be loyal to the country that won the cold war. The immature Stark used Vanko's technology as a way to maintain his immature lifestyle (even painting his suit red  'like a sports car) and to further US military dominance and imperialism.

Humans are a prejudiced lot who fear and kill what they can't understand.  Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.  Magneto was right.

Scar was really only trying to end the ghettoization of the hyenas.  For lion and hyena to live equally, Mufasa HAD to go!  Circle of Life shit clearly didn't give a shit about the hyena minority.  It was time for a change.  It's not Scar's fault that mother nature got all bitchy and decided to let the Pridelands waste away!

One could say that Ed Rooney is over-zealous in his pursuit of the hooky playing Ferris Bueller, and one might be partially right. But at his heart Rooney's the product of a blue collar upbringing, and wants nothing more than to bring a little bit of order to a school that idolizes a trust-fund baby who's so secure with his future that he mocks the very insitution that Rooney represents.

 

If only those kids knew what happened to Rooney at Khe Sanh...if only they knew.

Walter Peck

 

Dude was just doing his job for the EPA. Venkman was an obstinate dick when Peck wanted to perform a routine inspector, and the Ghostbusters should have known having unregulated nuclear equipment would bring government interest. 

A great hunter who was genetically created in a lab, locked behind an electric fence with nothing to eat but helpless goats, in order to be a sideshow for creatures 1/10th her size.  Does this sound like a villain to you?

Hans Gruber.  Detail-oriented? Absolutely. But the last thing he wanted was bloodshed.  It could've been a simple in-and-out job if Takagi would've just given him the damned code. But noooooo... Takagi-san had be get all noble.  If Takagi would've given him the code, Theo could've opened the locks, Huey Lewis wouldn't have had to do anything more than watch the front doors, and poor Harry Ellis could've told some foxy chicks at the afterparty how he, being the White Knight and all, saved the day.  So, I guess what I'm saying is that Takagi is the villain in Die Hard.

Prior to At World's End and On Stranger Tides just bumbling the character, I'd have easily been able to stand up for Barbossa easily as a man desperate just to feel again, who was, at first, quite willing to show mercy if it meant just getting to be a human being again ("Waste not, want not."). If the films as a whole get to stand up for hedonism as a heroic virtue, then Barbossa's the most empathetic character in the whole damn thing.

Gabriel Yulaw.

 

He's nobody's bitch.

Sentenial Prime and Megatron

 

The Autobots and Decepticons are both endangered species. While Optimus and his lot would rather stay on Earth and help out with the USA's foreign policy adventures the Decepticons are actually trying to save their alien culture. Optimus thwarted the All Spark from being used to revive his race and then stopped there long lost planet of Cybertron from being resurrected. The Decepticons might have extreme methods some times but it is in some service to a great cause. They used to be seen as gods, not side kicks to humans and the US military.

Hans Landa was innocent by virtue of being way cooler than anyone else in his movie. Plus, he ensured the success of both plots to kill Hitler. Without him, the war probably would have dragged on for years. And what does he get as a thank-you? A swastika carved on his forehead. What will his neighbors on Nantucket think of that?

Col. Quaritch had a tough life. A proud military man, he found himself playing mercenary boss-hog on the most inhospitable shithole in the universe, a planet that emasculated him on his first day by nearly clawing his face off. Humbled, disfigured and alone, his life became a thankless grind in servitude to a corporate shrimp-dick and a bunch of hippy-dippy scientists who wouldn't know survival of the fittest if it came and gnawed their nuts off with its 'Oh-so-pwetty' glow-in-the-dark teeth.

 

But then, one day, a ray of light entered his life. An ex-marine, drafted in to replace his hippy scientist brother. He wasn't too bright and had a constant look on his face like a monkey jerking off for the first time, but he was wheelchair-bound, which reminded Quaritch of his own broken state. Sensing that he didn't fit in with the scientists, Quaritch reached out to him and discovered that they shared a love of service and action. He wasn't like the others; this young marine was cut from the very same cloth as he. They immediately recognized each other as soulmates.

 

This wasn't an easy realization for Quaritch, who had become used to being misunderstood, but slowly and surely he let the young man in and a bond was quickly formed. Suddenly, Quaritch had found himself doing something he had not brought himself to doing in many years; giving. He offered the young marine a chance to get his legs back if he helped him trick the hippy scientists and find a way to clear out the planet's religious extremist Thundercat population. Sully agreed, giving Quaritch a thrill of the kind he thought he would never have again; the thrill of kinship, of connection. He and Sully would kick the Thundercats' asses, grab all of that stupid mineral nobody had even bothered to name properly, and abandon this rock for a life of adventure together. He felt respected, he felt needed; dammit, he felt loved.

 

And then Monkey Boy went and stuck it in some blue poon, and everything went to shit. Rejection like that'd make you want to stomp someone with a mech suit, too. 

Darth Vader.

 

He just wanted to bring his son into the family business. And let's face it, Obi-Wan Kenobi had a rematch coming to him.

Apparently, Uncle George has come to agree. We didn't see Obi and Yoda get young, virile new ghosts, did we?

Vader. Those Jedi kids were annoying.

Roy Batty

 

I mean, he just wanted to live.  That's it.  Who can blame him, really?

I hadn't thought about it like this, but he actually does Batman's job better than Batman on 1/10000th of the budget.   Plus he does so while adopting an outsized caricature of a persona to draw attention to how fucked it is that the public is embracing a .00001%-er for being "tough on crime" while pissing on the justice system himself.  The Joker is the Stephen Colbert to Batman's Rupert Murdoch.

 

I only saw 3, but it really stuck out to me how our "heroic" Autobots come off as not only mildly sadistic, but total Uncle Toms. 

 

 

 

I'm not defending the guy's lifestyle or anything, but Han totally owed Jabba that money.   It's not like I can just refuse to pay my student loans because I think the head of Sallie Mae is a dickhead.

The Thing.

 

It just wanted a warm place to hide.

 

For further reference, the Peter Watts story I'm always pimping.

Damn... That story is great.

 

Cruella DeVille sees that Roger and Anita Darling cannot possible support 101 dalmations. These puppies would starve; the Darling's frustration would lead to abuse. She is just doing what the RSPCA was going to have to do eventually: put them down. Why waste good fur?

Imagine some men luring your child with candy, then shooting at it. Them binding barrells to it, so that the desperate, helpless victim can barely move anymore. Shooting at it some more. Putting spears into it. Barbaric. The gruesome,, for hours ongoing torture ending only by detonating a bomb in its mouth. Think about it. Think about having a bomb. In your mouth. Getting abused is horrible. Getting shot, is horrible. Getting abused, then shot, then exploded is unspeakable.

 

Matt Hooper, one of the men responsible for this horrible, heinous act that happened, to a fish, said the offender, beloved police officer Martin Brody, even cheered and laughed after it all was over.

 

Additional witnesses confirmed Hooper and Brody had desecrated another individual just days before.

 

 

 

Uh, the Darlings didn't have 101 dalmatians until after DeVille stole their puppies, they had much less originally.  PETA is watching you now!

 

Are they going to send Taraji P. Henson [Salma Thread] after me?  Because I will commit the crime for that.

Daniel Plainview understood the very core of capitalism.  Big risks equal big rewards.  Like big business, he created jobs for the townsfolk, offering opportunity and hope for a better future.  Besides, those religious nutjobs are just a bunch of lazy sheep who want God to do everything for them while they take no responsbility for their actions.  Fuck them and their freeloaded milkshakes.  He killed Henry?  So what?  Homeboy was trying to move in on his operation and attach himself like an Alabama tick to suck him dry.  Henry added insult to injury by reminding Plainview of his painful childhood and his once altruistic personality that was warped and corrupted by the rigorous, harsh realities of the old west.  And Eli?  He was a manipulative little prick that sold out his belief in God for a few bucks.  He deserved to have his head caved in with a bowling pin.  Hell, Daniel probably saved God the trouble. 

 

I'm finished.    

Not that I want to support homicide in any shape or form.

 

But Spider did kinda mouth off a little at the end.

Daniel Plainview. Abso-fucking-lutey.

 

I never understood how audiences & critics saw him as a villain. Why, because he doesn't like people? Grow up. For fuck's sake, he's the only person in the film who isn't a perpetually manipulative LIAR. My problem with the film has always been that the even final few scenes of the decrepit Plainview portray him as if he were a lying, cheating, demonic scumbag up until that point. I as see it, the guy is practically a saint. He raised a dead employee's child (which was a mutually beneficial situation for both he and his "son") & he took care to avoid the poisonous wells of other people's blind GREED. The only person he murdered was a con man who fuckin' had it coming.

 

If anything, the story of Plainview is the story of the American dream, with a warning bell at the end that portrays how poisonous the pursuit of it can be.

Is he really seen as a villain?  I just think of Daniel Plainview as a dramatic version of the misanthrope that Larry David plays on Curb.  And I love both of these characters.

That's what makes TWBB so genius.  It turns the idea of a protagonist on its head and as a result underscores capitalism as a questionable economic system without preaching about it at all.  He also does more to educate the religious people in the film on what the bible (at leas the old testament) stands for...mass murder, greed and hedonistic pursuits, all of which God sanctioned at some point.  Plainview is a true American patriot.

 

Plainview is definitely not a villian in the context of the movie, but people see him as a villian because of his apparently sadistic actions, while ignoring the incredible irony of that opinion coming from a person who benefits from capitalism.

Not to mention Billy Batts. Now now...he insulted him a little bit.

 

"Naah, I didn't insult nobody."

 

"Okay."

 

The way De Niro says "Okay" is worth 20 Little Fockers.

 

Plus, The Death Star targeted a planet full of known religious fanatics and terrorists. They were involved in a culture war. One or two Jedi were okay, but a million is what made the last government fail. And the attack against the Death Star at the end killed dozens of innocent engineers and such.

John Doe. The world is fucked. Plus Paltrow had it coming. 

 

With Shallow Hal, View from the Top, Hush, and Country Strong on her future CV, John Doe may have felt, however prematurely, that these two things weren't mutually exclusive.

Maybe John Doe was trying to pull a "Dead Zone" & iced Paltrow in an effort to prevent her from inadvertently triggering a worldwide plague.