Comments on: Maybe a lack of Hollywood villains is to blame for our politics?

By: lorien1973

lorien1973 — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 17:46:30 +0000

Darth Vader was always something of an anti-hero

What? No he wasn’t.

By: Count to 10

Count to 10 — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 16:35:51 +0000

Terrorists tend to be depicted as anti-heroes (people who are doing what they think is right) while corporations are depicted as villains (people who are doing what they know is wrong).

By: Count to 10

Count to 10 — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 16:33:08 +0000

Emperor Palpatine?

malclave on December 7, 2012 at 10:12 PM

Interesting bit, there. Darth Vader was always something of an anti-hero, someone who has a somewhat different set of values, while Tarken and the Emperor played the real villains — people who enjoy doing wrong.

By: hawkdriver

hawkdriver — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 15:00:16 +0000

FlatFoot on December 7, 2012 at 11:41 PM

Dude, I was disappointed too. But we got it the first 5-6 times you spammed it.

By: hawkdriver

hawkdriver — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 14:59:12 +0000

Hollywood has villians. Christians and Conservatives.

By: eski502

eski502 — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 05:19:51 +0000

“The Dark Knight” was the best post 9-11 movie, and still is chiefly because it painted evil as it should be painted. The character Alfred’s description of “men who just want to watch the world burn” was a spot on description of some of the evil we as a country have faced in the past decade. That film was a brilliant painting of America post 9-11, and it was deliberate in the extreme. The Joker was a terrorist. Batman was a leading figure who had to take charge and do the things no one wanted to do (but had to) as a “Dark Knight” (such as spying). It was all too perfect. Any conservative should watch the film through that lens. Even the movies cover art was deliberate. It shows Batman standing in front of a a building with the bat symbol burning in the side of it – eerily looking like a gaping hole we’ve seen in the side of buildings before.

“Dark Knight Rises” was also decent but I think it came up short because it chose to cover different topics. It adequately showed a federal government failing to aid a city in need. It also did a great job of showing the evils of the bash the rich occupy mentality. Unfortunately, as great as the films political message was, its story telling kind of fell flat in the absence of a Ledger/Joker like character.

By: FlatFoot

FlatFoot — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 04:41:13 +0000

Not even the Green Room shrubs could muster the requisite COURAGE!

…

December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy…

…

A date which will live in — Infamy?

Not if you’re HotAir.com — or Google — or Yahoo.

HotAir.com posts NOTHING on Pearl Harbor Day to commemorate the horrific Japanese surprise attack on the American Naval Fleet in port at Pearl Harbor leaving 2,402 Americans killed and 1,282 Americans wounded — many of them civilians.

Pathetic.

This website has gone to crap ever since Michelle Malkin sold out to the highest bidder.

…

HotAir.com — Guaranteed Soft & Squishy™ Or Your Money Back

…

By: malclave

malclave — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 03:12:16 +0000

Now, go backwards through film history and give me a good villain that didn’t have complexity.

John the Libertarian on December 7, 2012 at 1:27 PM

Emperor Palpatine?

By: juliesa

juliesa — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 20:00:15 +0000

It's ok with me if villains have a back story. However, I quit watching 24 Hours when they went from Islamist terrorists to corporate villains. Other shows do that too, but at least they change up the villains from episode to episode.

By: Sekhmet

Sekhmet — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:47:55 +0000

Voldemort had an awful backstory, but one of the themes of the entire Harry Potter series is that Harry’s background was just as awful—but Harry made the better choices Voldemort did not make, which made Harry the only man who could defeat Voldemort.

By: Shump

Shump — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:05:48 +0000

Producers are constantly challenging the notion of a villain because they hate being cliche.

John the Libertarian on December 7, 2012 at 1:27 PM

Er… since when? I can think of few endeavors that embrace the cliched more heartily than the movie industry. So many movie plots, characters, situations — in fact, the whole movies themselves — are just cookie cutter repetitions, that I think the fear of NOT being cliched is what drives most producers.

By: Seth Halpern

Seth Halpern — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:04:06 +0000

The rich Horace Mann kid who liked to pour sand on me from his upper bunk in camp, and then accused me of “begging” when I asked him to stop, would have made a pretty good movie villain. Years later in law school I met someone who’d been with him at Yale. “Ah, yes, so-and-so,” he remembered. “He was impotent.” And then he let out a sly giggle.

By: CurtZHP

CurtZHP — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:47:01 +0000

Lecter was a lot more interesting when he was merely evil rather than the product of an agonizing childhood.

Maybe I’m a heartless SOB, but having a rotten childhood doesn’t justify eating someone’s face.

By: Seth Halpern

Seth Halpern — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:39:21 +0000

There’s a difference between giving villains humanizing qualities and making excuses for them. Most famous Hollywood bad guys/gals (portrayed by Cagney, Robinson, Bogart, Turner, Stanwyck, etc.) were still somewhat complicated characters. Shakespeare’s villains (Shylock, Othello, even Richard III) had some sympathetic traits. If they’d been cardboard cutouts, adult audiences wouldn’t have found them so frightening.

As I said, adult audiences.

By: narciso

narciso — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:39:09 +0000

Silva, btw, was just Sean Bean’s Trevelyan update for the modern day,
with a backstory out of the Tolstoy libel stories, he was betrayed by M, who represents MI-6, so he is just tearing down, everything that is important to her,

By: narciso

narciso — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:34:05 +0000

So why do they decide that CIA officials are merciless killers, operating out of a high rise, not that far from where the WTC stood, why are corporations, like Weyland/Yutani always the villain,

By: Capitalist Hog

Capitalist Hog — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:28:39 +0000

I’ve always wondered if Michael Caine had a say in Alfred’s declaration about evil. I think his line “some men just want to watch the world burn” makes the movie.

Hollywood, a place where Stephen Baldwin gets mocked and arrested but Alec Baldwin is worshipped.

By: John the Libertarian

John the Libertarian — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:27:39 +0000

I’m sorry, but this is dumb. I work in the field and can tell you that the creation of a villain is the hardest thing. Producers are constantly challenging the notion of a villain because they hate being cliche. If you explore the supposed moral relativism of the villain, whatever the backstory is, the villain still chose to retaliate or go down a reckless path. Recall that the original garden story of Adam & Eve is about free will. Now, go backwards through film history and give me a good villain that didn’t have complexity. How about the shark in Jaws? Poor little guy was just hungry, why call him evil?

By: Oil Can

Oil Can — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 17:59:12 +0000

When can’t have Middle Eastern terrorists as bad guys everything else just falls apart.