House of Eratosthenes

…mostly from screen, and the books are by Ayn Rand. No other writer of fiction, to my knowledge, had ever performed such a thorough job of identifying deleterious human traits in real life, and pouring out her soul onto the pages to showcase her antipathy toward them.

Since “awesomeness” here has to do with motivation, there are no Dragons here, only BigBads. BigBads plan, Dragons execute. There really isn’t much for the Dragon to do; just be sinister, memorable, scary, ruthless, chillingly competent in doing destructive things, and a little bit creepy. The BigBad assembles the story. And this is a science unto itself.

If it’s done right, a whole new type of BigBad is created. What follows is a roster of the exclusive club of guys who managed to ascend to that lofty height of badness. Rather odd that I couldn’t think of any gals.

So have a seat, Darth. This is all about the guy at the top.

1. Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers (I don’t remember which one)

I think it was Tim Curry in that otherwise-lackluster version from the nineties (although Charlton Heston’s version was far superior). There was this creepy scene in which the Cardinal brags, in private company, about being an atheist. Think about this: Using religion to control an entire country through its monarch, and privately, disbelieving. What a wonderful piece of bad-guy-definition, I still wonder if the filmmakers understood what they were doing.

2. Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead

Enabler with a capital E. Everyone in proximity to him suffers and doesn’t see it happening. The film version didn’t quite capture this, and perhaps couldn’t have.

3. Robert Stadler in Atlas Shrugged

The successor to The Fountainhead did a fantastic job of “busting out” Toohey’s character into a whole bunch of people, each of which captured just a piece of the nastiness. Stadler’s role is one of Fallen Angel amongst the men of the mind: He used his individual gifts and intellect to figure out what was going on, and he figured out what was going on to figure out how his bread was buttered. So he sided with the looters. He used his intellect to determine his destiny, threw his lot in with those who would deny all others that very ability, and as a consequence, ultimately failed at this.

4. Noah Cross in Chinatown

“Reprehensible prick” doesn’t quite capture it, and is an insult to reprehensible pricks.

5. Jerome Lundegaard in Fargo

The “kinda sorta bad guy” who never really wanted any rough stuff to happen, has been a tired stock character at least since cheeseball 1970’s prime-time action teevee shows like “Charlie’s Angels,” to name just one example. Here it’s given a shot in the arm. He is, quite clearly, the architect of events, and his incompetence that allows them to spiral out of control is linked to his failure to understand the complexity of people. He somehow thinks he’s the only one on the planet capable of having a hidden agenda, and this is where everything starts to go sideways. Know anyone like this?

6. James Graham, Earl of Montrose, in Rob Roy

Lundegaard’s next step up. He knows he’s been snookered by someone; he’s figured out it is not Rob Roy, but his own subordinates Killearn and Cunningham who are up to shenanigans (William Hurt’s performance leaves a fantastic piece of ambiguity here, just ever-so-slight); and you can tell that, to whatever extent he’s figured out what’s going on, he just doesn’t give a damn. The theme that permeates throughout the movie has to do with honor, and it is made resoundingly clear, through the subtleties, that this man has absolutely none.

7. Edward Longshanks in Braveheart

Cunning, scheming, treacherous. Wounded by the knowledge that his son and heir is a complete failure in every way, taking it out against a country. This is what makes a great movie villain: That the motivation is there, but defined only suggestively, in light pencil. He’s never actually psychoanalyzed, it never gets preachy.

8. The Shark in Jaws

Imagine yourself on that boat. A side garnish for the fear you’re feeling, is the genuine sense of bewilderment that the shark is planning and executing this stuff, like a master general. Dammit, they’re just not supposed to be able to do that!

9. Khan Noonien Sing in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Because overacting is a huge plus when you’re the bad guy. And quoting Milton just makes it better. He almost fails the cut, because his motivation is so simplistic and let’s face it, “just revenge” has been done before. But among the movie villains motivated solely by revenge, who is the leader of the pack? Nero? Eh, no. It’s Ricardo The Great, and you damn well know it.

10. Rene Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark

This is a stroke of genius, having the villain do the psychoanalyzing. He does it to Indy in that bar, and then he does it to Col. Dietrich near the end. Really, everything else he does in the film is small potatoes. And think about it: If he didn’t do these two things, some of the greatness would have been lost. He possessed purpose in building other characters, and at the same time, he developed crucial events in the story by injecting uncertainty into the choices they had to make — which, in turn, was something that served his own interests.

Update: Finally thought of some ladies:

11. Lady MacBeth

In high school, you are taught that she is the archetype, and rightly so.

12. Mrs. Iselin

Yowzer. You’ll never watch a re-run of “Murder, She Wrote” the same way ever again.

Update: Really had to wrestle with the two winning performances by Ronny Cox in the classics that were made back when Verhoeven was great:

13. Dick Jones in Robocop

14. Villos Cohaagen in Total Recall

There will never be another Ronny Cox.

On the other hand, this is not about acting. It’s about bad guys who are so good that, through the definition of what motivates them, they make a whole new breed of bad guy. And these would ordinarily fail…

But Dick Jones is clawing to the top of an organizational structure which is currently under the leadership of Dan O’Herlihy’s character, “The Old Man.” The Old Man, in turn, is rather like a kindly version of Montrose. Lacking in character, knowing there is some skulduggery going on but not really giving a care. Jones is a jealous ankle-biter….which makes him scary, because he’s backed into a corner.

Cohaagen, at three points in Total Recall, pronounces that he alone knows all of what’s going on and therefore he alone is in charge of planning anything. This is an interesting variation of Lundegaard’s character. This guy wears the same horse blinders with regard to the complexity of others, but he knows he’s wearing them and he’s proud of it.

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- House of Eratosthenes | 01/19/2010 @ 06:38
Cohaagen will finish the job and be home in time for cornflakes.

Have not heard that before or since.
- cylarz | 01/19/2010 @ 12:10
Do you actually get any work done during the day, darlin’?
- Daphne | 01/19/2010 @ 12:34
Oh yeah. That’s when I get into the BIG trouble.
- mkfreeberg | 01/19/2010 @ 12:41
I think you must have one of those fancy computers that takes voice dictation. Seriously, it would take me all day to write up as much as you do.
- Daphne | 01/19/2010 @ 12:48
“Blog o’clock a.m.” is somewhere around 5…which, more often than not, results in a post or two unceremoniously criticizing my favorite “basically-God” President. Today it was closer to 3:30, which brings on some right-brain stuff that’s been cooking on the SmartPhone for awhile.

It’s nice to find something else to discuss, but I’m not planning to make a habit out of it. It takes one of my rare insomniac spells, and/or a case of gas, to pry me out of a warm bed with a gorgeous woman in it. Oh well, life would be pretty boring if every single morning started the same way, huh?
- mkfreeberg | 01/19/2010 @ 15:25

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Ten Awesome Villains From Literature and ScreenTuesday, January 19th, 2010

Ten Awesome Villains From Literature and Screen
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010