Haha Christine I remember that film, miss Herbie gone bad.
I often cheer for the bad guys in films, it's not that I hate to see the good guys win or anything, I just find their motives a lot more fun to dissect. And well, I might be a little bit tired of the shallow and clichéed protagonists we usually see these days too.
But I often find that some really well done antagonists move me far more than your regular good guy does. What good guy has ever during the course of a film, managed to turn any of your morals or beliefs upside down? They don't exactly exist to serve that purpose in stories do they?
I picked 2 of my absolute favorites. One is animated and the other live-action.
This is going to be somewhat lenghty so beware, I tried to keep it varied with a few fun examples throughout so I hope you won't skip over it all.
Zigzag
Have no fear! Zigzag is here!
This is the coolest animated villain ever. Just
look at his entrance during the intro to The Thief and The Cobbler. I mean damn, who does not want to crash into a party like that? Looks like he just came fresh out of the ministry of silly walks!
I'm not sure I want to know just how many pencil tests this guy went through before he was greenlit by the director, Richard Williams, but whatever amount of zero's preceded that value, I'm sure it was worth it because this is what animation really should be all about, which it unfortunately rarely is. Whenever I look at this guy, I see just extremely well portrayed caricature of different emotions. I can't help but feel evil, deceptiveness, and manipulation exploding out of the film frame. He's like a puppet master acting according to his own image, I mean literally he's like a puppet himself! And none of it relies on his looks, it's all about the way he moves! I've never seen a character quite like that before, it just boggles my mind the more I think about it.
One of my favorite parts from the movie is when he fiddles around with his
playing cards. How does one even begin to conceptualize something like that? The animators must've been on crack.
Roy Batty
If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes.
There's not much of a point in trying to explain this man/android after what's been said during the final scenes of Blade Runner. People who have seen the film most likely knows why I picked him. For the rest of you, you have absolutely no excuse not to see this old classic! Just watch it for
this guy alone. I heard the actor, Rutger Hauer, perhaps mostly recognized from The Hitcher, wasn't too pleased with all the bad guy roles he'd been given during his career. Most likely due to the performance shown in Blade Runner, he paved his way through villain-ville. You could call it both a blessing and a curse, but I'm pretty sure he is glad to have been given the chance to play a rarity such as Roy Batty. It's not just a bad guy who does evil things like look scary and kill people, just as a bad guy is supposed to! But he really nails the right amount of powerful yet subtle empathy the viewer has to feel in order for a protagonist to come out as human as he does.
You may dislike Roy Batty during your first viewing of the film, but you'll love him every single time you watch it afterwards.
Time to die.
