Friday, March 11, 2016

Favorite Movie Villains, Pt 4






20. ZIRA
Suzanne Pleshette, The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride (1998)
Exiled with many other lions for being Scar’s most loyal follower, Zira feels that she’s being punished for that loyalty.  She grooms Kovu (Jason Marsden) to usurp Simba’s rule, and even decides to use his feelings toward Kiara to her advantage.  The whole time she’s been relatively dismissive toward her weaker, but more loyal son Nuka (Andy Dick).  When Kovu’s hesitation prompts Nuka to sacrifice his life, she feels both grief for her loss and guilt for her treatment of him.  In addition to being surprisingly complex and effective for a Disney direct-to-video villain, she also sings a pretty good song in the form of a twisted lullaby.  


 19. JUDGE CLAUDE FROLLO
Tony Jay, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Adapted from a conflicted priest in the book, Frollo is still a very effective villain.  Certainly one of the more vile Disney foes, he’s a self-righteous authoritarian whose penchant for cruelty, torture, and malice is only slightly tempered by his devout Catholicism.  He would have murdered an infant Quasimodo had the archdeacon (David Ogden Stiers) not shamed him out of it (and then moronically tasked him with caring for the child).  He then raises Quasimodo (Tom Hulce) in isolation and psychologically abuses him to indulge his desire for control.  In a bold move for Disney, he nurses a sexual attraction to Esmeralda (Demi Moore) which culminates in a desire to kill her if he cannot have her.  He expresses this with a twisted prayer that’s also one of the better songs in Disney canon. 


 18. COMMODUS
Joaquin Phoenix, Gladiator (2000)
Commodus is a murderous, power-hungry, and devious supervillain enhanced by a great performance from Phoenix (who deserved an Oscar far more than Russell Crowe).  His vileness is exemplified by his willingness to have children murdered and his incestuous lust for his sister.  He effectively uses all this to threaten Lucilla (Connie Nielson) into betraying Maximus.  The only serious villain on this list based on a real person, he’s arguably far more evil than the real Commodus.  Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus was certainly a violent and unhinged megalomaniac, but he was also more weak-willed, delusional, and impulsive than the movie depiction.  If you were a Christian, his reign was certainly an improvement over that of Marcus Aurelius.


 17. MOK SWAGGER
Don Francks (singing voices: Lou Reed and Iggy Pop), Rock & Rule (1983)
Despite being a painfully obvious parody of Mick Jagger in name and appearance, Mok is a pretty fun villain.  So egotistical he flies into a rage when his concert is one seat short of selling out, he resorts to conjuring an apocalyptic demon to enhance his influence and power.  He’s a very charismatic villain, charming Angel (Susan Roman) so he can use her voice to summon this monstrosity.  When Omar (Greg Salata/Paul Le Mat) is rude to him, his reaction of suppressed rage is one of the more amusing parts of the movie.  One has to credit animator Robin Budd for bringing one of the more intentionally grotesque characters of this movie to life with such expressiveness.  Props also go to voice actor Don Francks.  Mok has style and also has a pretty good villain song.    


 16. KRONK PEPIKRANKENITZ
Patrick Warburton, The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)
Kronk is a lovably buffoonish henchman with a heart of gold.  His chemistry with Yzma (Eartha Kitt) is amusing, and he’s one of my favorite comedic villains, even if he’s not particularly evil.


 15. AGENT SMITH
Hugo Weaving, The Matrix (1999)
Agent Smith is actually a relatively relatable villain.  He’s not a power-hungry sadist, but rather a man with a job to do who, like most of us, doesn’t particularly care for having to work.  In an interesting inversion of this trope, Smith, a sapient computer program, finds the sensory environment we use to interact with the world frustrating and annoying.  Like many normal people he’s motivated to get the job done just so he can go home at the end of the day and not have to worry about it.  That doesn’t, however, stop him from being very good at what he does while maintaining a stoic demeanor most of the time.  Weaving’s distinctive performance complements the G-Man motif of this character.  Unfortunately, Smith’s forced resurrection in the sequels negates his more identifiable elements and reduces him to some sort of philosophical boogeyman.  


 14. SHAN YU
Miguel Ferrer, Mulan (1998)
Unlike most Disney villains, Shan Yu isn’t flamboyant or weak.  He’s a strong, intelligent military leader who presents a constant, ominous threat to China and its people.  He even murders children with glee.  Despite Doug Walker’s absurd assertion to the contrary, he has some of the best lines ever uttered by a Disney villain.  Joking about murder with a surprisingly sharp wit makes him cringeworthy  in a good way.


13. RAOUL SILVA
Javier Bardem, Skyfall (2012)
An undeservedly awesome strawman version of Julian Assange, Silva (real name Tiago Rodriguez) has no qualms about endangering UK’s finest by spreading classified information about them to terrorists.  His story is suspiciously similar to Trevelyan’s, but his motivation makes far more sense.  While he was operating outside his brief as an MI6 agent, he still got royally screwed over by M, and the suffering he went through justifies his vendetta against her, if not his actions.  The experience also left him with a distinctive disfigurement.  A charismatic villain, he tries to use M’s failures to convert Bond, whom he sees as a potential kindred spirit.  While he fails at this secondary goal, he ultimately succeeds in what he truly wanted to do: humiliate M and kill her.  In other words, he’s a rare villain who wins.  Bond only succeeds in preventing him from fully savoring his victory; he seems more annoyed by his mortal wound than disturbed by it.  Javier Bardem has a lot of fun with this role, and his performance, while somewhat hammy, is truly entertaining.  My only complaints about this character are his slightly derivative nature in relation to Trevelyan and his use of Hollywood hacking.  Unfortunately, the inferior Spectre tried to make an unconvincing attempt to retcon him into a rather unreliable underling to Blofeld. 


12. CLERIC ANDREW BRANDT
Taye Diggs, Equilibrium (2002)
While Preston stars out as an honest authority figure who believes in the system, Brandt seems to be a corrupt peon who uses it for his own gain.  When the former begins to have doubts about his role, Brandt suspects and watches him like a hawk.  He often toys with Preston in the most devious and sadistic ways, clearly enjoying watching our hero squirm as he tries to talk his way out of situations without fighting.  He takes particular joy in watching Preston stand by as innocents are murdered.  At the end of the movie, when he and Preston finally face off in an honest fight, he smugly taunts his enemy only to be instantly and humiliatingly defeated.  In almost any other movie, I would find this to be crushingly anticlimactic (I’m looking at you, Shane), but Brandt is the kind of villain that makes such a death so satisfying.  Taye Diggs has a great performance, and I love the tense rivalry between the two characters that defines the movie’s tone.


 11. MADAME MIM
Martha Wentworth, The Sword in the Stone (1963)
Mim may be one of the more understandable Disney villains in her motivation.  While she is definitely evil as she is willing to murder a child, she only does so because he’s Merlin’s follower.  Heck, she even expresses momentary regret with what she “has” to do.  Seriously, Merlin is pretty shady.  His motivation is trying to groom a child to become king (against his will) so he can rule the country through him.  With this in mind, Mim almost comes off like a very immoral anti-heroine.  It also helps that turns into a fat dragoness.


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