The origin of villains
Villains have been around since evil has walked the earth. People have been creating villains ever since the beginning of human civilization. Every tale has its villain and villains are at the core of great stories. There are few real-life villains but the most colourful ones exist in literature, theatre and, needless to say, on the silver screen. Where would Sherlock Holmes be without Professor Moriarty? Or Iago and his “friendly” advice poison to Othello’s ears, destroying what was so innocent and pure. In Hollywood, the villain has been portrayed as a person that the audience loves to hate and hates to love.
These characters are made up of wickedness of mind; selfishness of character and will to power, often masked by beauty and nobility. Others rage unmasked. Daring the worst to gain the most, the movie villains we remember best can be horrifically evil, merely sleazy, or grandiosely funny, but are usually complex, moving and tragic. The earliest known villain caught on film would be the serpent in the Garden of Eden coaxing Adam and Eve into eating the apple. Thus began the never-ending trail of villains, ranging from Egypt’s Pharaohs to Chinese Emperors. One movie era portrayed villains from medieval times like the Vikings and evil knights. Villains on film have evolved devilishly throughout the ages from Nazis to mad scientists, psychopaths, gangsters, people with super human powers and spies.
After last summer’s August heat wave that contributed to the Terminator blasting out the local box office, the Robot dial has yet again been tuned into the villainous frequency, only this time it is very personal as the battle is set against Will Smith, aka as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, in I, Robot.
Based on the book (also entitled I, Robot) by sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov its theme has become now commonplace: the idea of computers and machines going berserk and taking over the world. There are however, some impressive special effects, such as the scene of the several thousand new robots lined up in a warehouse that recalls a Nazi Nuremberg rally.
But what stands out in the movie is the villainous Vicki Computer that bears a resemblance to 2001’s HAL, and the Robot character Sonny, an advanced robot of considerable intelligence with the innocently inquiring mind of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock. He certainly upstages Will Smith and improves on recent cinematic cyborg’s outings. The visual style of the robot should also be given the thumbs up as his look suggests that the next transparent Mackintosh computer we purchase will transform into a robot.
The Comic Book Villain
Euro 2004 may have kicked off this summer but it was the blockbuster movie clashes that made it more exciting. At the end of the day it is the comic book villain that has scored big at the box office. Superhero movies have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, largely because of the built- in fan base that knows the mythology laid down in the vibrant hues of comic books. We know everything about Superheroes – Spiderman’s radioactive spider bite, Superman’s exploding planet Krypton, Batman’s crime–fighting vow after his parents were murdered. But just as crucial are the villains or the anti-heroes, who have their own rich and tragic back stories, which until recently didn’t always make it to the big screen.
In Superhero movies it takes two to tangle. You can have the greatest hero in the world, but you cannot have a good story unless you have an equally great villain. What makes a classic super villain is something Marvel and DC have spent thousands of pages defining and developing since Superman became the first major superhero in 1938. Early on, comics drew from real life, patterning evil nemeses after Adolf Hitler. Some of the best villains, at least within the Marvel universe, have always been the villains who are almost identical in character structure as the hero. This fluke-of-psychology approach was especially thematic in the first Spiderman movie, in which family, friends, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) both endured freak lab accidents, with Parker becoming the heroic Spiderman and Osborn transforming into the evil psychopath Green Goblin. While fans still get movies that continue to emphasize classic super villains based on myths set decades ago, this year’s blockbuster superhero movies have radically reinvented the notions of what makes a super villain, making them more real and delving into the villains’ personal history and motivations. Such as in Spiderman 2, they have dug deeper into the villain’s psychological history. It is true that Dr Octopus played by Alfred Molina threatens Spiderman and the city with giant robotic tentacles but fans take him seriously because he has a reason behind his actions. A lab accident exposed him to radioactivity and in the process he lost his wife and job, turning him into a monstrous criminal. The Ying–Yang formula works well with this villain as an earlier scene establishes him as Peter Parker’s friend and later on he tries to save the city from destruction .
Leading this summer’s villain battle is Tom Cruise who for the first is playing a bad guy in Michael Mann’s adult thriller Collateral. The Cruiser puts aside his Samurai armour and plays Vincent, a slicker-than-thou assassin who takes LA Taxi driver Max, played by Jamie Foxx, hostage over the course of a single night, during which he has five hits to carry out, while Mark Ruffalo’s dogged cop tries to stop him. Collateral promises dead-eye action and gritty visuals but there are some who doubt whether the great movie-going public will accept Tom Cruise as a bad guy in Collateral but nevertheless it will still be a joy to watch Cruise finally unleash his id, as on screen he has always come close to being the psychotic villain.
