What makes a good villain in Sci-Fi? And Why? Do they have common archetypes and do they play upon common human fears?
The Evil Emporer, Darth Vader and Stormtroopers The Go'ah'uld The Borg Khan Replicators The shadows Daleks The Cylons Krase and Scorpius The Fembots Reavers Buggers
Discuss...
--Ray
__________________
I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
Would have to start out by saying 1. a sense of darkness / evil; 2. a lack of compassion / empathy; 3. focused on complete control / destruction; 4. unable to be reasoned with; 5. strong / hard and near to impossible to defeat.
Although, Khan has got to be one of the coolest villians out of the bunch listed. I tell ya, Ricardo Montebaln and William Shatner as antaganist and protagonist was one of the best things out there in bringing a stage dynamic between characters to the silver screen (for sci-fi, that is) IMHO.
__________________
It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
What!? Even cooler than the Fembots!? I think not!
--Ray
PS> A good villain is not blanket evil, but driven by an agenda, often to supplant or take over something that is good and wholesome and the audience sympathizes with... with an attempt to replace it with something entirely self-serving to the villain.
__________________
I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
If the villian builds a sizable army, that army will always have superior numbers and often superior technology. But the good guys will have better skills, and will win just because they're good.
Star Wars: Stormtroopers vs. Jedi battles LOTR: Helm's Deep - Aragorn and friends vs. Orcs All of the heros from comix--Spider Man, Bat Man, Super Man, X-Men, etc.
Those are the examples that most readily come to mind.
__________________
The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life. - Julie Beck
The Wraith scare the ebeejeebees out ot me. Mainly because they are so hard to kill. I think anything that is hard to kill that also wants to kill humans makes for a good Sci Fi bad guy.
If you look at the typical villian from Dr. Who (say Daleks or Cybermen or what have you), there is also the aspect of the individual / group being mentally / logically unstable. You don't see that as much in American sci-fi, or at least as prominently a part of the villian's portrayal.
For American TV / film, a villian with mental problems is usually cast as some sort of psychotic beserker. Maybe Brits are more afraid of folks who are mentally imbalanced or something, as I think somewhere in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence that we have the right to portray psychos as folks who have gone off the deep end a time too many in the shallow end of the pool. :wnk:
__________________
It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
I think a good villian has to be complex. He will do many good things and may even appear good or partially good to others. "Kill! Destroy! Maim! and do it indiscriminately and for no reason!" are not the battle cries I find engaging.
I've noticed there are similarities often between old westerns and scifi. You either have specific bad guys or gangs or you just have unamed hordes (Apaches, Souix, Cylons, Wraith) trying to kill the bad guy. It is typically a good versus evil with heros and villians and lots of gun play. The frontier is space instead of the wild west. They ride space ships instead of horses. There are usually intergallactic saloons and gambling where a lot of action takes place. I think these themes play so well because we like to see the bad guy get his comuppance.
But what about Romans? Sometimes they get portrayed as bad guys (Spartacus for example), and some times they get portrayed as the victims (that utterly terrible movie that was just recently on TV where they made out like King Arthur was simply a Roman mercenary that defeated invading Saxons in ancient Britain)...
Oh, wait, my bad... this is sci-fi, right? Well, they had evil Roman type guys a couple times on Star Trek, and Star Trek was simply the "wagon train" to the stars... uh, yeah sure thing there Gene... (did anyone else notice that with each successive sci-fi series he wrote / thought up / produced / his wife produced, things got a little wierder? I thought Earth Final Conflict was weird -- cuz it was constantly jumpin' the shark -- but Andromeda almost made it look semi-sane... and you were never sure who the bad guys were in either series or what the bad guys motives were, and sometimes / often the bad guys and good guys flopped around from side to side).
__________________
It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
The Evil Emporer, Darth Vader and Stormtroopers - Star Wars The Go'ah'uld - Stargate, Stargate SG1 (first set of evil villians) The Borg - Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Trek Voyager Khan - Star Trek original series episode, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Replicators - Stargate SG1 (second set of evil villians), Stargate Atlantis (variation of sorts from the SG1 version) The shadows - Babylon5 Daleks - Dr. Who The Cylons - Battlestar Galactica Krase and Scorpius - Farscape The Fembots - not sure... Reavers - not sure... Buggers - Enders Game, also "bugs" are the enemy in Starship Troopers
In addition to these, there are a couple of others that have been referenced:
Orcs (goblins, ogres, trolls, et al) - fallen creatures that typically have more brawn than brain and don't know what soap, water, and visits to dentists are. They revel in being slimey and dirty and well, just all around physically disgustifying... found prominently in any "fantasy" type sci-fi works. The Wraith - Stargate Atlantis (original bad guys... kind of a combination zombie vampire insect human fusion kind of thing that feeds off people's "life force") The Ori - Stargate SG1 (the last of the bad guys - non-corporeal "god-like" ascended to a higher plane of existence human beings from another galaxy that are the antithesis of the good, but non-interfering "ancients" -- same thing, ascended to higher plane of existence human beings but from our galaxy -- who follow a different political ideology. Romans - conquered and ruled the greater part of the ancient western world for several hundred years before succombing to the evils inherent to their culture and losing their empire to the uncivilized barbarian tribes. Toga parties, cage fights, and homosexual members of congress are their legacy in modern society. Bubble Bass - big fat bully who tries to discredit the ability of filling special order crabby patties correctly by that loveable frycook who is yellow and square and who is a sponge and whose name is Bob.
__________________
It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
For some reason, the nameless hordes who follow the bad guys typically have terrible aim and are very easily killed are avoided, at least when the good guys are around.
I think that one of the things that makes great supervillains is how they are usually amplifications or derivations of our own human nature.
E.g., Cylons are amplifications of our need for technology run amok Borg are our need for simplification and conformity run amok Reavers are a result of our trying to force happiness and contentment on everyone Khan was a result of bioengineering the 'perfect' humans, and his belief in that perfection being superior was what drove him to megalomania Fembots are...ahem...well...that one's obvious... :D
Fembots... honestly, don't know what they are... had fleeting thought maybe they were something from Austin Powers... but I guess they are more or less stepford wives? Reavers... guess I never saw enough of Firefly or whatever the show was to realize there was a some sort of bad guy alien species... I guess I was mistaking them for the magog from Andromeda, sound about the same and play about the same role.
__________________
It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
Reavers were explained in Serenity (the Firefly movie) -- basically, the government terraformed a world and in doing so added a product to the air to keep people happy and content. However, 2 bad things happened: 1) the majority of the people stopped caring about their lives, and they basically stopped living. and 2) a small minority of the people had a bad reaction to the drug and became sick, sadistic freaks bent on rape, cannibalism, and torture. That second group is what became Reavers.
When I was a kid, I went to see the Disney movie, Black Hole. Now of course barring the obvious and utter disregard for actual physics, the movie was horrifying to me when it was discovered that the obedient, yet otherwise lifeless, crew of the gravity ship were really the original crew of brilliant scientists and explorers who'd been "lobotomized" to obey.
The scene where the femme fatale is put on the conveyor belt, and the process of lobotimizing her starts, left me with this sick and horrible feeling as a child, so palatable that I can still recall the feeling of revulsion.
The only other movie that scared/affected me in such a way as a kid was the time when we accidentally (the other show we were going to see was sold out) went to Poltergeist one summer, and the scene where the clown becomes animated and it's face is all twisted into an evil face... freaked me out bigtime... the rest of the movie is actually laughably unscary, but that one scene freaked me out... I couldn't look at a doll the same way ever again...
--Ray
__________________
I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
Poltergiest scarried me silly when it came out. The second one was even scarier. Even scarier when I realized that Cain was singing a hymn from our own hymnal!!!!!
The Fembots were really freaky. They were essentially mechanical replacements of actual people. People would disappear and then their fembot replacement would appear. Lindsay Wagner had to battle them, and they had just as much strength as she did, for they were entirely bionic, and she was the bionic woman... Normally the Bionic Woman was pretty predictable, because everyone she went up against had no special powers, but with the fembots, she was completely outmatched, for these robots were superior in strength, and so forth. At one point, The bionic woman has to jump out of a really tall building, and damages herself in the process...
The characteristic scene that freaks you out, however is when her supposed friends she's talking with, attempt to kill her, and she starts grappling with the woman in typical 70s style scene... only at a certain point, the face of the fembot detatches and there's a robotic face with eyeballs... very freaky...
I've never seeen the Austin Powers movies, mostly because my wife won't let me... she says they're nothing but crude jokes (we'd rented it, but she watched it while i was at work... or part of it, then turned it off...) and warned me... But since AP is about spoofing the 70s I wouldn't be surprised if he did spoof the fembots...
--Ray
__________________
I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
I just have to say that Anakin's transformation to Darth Vader was totally mishandled. Anakin Skywalker should have been one of the great tragic heroes--he should have ranked with Othello and Oedipus. His tragic flaw should have been that he wanted to learn the Force and become a Jedi, but he was impatient and took the "quick and easy" way of tapping into the Dark Side--tapping into his aggression and hate. It should have been a parallel to Luke's temptations in the Original Trilogy. We should have seen how Anakin made the wrong choice when Luke made the right one. Instead we get a kid who is upset by his bad dreams and mad at the Jedi for not saving his mommy. How could you let us down, George??
__________________
I'm not voting for Ron Paul because it's not expressly prescribed in the Constitution.
Shiz, I completely agree. The stage was beautifully set--Palpatine twisting Anakin's ambition, Anakin's obsession with saving Padme, Obi-wan's arrogance in teaching without his own full mastery. But the transition was too sudden, too complete, and ultimately unbelievable. I guess when you're working within a limited time frame for a film which is already long, you gotta leave a lot of stuff unsatisfactorally undeveloped.
It's the same thing with LOTR. To me, the best chapter in the books was "The Scouring of the Shire." After experiencing all the horror, Frodo retreats into non-violence, Sam heals the Shire with Galadriel's gift, and Merry and Pippin use the knowledge and experience gained in service to their respective lords to rally the hobbits and liberate the shire. It was a thoughtful and triumphant way to bring closure for the "little people." And Saruman earned a fitting end for his betrayal. But instead, we got 45 minutes of sentimental farewells in various settings.
-- Edited by Roper at 21:29, 2007-05-31
__________________
The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life. - Julie Beck
I saw part of the show talking about the Star Wars Legacy and how it is supposedly a retelling of lots of the classic greek tragedies / heros. The story and character development is a cheap imitation at best... watered down for the kiddie crowd.
__________________
It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
I don't know that there is any rhyme or reason as to what makes a good science fiction villain. The only common element is that they make the situation intolerable for the characters that we sympathize with.
In X-Men III, Magneto makes sure that a little girl is returned to the safety of her family during the bridge scene. I like the fact that Magneto is not 100% evil. That actually clarifies the nature of evil, because few of us are 100% evil.
Darth Vader fills the role of the archtypical villain quite nicely. Without the villains of Star Wars, there would be no story.
The Borg were interesting because they were so alien, having had their humanity and individuality programmed out of them from infancy. The other interesting thing about the Borg is that they actually gave the heroes of ST:TNG a real villain who could actually hurt them. While it's true that Q could do so, it seemed that he was never that much of a threat because he was too attached to the Enterprise due to its entertainment value to ever actually want to destroy it. Although it was Q who made the introduction to the Borg.
Khan was not a particularly interesting villain. Rather full of himself.
The shadows were even more alien than the Borg, their alienness being part of their nature rather than being due to pre-programming. Like the Borg, they were powerful and could do some real damage.
The buggers were very alien. Like the Borg, they had no individuality, but it was not programmed out of them. They sort of took on a tragic quality. The war against the buggers was necessitated by the fact that such an alien could not live in peace with mankind, because they were too different for them and us to understand each other.
Fred Saberhagen's berserkers made great villains because they were soulless, having nothing in common with humans, and were formidable enemies. You could never get rid of them all. They recruited useful idiots and named them GoodLife. The new pet food named GoodLife obviously is not recruiting Fred Saberhagen fans.
In Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of Moondust, an alien landscape was the villain. Being sucked into the dust pit was sufficiently terrifying without having a malevolent character.
In Isaac Asimov's Nightfall, the villain was a very rare but terrifying celestial phenomenon that had a disastrous effect on the minds of the sentient species.
In Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the book was better than both the movies) the villain was the pods. You never knew who was your friend, and who had been replaced. Those pods were ubiquitous.
In Martians Go Home, the villain was millions of pranksters who made life miserable for mortals. They were very effective.
In Robert A. Heinlein's The Day After Tomorrow, the villain was a foreign country in Asia, taking over our country. There were hordes of them, making life miserable.
In Robert A. Heinlein's Puppet Masters, we never found out if those parasites were sentient, or if they were merely using the intelligence of the humans that they attached themselves to. If they weren't sentient, then heaven help us if a sentient version of them ever arrives.
An effective villain in science fiction can be a single personality, a corporation, a nation, an alien species, or even a natural event. If it causes (or potentially causes) death, genocide, enslavement, separation of loved ones, or purposelessness, it is a good villain. If the writer's any good, anyway.
