BS: 'Good' Bad Guys

Subject: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: robomatic
Date: 24 Oct 17 - 05:06 PM

I want to get a symposium going on bad characters. A word on what I mean:

For a start, I'm looking for fictional characters, NOT characters we wish were fictional. A ?bad? character is the primary opponent of the protagonist. So yes, I?m looking for your most memorable antagonists. Maybe book, movie, or television. And let?s throw in games, which I?m pretty ignorant on. I don?t care if it?s high literature or low. Name your favorite bad gal or guy and tell a bit about her or him and ?why? and whether it made the book worth reading or the show worth watching.

One of my faves:

From the TV show ?Wild Wild West? (the original starring Robert Conrad and Ross Martin), Dr. Miguelito Loveless, played by the great Michael Dunn. The character had boundless drive and imagination, was decades ahead of his time technologically, and an abiding hatred for the series hero. He invariably escaped at the end of an episode, and could be counted on to reappear. Especially interesting, was that although he was a ?little person?, this did not figure as a plot point, other than that James West could usually peal away one or two of the lovelies who accompanied the evil Doctor (maybe a source of his abiding hatred). Although he was a bad guy out of my youth, I was especially intrigued to learn many years later that there was a brilliant 19th Century scientist named Charles Proteus Steinmetz, who suffered from dwarfism and other deformities which gave him a diminutive stature and nonsymmetrical structure. I wondered if some well-read writer had used him as inspiration, but apparently the Loveless character was NOT a derivative of Steinmetz, but it captures the imagination in retrospect.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Oct 17 - 07:54 PM

A symposium college of complexes eh?
No doubt about it, a good villain makes a story strong as hell.
Since I can not draw on literature I can only offer a couple of my own invented villains you will hate;

like a ghoulish woman who wants a Senate seat so badly she insists that she be appointed by the Governor since the current Senator has cancer, "He should take his diseased carcass out of Congress and make room for healthy fighters for the sake of his party and America". Eve Vladess is as lovely as she is ugly with craven enticing lies. The irony is the disease she has makes her ground zero, deliberately.

The other villain is like a crooked financial psychological judo expert using the weight of his enemy against itself. First he invests in all the hacked personal data of half the American population and steals the identities to siphon all the money to his country, then with that money buys the data necessary to siphon all the declared corporate money to be returned to the US tax free but hidden in European banks and takes every penny.

With those trillions he purchases 24 nukes from Pakistan that are later sequestered in Korean Christian churches across the US. Money makes a delivery system more reliable than rocketry.

The deformed part of a villain should be kept secret and not be able to be seen by the public, until you reveal it. eeEWWWW shock and horror.

or just go with a Chucky that looks like Donald Trump. yawn

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Oct 17 - 09:18 PM

Mr. Big (BEEG) Rocky&Bullwinkle

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: robomatic
Date: 24 Oct 17 - 10:30 PM

Your first post reminded me of a cute little paperback that's been out some years but is oddly topical: "Dark Horse" by Doug Richardson features antagonist Shakespeare McCann, a genial folksy candidate who WILL STOP AT NOTHING in the Texas Governor's race. Really enjoyable as a summer read. It would have been a cautionary tale in earlier times, but we've gone beyond that as reality beggars fiction.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Oct 17 - 11:43 PM

I've drifted through various audio books this year and recently listened to one in Lawrence Block's Hit Man series. Keller, the protagonist, is the anti-hero of several books, putting the reader/listener in the position of wondering if he was going to pull the next one off. And how. And should we care.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: robomatic
Date: 25 Oct 17 - 12:54 AM

I guess another example would be Dexter from the book and television series. I followed it on TV and I think the actor Michael C. Hall did a fine job but though his character was a serial killer, he was always the Protagonist, and each season he was faced with an Antagonist, sometimes a cop trying to expose him more often a serial killer who was way 'worse' than him. The seasons varied with John Lithgow being IMO the acme of bad guys. The idea of the series was quite insidious, suborning the viewer/ reader to identify with the protagonist, himself a serial killer. Not everyone I know will watch it and I don't fault them a bit.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 25 Oct 17 - 07:42 AM

Hannibal Lecter.

A very intelligent man who is courteous, and treats the world fairly (in his own view)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 25 Oct 17 - 08:06 AM

Serge Storms, the protagonist of Tim Dorsey's novels, is a homicidal maniac who usually concocts intricate Rube Goldberg methods of dispatching his victims. Said victims are usually lowlifes deserving of their punishments, though Serge tends to not see a great deal of difference in the offenses of a professional hit man and a compulsive litterbug.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Stu
Date: 25 Oct 17 - 08:26 AM

Sir William Gull in Alan Moore's "From Hell". Utterly terrifying.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 25 Oct 17 - 08:49 AM

Khan, as played by Ricardo Montalb?n in the original Star Trek series.

Blowfeld as played by Donald Pleasence in 'You only live twice'.

Lord Summerisle as played by Christoher Lee in 'The wicker man'.

Now we are on Christopher Lee the list could be endless so I will stop there :-)

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: frogprince
Date: 25 Oct 17 - 11:04 AM

Christopher Lee, indeed; just saw him as Dracula last night.

liberty Valance. Lee Marvin's performance made the line "You call Liberty Valance a human being?" resound perfectly.

Any of the soulless killers Jack Elam played in old westerns. I was taken off guard by the comedic talent that Elam later displayed on TV; can't think of the series title.

Lee Van Cleef's characters in "High Noon" or "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". He didn't really have to act; he just looked like pure poison.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: olddude
Date: 25 Oct 17 - 11:16 AM

Dirty harry

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Will Fly
Date: 25 Oct 17 - 05:17 PM

Patricia Highsmith's Ripley.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Jeri
Date: 26 Oct 17 - 04:28 PM

On Doctor Who, I think the character of "Missy" (Michelle Gomez) is fantastic. The latest "Master" X2, nowhere near as good.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: robomatic
Date: 26 Oct 17 - 09:17 PM

Am listening as I type this and a book reviewer is going over the theme of creatures which bring down the U.K. (or at least England). There have been rats, insects, and my favorite, Nazi Leprechauns
.

I also propose as a great great antagonist of English yore, Triffids. Bless you, John Wyndham.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 06:51 PM

music director Fletcher from Whiplash
Tony Soprano from Sopranos

But Ripley was so talented

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: frogprince
Date: 27 Oct 17 - 10:10 PM

Robomatic, I followed your damn link to the Nazi Leprechaun part; now my clothes are all messed up from rolling on the floor laughing.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Oct 17 - 10:15 AM

search anti heros for literal good bad guys

for virtual villains Disney villains are numerous

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Oct 17 - 08:20 PM

Forgive me for including a New York Times review piece, but it seemed somewhat appropriate. With some exceptions, good and bad literature require a good opponent, all too often with evil intent. Evil seems to be necessary to get the ball rolling.

Our Villains, Ourselves

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 04:53 AM

Gru (Despicable Me)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 12:02 PM

rather a lot of Robert Carlyle's roles,

like the Antonia Bird film "Face"

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: lefthanded guitar
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 04:51 PM

A good topic for Halloween

Ah characters I've liked in spite of myself...or their selves:

Bobby in Five Easy Pieces

Gregory House in House

the guy who lives for whiskey, courtin' pretty ladies in the morning oh so early, and robbing Colonel Pepper (or Farrell or whoever) in Whisky in the Jar

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 07:15 PM

Gregory House is an heroic figure more than a villain but is deliciously insultingly arrogant. The writers made him do property damage rather than cause deliberate destruction of people. For the most part people were better for his mini evil plots.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: lefthanded guitar
Date: 30 Oct 17 - 08:06 PM

I think one could sympathize with Greg. due to the writing,his success as a doctor, and the artful portrayal by
the actor (and real life musician) Hugh Laurie. But as he is a drug addict, pitilessly judgmental, and destructive at a felony level; I d see him more as an anti hero than a hero. And in fact, I think that any of the 'villains'. I favor are as much somewhat admirable, on some level, than purely evil; and are better defined as 'anti heroes.
Another I would pick (perhaps more to your definition of a bad guy)
is Zampano, the brutal Anthony Quinn character from La Strada( Fellini
movie). What unites all three is that they are selfishly ignorant of the
needs of most everyone they encounter, the constraints of common decency, but still are bound by the
limits of their place in time, and the misfortune of their own human condition.

Well then, how's about, Barnabas, the vampire from Dark Shadows? Bad enough
for the upcoming holiday? And Happy Halloween folks (I ve got almond joy bars for
the treaters)

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Donuel
Date: 02 Nov 17 - 12:37 PM

Larry David is an anti villain anti hero because his missteps and social awkwardness never deserves the extreme vengeance and revenge he inspires in others to be turned upon poor ol Larry..

If he ever becomes less self centered he would avoid most of his misadventures.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Thompson
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 03:15 AM

The Terminator, definitively. In the first film of the series, he tidies up where his eye has been ripped out, then admires himself in the mirror before or after putting his shades on.

He/it is written really as a working joe determined to do the job he/it has been given.

In the second film, of course, he's the good good guy.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Jackaroodave
Date: 05 Nov 17 - 10:33 AM

Falstaff--He's so beloved a character it's hard to keep in mind that he really is a bad guy.

Long John Silver.

Heathcliffe of Wuthering Heights (well, a fascinating bad guy anyway).

The Godfather in both the Deniro and Brando incarnations, and Robert Duval's Hagen.

Loki the trickster from Norse mythology.

Any villains played by Christopher Walken or M. Emmett Walsh--or Orson Welles.

Morgana le Fey

Vittoria Corombona in The White Devil

Irene Adler in the Sherlock Holmes stories, though she doesn't actually show up much.

Sorry to rattle on, but there are so many!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: robomatic
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 02:10 PM

One of my favorites from my youth:

Cruella DeVille from Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmations

Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons

Graham Mallett from The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett

Subject: RE: BS: 'Good' Bad Guys
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Nov 17 - 03:20 PM

Clearly, none of you listens to The Archers and knows how evil Matt Crawford is. Tsk.