Honored samurai, ruthless ronin, wayward vagabonds, shadowy ninja and helpless villagers... welcome.
Opening Volley
Villains. Paired with a fantastic protagonist, they make or break a story. This issue, I explore four great film antagonists who honestly make my toes curl each time I watch. There are no supernatural elements to these baddies ("mostly"); they are all human, making them all the more dangerous and mesmerizing in my opinion. (And no, while I LOVE the original Darth Vader, he is NOT on this list.) So, in no particular order...
Main Event
Anton Chigurh (No Country For Old Men)
Cold, cold, cold. Without heart or conscious. Even when he is being "generous" (the boys at the end or the gas stand attendant), he is frightening. This is not a factor to be underestimated or underrated. Most villains are given a degree of "likability" or sympathy — something viewers can relate to. Plenty of antagonists have valid reasons for turning on their fellow characters. But Anton kills because it is in his nature to kill. The money is secondary. I would even go as far to say (Disclosure: I haven't read the novel, so this is speculation) Anton is not the kind of villain who kills for pleasure. There's no pleasure, no emotion that Anton displays when he kills. He takes great pains to ensure it is done, done correctly, done methodically, done thoroughly. His determination to do his job makes him unstoppable, even despite being injured or in pain. He is comparable to the Terminator in many respects, but what makes him more frightening than the machine, Anton is human, and therefore, we assume has the emotional capability to connect with other humans, even those he is hunting. Alas, that may be one of the very factors Anton is counting on when hunting. Ohai, BOOM.
Lord Humongous (Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior)
The warrior of the wasteland and the ayatollah of rock and roll-ah — what a glorious villain. My love for Humongous is rooted in the absolutely wild take on villainy he represents. At once, a ruthless leader who leads his band of murderous marauders through the desolation of the old world to take what they want by any means, yet apparently intelligent and not seemingly unreasonable. Without a doubt, his tactic of being able to speak with some eloquence has not only garnered him the large following of the aforementioned gang, but likely, as he is obviously tooled up for it via the speaker system on his vehicle, access to whatever he wants through guile. There is also the question of his face. The hockey mask hides his countenance; a neutral slate offering no hint to his true intentions, so we know not whether he is man or monster. It is only via sparse shots of his pulsating, fire-scarred head with its wispy straggles of hair that we get a glimpse of the demon within.
The Kurgan, aka Victor Kruger (The Highlander)
The Kurgan is wild and untamable, first appearing on screen in armor of bone creating the illusion of a man possessed by demons, or perhaps a demon himself. Like Lord Humongous, he is massive, towering over his battlefield opponents, striking them down with swift blows of a broadsword that is equally intimidating. Add to that, his immortal strength and relentless nature, the Kurgan is not an enemy any protagonist would want on their tail. While like Anton Chigurh in that regard, The Kurgan's drive has purpose. His goal to obtain the Quickening of his fellow immortals leads him across the globe over countless centuries. But this drive that makes him such a great baddie. It is clear he enjoys the chaos he sows when he walks onto the scene — old people tremble, nuns run, punks kowtow. The Kurgan is the walking embodiment of danger, kickstarting the average person's flight instincts into high gear. It's glorious and frightening.
The simulacrum of Brian O'Blivion (Videodrome)
It's the creep factor. Hands down. Branded as a "socio-political battleground in which a war is being fought to control the minds of the people of North America", Videodrome is a virus-like infection that creates a tumor in the brains of those who watch. But it's not the tumor that's frightening (well, yes it is), but the amorphous, saturating phantom of O'Blivion, assassinated by his own partners in the scheme, that is the very embodiment of 80s government-mistrust paranoia genre. This simulacrum (if that's the word for it) is a collection of over 10,000 hours of video recorded before O'Blivion's death. Meaning, the consciousness "recorded" (my term as Lynch, to his credit, never explains how all this happened, is happening, will happen) onto the tapes understands the timeframe after O'Blivion's death. O'Blivion's ghost is waging a war against nameless/faceless entities desiring absolute control both the corporeal and incorporeal of viewers' minds across the nation, and likely beyond. There is a constant existential anxiety encapsulating every frame of this film and O'Blivion is at the heart of it. He created the means to wage the war and the means by which to rebel against it. It's only when you realize that waging the war means becoming the phantom reality that is O'Blivion that the creep factor solidifies in your gut and crushes the will of the protagonist and viewers alike. Villainous through and through.
We never meet without parting
Next issue... Four anime villains
Until then!
Made in DNA
The Kurgan is one of the greatest genre film villains of all time. Fantastic performance by Clancy Brown. I have an antagonist in one of my side stories, heavily influenced by the Kurgan.
One of the best sci-fi/fantasy film made.
O'Blivion is so interesting, it's easy to watch the film and get distracted by 'surface level' elements but the more you think about him the more important he seems. Not only is he dedicated to making the image superior to the real, he actually is an image, one that's being manipulated by his daughter. Who seems to define herself in relation to him and is motivated by a desire to continue his work, to live up to the image of him she has...
Images manipulating images manipulating images.