Cinema's Finest Villains part 1

As a large fanatic of films I am able to appreciate the actors portrayal of villains and for me this is very important, so I am going to do an essential list of my personal favourite villains (human and non-human). I have decided to make it 15 and in any order. However it will be in 3 parts with 5 villains per blog.

Hal 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey)


Hal is the brainchild and symbol of the development of humanity as a whole, he is emotionless, lacks empathy and is willing to do anything to get the job done, so when it comes to the point in which he feels the mission is on the verge of jeopardy due to the humans, he pulls the plug. The worst thing is that he cannot be held responsible for his actions because he was programmed to continue the mission regardless.

Jack Torrance (The Shining)


The man is persistent and clearly went through a mental breakdown due to the isolation he has to deal. Slowly he begins to become more and more aggressive during until he finally snaps and attempts to murder his wife and son simply as punishment.

Frank Booth (Blue Velvet)


Frank is nothing more than insane, he is a sadist and enjoys getting himself induced on an unknown drug so that he can beat anyone. However there is a clear indication of emotional instability for instance when Dorothy is singing Blue Velvet or when Ben (whom Frank defines as "one suave f***er") lip-syncs to In Dreams.

Reverend Harry Powell (Night Of The Hunter


Harry Powell is by far one of the most significant and greatest villains in cinema history one of the reasons for this is simply because he doesn't try to save people as much as he would condemn them to hell, when he learns of a large amount of money, he feels that he has to get his hands on it so he could continue his "holy" crusade. But in order to get the money he has to take it from 2 children which makes him even more sinister because it shows that he couldn't care less about who he has to kill.

Anton Chigurh (No Country For Old Men)


In terms of recent cinematic villains; Chigurh is by far one of the more significant. During the film he seems like he is unsure about whether what he does is right or wrong, but feels like he has no choice but to kill people and get the job, which he is asked to do, done. There may be some form of sympathy or empathy towards him as you watch him do his job. But nevertheless he is nothing more than evil.

Bring Out The Gimp, So We Know What He Looks Like.

Ah yes the Gimp, a dark thing of our world that has possessed human's into pleasure/pain. But why do people hate the Gimp what has he actually done to his. Why does he have to be defined as dark or twisted. These are the questions I ask the readers of this blog of mine.
I mean it has in a way affected our culture - specifically the film culture and yes I am talking about the 1994 Tarantino film Pulp Fiction.

In fact I believe there was a gimp in the Madonna video Justify My Love so more or less the Gimp has had a significant impact on certain forms of media.
The only reason I am blogging about this is because I think Gimps should be taken into a much more lighter concept. I had this idea on the bus today about bringing a Gimp mask into my class and becoming the Radio Gimp, because I think people should have a lighter outlook towards the Gimp community.

Oh Remakes You Have So Much Thought

So yeah remakes, there are many of them and 99% of the time, they are quite pathetic however there are some that have some thought and do end up being successful for instance Brian DePalma's Scarface.

However it is not the case for many movies such as The Ring and The Grudge

The only reason I am talking about this is because I have started to notice that there are many remakes being released such as a remake of Sam Peckinpah's highly controversial film Straw Dogs

Another remake coming out soon is David Fincher's "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" starring Daniel Craig. Which for me is rather disappointing as the original Swedish film is amazing.

Speaking of which is it just me or have the lengths of time between the original movies release and the release of the remake shortened a hell of a lot for instance the Swedish horror movie Let The Right One In was released in 2008 and the remake was released 2 years after. The exact same goes to the Japanese horror film The Grudge. However there are films that have been taking time for the remake to be released: for instance the 2003 Korean movie Oldboy (by Chan-Wook Park) which was released originally in 2003. In 2012, Spike Lee is remaking this amazing movie and is more or less going to ruin it just like most of the time.
Overall most remakes will flop and also implicates that most of these directors have got little to no thought and are so desperate that they have to adapt decent and original movies.

Ryan Dunn - RIP

Well I just found that Jackass star Ryan Dunn has died in a car accident if you don't know who he is then I'll explain.
He was one of the members of hit TV shows Jackass and Viva La Bam.
He and his passenger died this morning due to their car crashing into a tree. I would like to say RIP.

RIP

If It Did Happen

Now I'm going to try and keep this blog series going and to begin with I'm going to talk about who would win in a fight: Darth Vader of Jean-Luc Picard.

Now you can clearly tell (in this picture) that Picard is badass. But in truth Darth Vader would wipe him all over the enterprise. But even so this picture is sweet.

The Heroes Of Gotham

So I have already discussed the villains of Batman in a previous blog.  So I'm doing the heroes of the Batman series. So let's begin with the obvious Batman.

I don't think I need to explain Batman much to be honest. Originally Batman was Bruce Wayne: a billionare playboy whose parents were murdered right in front of him. He became Batman and used his own fears against his enemies. When Bruce died, Dick Grayson (The original Robin) replaced Batman.

ROBIN

Robin was originally Dick Grayson a young acrobat whose family was murdered, Dick left and became the new nightwing. He was replaced by Jason Todd, who dealt with a similar situation to Dick, however he was killed by The Joker. Later on he was resurrected by one of Ra's Al Ghul's Lazarus Pit and became the Red Hood.

BATGIRL

Batgirl (like Robin) is another one of Batman's assistants and again there have been many. The most notable being Barbara Gordon (Jim's Daughter) who was paralyzed by the Joker in the story: The Killing Joke. She became the Oracle after this and helps Batman with information about area's he is in or schematics.

COMMISSIONER GORDON

The police commissioner of Gotham City, Gordon is one of Batman's greatest allies on his side. He is the first of the heroes that was introduced into the comic series and by far the most interesting character in the comic series. For me his greatest story was in The Killing joke in which the Joker tries to mentally break-down Jim Gordon.

NIGHTWING

Nightwing was the character used by Dick Grayson when he shed his Robin disguise, he wasn't the best of them but is enjoyable.

AZRAEL

Azrael is a member of a group of assassins who are asked to do "God's will" most known being Jean-Paul Valley who temporarily replaced Bruce Wayne as Batman after Bruce got paralysed by Bane, he normally wields the suit of sorrows and is more merciless than Batman is.

Gary Oldman: Good Or Amazing

So Gary Oldman is by far one of the greatest actors of our time, playing some of the most interesting characters out there: Dracula and Sid Vicious being just 2 of them.
He's been in lots of film most recently the Christopher Nolan Batman movies as Jim Gordon.

But he has been in better films to be honest. For instance as Norman Stansfield in Leon: The Professional and The Fifth Element as Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg. Both times he is a villain.

Stansfield

Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg

But now, his roles have shrunken down to lesser roles and not the villain. He's played as Sirius Black in Harry Potter and (like I said at the beginning) Jim Gordon in Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and will be Jim Gordon in The Dark Knight Rises.

But this is my opinion let's hear yours.