So I’m playing Kingdom Hearts (a Disney RPG) on my PS2 the other day, and the interplay between the various heroes and villains in the Disney canon is an essential part of the game. Which got me to thinking,
In yer archetypal hero/villain plot (and this is in all movies, not just Disney movies), the villain is either going about his business being villainous, or is specifically trying to do something to the hero. The hero then defeats the villain by:
[ul]
[li]killing him/her[/li][li]rendering him/her irrelevant in some way besides killing him/her[/li][li]succeeding in doing whatever it was the villain was trying to prevent the hero from doing[/li][li]otherwise preventing the villain from doing whatever it was the villain was going to do.[/li][/ul]
Follow me so far? If not, here’s an example. Consider Disney’s Aladdin. (SPOILERS AHEAD) Villain (Jafar) wants to be Sultan of Agrabah and, if he can swing it, be a powerful sorcerer. Aladdin wants the current Sultan to be himself, wants the heart of Jasmine, and wants to live in peace. Powerful showdown between Jafar and Aladdin ensues, and Aladdin tricks Jafar into imprisoning himself in a lamp. Villain is defeated.
Get it?
Now, can any of you think of a movie where the hero and the villain do their thing, and the hero prevails, but the two never actually meet? Clearly the hero will prevail by some other means, like perhaps simply outwitting the villain or by having others do his work.
After thinking about this for two days ( :eek: ), I’ve managed to think of only one example: Miracle on 34th Street (the one from the mid '90’s). (SPOILERS AHEAD) The villain is the owner of Shopper’s Express, who is trying to take over Cole’s department store. The villain sees Kris Kringle as standing in his way, so he tries to have the poor old man comitted to a mental institution. Kris Kringle is then proven to be Santa Clause in a court of law, the crowd goes wild, Cole’s makes millions, and the villain is defeated in his quest to take over Cole’s. But Kris Kringle and the villain never actually meet.
In Star Trek II, Kirk and Khan only meet via viewscreen. But perhaps you want something more narratively pure, i.e. the protagonist and antagonist never converse.
Speaking of stars, Luke Skywalker never meets Darth Vader until they confront each other on the platform in Bespin. Sure, the saw each other across the Death Star hangar, and Vader tailed Luke down the trench, but they didn’t exchange words until the end of Empire.
Not many spring to mind. The only one I can think of is The Last Starfighter. The good guy has been “recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier from Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada”. Xur himself spends the whole movie prancing around his starship waiting to get blown up. They never meet.
I think the prime example of what the OP is talking about would be Enemy at the Gates. There is a direct contest between the two protagonists, but they never see one another’s faces (except once, through a gunsight, IIRC).
Sub movies would be good ones. I was going to suggest Das Boot. The crew of the sub never “see” the crew of the British destroyers driving them into the bottom of that canal*
How about Phantom Menace / AOTC? The heroes still haven’t met Darth Sidious face-to-face…
*[sub]Yes, I realize that the hero and villain of this movie can be interpreted in many different ways. [/sub]
The Fourth Protocal, with Pierce Brosnan as a Soviet agent sent to plant a small nuclear bomb in Great Britain and Michael Caine as a British agent unravelling the plot. I believe they only meet when Caine bursts through Brosnan’s door at the very end and shoots the Soviet agent dead. The never talk to each other. But I’m not entirely sure it’s Caine that comes through the door first; it might’ve been some other guy, and Caine walks in after the Soviet agent is dead. I remember that after he walks into the room he looks where the agent was trying to press a button mere inches from his fingertips, and finds that if pressed the button would’ve ignited the nuclear bomb.
A pretty chilling ending, however you look at it. It’s a very good flick.
In Snatch I’ve never been quite cetain which is the good guy and which is the bad guy in that film, but if I ever figure it out, I am willing to bet they probably didn’t meet.
In Day of the Jackel while the policeman causes the assissin’s death, he doesn’t actually do it and they don’t really meet.
In The Eiger Sanction, the book, it definitely breaks the mold you suggest, but everytime the film comes on I doze off before the final scene. Can someone tell me if The Eiger Sanction, the movie, diverges from the norm also.
Lizard, take a read of the book or even watch the movie Day of the Jackel and see where they got the plot for The Fourth Protocol.
The same may be said (if you wanted to stretch it) about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They never actually face down the guys chasing them. You can’t really call the ambush in South America facing them down. It’s just a massacre.
See, I thought about that. BUT, in FotR in many ways Gandalf is the hero as much as Frodo. And following this interpretation, Sauruman is as much the villain as Sauron. And Sauruman and Gandalf do meet.
[spoiler]In The Pledge, Jack Nicholson is a retiring detective who promises a grieving mother that he will find her daughter’s killer. Even after retirement, he continues to hunt the serial killer he believes is kidnapping, molesting, and killing little blonde girls in the area. He meets a nice young woman with a little blonde girl. He falls in love with the woman, but still uses the little girl as bait for the killer, even to the point of setting her up in an isolated place so that the serial can try to kidnap her and he’ll catch his killer. The killer never shows, Jack’s detective buddies give up on him as a nutcase, and the mother leaves him. At the end, we are shown the burning wreckage of the killer’s car, which he had wrecked, killing himself in the process, on the way to the meeting.
Not only does he never meet the bad guy, he never even knows who he is. He wins, but never knows that he’s won.[/spoiler]
[/sub]