Captain Hook. He had it all. Had a great ship, a great costume, and even a loyal sidekick. But he couldn’t beat Peter Pan. Not only did he have a sword but he also had a hook! Two for one type of deal! If only he had gotten over his obessiveness over that alligator and the clock. I mean, what did Peter Pan have? The little dagger. But then he did have the support of about ten or more Lost Boys and he could fly.
So, what are some other WTF villans (cartoons, movies, whatever)? Meaning, they had it all but just couldn’t get the good guy. I know there are a lot, but the most extreme.
Khan, from The Wrath of. He had a freakin’ STARSHIP, with enough supplies on board for a crew of hundreds. He could have gone anywhere and picked his own garden spot planet to rule. Instead, he took on Kirk. What a doof.
If there was an ounce of justice in the world, if hard work, intelligence, and thoughtfulness paid off a jot, Inspector freakin’ Gadget would have long ago been decapitated by his own helicopter blades, leaving Penny and Brain, galvanized by their grief, to invest in some very basic, dependable, lo-tech, high-caliber ordinance and become the most effective force against organized crime in history.
Any James Bond villain, but one in specific comes to mind.
In Live and Let Die, Tee Hee has Bond captured at gunpoint. He wants Bond to die. Does he shoot Bond? No, he forces him at gunpoint onto an island in a swamp full of hungry crocodiles. (Or were they alligators?)
I mean, talk about a villain unable to “get it together.”
What about COBRA? Apparently they had billions of dollars to spend or eradicating GI Joe. They had access to a time machine, for god’s sake (remember Serpentor? Made up from the most evil people in history. Part Atilla the Hun, part Napoleon, etc), and they STILL couldn’t win!
In the same vein as Tee Hee, Alec Trevelyan from Goldeneye. He sticks Bond in a helicopter that’s about to be blown up. Why doesn’t he shoot him first? He was trying to frame him for the theft to the helicopter, but after the explosion, no one would notice a bullet, or even less noticeable, lethal chemicals. (He did knock him out with a tranquilizer dart in the first place.) Instead, Bond revives just in time to hit the eject button.
Megatron! One of the coolest bad guys ever, but he couldn’t kill Optimus Prime (until the movie, and even then it took way too much effort). He could shoot from a bloody cannon on his arm…And as if that wasn’t enough, all the Decepticons could FLY. I mean, jeeze, just circle overhead and shoot at Prime and the other Autobots until they’re dead.
Fu Manchu…not only a criminal mastermind and scientific genius, but he had all of the Faceless Ungodly Yellow Hordes of the Asian Continent at his command, ready to overthrow the dominant white races.
And who was there to stand against him? Nayland Smith. Nayland Smith, by god. The little pussy.
Ming the Merciless. He had advanced technology, absolute power over several races of sentient beings, rayguns and spaceships, but he’s brought down by one weenie with a heap of good ole 'murican know-how. Jeez.
Yeah, but Flash Gordon was an AMERICAN CITIZEN, by gum, as well as an Olympic athlete and a graduate of Yale University. Clearly one of the Ubermenschen.
So these idiots were trying to invade this pissant planet “Earth”, right? So can you believe they had IrTalk enabled and gave full privs to “Guest”? They weren’t even parceled out into a specific AppleTalk ZONE, can you believe that?!! So these little primates go to Chooser and hey golly, there’s Da Ship, welcome to our files, launch our apps, do whatever pleases you! So when these idiots dialed the Help Desk and said “Duh I, uh, I think these Earthlings have assumed control of our system, what should I do?”, I said to them, “Didja also break your CDROM tray by using it as a coffee cup holder? Didja plug your surge protector into itself and wonder why you couldn’t boot? OK, here’s whatcha do, find the master power button for the spaceship. Got it? OK, turn it off. Now open a window and hop out and tell the little primates you’re too fucken stupid to own a spaceship”
Actually, I’m puzzled by any villian who gloats over the hero instead of simply shooting him/her. That’s why I support eviloverlord.com and its efforts to educate villians on how to properly conduct themselves with its evil overlord list which provides anyone planning on setting up him/herself as the selfstyled ruler of the world and/or the known universe.
PS, I know why Khan went after Kirk. The only music they had to listen to on Ceti Alpha Five was Shatner’s “The Transformed Man.” 15 years of that shit and you’d be as rabid as a skunk!
Lex Luthor…billionaire industrialist and arch-nemesis
of Superman. The only way he actually got a hold of superman was in the movie…tricked him into his underground lair and poisoned him with kryptonite.
If I were Supes…I’d just take 'em ALL out.
Luthor, Braniac, maybe swing by Gotham and snuff Joker and Penguin while I’m at it.
Seek and destroy, baby.
Like, whose gonna stop ya, Batman? Nah…that’s right up HIS alley.
Emperor Palpatine. He came within 30 seconds of offing the entire Rebel Alliance with the first Death Star (and what kind of ragtag guerilla army repeatedly concentrates all or practically all of its forces in a single Secret Hidden Base?). Okay, maybe the whole Unshielded-Exhaust-Vent-Leading-Directly-To-The-Reactor-Core thing was simply an unavoidable flaw in the Empire’s power generation technology. That said, I really think the above referenced Evil Overlord Do’s and Don’t’s List should include one to the effect that, if your Chief Designer of Invincible Superweapons, upon being asked about the freakin’ gaps in the defense shields, says “Oh, only snub fighters could get through those, and they couldn’t possibly do us any harm”, you should just execute him on the spot. I mean, if they’d just made the edges of the damned shields overlap or something blindingly obvious like that, they’d have won the damned war right there.
But, okay, you live and you learn. But, Palpy, baby, if you’ve staked your entire strategy on luring the whole Rebel fleet into a trap (and the idjits are dumb enough to mass all their forces and fall for it, so you really have no excuse for not eliminating them), with an apparently unfinished Death Star as bait, which you’ve actually gone to the trouble of making sure has a fully operational main weapons system, why oh why not put the screws to Jerjerrod and see to it that the station’s internal shield generators are on line? (With no freakin’ gaps this time.) Oh sure, you want to have a carefully undermanned shield generating station on Endor, so the hapless Rebels think they have a comet’s chance in a supernova of winning–But then, when they blow the moon-based shield generator…there’s another, internally generated shield inside it! Bye-bye, Rebel scum.
Oh, and that whole “Play mind games with your chief henchman whereby you sort of acquiesce in or even subtly encourage him into the notion of betraying and supplanting you” thing is kind of doubtful too. I’m pretty sure that violates at least one of the Rules for Evil Overlords.
AHunter3 – I just wanted to say that your “Alien TechTales Mode” bit made me laugh out loud. Thank you.
For yet more evil overlord guidelines, including those for evil empresses and henchmen, and various other stuff, try here.
I’ll vote for all those mad geniuses who can create a time machine\death ray\fusion reactor whatever, and instead of selling it try and blow up the world. Why? Just patent it and let the money roll in.
And for a bad guy who’s WTF in a slightly different way, try Gorilla Grodd, arch-enemy of the Flash. Yes, the nemesis of the fastest man on earth is a talking gorilla. (From the Brunching Shuttlecocks)
Not just any talking gorilla, but one from a super advanced civilization and who had psychic powers. (Actually, despite the silliness of the concept, Super Gorilla Grodd was a pretty effective comic book villain).
Ridiculous villains? I cast my vote for the Shadowy Conspirators from the X-Files. I can’t help feeling that, if it wasn’t for their endless in-fighting and pointless betrayals, and their obsessive need to avoid giving any sort of straight answer to a straight question, this lot would have achieved their Evil Ends before Mulder was out of high school.