It’s a very long time since I read it, but what got me was not that but that
it was a volunteer suicide squad that was his implement.
Or am I misremembering?
No, they didn’t. Only one of them figured it out, and that was after the guy he was meant to kill (the safecracker) told him that the Joker wanted the phone guy dead.
Considering that the robbers believed there were six people involved, and the Joker only had to arrange for three of them to double-cross anybody, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that they didn’t figure it out until it was too late.
Honestly, I don’t remember.
I should clarify one thing, which is that unless I’m misremembering, Ender didn’t know he was killing the Buggers for real; he thought it was a simulation. The debate in my HS class was over whether the people who planned it that way had done something immoral. (I suppose you could also consider them immoral for tricking Ender, but for me that was secondary.)
tim314, re: Ender’s Game I have to agree with the class rather than you.
[spoiler]First, if every member of a race is bent on destroying Earth, then it’s legitimate for a defender of Earth to destroy the entire race. In historical examples of human genocide, the issue is that non-combatants, including children, are killed. Second, (IIRC) Ender was faced with an all-or-nothing choice; it wasn’t an option to kill 70 or 80 percent of the Buggers.
To use an analogy, if I could wipe out a human-killing virus, I wouldn’t have any qualms about making this destructive species extinct, particularly if wiping it out completely was the only sure way to save the human race.
Third, and perhaps most important, Ender believed at the time that he was still running a simulation.[/spoiler]
I agree that depravity isn’t the deal-breaking in fictional villians – credibility is. A leader who routinely kills the people who work for him can not build a viable organization of followers (unless he’s like Sauron and can make them from scratch and/or control their minds.)
Another stupid/evil thing you see a lot is the killing of innocents after they’ve coughed up information. This happens in so many movies and TV shows that I can’t even name specific examples (although any episode of 24 is likely to have a scene like this).
The hero gets a step ahead of the bad guy but there is a relative or cohort who knows where the hero can be found. The villian tortures the innocent person until the information is extracted, and then kills them. Often the person knows they are going to die as soon as they cough up an address or a name. So why do they always tell the truth? It’s a stupid and tired plot device that has ruined a lot of movies and shows for me.
I can’t recall Sauron ever wantonly killing his subordinates anyway. I can’t recall anyone in LotR, Silmarillion, or Hobbit doing that. The nearest I can think of is orc infighting, but as common as it was, it wasn’t wanton.
I don’t mind the killing of the innocent who has just given information under torture. The victim spoke to stop the pain more than anything else, seems like. Plus, if you’ve just cut off Lana Lang’s fingers to figure out where Superman keeps that last bit of kryptonite he keeps around in case of a Phantom Zone emergency, you probably don’t want to leave her alive and able to warn Clark, now do you?
I’m not talking about the Joker - I can understand the idea of a villain being so crazy he kills his own henchmen. Crazy has its own rules.
The unbelievable part to me is that he keeps finding new henchmen. Seriously, if you were a low level criminal in Gotham would you be willing to work for the Joker? The Penguin or the Riddler maybe but not the Joker.
I don’t think so. He Force-choked the smarmy officer in the Death Star conference room until Tarkin told him to knock it off, but he didn’t kill anyone on the DS that we saw. It was while he was aboard his warship in The Empire Strikes Back that he killed several screwup subordinates. I think word would get around.
And then…they file a complaint with H.R.? Go AWOL when you’re on a starship?
-Joe
No,just work harder.
Though if you’re captain and realize you’ve done something that is going to piss Vader off, I don’t know why you don’t just run.
No kidding. You’ve got nothing to lose, pal - might as well heist a starship and head for the Galactic Rim!
Merijeek, I agree that a clumsy or unfortunate Imperial Starfleet officer’s career options would be quite limited under those circumstances. My point was that ol’ Anakin did not, as far as we know, “kill… a handful of underlings… on a top secret space station…”
Actually I do know: honor. I can’t imagine that the entire Imperial Fleet was manned by bastards or dastards. There may have been people who simply were too proud to run.
“Man’s not proud, he’s not worth knowing.”
Hey, my Star Nerdiness knew that. I was just correcting a perceived error.
Anyways, how is a captain going to run for it? Anyone who is going to help him escape is going to be putting their asses on the line, too. So that’s probably out.
Let’s also keep in mind that we’re not looking at Vader killing guys who left the toilet seat up. These were guys who were responsible for an unnecessary big battle and the loss of the objective OF that battle.
-Joe
Say that you’re going directly to Lord Vader to apologize. Leave Exec or senior officer present with the conn. Enter elevator, but go to landing bay rather than Vader’s quarters. Order rating on duty to get out of your way and get into shuttle. Take off.
Admittedly, it’s possible that you’ll get stopped by a Maco on en route and escorted to Vader’s quarters, but so what? What do you lose by trying?
Other than your honor, of course. If you’re the kind of guy who cares about that, you won’t even try. If you’re not, run.
Brings to mind an interesting observation by the writer George MacDonald Fraiser (who wrote the “Flashman” series, among much else): in his autobiography about fighting in the Burma campaign, he notes that much extreme behaviour - such as combat - would be essentially unbelievable if written or filmed as fiction - often, because it is unbelievably stereotypical or hokey.
The example he gives is he once saw a man shot, who fell down and rolled along the ground clutching his bleeding leg and yelling “They got me, the dirty rats, they got me!”. As a novelist, he said, he’d never dare to write a scene like that even though he’d seen it with his own eyes in real life.
Similarly, a fictional evil guy could commit the exact same evils as actually committed by real-life evil people and not come across as believable.
Remember Darth Vader has demonstrated that you don’t even need to be on the same ship as him for him to kill you. You might be able to get out of range, but for all you or any other officer knows, he might be able to get you even if you’re halfway to the next system.
I didn’t say it was guaranteed to work. Just that it’s a better option than going meekly to your own murder.
Han may not have seriously believed he was going to be able to escape Cloud City by shooting Vader, but that didn’t make trying pointless.
There’s your problem, right there. I wouldn’t call him a bad actor, but he’s almost hammy when he’s playing just an average evil guy. I think if he played someone who was intentionally over-the-top evil the screen woudl explode in a Ironic miasma*.
*Ironic miasma - of or like Jeremy Irons.
I would put Voldemort into this category. He was just too irredeemably evil. I don’t think he showed one pleasant trait throughout all seven books. He was evil from the time he was a very small boy. And why? Because his father abandoned him and his mother died, both of which happened before/very shortly after he was born?
Okay, I’ll agree that he had some pretty rotten genes in his family, what with Marvolo and Morfin and all. But Merope didn’t really seem like a bad sort, so obviously somebody was able to escape the family curse. And the orphanage was portrayed as a decent place–a little sterile and inattentive, maybe, but certainly not actively unkind or abusive.
I usually like the villains in stories, if they’re good and well written. Usually they’re more interesting than the heroes in a lot of ways. But I never liked Voldy. He wasn’t even decent to the more influential/powerful of his own followers.
…hope you can get to whatever planet(s) your family lives on before the Empire’s hit squad gets there…