:: shrug ::
I can easily believe that,for instance, the Admiral in RotK who went to apologize to Vader personally for his failure did so because he didn’t wish to get his family killed. And, of course,it’s not like Vader’s on every ship. You haven’t spent your whole career planning for htis eventuality.
Vader doesn’t kill anyone except the Emperor after he tells Luke he’s his father in Empire. It’s kind of a big moment when he DOESN’T kill Piett after the Falcon escapes.
As far as bad guys killing their own subordinates goes, I recall that Saddam supposedly had a habit of doing just that; casually killing his subordinates with a pistol in a temper tantrum.
Good point. I recall reading some years ago that Stalin once apparently just for fun wrapped a female subordinate’s fingers in paper and set them on fire. It would be hard for a fictional villain to do that without looking over the top to most people.
Well, it is a jungle region; having a machete equivalent seems reasonable. Personally I’d have made it an oversized chainsaw instead, for the coolness factor.
Yeah, that was more than a little jarring.
Huh. I never actually connected those two events. I always thought it was more of a “I am so pissed I can’t even kill someone right now. I’m going to go skulk in my helmet chamber”.
-Joe
Well, it’s fairly subtle given that the actor was wearing a helmet and mask and they didn’t have anhy dialoghue, but if you look at it there’s a moment where Vader looks… pitiable. Like his son died and he was trying to hgold it in. One of the finest moments in film history.
Yep, when I’m being tortured to give up my Hot Spy Wife’s secret location, I’m going to act all scared and pretend that having my fingers broken actually hurt, and act like it’s being forced out of me and… mutter “Nine thirty …five… Pennsylvania Northwest… in Washington …District of …Columbia, not the state …”
And die smirking to myself that they’d end up at FBI headquarters.
{ Oh, wait, if this is my fantasy, I… um, faked the broken fingers, so I can suddenly poke the bad guys in the eyes three-stooges-style and take them down, all while quipping awesome one-liners. }
Hey, it’s a robot suit, so the chainsaw could screw onto the wrist! And it could have a shotgun, I mean Boom Stick…
Let’s stick to fictional villains, shall we? The real villains are far worse.
I dunno why you guys picked Vader. He isn’t responsible for blowing up the planet in Ep4, it was actually the admiral that gave the order (yep, I thought so too until I saw it again.) Other than that, he did the ol’ Vader choke on a couple of officers. The rebels killed far more than he did. Also, in ep4, he was subordinate to the Admiral, and in later films, the Emperor.
The villains I think are consistently over the top are teen gangs in such films as Blackboard Jungle, the Substitute, the Principal, The Warriors, Death Wish movies, or Class of 1999. Not only do they rape and murder, they seem to be experts at psychological warfare as well, as well as experts at investigation, tracking, etc. Imho, if you substituted them with a supernatural monster like vampires or Freddy Krueger, they would have similar superpowers.
In the words of TV Tropes - Reality is Unrealistic.
Which actually covers both this, and the effect of reality not seeming real because it’a not the same as in movies.
Your smalltime villains like Freddy Krueger or some psycho gang can get away with being just evil. But an supervillain needs to supplement his evil with some organizational skills. Sure he has to be a little less indiscriminate in killing his minions but the pay-off is he can project his evil over a much larger arena.
Are you aware of the book Speaker for the Dead?
I haven’t re-read the last couple of HP books, but I don’t recall having the impression that we’re supposed to attribute Voldemort’s villainy to his bad childhood – especially since Harry’s childhood was arguably worse. I don’t believe Rowling was going for some dimestore Freudian type explanation for Voldemort at all. He wasn’t evil because of anything that happened to him growing up. He was apparently a sociopath to begin with, and as an adult he became truly evil through voluntary action. He was obsessed with gaining power and avoiding death, and chose to commit one evil deed after another in pursuit of these goals.
Now, I can see not finding this the most satisfying explanation for Voldemort’s behavior, but it is at least less hackneyed than “He was evil because he had a deadbeat dad!”
The problem is that Rowling couldn’t make up her mind. She couldn’t figue out whether Voldemort was just innately utterly evil, or if he was tainted by his evil family, blah blah. She’s the kind fo writer who denies fate on one hand and then describes in lurid detail how people are helpless against the tide of fate, in a variety of ways.
Voldemort was an unrealistic villain though, because nobody would really follow him. He was a dimbulb at best, with no ability except in magic. yeah, he’s powerful, but the fact is that his crappy pseudo-imortality isn’t worth much, while his complete incompetence is not well covered by his pointless cruelty and general lack of any redeeming quality. It’s a sad day when your villain would not be preferable to a lobotomized Jeffrey Dahmer.
I find it all too plausible that such a person could gain followers by appealing to their prejudices and desire for power. The possibility of escaping death wasn’t what attracted most of the Death Eaters, it was the prospect of a world controlled by a “master race” of pure-blooded wizards. Belief in the superiority of pure-blooded wizards dated back to at least the founding of Hogwarts, and many wizards must have found it annoying that they had to hide their powers from Muggles.
It’s pretty clear that Lucius Malfoy doesn’t feel any particular loyalty towards Voldemort, but what Voldemort is promising is what he wants. As far as I can remember the only characters who seem particularly devoted to Voldemort personally are either mentally unstable or weak-willed.
The thing that always struck me as wrong about Malfoy, though (and he is a character I like a lot–remember, I do like villains as long as they’re interesting) is that he’s portrayed as the elite of the wizarding world. He’s got insane amounts of money, a huge ancestral home, a wife and son that he genuinely cares for and who care for him. He’s also a very powerful guy in his own right, who seems to like being in charge. I just can’t picture a guy like that being all “yes, my lord” to some fishbelly-pale guy with a snake for a face, who runs around acting like a ten-year-old boy’s version of a dictator. If I were Lucius, I would want to be the architect of that new society run by pureblood wizards–with myself as Minister of Magic.
The only thing that rings true about him is that if he genuinely feels that Voldemort is a threat to Narcissa and Draco, he might feel compelled to follow. But Voldemort, for all his power, is nothing without his followers. Sure, he’s a powerful wizard. But he’s no match for the combined might of the whole wizarding world.
Given the kind of idiots and lunatics who have successfully become dictators in the real world, I don’t have much problem believing it when an idiot or a lunatic does the same thing in fiction.
Malfoy is too rich, powerful and thus, BUSY to want to be Minister of Magic. He wants to control things, not to be in charge. So it is by money and influence that he wields his power. Even in his somewhat obsequeous dealings with Voldemort, he always struck me as displaying an underlying level of contempt for “the Dark Lord”. I always figured it was a way for him to weaken the elements of the Magic world that he didn’t like (such as Muggle Borns in power and laws against Dark Magic) in favor of more power and influence for the Old Families, of which he was the most powerful, and therefore the natural leader.
Just like with Hitler and other rising Dark Lords (or even among revolutions in general), among the dimmer and darker of their followers, it is all about overthrowing the hated power structure and gaining power themselves. For the brighter ones, in the case of serving a powerful Wizard like Voldemort, who has achieved such great things, it is about the rewards and the possibility of gaining some of that knowledge and skill for themselves.
I think voldy was characterized too much by the hannibal effect: his servants and minions acted like he was the biggest bad ass in all of creation, that when he finally appeared, he seemed rather tame in comparison.
Note also that, by letting Voldemort run the show, Malfoy maintained plausible deniability after Voldemort’s first defeat. During the years when Voldemort was “dead” Malfoy continued to be very powerful in wizard society, had connections in the government, and was on the Hogwarts board of trustees until the end of the second book. If he’d put himself forward as the leader of a revolutionary group then he’d have had to take the fall if things went bad. But by remaining a mostly behind-the-scenes player, he maintained his status even after Voldemort’s apparent death.
*Thinking about the Death Eaters and how Voldemort gained followers, IIRC there weren’t ever all that many of them. I checked on the Harry Potter Wiki, and there are apparently only about 30 Death Eaters ever named in the books. While there were many wizards who held the basic “pure-bloods are best” ideology, Voldemort’s actual followers seem to have been more a modestly sized terrorist group than a massive army. Their big advantage was that they performed powerful curses that others couldn’t or wouldn’t use. There must have been more than 30 total Death Eaters, but my impression is that there weren’t a lot more. By way of comparison, more than 50 adults died alongside David Koresh, either in the fire at the compound or by shooting themselves and each other. More than 600 adults voluntarily poisoned themselves at Jonestown at Jim Jones’s command. Unlike Voldemort, neither Koresh nor Jones could actually read people’s minds or do any kind of real magic.
I don’t find it difficult to believe that a man who wasn’t especially charming or mentally stable but who happened to be the most powerful dark wizard ever to live could manage to attract a few dozen followers, or even a few hundred, by playing on common prejudices and resentments and promising them power.
Because it’s hard to keep your lies straight when your toenails are being ripped out. If you know your secret HQ is on 123 White Hat Road, you know that. You don’t have to really think about that. But if you make up some elaborate fiction while in horrendous pain and mental distress, it’s harder to remember if it’s 49 Fake Place in Nowhereville, or 94 Fake Place in Somewhereville. If the villain comes back the next day and puts you on the rack for another hour, you’d be too out of it to think. If you say the exact same thing as last time, it’s likely to be true.
And if, when he takes the pliars out, you shriek, “No, no, I’ll talk! It’s 49 Fake Place!”, he might get a bit suspicious.
At least, that’s what I’d think would happen. I obviously wouldn’t know. But it seems logical.