To stick with Batman, though there are some heroes like The Punisher who are arguably even worse to have around, he can’t be bribed or intimidated. He doesn’t seem the type with whom any kind of “arrangement” could be reached. With him around mucking up your plans, you aren’t ever going to be able to have stable long-term profit bases like organized crime does in superhero-free realities. All you are ever going to get done is rebuilding after the most recent Batbeatdown. And recuperating and going through physical therapy and maybe some reconstructive surgery…because don’t forget that he won’t just shut down your operation. He will also deliver upon you a righteous asswhooping where the only rule is that he won’t actually outright kill you. Depending on which era we are talking about, he may actually do all this to you with a smile on his face while merrily trading quips with The Boy Hostage. He is a toxic element to supervillainy in general. So are his fellow capes, but he is particularly so. Most of the others lack his drive and focus.
I was speaking movie plot-wise, where the quote originated from.
Most of the classic Batman villains are motivated by financial gain. The Penguin, Catwoman, The Riddler,* Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, etc.
There were two exceptions. The Joker was originally motivated by financial gain, but later became a psychopath who saw Batman as an adversary, but wasn’t interested in revenge. It was a cat and mouse game for him to outwit Batman.
Two-Face, of course, never cried vengeance against Batman; he committed crimes due to his psychopathy. The money was not a big part of it: he was committing crimes to act out his evil side.
For other heroes, the Flash (who, along with Batman and Spider-Man, had the best rogues gallery of the silver age) was always fighting supervillains who were more interested in money than revenge. One outlier, Abra Kadabra, committed his crimes just to get the admiration of the crowds. Grodd was the only one who had revenge as a motive.
In general, most supervillains saw the heros are impediments to their plans, not objects of revenge.
*A villain few people these days understand: in the Golden and Silver Age incarnations, he was taunting the police. His riddles were not obvious and often had ambiguous solutions, sending the police and Batman off on wild goose chases. The TV show dumbed him down.
Well, in John Le Carre’s spy novels, George Smiley’s main KGB adversary, “Karla,” never tries to assassinate Smiley or any of his top agents. Oh, casualties occur from time to time in the spy game, but Karla is a chess player and so is Smiley. Personalizing their relationship wouldn’t be smart, and they both know it.
James Kirk tried to goad Khan into taking personal revenge.
Khan declined.
Kirk was upset.
In The Godfather Part 2, Hyman Roth gives the best rationale for eschewing revenge that any bad guy has ever stated:
"There was this kid I grew up with; he was younger than me. Sorta looked up to me, you know. We did our first work together, worked our way out of the street. Things were good, we made the most of it. During Prohibition, we ran molasses into Canada… made a fortune, your father, too. As much as anyone, I loved him and trusted him. Later on he had an idea to build a city out of a desert stop-over for GI’s on the way to the West Coast. That kid’s name was Moe Greene, and the city he invented was Las Vegas. This was a great man, a man of vision and guts. And there isn’t even a plaque, or a signpost or a statue of him in that town! Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn’t angry; I knew Moe, I knew he was head-strong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we’ve chosen; I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with BUSINESS!"
NM
Khan’s whole bit in Trek II was about personal revenge, and at that point he was sure he’d achieved it. He just didn’t want to bother with delivering Kirk a beatdown just then because destroying the Enterprise was better.
And Khan’s lieutenant – Joachim ? – spent the movie (or at leadt the novelization thereof) counseling Khan against bothering with the revenge plot. Once they had the Reliant and the Genesis device they should have just run for the border, chosen a random planet of the right approximate size, and made their own paradise.
I seem to recall a couple immortals in the Highlander series who just outlived people, rather than get revenge.
McLeod killed them, of course, but up to that point…
see, the big problem is that, in order for not seeking revenge to work, the villain still has to survive, and that’s kind of tricky with most heroes.
Ozymandias in Watchmen isn’t driven by revenge. He does take revenge on The Comedian as part of his grand scheme and I think you can see he enjoys having done so, but it’s not his goal at all. He’s too rational to get sidetracked that way.
That’s true, but it’s also true that they would never have been a threat to him if he’d taken the opportunity to go into business with them earlier on. Not that that would’ve been a great idea, but they weren’t a threat to him initially. I would argue that revenge is a piece of his motivation in dealing with the Brotherhood, though.
They murdered Hank after he begged them not to, and he also wants revenge on Jesse for “betraying him” until he learns that they’re holding Jesse captive.
But that’s only during the last season of Breaking Bad. For the rest of the series he’s primarily driven by other egotistical considerations. Which might put the OP’s point in broader context: Walter’s irrationality makes him a memorable character and a horrendous businessman.
Dude. You mentioned the very character I came here to post about in the second post!
But a different series. In Sandman, he vows to seek vengeance on Morpheus, and then puts it on the back burner. Probably never would have followed up.*
*Though one could posit that a being as powerful as himself merely wanting vengeance on Morpheus could have ramifications. Much as I believe that Desire merely wanting Dream to suffer had something to do with events.