No, actually, it WAS.
As I’ve said before, back in 1984, I knew I was really an adult when I saw ***The ******Breakfast Club ***and sympathized with the assistant principal, Paul Gleeson,rather than with any of those asshole kids.
All the kids seemed to think punky Bender was mega-cool. I AGREED with Gleeson when he said, “You think he’s funny? You think this is cute? You think he’s “bitchin,” is that it? Let me tell you something. Look at him - he’s a bum. You want to see something funny? You go visit John Bender in five years. You’ll see how goddamned funny he is.”
Gleeson was 100% right about Bender. He WAS a bum who’d end up with a pathetic life. I thought it was GREAT when Gleeson called Bender’s bluff, and showed him up as a pussy.
No actually it WASN’T.
Guys, take any squabbling elsewhere and stay on topic in the thread, pls.
Thanks,
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
You know he’s referring to the 1991 Gulf War, right? The people of Kuwait, invaded and murdered as they were, might have something to say about those poor Iraqis. It was Kuwaitis who were getting killed over the price of gas.
As for the character’s actual motivation:
Human Action, “stay on topic and take your squabbling elsewhere” in the post immediately above yours seems pretty clear to me.
Let me repeat my instructions – which, coming from a moderator, it behooves you to follow, since ignoring them is a warnable offense:
Stay on topic and take your squabbling elsewhere.
Thanks.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
Wrong.
Animal cruelty laws exist.
I don’t think that’s quite right. Rorschach has a thing about justice. If that means killing a bad guy, then he’s OK with it.
But killing innocents who don’t ‘deserve’ it (by his code) is across the line. Rorschach sees Veidt as a murderer on a grand scale, but still just a murderer. The story needs to be told and justice done. When it proved impossible to dispense that justice himself he hoped to bring the world in on it.
“What’s one more body amongst the foundations?”
In the end, Rorschach was acknowledging that his methods were powerless and that Viedt had likely created a better world. It was just that he didn’t want to live with that level of hypocrisy. That’s why he begged for death at the end.
It has been pointed out that Human Action’s post is not the sort of squabbling I was trying to head off, but rather a content-filled clarification of an actual point that was being discussed.
I thus rescind my note to him or her.
Carry on.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
From Snakes on a Plane:
“Hisss…hiss…hiss…”
Translation: “Hey, I want that !@#% Samuel L. Jackson off my !@#%%^ plane!”
It looks like badly written dialogue – surprise, surprise. There were nowhere near a hundred thousand casualties in Desert Storm, so one must assume that he is either exaggerating (reasonable assumption), or he is referring to the previous war, bankrolled in large part by the US and resulting in at least that many civilian casualties (hence, “murder”). That would make sense if the film was alluding to Bush, and would connect the president, how ever remotely, with the demise of the Soviet Union.
Whatever the case, the real villains in Air Force One are Beacon and Columbia for making and distributing this thing in the first place.
Hook: Before you and your sister were born, your parents had more free time. They went out dancing and to parties, they went to the cinema… they were happier before they had you.
Fair enough. It’s impossible to make neat, distinct categories of villain motivations/rationalizations/reasons, anyway.
(It’s fun to try, though.^_^)
Also, there’s the indisputable fact that people disagree over what is ‘valid’ and what isn’t. Your topic is an excellent tool for revealing our values.
Excellent points, both.
The associated discussion over the ethics of ‘killing some to save many’ reminds me irresistibly of the famous “SS outfits” scene in Starship Troopers, in which Neil Patrick Harris’s Nazi-black-clad character spouts the philosophy of fascism in re necessary human deaths that would Save Humanity From The Bugs–conveniently ignoring the fact that humanity had been the aggressor. (I just saw the interview with screenwriter Ed Neumeier in The Story of Film, so it was on my mind.)
Agreeing that Colonel Carl had a valid point would require a bit of double-think—the same double-think apparent in Donald Rumsfeld’s response to a parent asking why soldiers didn’t have armored vehicles sufficient to save them from mines and bombs: “You go to war with the army you have. They’re not the army you might want or wish to have…”*
*8 December 2004; Town Hall meeting with parents of soldiers. And, yes, I do assume that sciurophobic intended this topic to be about fictional villains, but…
http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=1980
I would like to point out that Captain Rhodes and his soldiers were dangerous, weapon-brandishing bullies to the civilians. Sarah doesn’t plan to leave them just because they’re military, it’s because they’re sociopathic bastards on a power trip. In the spirit of the thread though, I agree with you that Rhodes had a point - Dr. Frankenstein was playing with the zombies like toys, and it wasn’t easy to see where his lengthy rehabilitation of “Bub” could help save humanity.
This doesn’t really count, because it’s a set-up, but “Lionel Twain’s” (Truman Capote’s) closing rant in “Murder by Death.” He’s addressing a group of murder-mystery-novel detectives, and has them dead to rights.
“You’ve tricked and fooled your readers for years. You’ve tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You’ve introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You’ve withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it.”
But see, that’s the whole twisted evil genius of the Sith.
The master knows that his apprentice is going to try to kill him and take over, and the apprentice knows he knows, and so on. So it’s a long slow game of the apprentice trying to gain power and experience until he thinks he can take on the master. The apprentice will get ONE shot, at which point they’ll see just who is stronger and cleverer than who; and the Dark Side will empower whomever is the better vessel for it. And a part of this is often the apprentice trying to recruit an apprentice of his own, to team up on the master; unless the recruit gets turned into the new apprentice and the former apprentice is dispatched.
This played into the whole thread of Dooku a.k.a. Darth Tyranus leading the Separatists. Yes, he was doing it at Sideous’s orders; but maybe, just maybe, he could hedge his bets and if the Separatists did better than Sideous expected… (which is why Sideous had that secret deactivation code for the droid army- never play Dragon Poker with a Sith Master). The sheer breathtaking jiu jitsu of Sideous’s entire plan was to back the Republic and the Jedi into a position where no matter what they did, Sideous won. If they didn’t fight, they lost and if they did fight they destroyed what they were fighting for. Even Yoda, dim as he was at that point, realized at the end of Attack of the Clones that the Republic “victory” was likely to backfire. And it was a measure of just how twisted the Sith plan was that Dooku could tell Obi-Wan the truth and Obi-Wan would think it a carefully calculated lie. Or who knows, if Obi-Wan had believed Dooku and accepted an alliance…
As is oft the case, there are some ready collections of Tropes for just this situation—Villain Has A Point, Hannibal Has A Point, Jerkass Has A Point, and even Strawman Has A Point, and a few choice quotes from Heroes React, Villains Act.
OK, but how does that sit with the quote mentioned above about the world begging for help and him refusing?
He was an interesting character. 
Rorschach was pretty strongly conservative, IIRC. His original monolog was aimed at the ‘liberals’ and other people he didn’t deem worth saving. It was the indiscriminate annihilation of half New York and the cover up that he was against.
But yeah, he was an interesting character. We could have an entire spin off thread just about his reaction to Ozymandias’ plan.