The best movie villian
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Rickman. Oldman is really a more believable, and interesting villain...but Rickman is creepier, and easier to hate.
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I'm going to show some of my actor ignorance-- can you give us some of the parts the people have played? Thanks.
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Malkovich: Con Air...Rickman: Die Hard (Hans Gruber), Oldman: Dracula, (That Bram dude's version. 
), Air Force One, Lost in Space...Hopkins, Hannibal Lecter, of course, Lithgow: Cliffhanger comes to mind. DeNiro: well, Godfather comes to mind, but he wasn't a villain per se...not a nice guy, but not a completely bad guy, either. There are others, although honestly, I don't think he's in the same league as these other villains...way off the pace. Not as a complete actor, mind you.
), Air Force One, Lost in Space...Hopkins, Hannibal Lecter, of course, Lithgow: Cliffhanger comes to mind. DeNiro: well, Godfather comes to mind, but he wasn't a villain per se...not a nice guy, but not a completely bad guy, either. There are others, although honestly, I don't think he's in the same league as these other villains...way off the pace. Not as a complete actor, mind you.
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Here comes one of my anal-retentive lists (at least somebody asked for it this time):
SOME VILLAINOUS-TYPE ROLES BY...
Robert DeNiro: Cape Fear, Angel Heart, The Godfather Part II, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, This Boy's Life, and The Fan
John Lithgow: Blow Out, Ricochet, Cliffhanger, Santa Claus, Raising Cain, and Shrek
John Malkovich: In the Line of Fire, Con Air, Rounders, Dangerous Liasons, The Portrait of a Lady, Mary Reilly, and Mulholland Falls
Anthony Hopkins: Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Freejack, Titus and Nixon
Gary Oldman: Leon (aka The Professional), Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Fifth Element, Air Force One, State of Grace, True Romance, Lost in Space, Murder in the First, Hannibal and JFK
Alan Rickman: Die Hard, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Quigley Down Under, Closet Land, Bob Roberts and Rasputin
Obviously some of those I listed aren't straight, strictly-defined "bad guy" roles, but you get my drift.
[Edited by Holden Pike on 10-26-2001]
SOME VILLAINOUS-TYPE ROLES BY...
Robert DeNiro: Cape Fear, Angel Heart, The Godfather Part II, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, This Boy's Life, and The Fan
John Lithgow: Blow Out, Ricochet, Cliffhanger, Santa Claus, Raising Cain, and Shrek
John Malkovich: In the Line of Fire, Con Air, Rounders, Dangerous Liasons, The Portrait of a Lady, Mary Reilly, and Mulholland Falls
Anthony Hopkins: Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Freejack, Titus and Nixon
Gary Oldman: Leon (aka The Professional), Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Fifth Element, Air Force One, State of Grace, True Romance, Lost in Space, Murder in the First, Hannibal and JFK
Alan Rickman: Die Hard, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Quigley Down Under, Closet Land, Bob Roberts and Rasputin
Obviously some of those I listed aren't straight, strictly-defined "bad guy" roles, but you get my drift.
[Edited by Holden Pike on 10-26-2001]
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And if Vito Corleone is a villian, then so is Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire" as well. And Tennessee Williams once said that "there are no good or bad characters, some are a little better or worse, but in the end they are all driven by misunderstanding rather than malice". In other words, Brando as Stanley in "Streetcar" ain't no bad guy, Vito ain't a bad guy, and therefore cancelling De Niro out as Bickle and LaMotta.
I'm just saying.
I don't believe any of the above characters to be villains.
Bickle, LaMotta, Corleone, Stanley....
I'm just saying.
I don't believe any of the above characters to be villains.
Bickle, LaMotta, Corleone, Stanley....
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Like I said, in some of the movies I listed the characters are much more complex than simple "bad guys", but I was taking into account things like menace, mental instability, the character's function in the plot, and just a genral tone of villainy. I don't think for example Travis Bickle or Jake LaMotta are villains (or for that matter Hopkins' Nixon or Titus Andronicus, Oldman's Lee Harvey Oswald, or Rickman's Rasputin, etc.), but they certainly have villainous overtones and gradations. Scorsese happily didn't make movies about those two DeNiro characters as villains, he presents a much more complicated and murky moral universe. Of course.
I was trying to filter often complex and layered characters through the prism of the original question, a question I didn't frame and find overly simplistic and too general myself. He should have listed the specific characters he had in mind rather than actors who have played all kinds of roles during their careers.
I would have thought all that was clear, but I'm happy to make it explicit. In my original post I said it was "obvious", but I guess I was wrong.
[Edited by Holden Pike on 10-26-2001]
I was trying to filter often complex and layered characters through the prism of the original question, a question I didn't frame and find overly simplistic and too general myself. He should have listed the specific characters he had in mind rather than actors who have played all kinds of roles during their careers.
I would have thought all that was clear, but I'm happy to make it explicit. In my original post I said it was "obvious", but I guess I was wrong.
[Edited by Holden Pike on 10-26-2001]
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Geez sades, not gonna live nothing down are you...LOL
I chose Oldman, simply because, this man IS a villian. He gets into his characters so well it's hard to even know what the guy actually looks like...LOL He was a mean SOB in Leon the Proffesional, or to those of you who haven't seen the international version, The Proffesional.
I chose Oldman, simply because, this man IS a villian. He gets into his characters so well it's hard to even know what the guy actually looks like...LOL He was a mean SOB in Leon the Proffesional, or to those of you who haven't seen the international version, The Proffesional.
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I'm placing a write in vote for Denzel Washington-- although I haven't seen it, he looks like one bad MoFo in Training Day.
Well golly-gee-willickers, Sades, perhaps, just perhaps, every single comment on this board isn't directed at you? Possible. Not likely, I understand, but possible.
Yes, you had a comment about the DeNiro character in This Boy's Life (congrats! and I agree with your assessment), but I was addressing SilverBullet's post specifically - it's the one above your second of this thread.
Yes, you had a comment about the DeNiro character in This Boy's Life (congrats! and I agree with your assessment), but I was addressing SilverBullet's post specifically - it's the one above your second of this thread.
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Originally posted by spdrcr
Geez sades, not gonna live nothing down are you...LOL
I chose Oldman, simply because, this man IS a villian. He gets into his characters so well it's hard to even know what the guy actually looks like...LOL He was a mean SOB in Leon the Proffesional, or to those of you who haven't seen the international version, The Proffesional.
Geez sades, not gonna live nothing down are you...LOL
I chose Oldman, simply because, this man IS a villian. He gets into his characters so well it's hard to even know what the guy actually looks like...LOL He was a mean SOB in Leon the Proffesional, or to those of you who haven't seen the international version, The Proffesional.
Holden-If you're just posting to a specific person, maybe you should qoute them or use their name in a sentance.Because the way it looked to me...you were adressing everyone in general.
SilverBullet, I wasn't talking about Brando, I was talking about De Niro. As in Godfather Part II.
And my statement still stands.
Originally posted by Holden Pike
I don't think for example Travis Bickle or Jake LaMotta are villains (or for that matter Hopkins' Nixon or Titus Andronicus, Oldman's Lee Harvey Oswald, or Rickman's Rasputin, etc.), but they certainly have villainous overtones and gradations.
I don't think for example Travis Bickle or Jake LaMotta are villains (or for that matter Hopkins' Nixon or Titus Andronicus, Oldman's Lee Harvey Oswald, or Rickman's Rasputin, etc.), but they certainly have villainous overtones and gradations.
What statement, that Don Corleone is as big a "villain" as Travis and Jake?
Personally I don't disagree with that at all. In the broadest sense of the term, which is how I was interpreting for the purposes of inclusion (and the way the open-ended question begs), DeNiro's Don is a villain. I didn't list every single movie that may fit for each actor (despite my initial claim that the list would be anal-retentive, and by implication comprehensive). Though now I've edited in The Godfather Part II.
I don't know about SilverBullet, but I certainly agree that DeNiro's Vito Corleone is villainous (in the loosest sense of that term).
A debate about what a villain really is or the slippery slope of a complex character's morality goes WAY beyond the "best [sic]villain [sic]u love to hate!" that was off-handedly posed in the poll.
Personally I don't disagree with that at all. In the broadest sense of the term, which is how I was interpreting for the purposes of inclusion (and the way the open-ended question begs), DeNiro's Don is a villain. I didn't list every single movie that may fit for each actor (despite my initial claim that the list would be anal-retentive, and by implication comprehensive). Though now I've edited in The Godfather Part II.
I don't know about SilverBullet, but I certainly agree that DeNiro's Vito Corleone is villainous (in the loosest sense of that term).
A debate about what a villain really is or the slippery slope of a complex character's morality goes WAY beyond the "best [sic]villain [sic]u love to hate!" that was off-handedly posed in the poll.
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This really depends on how you tend to define the word "villain." Vito is not, in a RELATIVE sense, really the bad guy...but, overall, he certainly is. So, I guess the question would be this: when you say "villain," do you mean the person playing the part of the film's bad guy, or any bad guy at all, regardless of whether or not there are other bad guys in the film? Or (similar to the first option), are you referring to anyone that the film wants us to see as a bad guy?
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