User blog:LucidPigeons/Villains I Dislike That Everyone Else Loves

Alright.

So, I was initially going to leave this as just a part of my user page, but I figure this'd fetch more attention and take up less space on my already cramped page. Besides, I rarely create blog posts and everyone else seems to do this kind of thing, so why not? Cooper's blog is here.

Keep in mind I never said I hated any of the villains on this list, as all of them have at least some good aspects to their character. It's just that while these characters are beloved in the eyes of everyone else, I personally find them weak. This can be due to fact that they're ineffective as villains, end up forced, or even more personal matters to me (that usually stem from edit wars) but I'll explain all that below.
 * Sauron: I don't know what the big fuss about this guy is. Often he's hailed as one of the greatest villains in all literature, whereas personally I see him as a flat, one-dimensional generic dark overlord in a cast of characters that's actually quite fleshed out for a high fantasy of this era. You can talk to me all you want about how "this was in the 1950's" but the high-fantasy "dark lord" trope was already well-dated even back then. He's got a better character in The Silmarillion, but he feels a bit too much like a Lucifer stand-in, whereas his master Morgoth is much more interesting as a villain.


 * Lord Voldemort: Oh, boy, here's one that might get me some flak. No, Voldemort is not an effective villain in my eyes. The sheer scope of his manipulations is something to be admired, but at the same time, there are a dozen holes in his plan and he's way too smug for his own good (he could've have made his Horcrux's something unassuming, like as it's said a pebble in the Gobi Desert, but that wouldn't be "theatrical" enough) and I hardly find myself remembering anything about the character aside from Ralph Fiennes' performance (which is enjoyable in the same way Ian McDiarmid's performance as Palpatine is). Aside from that, Voldemort gets his ass kicked by a baby, is essentially dead for half the series, and even when he finally gets revived, sits back cowering and lets his Death Eaters do essentially all the work for him. Voldemort axes not one notable character with the exception of Harry's parents while his minions kill main characters left and right. The only reason he manages to kill Harry is because he lets himself be killed, and, hell, the only reason he can really do anything directly is because of his cheap, one-hit kill spell he can spam at will. The character's not without his perks, like again, Ralph Fiennes does a magnificently hammy job performing as him, but he really isn't the ultimate Big Bad everyone makes him out to be in my eyes.


 * The Joker (Michael Emerson): My least favorite out of all the Jokers, The Dark Knight Returns presents a shallow, watered-down version of the baddy we all love and makes him incredibly flat and uninteresting. There are still several aspects of the Joker, but it's a given that the Joker still has to be identifiable as the Joker, and the way this incarnation is written does not feel anything like the Joker. I feel the writers were trying to hard to blend both Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger's Jokers together, and got a confusing result that didn't feel like either. Not even Emerson's performance is that stellar, personally; even John DiMaggio, who still sounded like Bender when performing the Joker in Under the Red Hood, still pulled off a good voice, a good laugh, and had writing that actually felt like the Joker. I don't see it with Emerson's. Now, I know this Joker was incredibly divisive, so it's not everybody who "loves" him, but I know this Joker and the movie itself still has quite a lot of fans. That's fine. I think Returns was decent; better than Rises but nowhere near as good as virtually any other animated Batman film/series, and part 2's version of the Joker really did not put me in a laughing mood.


 * Oogie Boogie: Here's another one that might get me some flak. Oogie Boogie is the "villain" of The Nightmare Before Christmas (which I too felt was decent, had an enchanting touch, and paved the way for arguably even better films like Coraline and Para-Norman). I put that in quotations because Oogie Boogie feels like nothing more than a plot device shoved in at the last moment to give the film some antagonistic conflict or whatever, when it was just doing fine without a villain. He appears literally within the last act of the film, never leaves his lair, appears maybe three times for a total of seven to ten minute of screentime, and dies. The film didn't need a villain in the direction it was going, the only hints of his presence beforehand was a few off-hand mentions and Lock, Shock, and Barrel (and a brief appearance in the opening number, though that literally serves nothing to his character and instead confuses things even more; why is he singing in this song if he's been exiled from Halloween Town?) and when he ultimately does appear, boy, does it feel forced. He also rocks a particularly flat design. The "filled with insects" is a nice touch, but just looking at him without that... he's a fat pillowcase with a weird-looking face. Compare that to all the appropriately Burton-esque and wickedly creative monsters of Halloween Town, and he looks stale in comparison. Now, Ken Page does a good job voicing him and his song is truly good, but I really wish the character got more screentime, and, well, actual purpose to the plot. I know he's got some extra screentime in expanded material like the video games of Nightmare and whatnot, but going by the film as is, he's disappointing.


 * Cyrus/Ghetsis/Lysandre: Knights of Cerebus they may be, I don't find myself liking any of these villains when they're constantly praised for being "edgy" and "dark." Ghestis especially, to the point where the mere mention of his name has become a berserk button for me, but I'll briefly go over to other two. I feel none of the sympathy that was apparently geared towards Cyrus; I hold a special love-to-loathe against omnicidal maniacs, but Cyrus just came off as flat and, given his end goal, disgustingly repugnant and evil, not exactly to the point of a Complete Monster, but incredibly vile nonetheless, which may not have been the case given the fact he's given some supposedly sympathetic moments and traits (which, since I don't feel work, make the character even worse). He was much better done, I feel, in the manga (Pokemon Special, primarily) The sympathetic moments, while a little better done with Lysandre, ultimately felt nothing but forced in his case (as well as the plot of X/Y in general), and the omnicidal goal by that point had grown stale and I was no longer shocked by it.


 * I also feel I should mention Matt and Courtney here; their omnicidal goal literally served absolutely no purpose to the plot whatsoever and simply felt like a writing cop-out for the sole sake of more "I wanna kill everyone because bleeaugh" characters. They don't make it onto the list because their sympathetic moments were decently well-written, and Archie and Maxie were much more well-written antagonists in general.


 * Now, Ghetsis. I loathe this character. Hate, hate, hate, hate this character so much. Not because he's a bad villain; by all accounts, he's bog-standard and the only straightly evil villain in the main series of games (although he comes off as flat and two-dimensional because of this, but in several cases I don't weigh that against characters) but because nobody will ever shut the hell up about how "evil" he is, ranting on and on about how he's a Complete Monster and how he's such an evil douchebag. He's a douchebag. He's dislikable. But his crimes are roughly on par with Saturday-morning cartoon villains; the abuse to N (who actually is a well-developed, well-written, and believable character, unlike this hackjob) is frankly exaggerated to stupid proportions when people talk about him when really it's just a bunch of name-calling (verbal abuse can be bad, but because of the E rating it's much more mild than it's made out to be) his abuse of Kyurem is treated as shocking when really it's nothing new at all (hell, some villains in the anime kill Pokemon) and his attempted killing of the protagonist... really? That's supposed to be big and shocking? Ignoring the plethora of villains (including Lysandre, who later attempted to drop the Ultimate Weapon's power on the protagonists out of spite) with much higher attempted bodycounts... it's still nothing more than a case of trying to kill the hero, and it's made worse because in the English version, nothing is explicit (people make a big deal about how the hero would "slowly freeze to death" or some crap when you forget this is a universe where things like that is Harmless Freezing). Same thing with his plans to freeze over Unova; death could be implicit, but nothing is outright stated, in a stark contrast to the other villains in the franchise with other omnicidal goals. Ghetsis is little more than a caricature of a standard-evil moustache-twirling dickbag in a world where omnicidal maniacs have become the norm, both Pokemon and humans. He does nothing to separate himself from this crowd except be devoid of redeeming qualities (and that's already been done better in the game universe) and his crimes are sensationalized to a point where it makes me want to tear out my hair. Plain and simple, I hate Ghetsis, and never bring his status on whether or not he is a Complete Monster to me. I will simply redirect you to one of my rants and be done with it.


 * Prince Hans: Another villains who has been praised for his "shocking" twist (well, some of the critics might disagree, but he's mostly just adored) when really Hans' villainous nature comes off as even more forced than Oogie Boogie's, because of one reason; there was no foreshadowing. The tiniest tidbits were very, very easily missed (and may not even be intended) and literally none of them foreshadowed that he was a diabolical mastermind, merely that Hans was not meant to be with Anna. Thus, when the plot twisted, it felt like the writers just gave up. The film didn't need a villain; Elsa created enough valid conflict and was an antagonist enough (before you ask, Elsa is the film's "antagonist" in the sense she opposes the heroes and creates conflict, whereas Hans is the "villain" because "Disney needs more merchandising for its villains' line so I guess I'm evil now hahahaha") and forcing in Hans at the literal last moment nearly made me quit the film altogether. I like Frozen, but even before it became a roaring spectacle I still noted several flaws in it, the biggest of which was Hans. Even the cautionary tale that comes with this (don't trust strangers) comes off as jarring and somewhat hypocritical, jarring in the sense that, again, there is literally no foreshadowing to indicate Hans is evil, and hypocritical because Anna only spent about a day longer with Kristoff than she did Hans (you can at least say Anna and Hans shared a musical number together). Point being, the film would have worked out perfectly if Hans was just the "meant-not-to-be" as opposed to one-dimensional plot device with the most phoned-in of motives and an exposition scene twenty minutes too short to explain this writing heart-attack forced in at the last moment to give us someone to root against (when, frankly, the Duke was doing fine). It would have worked better if the twist had been worked in earlier to give Hans some more screentime (like Callaghan) and received some proper foreshadowing, or at least worked to make the character a bit more obviously sinister (like Turbo) rather than just switching his role from Prince Charming to Prince Asshole at the last minute. Hans simply did not work in the end.