User blog:ThatScrewyDuck/PE Proposal: King Malbert (Igor)

Hey there fellow users. There’s this animated B movie from a little over a decade ago that I've only recently been remembering, and that lead to me wondering if one of it's main antagonists has a chance at qualifying, especially since he doesn’t seem to have been discussed before… at least I’m pretty sure he hasn’t, though it’s hardly surprising since not many people seem to remember the movie due to it being rather… not outright bad, at least in my opinion, but definitely pretty average in quality. Anyway, I just revisited it to refresh my memory, and while I’m still kind of uncertain, I do think he has enough potential to qualify to at least try doing a proposal. Even if he doesn’t end up approved, I’ll at least feel like I’ve addressed it to make sure either way. So here we go…

What’s the work?
Igor is a 2008 computer-animated science-fantasy/comedy film from an obscure studio called Exodus Film Group, set in the fictional town of Malaria. Malaria was once home of fertile farm lands, but is now a dreary place to live ever since permanent clouds enveloped the place. As a result, King Malbert (voice of Jay Leno) concocted a scheme to raise capital by extorting the rest of the world with the threat of unleashing something truly horrible unless everyone pays up to keep it leashed. Every year, the land's evil scientists strive to create such monstrous experiments, with the annual competition just a week away. Igor (voice of John Cusack) has long dreamed of being such an evil scientist, but the hunch on his back meant he was automatically assigned to go to Igor school to learn how to become an assistant to real evil scientists.

The only problem is that he's so much better of an inventor than his master, Dr. Glickenstein (voice of John Cleese), whose every attempt has failed. That's unlike Igor's creations that might not be perfect but have survived, including the suicidal, buck-toothed rabbit Scamper (voice of Steve Buscemi) who's afflicted with immortality, and Brain (voice of Sean Hayes), a nervous bit of gray matter transported around inside a jar atop a dolly. King Malbert hates that the reigning evil scientist champion, Dr. Schadenfreude (voice of Eddie Izzard), is becoming more popular than him, and thus hopes that Dr. Glickenstein can concoct something to best him. Unfortunately for him, the evil scientist has recently perished in one of his experiments, but Igor sees that as his chance to create something under the guise of his late master.

Accordingly, and with the help of Scamper and Brain, he creates a towering Frankenstein type monster, assembled from a hodgepodge of parts, including an evil bone that will make it the most feared being in the land. But Igor is shocked when the bone doesn't work and his creation is subjected to acting theory, thus turning his monster into the sweet-natured Eva (voice of Molly Shannon) who dreams of being a starlet. From that point on, Igor scrambles to activate her evil bone to turn her bad, all while Dr. Schadenfreude and his shape-shifting assistant, Jaclyn (voice of Jennifer Coolidge), sometimes also seen as Heidi (voice of Jennifer Coolidge), try to get their hands on Eva in order to overthrow King Malbert and take over Malaria.

Who is he and what does he do?
So as you’ve probably gathered, King Malbert is the tyrannical ruler of Malaria who has risen to power by coming up with the idea to develop evil inventions to make up for the lack of crops which the town used to make a living off of, due to them all dying because of the perpetual storm clouds that have enveloped their land for many years, making them dirt poor. Thanks to this declaration, many individuals have become mad scientists that compete every year to create the most evil, diabolical and lethal invention to unleash upon the world unless the rest of it pays an obscenely large amount of money not to. However, due to one such scientist named Dr. Schadenfreude winning every year and risking becoming popular enough to be made king, he has started to go out of his way to undermine and embarrass him every chance he gets, and is encouraged when he hears from the titular Igor upon a visit that Dr. Glickenstein is creating life (which is really him, of course). However, he warns Igor that if anything should happen to Glickenstein (which is kind of a problem since he’s already gotten himself killed), he’ll have him sent to the Igor Recycling Plant and use his hunch “as a speed bump”. He then leaves and suggests to his guards that they go “kick some old people”

Through a series of events, Dr. Schadenfreude gets ahold of Igor’s invention, Eva, to use her for the annual Evil Science Fair so he can finally have a powerful enough invention to usurp King Malbert. Shortly afterwards, he rats out Glickenstein’s death to him, after which he angrily and callously has his guards throw Igor down the recycling chute to the plant, which turns out to be a fierce incinerator where “Igors” are literally chopped up and used for spare parts for anyone who may have use of them. After thankfully being saved by Brain and Scamper, Igor and his companions set out to save Eva from having turned evil by Schadenfreude, who unfortunately, does succeed in activating her “Evil Bone”, turning her from an otherwise gentle and kindhearted creation into a ruthless monster. Shortly after seen announcing to the citizens of Malaria at the fair that the rest of the world has to offer a small price of “one hundred billion dollars” to keep the peace, Igor and the others come across a weather ray that turns out to be the source of the perpetual set of dark clouds that have enveloped the land. Igor quickly surmises that King Malbert’s been using this to trick the town into believing that being evil is a necessity to survive, when in fact, it never really was.

Meanwhile, at the Science Fair, which turns out to be an all-way brawl between all the evil creations, Eva ends up destroying all the others, while Schadenfreude, declaring his dominance with such a powerful creation serving him, throws Malbert off his throne and declares himself the new king. Igor then arrives and tries to reason Eva out of being evil, at which point, she threatens to destroy the entire colosseum. Thanks to Scamper chewing through the wires and surviving the massive shock thanks to his immortality, the weather ray is shut down, with the clouds finally dissipating and giving way to clear sky and sunshine for the first time in years, and due to it not working in sunlight, Eva’s Evil Bone deactivates, regaining her peaceful and innocent personality. Igor then reveals King Malbert’s deception publicly to the crowd, which prompts a massive chorus of boos. King Malbert then angrily declares that he has no real proof and demands to see it… after which, fittingly, said proof in the form of the deactivated weather ray, breaks off its base and falls down on him, crushing him to death. Eventually, the monarchy is dissolved, and Malaria becomes a peaceful farming republic, with Igor as president, and the annual Evil Science Fair replaced with an annual music theater showcase.

Does he have any redeeming/mitigating qualities or a valid excuse for his actions?
This is a pretty easy “no”. Beyond his charismatic showman-like personality (he is voiced by Jay Leno, after all), he’s a selfish and greedy tyrant who’s only real concern is staying rich and in power (at the literal expense of many). Frankly, the closest thing he has to a mitigating quality is not resorting to more extreme measures like attempted murder to get rid of Schadenfreude, who is a clear threat to him and his position. However, given the sheer amount of media coverage and general attention they both get, this doesn’t seem to be a real option since it would be nearly impossible to do something like that discreetly, nor does he seem to have anyone who can, or would, be willing to carry out such a thing. I think publicly humiliating him and conspiring for someone to best him at the science fair is probably the most he can do given the circumstances, and is not a case of him being unwilling to resort to more extreme methods.

Is he heinous by the standards of the work?
As if often the case, this is the most interesting part that will probably single-handedly make the difference between whether people think he qualifies or not. While it’s mostly dark in a light-hearted and spooky, but not outright terrifying manner like you often get from animated films by Tim Burton, Igor still has quite a dark setting for an animated film that’s aimed at family audiences, at least in theory. Creating evil experiments that can wreak world-wide havoc if unleashed is pretty much the norm in Malaria, with the committing of evil acts in general being seen as a swell living, even by general decent people like Igor himself. It’s also a setting where anyone born with a hunch is automatically and derogatorily labeled as an “Igor”, and seen as only being good for serving masters who mistreat them casually and frequently, and who can be sent to a recycling plant like literal garbage to be chopped up and reused for parts. It even plays Scamper’s frequent attempts at suicide for dark laughs.

With all that said, once it’s revealed that he secretly used a weather ray to create the never-ending clouds that killed off Malaria’s crops, making the land poor and desperate, it’s irrefutable that King Malbert is the one responsible for the movie having this sort of setting to begin with. By presenting himself as a false savior of sorts and coming up with the idea of using evil inventions to blackmail the rest of the world into annually paying them obscenely high amounts of money under the very real threat of unleashing them, all of the actions of those who became evil scientists and created evil inventions that threaten the world can be traced back to him. This also means it’s likely that the practice of treating those dubbed as “Igors” so poorly is also on him; up to and including the existing practice of recycled them for reasons as minor as disappointing their masters, which is frankly, a ghastly and extremely callous way of essentially sending people who are considered ugly and inferior to their deaths. While I can definitely see, and even understand, why some people would argue that outside of trying to have the main character recycled for no particularly good reason, he doesn’t actually try to kill anyone, and that most of his actions are only related to the setup of the setting, I still think being responsible for all that makes him pretty darn heinous.

As far as other antagonists go, the only one who really rivals him in importance and possibly heinousness is Dr. Schadenfreude, who seeks to usurp him, and actually gets more screen-time and attention. However, Malbert is still easily the worse of the two since Schadenfreude was just as in the dark about his deception and convinced that being evil was a necessary profession for getting by. In fact, most of Schadenfreude’s villainy is pretty standard with the partial exception of putting everyone at the coliseum in danger when Eva threatened to bring it down, but even that seemed to be unintentional on his part, as he showed concern when she started getting out of control. After all, overthrowing Malbert would have meant simply continuing what he started, but being unaware of it being unnecessary. It also helps that he has some solid mitigating qualities; while they’re almost constantly bickering, insulting and snarking at one another, he and his girlfriend Jaclyn/Heidi do seem to genuinely like each other, and he passes up clear chances to do worse, like merely using a shrink ray on Igor and his friends when initially trying to steal Eva, or making what seems like a genuinely affable effort to convince Igor to give her to him in a deal they could both benefit from as opposed to using more ruthless and lethal methods from the start.

What’s the verdict?
After really analyzing all of this, I think he just makes it. He may be almost completely lacking in an actual or attempted body count, but being responsible for essentially corrupting his town for the sake of blackmailing the rest of the world with the threat of widespread destruction using the inventions his more ambitious citizens create does make him pretty bad. And again, the whole system of those being born with hunches being degraded and treated like disposable garbage can definitely be traced to him too, even if it’s not explicitly confirmed. That said, this is one of those cases where I’ll have little trouble understanding if people still don’t think he stands out enough to qualify, and if he does, I can openly admit that he’s still pretty tame for the standards for the trope/category. So… what say you?