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| “ | You ever pulled the wings off a fly? You care to see a fly get even?! | „ |
| ~ Edgar to Kay and Jay.
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| “ | You idiots! You don't get it - I've won! It's over! You're milksuckers! You don't matter! In fact, in a few seconds you won't even BE matter. | „ |
| ~ Edgar the Bug confronting the agents in a final duel.
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| “ | I see. I put my hands on my head...Like this? | „ |
| ~ Edgar the Bug's last words before removing his skin disguise and revealing his true form.
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Edgar the Bug (or just known as The Bug) is the main antagonist of the 1997 sci-fi action comedy film Men In Black. He is an interstellar terrorist in search of the Arquillian Galaxy, and his actual appearance is that of a giant cockroach. He does not like it when any bug, especially cockroaches, are killed.
He was portrayed and voiced by Vincent D'Onofrio, who also portrayed Private Gomer Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, Carl Rudolph Stargher in The Cell, Vic Hoskins in Jurassic World, Bob Fittler in Chained, Lester Clark in Escape Room, Luca Abele in Dishonored 2, and Kingpin in the Marvel Netflix series Daredevil.
Appearance
Edgar takes on the form of a giant alien cockroach, complete with two antennae hanging over his head. He has big yellow eyes and enormous, razor sharp teeth. When inhabiting the human skin of Farmer Edgar, the Bug looks remarkably like the farmer except for his raggard appearance, namely as his skin is noted to hang off his bones on several occasions. In addition, Edgar's left eye is slightly discolored and pale in comparison with his right eye. Over time in the film, the dead human's skin slowly decomposes becoming worse and worse each time he is seen.
Personality
Edgar has an inferiority complex, which is quite noticeable, like when he described humans as “underevolved pondscum”, and when he said that he was in a higher phase of evolution. He is easily angered when he saw bugs, especially cockroaches, get crushed.
History
The Bug lands on Earth by flying saucer and eventually crashes and wrecks the truck of Edgar, an abusive farmer while berating his wife, Beatrice for having his dinner poorly made instead of having a steak. As he goes out to investigate after Beatrice asks him what on Earth is it outside and Edgar rudely tells Beatrice to get back inside, the unseen bug demands that he surrenders his shotgun. Edgar refuses, threatening the bug instead. The bug responds by revealing himself to the farmer, yanking him into the pit and kills him by flaying him and eating his body (offscreen), also taking possession of his shotgun while he is investigating the crash-site. The Bug uses Edgar's human skin as a disguise while he searches for the Arquillian Galaxy not before asking for sugar water. He rampages through New York City as a human, killing people and trashing everything and everyone in his way amongst them, a pest control man, an Arquillian prince and his royal bodyguard, as well as a Repo man, who almost towed the pest control van that Edgar was hiding his space saucer.
Eventually, he found Rosenberg and killed him and got what he thought was the galaxy, but it was diamonds. He later finds that it's on the collar of Rosenberg's cat Orion and infiltrates the morgue to get it. He takes Dr. Laurel Weaver as a hostage and Agents K and J pursue him to a pair of spaceships, since his saucer was captured when Jay shot the van from the tow truck that Edgar obtained from the Repo man. Dr. Weaver escapes, but Edgar manages to get on one of the two working spaceships.
After the agents arrive just in time and shoot his craft down with their guns, they hold him at gunpoint, but Edgar rips off his human disguise and reveals his true form. He eats the agents' guns and K purposely gets eaten as well in order to find his gun after telling J to make sure he does not go on the second ship. J is then able to distract him by stepping on cockroaches. He was defeated by K who blasts him from inside with his gun after he has found his gun in his stomach before blasting his way out, but half of him was still alive and he was finished off by Dr. Weaver with J's gun, spattering the rest of him over K and J before Dr. Weaver tells them about their jobs which are interesting, also avenging the deaths of the humans and the aliens he had killed.
Powers and Abilities
- Heightened intellect: Edgar possessed a sharper and more advanced level of intelligence than humans.
- Super strength: Edgar was shown to possess inhuman strength, and K makes a comment that implies he had unlimited strength, but with his human body, he seems to somewhat compress it to an extent.
- Super leaping: As a bug, Edgar was agile and nimble, enabling him to hop extremely high in the air.
- Malleable physiology: In spite of his size, Edgar's body is surprisingly malleable as he can contort, bend and twist his body so he can fit on smaller space and forcefully reduce his body mass. Thus can be seen when he can bent his body to humanoid shape and size, so he can wear human Edgar's skin for disguise without accidentally tore it from the inside and even fit into his crashed saucer-shaped starship which no bigger than a human taxi.
Trivia
- Edgar's species leaves a green spectral trail and craves sugar water.
- Edgar's true alien form was originally going to be an animatronic puppet, but the puppet was scrapped and was replaced with a computer-generated version instead.
- Edgar appears in a flashback by K where he gets killed by Laurel Weaver in the Men in Black: The Series episode, "The Big Bad Bug Syndrome". However, he resembles his twin brother, Edwin, and looks nothing like his movie appearance. Given that the cartoon series goes through separate continuity, Edgar in movie and cartoon series are separate incarnations in spite of having similar odds with the Agents.
- Before Vincent D'Onofrio was cast as Edgar, Bruce Campbell and John Turturro were both considered for the role of the Bug. However, they turned down the role.
Template:MIB Villains