More Big Screen Comic Villains

Can Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight be considered the greatest portrayal of a comic book character in film? Within those parameters yesterday, the best I could come up with was Ian McKellen's Magneto. I'd say both performances are on par with one another, but to say one is better would be comparing apples to oranges. One sought revenge for his people, acting with confidence, justification, and purpose, while the other was sheer chaos, an unpredictable force of nature with no true motive, at least none you could trust.

I'm going to look at a few other performances and though I won't hit every villain, I hope to hit most of the significant ones, including my choice for the worst.

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Willem Dafoe: Spider-Man was such a good movie, with solid performances faithful to the source material from all involved, you can forgive the ridiculous costume with the oversized helmet that Dafoe gets stuck with as Green Goblin. It is Dafoe's portrayal of the Goblin's alter-ego Norman Osborn that earns him a spot on this list, and his barely contained emotions simmering beneath the surface make for fascinating cinema as his decline into madness and villainy parallel's Tobey Maguire's ascension to heroics. The film cuts back and forth between both character arcs until the inevitable collision, and you're invested in this character faster than he can snarl “back to formula?!”

Alfred Molina: For Spider-Man 2, the filmmakers found the perfect way to make Doc Ock far more credible than his comic book counterpart. Taking a page from the animated origin of Mr. Freeze, they had this brilliant scientist lose someone dear to him in the same accident that changes him into a powerful menace. Molina's performance manages to capture your sympathy while remaining a considerable and deadly threat to our hero.

Thomas Haden Church: Spider-Man 3 shows promise early on and pays off various developments set up in the previous films, but ultimately collapses in the third act under the weight of too many villains and plot threads. Venom's origin ends up being rushed and he's on screen for 10, maybe 15 minutes at most, when he should have been a cliffhanger setting up another sequel. Sadly, this takes away not only from two movies worth of set-up for James Franco's turn as a villain, but from Church's portrayal of Sandman, which manages the same balance of sympathy and terror as Molina's. He looks exactly like the source material, through his own stony features and the magic of amazing computer graphics, and he does a great job as a guy who made one wrong choice after another with some good intentions, only to continuously be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A Spider-Man 3 that focused entirely on Sandman would have been a far better picture.

Cillian Murphy: He's not even the main villain in Batman Begins, but he does a great job as Dr. Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. The Scarecrow. Since the main villain role ends up split between an appropriate actor who winds up being a red herring and an accomplished actor who doesn't quite fit the role, I found myself more focused on Cillian's quiet menace, a therapist who's supposed to help people, but instead experiments in bringing out his patients' greatest fears. Just watch his eyes; even when they're not behind a hallucinogenically enhanced burlap sack, he's clearly unhinged...

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Now let's look at two of the worst offenders:

Julian McMahon: Love them or hate them, the Fantastic Four have very distinctive personalities, a tight family of superheroes that has been refined and tweaked since the 1960s, but have remained true to their core. It's not that hard to get these characters right. The same should be true of their nemesis Doctor Doom, the number one bad guy of the Marvel universe. He's the supreme dictator of the small European nation of Latveria, but diplomatic immunity isn't his greatest power. He conceals a horribly scarred face behind a metal mask, and wears powerful armor of his own design. He commands magic as well as technology, and employs countless machines built in his own image. With his ambition he's stolen great power on more than one occasion, rising to levels of godhood. So for the film, his ties to Latveria are minimized as are his scars, and we get more facetime with McMahon as a smug businessman than as a menacing tyrant. By the time he bears any resemblance to the source material, he's taken down in the span of 10 minutes. By the sequel, we do get a glimpse of Latveria and a decent adaptation of the time he stole the Silver Surfer's powers, but again this is relegated to the last few moments of film and most of the time Doom walks around with his scars completely healed. I don't care if the guy is on Nip/Tuck; Doom should have a face like Freddy Krueger. Too many comic book films suffer when they cast an actor who doesn't want his face covered for the bulk of the film. Acting should entail far more than your natural physical appearance, or else you should consider modeling or some other career.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: I mentioned earlier how the animated series had really revamped Mr. Freeze, making him more of a tragic figure. While researching a cure for his wife's disease, there's a tragic accident with the cryogenic equipment preserving her, and his body chemistry is forever altered so he can only survive in a special suit that keeps his body temperature low. All crimes perpetrated using his armor and freeze ray are done so to fund further research in saving her life. Now, I'm as big of an Arnold fan as anyone who grew up in the ‘80s, and I will even defend Last Action Hero, but his portrayal of Mr. Freeze may well be the WORST comic book villain I've ever seen at the movies. I'll lay as much blame for Batman & Robin at the feet of Joel Schumacher, who didn't get the character and created a muddled hybrid of ‘60s camp and ‘90s “angst”, but all those cold puns that Arnold spouted were literally painful to watch. I'd quit acting and become a politician after a disaster like that too...

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Thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Any villainous portrayals you'd like me to cover in the future? It seems I drew entirely from the Big Two comic book companies, but the villains from the smaller companies didn't seem as iconic or memorable. Yes, Timothy Dalton was good in The Rocketeer while Martin Sheen was terrible and John Leguizamo was miscast in Spawn. But does anyone really remember James Saito's turn as The Shredder in 1990's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Anyone? I couldn't even tell you who the villains were in Judge Dredd or Tank Girl, and I saw those in the theater.

If someone can think of examples from films based on independent comics, I'll gladly respond or include my thoughts in a future post.