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.

Big Screen Comic Villains

Heath Ledger recently received a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of The Joker in The Dark Knight. I think the late actor completely deserves the nomination, a win, and many other awards. A friend who has yet to see the movie(!) was asking me if his was the best portrayal of a comic book villain on the big screen. It was a surprisingly tough question, especially limited to comic book films alone. Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs might rival Ledger as a villain, but that of course wasn't based on a comic book. Historically, comic book movies have been dictated by the original medium, while the thing that Christopher Nolan does right is first ask, “What if this story took place in the REAL world?” By making a film first and a comic book story second, he's achieved great success in making a series that relates to a wider audience.

So is Ledger the best? Who else is there, and how many of them got it right?

Jack Nicholson: The previous Joker in 1989's Batman, he was for some time the benchmark against which all other cinematic comic book villains were measured. He clearly had fun with the role, and we all walked away from that film with memorable quotes from “Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?” to “Where does he get all those wonderful toys?” But in the grand scheme of time, his portrayal basically breaks down to Nicholson just being himself in white face paint, firing off an array of timeless catch phrases and occasionally dancing to Prince.

Gene Hackman: This list would be incomplete without Lex Luthor, the “greatest criminal mind of our time”. But was Hackman the greatest Luthor? He was certainly better than Kevin Spacey, and I'd say Hackman is the definitive big screen Luthor. But on the small screen, Michael Rosenbaum completely and consistently owned the role, and was always at his best even when Smallville was at its worst. On the animated side of things, Clancy Brown voiced the definitive Luthor, most especially on Justice League. Hackman was good as a greedy evil scientist, but for the majority of Superman movies he couldn't even be bothered to wear a bald cap. Rosenbaum shaved his head for seven years before finally leaving Smallville. As with Nicholson, when I watch Hackman's performance I just can't separate the actor from the character, and I have a constant awareness that I'm watching Gene Hackman, not Lex Luthor.

Terence Stamp: Hackman was fun to watch, but Superman II brings us the best villain of that series with Stamp's General Zod. He manages to be calm, calculating, regal and wholly evil, while managing small bits of comedy as he learns about Earth in his quest to seek revenge on the Man of Steel, son of his old enemy. “KNEEL before ZOD!” is hammy old-school villain acting that conjures memories of Ming the Merciless, but for this particular movie it works. I don't think that kind of portrayal would work as well in today's film environment; this genre has evolved.

Stephen Dorff: I'm not all that familiar with the comic book version of Deacon Frost, so I can't speak to how well Dorff interpreted the source material, but as an ambitious and scheming vampire he definitely played a formidable adversary to Blade. Though based on a Marvel comic, Blade plays primarily as a vampire movie before a superhero movie, and in the new age of comic book movies is sometimes forgotten. I will always consider it the turning point where Hollywood started treating comics seriously, and found they could inspire some genuinely good movies, which is why Dorff makes the list.

Ian McKellen: For most Marvel comics fans, Magneto is their best villain, second perhaps to only Doctor Doom. When you have a villain that popular and iconic, fans will be watching closely, and it is dangerously easy to get it wrong. To our relief, McKellen got it very, very right. Surviving the Holocaust as a boy, he grew up to be the best kind of villain, the kind with a cause who doesn't see himself as a bad guy. Forget the mustache-twirlers and a cat-strokers with the diabolical laughs; it's more realistic and dangerous to have someone feel completely justified and right in his actions. McKellen captured not only Magneto's zeal, but also his supreme confidence. With complete control over magnetism, he had no need to fear bullets, and dispensed most foes with a wave of his hand. It was great to see him smirk and mock our heroes at every turn through every one of the X-Men movies, and he's definitely one of the best comic book villains to grace the big screen.

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Have I found a better performance than Ledger's? Tune in tomorrow when I explore even more actors who got their fiendish four-color counterparts right, and a few who got it very, very wrong....