This is the villainous counterpart to
Heroic Mime; while the hero's silence makes him open to interpretation, the
Silent Antagonist's silence makes him a sort of
Enigmatic Minion.
A
Subtrope of
The Voiceless. The
Supertrope of
Enemy Mime.
Sister Trope to
Enigmatic Minion.
Examples:
Film
- The Mysterious Woman from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
- The Thin Man in the first Charlie's Angels movie. (If I remember correctly, he originally had lines in the script, but they decided he'd be more villainous if he was The Voiceless.)
- Jaws from the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. He also counts for most of Moonraker but it's finally subverted when he gets one line near the end of the film.
- Karl Ruprect Kroenen from the film version of Hellboy. The comic version not only speaks but is quite Affably Evil.
- The Baseball Furies gang in The Warriors never utter a word, even as they fight the Warriors.
- Darth Maul only has a couple of lines, and none in the presence of the heroes.
- Kevin from Sin City. Apparantly, he spoke only to Cardinal Roark and "had the voice of an angel" but the audience never hears him.
- Adolf Hilter in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He meets Indy face to face, but doesn't say a word.
- Well, he's not an antagonist in the context of the scene, because he doesn't know who Indy is. Indy is wearing a stolen Nazi uniform and is remaining silent himself, so Hitler assumes he is just another autograph-seeking soldier. He takes Dr. Henry Jones's book from Indy and signs it, then promptly gives it back without realizing that it was the diary he was trying to get his evil mitts on in the first place.
- Rinzler, The Dragon in TRON: Legacy, for 99% of the film. It's not just to make him creepier: it's because Rinzler is Tron, reprogrammed to serve the villains, and hearing his voice would spoil The Reveal. When he does speak, it indicates that he's himself again.
- Kiriyama from the film version of Battle Royale.
Video Games
Web Original
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender has
Sparky Sparky Boom Man Combustion Man, who would rather blow stuff up with his mind than talk.
- Apocalypse from X-Men: Evolution is like this during his first appearances, though he finally talks during the Grand Finale.
- Soundwave's Transformers Prime incarnation, who has stopped talking on his own since coming to Earth. He "speaks" by replaying clips of other people talking (with the standard Soundwave voice effect undearneath).
