Qualifications: Complete Monster

I, and others, think the qualifications for this need to be revised. Specifically, the first one, which states that no Offstage Villainy counts. This is misleading, and I think it's being taken too literally.

The distinction should be, I think, between implicit and explicit. If the crimes are off screen to hide how horrible they are, yes, that would disqualify a character on that count, but there's other situations where the horrible crimes happened off screen simply because you don't have time to do it on screen, but the story still explicitly states what happened, in no uncertain terms. Fact is fact. If the story presents it as fact, it should count whether it happened right in front of us or it's told to us.

For example, Syndrome from The Incredibles. Going through the five criteria, he should qualify:

1. His actions, murdering people whose reason for being amounted to "save people" for very petty reasons, are treated as heinous in the story, and no effort is made to excuse them. He also, on screen, orders that a woman and two young children—who, as far as he knows, have no superpowers—be murdered, with a smile on his face.
2. His terribleness is played seriously, never for laughs, and the other characters are repulsed by him, including his assistant who undergoes a High-Heel–Face Turn as a result of him trying to murder those children, and callously allowing the hero to crush her to death.
3. His Freudian Excuse is not treated as making his actions at all excusable.
4. He has no altruistic qualities; he does everything out of petty spite, and cares only for himself.
5. He doesn't have any chance at redemption, and shows no regret over any action he's taken in the course of the movie; his reaction to seeing his old hero do what he does best is to try and kidnap an infant and try to raise him as a murderous villain, like himself.

The only thing that seems to disqualify him is that some of his actions took place offscreen, specifically the murder of the other supers. But these actions, while offscreen, are not "implied", but explicitly stated: We're shown the records, with the Supers listed in order of death, and what version of the machine killed them. We see one of their bodies. It is made perfectly, completely clear that this did, in fact happen, that Syndrome was directly responsible, and he had no qualms or regrets about anything he's done.

The scene with the computer is the movie showing the audience in 50-foot tall, flaming letters, "THIS IS A BAD GUY WHO HAS DONE BAD THINGS AND YOU SHOULD NOT SYMPATHIZE WITH HIM".

So why do those actions not count? We know for a fact they happened, and they're not presented as excusable in any way.

edited 21st Jun '11 10:19:53 AM by MrDeath

Without getting specific on one character, yeah I kinda agree. I mean if we see the results of implications of an act on screen it should count. How about the acts have to have impact on the story.

edited 21st Jun '11 10:23:52 AM by CrypticMirror

God gods sake, use the other thread!

The other thread is about whether it should be locked or not. This is about the qualifications for the trope. They're separate issues, hence I didn't want to muddy up that discussion with one that's on a different topic.

God gods sake, nuclearneo 577;read Mr.Death's orignal post.

We do not need multiple threads to discuss one trope. Please start being mature about this.

Anyway, Syndrome fails because he has a valid Freudian Excuse and because his evil is comedic. Next!

edited 21st Jun '11 11:40:37 AM by Fighteer