Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

The way the example is written now though...

A good example is in Closet Land where Alan Rickman plays a brutal Torture Technician and interrogator. Rickman in real life is vehemently anti-torture and presumably signed onto the film to showcase how utterly inhumane and cruel it is.

I'm not sure actors like Conrad Veidt ever talked much about their roles, but I know back then Hollywood was considerably interested in pigeonholing. I'm sure some were grateful for the work, or even proud to participate in films that were meant to inspire patriotism in the war effort. Others might have been resentful of it.

I didn't think much of it any more than I'd think of putting 'Russian' or 'Italian' mobster, but if you think it's bothersome, I don't mind the request to change it to "Member of the Jewish Mob though

edited 18th Sep '13 4:20:03 PM by Lightysnake

How about writing [[ Kosher Nostra Mickey Cohen ]]?

"Member of the Jewish Mob" sounds better. "Jewish mobster" could be read as though "Jewish" and "mobster" are separate crimes, which would be skeevy.

edited 18th Sep '13 4:22:35 PM by HamburgerTime

On Max Zorrin: He has an *Even evil has loved Ones* entry on the character section and I think I remember that he had a mutual fond relationship with his creator Dr Motner.

So that would be a cut-reason.

That works. I just fixed it to that.

I can't remember Zorin ever really loving the doctor at all. The doctor loves him, yes, but Zorin showed way more affection to Mayday and then showed the doc and he revealed he didn't care about her even a little

Plus, he's a sociopath. It's indicated he can't care about people

He did spare the Doc and Scarpine when he killed everyone else (and in fact Scarpine helped him kill everyone else). Villainous Friendship?

Or they're very useful.

Maybe. But he also killed Conley (a wealthy oil exec who probably would've been handy to have around if Zorin needed any more evil mining done) and May Day (who seemed to be his most trusted killer, even more than Scarpine); wouldn't they be useful, too?

May Day was also from the same program as him, so it's reasonable he might worry she could eventually overcome him. Conley was simply...superfluous.

I found this on the YMMV page for Murder On The Orient Express:

• Complete Monster: Ratchett, who kidnaps Daisy, holds her for ransom, and after he gets his money kills her anyway.
  • In the 2010 adaptation it's revealed that he'd murdered her an hour after he'd kidnapped her. In essence he cruelly strung them along and played on their desperate hopes of seeing their child when he knew damn well she was already dead.

Problem is that his crime takes place in the backstory and is never depicted. It only comes up when Poirot is explaining why Ratchett, who is the victim of the murder the novel revolves around, has been killed.

It's also worth noting that Ratchett isn't particularly heinous by the standards of the work. Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple novels share a 'verse, a 'verse in which murder is a fairly common occurence. Having read many of these mysteries, there are only three possible contenders who spring to mind: the murderers from Towards Zero, The ABC Murders, and Curtain. With that in mind, I thought I'd bring them all up. Since these are murder mysteries, unmarked spoilers will abound.

First up is Neville Strange from Towards Zero.

Who is Neville Strange? What has he done? Are his actions heinous by the standards of the story?

Neville Strange is a tennis player with a reputation as a great sportsman. In reality, he's a psychopathic madman who can't allow anybody who has slighted him to live. As a child he shot and killed another boy with a bow and arrow when he insulted him. That's offscreen, but it provides a nice summary of Neville's personality, and informs his actions throughout the book, which include:

• Killing Mr. Treves, a solicitor who was present for his childhood trial. When Treves mentions that he always remembers his cases, Neville puts an "Out of Order" sign on an elevator, causing Treves to have a heart attack trying to manage the stairs.
• Killing Lady Tressilian, his adoptive mother, not for money, but as part of a plot to frame somebody else for the murder.
• Framing his ex-wife, Audrey Strange, for killing Lady Tressilian. Pissed that Audrey left him for another man, Neville kills Lady Tressilian and lays a trail of evidence leading back to Audrey. He also plants a fake trail of evidence leading to himself so that it will look as though Audrey has tried to frame him. His plan is not only for her to die, but for her to die publicly humiliated. When Superintendent Battle reveals his plot, Neville breaks down and starts screaming that "Can't you see? She's got to be hanged. I do so want to see her hang."

Within Towards Zero, Neville is naturally the stand out. As for the rest of Christie's canon...there's a lot of murderers around, but I can't think of any who try to kill for reasons as utterly petty and petulant as Neville. His bodycount is also pretty high—three murders, all planned out from the start (most of Christie's multiple murderers are offing people who try to blackmail them over the first crime).

Does he have any redeeming qualities?

None. Neville cares about nobody but himself. He's willing to throw away his relationship with his second wife, Kay, so long as it means that his plan to get rid of Audrey proceeds as planned (for the plan to work he needs it to look as though he and Audrey were going to reconcile), he hates Audrey not because he once loved her but because he can't handle rejection, and he offs a woman who acted as his surrogate mother in order to finalise the plan. By the end of the novel Neville has burned his bridges with everybody. He does have a reputation as a good sportsman at tennis, but that's because his good reputation matters more to him than getting back at everybody who has ever beaten him. I'll note that at the end Neville shows no remorse whatsoever; the last thing we see him doing is screaming about how it was a brilliant plan (one that showcased his genius) and it should have worked.

Any Freudian Excuse or mitigating factors?

Neville is consistently referred to as a "madman" or "criminal lunatic" but that translates into modern parlance as "psychopath", not "insanity plea". He's a spiteful Psychopathic Manchild who has no right to act the way he does, but acts that way anyway.

Next we have Franklin Clarke from The ABC Murders

Who is Franklin Clarke? What has he done? Are his actions heinous by the standards of the story?

Franklin Clarke is the younger brother of Sir Carmichael Clarke. Deciding that he would like to inherit his brother's fortune, and concerned that Sir Carmichael (who is a young sixty) will marry again and have children, Franklin decides upon an ingenious plan, based around the fact that his brother's initials are "CC" and he lives in "Churston". He will pretend to be a Serial Killer and murder somebody with initials like that various towns in alphabetical order, leaving an ABC (a railroad guide) at the scene of each crime. He sends letters to Hercule Poirot before each murder in order to better the facade. Over the course of the novel he:

• Bludgeons Anne Ascher to death in her shop in Andover.
• Seduces and then strangles Betty Barnard in Bexhill-by-the-Sea (with her own belt I'll add).
• Clubs Sir Carmichael to death in Churston.
• Knifes a man named George Earlsfield in a theatre in Doncaster; this one is intended to look like a mistake, as Franklin reasons there will be someone with a "D" name in the audience somewhere.
• Frames Alexander Bonaparte Cust, an epileptic for the crimes. Pretending to be an agent for a stocking company, he "hires" Cust and sends him to each town on the day of each murder. He hides the knife from the Doncaster murder in Cust's pocket; he also visits him in disguise and convinces him that he is committing the murders during his epileptic blackouts and is going mad.

Franklin is scum. Christie, once again, wrote a lot of murderers, but Franklin beats almost all of them (excepting Mr. X and the villain from And Then There Were None) in bodycount, and unlike most of her multiple murderers, his are planned out well in advance. Worse still is his use and abuse of Alexander Bonaparte Cust, which is unmatched in Christie's canon. He drives the man to the brink of insanity, resulting in his arrest and near committment to a mental institution (or hanging, the jury was out on that one) all in order to have a patsy for his crimes.

Does he have any redeeming qualities?

Franklin is charming and easygoing, and is in Poirot's words, "an excellent, if somewhat cynical judge of character." It's all a part of the facade though, and at the core of it he's every bit the psychopath that Neville Strange is, if of a more impressive variety. There's very little to like about Franklin (unless you want to count taking Poirot down a peg or two).

Any Freudian Excuse or other mitigating factors?

No. Franklin is Only in It for the Money.

Finally, we have Mr. X, real name Stephen Norton from Curtain, Poirot's last case.

Who is Mr. X? What has Mr. X done? Are his actions heinous by the standards of the story?

Mr. X, modelled on Iago, is a sociopath who enjoys creating chaos and watching it unfold. He never commits a murder himself, but instead gravitates towards those people who might and gives them the extra push they need in order to make them do it. Having committed five murders offscreen, he proceeds to do the following onscreen:

• Convinces Colonel Luttrell to shoot his wife with a birding rifle (she survives).
• Persuades Hastings, Poirot's Watson, that the slimy Major Allerton is after his daughter Judith, then pushes him towards trying to poison Allerton (Poirot forestalls this by drugging Hastings).
• Pushes Barbara Franklin into trying to poison her husband (she accidentally drinks it herself).

X is responsible for three attempted murders onscreen, and would have kept on trying had Poirot not shot him and then committed suicide. As far as Poirot is concerned he is the worst criminal he has ever pursued. As far as the rest of the canon goes, only Strange and Clarke match him in both attempted bodycount and repugnancy of motive.

Does he have any good qualities?

As in Clarke's case, not unless you want to qualify frustrating the Hell out of the usually arrogant Poirot. He's another psychopath, completing our trio of antisocial asshats.

Any Freudian Excuse or other mitigating factors?

None. X is a near motiveless thrill killer, who is only in it For the Evulz and gets a kick out of the fact that he can never be convicted.

Anyways, those are the three Agatha Christie villains that I think have a shot at qualifying for this trope in terms of bodycount, vileness of motive, and nastiness of method. I don't know if they all make the cut, but I do think they are all at least worth talking about. They all certainly outweigh Ratchett. Thoughts?

Cut Ratchett. He's an Asshole Victim, but, as has already been mentioned, it's all from Poirot talking about what he's done. Plus, he doesn't really break past the general heinousness standard.

I support cutting Ratchett. Franklin sounds like a keep and Mr. X as well because he seems a lot more "hands-off" than the others. Neville could also count but I don't know if he stands out from Franklin.

edited 18th Sep '13 6:50:33 PM by TommyFresh

Personally I find Strange worse than X in some ways. X is killing people he's just met, whereas Strange killed his mother figure to frame his ex-wife. There's just something incredibly perverse about that.

Will remove Ratchett now. Will also cut that Lord Peter Wimsey example we decided didn't qualify.

edited 18th Sep '13 6:52:15 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Also post the Peter Whimsey example we decided counted to the main page?

I vote for all three. They all stand out a ton of Christie's legions of other murderers. Even if there's debate over one of them, he's very, very terrible by Christie standards which I think qualifies him.

By the way, if anyone is worried about the possibility of having three examples from one franchise, worry not. Agatha Christie wrote sixty-six detective novels and fifteen short story collections (most of them also murder mysteries), with all but a few being set in the same 'verse. Three standouts is likely acceptable at that point.

Well Neville isn't responsible for as many murders as the others. However, I see your point about how twisted his crimes are and he is the most personally hateful of the three. Leaning to keep.

edited 18th Sep '13 7:06:37 PM by TommyFresh

Neville killed three people onscreen, same as Mr. X, which puts them both in second place after Clarke (it isn't clear if And Then There Were None, her novel with the highest bodycount takes place in the same 'verse as the others, and since its villain is killing other murderers I don't qualify it at all). X killed more offscreen of course, but so did Neville, and we can't qualify those.

edited 18th Sep '13 7:11:23 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I think Neville is a keep now. Before I was only comparing Franklin and Neville because X seemed like more of a manipulator than the other two. However, I now think that he is sufficiently heinous.

edited 18th Sep '13 7:58:43 PM by TommyFresh

Can anyone give some thoughts on the writeups at post 16718 and my proposition for Kamiya? Or the rewrites and writeup at 16682 otherwise?

Posting the edited writeups for the keepers:

• Major Tint from Rambo 4 manages to be the worst antagonist that has appeared in the entire franchise. He's an Ax-Crazy military-leader who forces villagers to walk into mine-infested marshes, and he and his men shoot and dismember entire families (including childrens and babies) of villages. Also, he threatened to cut out the tongues of anyone who tried to stop his indoctrating teenage boys into his army, as well as threatening to feed them their intestines. To add even more monstrosity, he's a depraved pedophile and has hostages in inhumane conditions.

• General Medrano of Quantum of Solace, who raped and killed Camille's family in front of her, and burnt down the entire house. He conspires with Dominic Greene of the organization Quantum, deliberately engineering a nationwide drought in Bolivia to get allow Quantum to get its hands on his nation's water supply and having the gall to frame the government for selling off its rainforests. Medrano is willing to plunge his nation into drought and famine, dooming multiple innocent people,solely so he can have an excuse to seize power. When Greene informs Medrano how expendable he truly is to Quantum, Medrano buckles under pressure and acquiesces to Greene's demands before trying to rape his maid out of frustration. When Camille intervenes, Medrano tries to rape and murder her as well, mocking her about her mother and sister.
• Carver of Tomorrow Never Dies. In addition to the whole plan of killing a city full of people and quite possibly instigating World War III, there's what he planned to do to 007 and Wai Lin. Carver orders them tortured, telling them of the techniques Mr. Stamper will use and explaining that these methods (including mutilating the genitals) are designed to inflict the maximum amount of agony while keeping the victim alive as long as possible. To say nothing of Carver ordering the murder of his own wife when she becomes too close to James Bond.

For Robocop

• Dick Jones is as bad as Boddicker. not only is he a Corrupt Corporate Executive (one of the most well known examples), but it's revealed that Clarence Boddicker is working for him from the very beginning, ordering him to kill plenty of good-working/innocent cops so that Jones could make money with his failed ED-209. Speaking of ED-209, Jones doesn't care one bit when it malfunctions and blows holes in an Innocent Bystander ("Who cares it worked or not?). And when, due to the failing of ED-209, Bob Morton gets the upper hand with his Robo Cop project, he has him murdered. While Boddicker is a monster, Jones is fully aware and uses his monstrosity simply for a better bottom line
• Mc Dagget of Robocop 3. He's the one who killed Lewis without any reason. He convinces the public that the Rehabs give the people of Old Detroit new houses (actually putting them in death camps) and that Robo Cop is a criminal. The last straw was, when the Detroit Police refused to work with the Rehabs to clear out Cadillac Heights, he simply hired some Splatterpunk gangmembers to do the job.

And now rewrite time...For the Monster.Twenty Four page

• TwentyFour is absolutely full of nasty terrorists, but some villains blow the others out of the water.
  • Recurring villain Nina Meyers. While terrorists have the excuse of being motivated by ideology, Nina is driven by her bottomless greed. Having infiltrated CTU, Nina fed information to the Drazen terrorists to assist in their schemes, and when Teri Bauer overhears Ninja speaking German, Nina murders her to keep Teri from connecting her to Germany. Nina assists in numerous innocent deaths and terrorist activities, even conspiring to allow terrorists to get their hands on nerve gas. Jack Bauer once summed it up best: "You're worse than a traitor, Nina. You don't even have an ideology. you don't believe in anything."
  • Ramon Salazar was a brutal psychopath of a drug dealer. Since his release from prison, Ramon killed numerous innocent people. Ramon was attempting to get his hands on a lethal bioweapon called the Cordelia virus for his own profit and when his own brother Hector caused problems for the deal, Ramon cold-bloodedly gunned Hector down, simply for a better payout for the Cordelia.
  • Navi Araz of Season 4. His Big Bad boss Habib Marwan was ruthless, but Navi forcibly involved his innocent teenage son Behrooz in dangerous terrorist activities that took the lives of innocents, and then ordered Behrooz's girlfriend's death at Behrooz's own hand. When Behrooz proved unwilling, Navi attempted to murder him.
  • Abu Fayed has the most successful body count in Season 6. Fayed shows himself as nasty by having Jack Bauer tortured and later orders the same on a computer technician with a power drill. Fayed succeeds in having a nuclear bomb detonated in downtown LA, causing at least 13,000 deaths.
  • Jack's father, Philip Bauer, a Corrupt Corporate Executive who helped mastermind a conspiracy that reached all the way to the President, and helped have a previous president assassinated for it, with multiple innocents dying thanks to his actions. To cover his tracks he murders his co-conspirator younger sonand later sells out his country upon being discovered, annoyed at the lack of appreciation for his work. Philip's work nearly started World War 3 and he kidnapped his grandson, fully willing to kill him if the boy didn't conform to Philip's standards of Philip's legacy.

edited 21st Sep '13 12:01:27 PM by Lightysnake

How do these entries look?

• Heymar Reinhardt, or his alias "Wulfgar", from Nighthawks. He is a terrorist who manipulates everyone around him and kills the people who help him. Even his employers don't like him, as evidenced by one of them refusing to pay him because several children were killed by his last attack at the beginning of the movie. He doesn't care who gets injured or killed by his actions, even if the victims are children. He takes a frail old woman hostage at a subway, and before that, he murdered the flight attendant he was staying with after she looked in his briefcase, calmly telling her that everything was okay, before murdering her offscreen. Later on, he takes more hostages, including an eight-month-old infant. The only reason that he lets the infant live is because he knows that doing so would make him seem more employable to future or potential terrorist organizations, provided he can escape his current predicament alive. He does escape, but then he makes the mistake of trying to kill DaSilva's ex-wife, and DaSilva shoots him dead before he can do so. The scariest part is that this is easily one of the most realistic terrorists in cinema when compared to terrorists featured in other movies.
• Anton Chigurh of No Country for Old Men certainly fits this trope. He strangles a cop to death with cuffs; shoots both his employers in cold blood because he wanted the money they were chasing after; shoots a crying, surrendering man hiding in a shower; and has absolutely no qualms about killing innocent people, including a random old man for his car and a motorist that did nothing except pick up the main character. In his most senselessly cruel act, he murders the dead protagonist's wife only to fulfill a pointless promise to him. Some consider Carla Jean's refusal to accept his offer as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome, calling out his bullshit of giving his victims a 50-50 chance. Even knowing Anton Chigurh puts you in mortal danger. Like one line by Carson Wells points out: "Even if you gave him the money, he would still kill you just for...inconveniencing him." The worst thing about him is how he subjects his victims to a bizarre form of Mind Rape and actually convinces them to accept their death. It's easy to see why his partner-in-crime Carson Wells compares him to the Bubonic Plague. He faces no repercussions, which goes chillingly well along with the nature of his character: an unstoppable force of nature personified in human flesh. He does not enjoy these acts, he is just a evil psychopath with utterly no regard for the lives of anyone.
• Archibald Cunningham from Rob Roy. He stole a heap of money from peasants in order to buy himself fancy new clothes, murdered a man in the process, pinned the crime on Rob Roy, and then volunteered to capture the "thief" by destroying his home, killing his livestock, and brutally raping his wife. And in his spare time, Archie would seduce a chambermaid, impregnate her, and abandon her, mocking her in the process.

Also was it decided to cut Detective Jack Scagnetti from Natural Born Killers?

EDIT: On the Film Sandbox, I moved Star Wars and The Godfather to a section above the entries.

edited 18th Sep '13 10:25:05 PM by TVRulezAgain

One way or another, the Godfather page has gotta go. Ciccio is the only potential keeper and I don't even think he counts

Just finished Kings. Andrew Cross' entry will indeed have to be cut. In-series his only crimes are releasing naked pictures of his cousin Michelle to the newspaper, stalking his aunt, being party to his father and Jack's coup d'etat (along with about a million other people), and selling his father out at the end in order to get back into Silas' favour. Given the general heinous bar of the series, which is set by King Silas, Andrew's father William, and Silas' Evil Genius Vesper Abbadon, Andrew misses qualifying. He's a creepy little psychopath, but that's about it.

Had the series' continued, things would likely be different, given that not only does Andrew manage to win himself a key position in Silas' government, but that a cut scene features his releasing Abbadon from prison just to stir things up. He was clearly being set up as a major villain, and a particularly reprehensible one at that. But I don't think that we can qualify people on the basis of What Might Have Been, and so away he goes.

Found this on the Infinity Blade YMMV page:

constantly switch equipment to continue leveling up.

• Complete Monster: Ausar, pre-Memory Gambit. In the first game, there's a scene where Raidriar tells Archarin, after the latter joins him, that he's worried about the rising power of less principled Deathless—the whole reason he needs the Infinity Blade. That's nothing compared to the sheer hatred and disgust Raidriar has for Ausar, an utterly honorless being who apparently didn't get dubbed "Ausar the Terrible" by history, and "the vilest evil this world has ever known" by the Archivist, for nothing. That he killed his own wife may just be part of the above-water part of the iceberg... There's a reason his original trademark equipment is called the "Vile" set.
  • Ausar is heavily implied to be this in both the novel and the game's sequel, not only by everyone who speaks of him, but also the dark thoughts that Siris is getting throughout the novel. However, it is also implied that his Memory Gambit is his attempt at atoning for what he has done.

Most of Ausar's actions are Offscreen Villainy and just mentioned and considering that Siris is Ausar than he genuinely wants to atone for his actions as Ausar once he found out what he really was unlike Light from Death Note, who goes back to being a bastard after the Memory Gambit and the Yotsuba arc when he gains his memory.

So cut for Siris/Ausar

There is another villain, The Worker of Secrets, I'm just gonna say he dosen't qualify either. He never does anything heinous onscreen except kill the God King in Infinity Blade III and turn his body into a soulless husk. His goal is to destroy the world and flee into space and then remake the world in his image. But that's just generic villainy and he hasn't done anything heinous in the backstory either.

edited 19th Sep '13 7:14:08 AM by xie323