Scar vs. Zira in terms of Complete Monster status (SPOILER ALERT)

Not sure where to post this... but it is about two movies, so I am tentatively posting it here.

I noticed that on both the page for The Lion King and the Disney Complete Monster list, Scar seems to be more popularly regarded as a Complete Monster than Zira. I say this because on both The Lion King page and the Complete Monster page, even when Scar was considered a Complete Monster, Zira wasn't; at least not until I added her. I made my guesses as to why, but I figure now I may as well create a separate topic for this.

Let's run through the checklist, and see how these villains differ in their applicability to these criteria:

• Series of horrendous acts: Scar murdering his brother, exiling and trying to kill his nephew, bringing the pridelands to ruins, etc... vs. Zira abusing her children, brainwashing them to think of pridelanders as the enemy, orchestrating attacks on the pridelands, etc... ok, hard to tell who is worse here.

• Revulsion from other villains: The hyenas don't really begin to hate Scar until they realize that they weren't better off under him after all. Compare this to Zira's family, whose villanous status (if not Anti-Villain status) is probably all her own doing given how she raises them... who terrifies her own children, especially Nuka... and at the end, others who used to be on her side were convinced to make a truce with the pridelanders, (partly because Zira threatened to kill her own daugter for refusing to participate in the attack) while Zira herself would accept no truce.

• No adequate justification: Scar is motivated mostly by greed, whereas Zira is motivated mostly by spitefulness... not sure if that is really any more honourable, though. Zira is given a 10-second Freudian Excuse at the beginning of her villain song, though it is not made clear whether she is truthful about it or not, let alone whether it's really supposed to explain her evil or not.

• Remorseless: Check for both, obviously... but Zira seems to enjoy her villainy even more; much more; she even Loves the Sound of Screaming, as indicated by her Villain Song.

• Irredeemable: Check for both, obviously... but at least Scar temporarily accepted Simba's truce offer before changing his mind, whereas Zira saw everyone around her declare a truce and said she would never let go, and tried to attack Simba anyway. Even when a pridelander offered to save her life, she chose death over accepting help from a pridelander.

Also, Scar seems to be more Affably Evil than Zira is... Scar SORT of sounds polite, at least some of the time, but Zira just sounds so much more vicious and hateful.

edited 20th Sep '10 4:17:52 PM by neoYTPism

Despite providing the most memorable animated death of my childhood  ^*

, Scar kinda looses out to Zira in my opinion, mostly because she's so sadistic and spiteful about it, also, you could kinda see Scar as ambitious and severely lacking in the morals department, but Zira? She's pretty much just pure sadistic For the Evulz.

Now, which of these two that is the best villain, well, that I'm not 100% certain of.

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That is strange, because until I added Zira, she did not seem to be thought of as a Complete Monster even when Scar WAS. o.o

I think Zira has much more justification. At the beginning of The Lion King, Scar is still royalty; he isn't actually king, but he still gets to enjoy the cushy lifestyle of a lion in the pridelands if he could just get over the fact that Mufasa is in charge.

Zira has at least been driven away from her home and made to suffer and starve. And we don't even know exactly why she was exiled—she might not have done much or anything wrong. So yes, Disproportionate Retribution, but at least she did undergo more.

edited 20th Sep '10 12:13:34 AM by jewelleddragon

Maybe more people just haven't seen Lion King II?

I haven't really thought about who's worse, they're both nasty. Although I would personally like Scar better than Zira, he's much more charismatic.

There was a Lion King II?

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It's on my to-watch list, but I hear as Disney video sequels go, it's not too bad.

"Maybe more people just haven't seen Lion King II?" - meloncollie

That could easily explain the discrepancy in the Disney list of Complete Monsters, but not in the page for The Lion King itself; obviously, the Lion King 2 trope list would probably be written mostly by people who either have seen the movie or are otherwise familiar with it.

edited 20th Sep '10 12:11:37 PM by neoYTPism

It's the best of the sequels, but I may be slightly biased.

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@neo: Not necessarily. The original Lion King was the highest grossing animated film of its day (and still the highest grossing 2D animated film). Many people who saw it may not even know about the sequel.

edited 20th Sep '10 3:34:03 PM by OldManHoOh

"Many people who saw it may not even know about the sequel." = Old Man Ho Oh

... maybe, but still, I would think that those who edit the trope list for the sequel would be the ones who either watched it, or have heard enough about it to form an opinion on it, or were just commenting on the logic with which something was considered an example of a trope. And yet Scar was in the Complete Monster entry for the 1st one for a while, whereas Zira was not in said trope for the 2nd one until I mentioned her.

Trope lists are not usaully complete. Zira wasn't there because nobody had added her then. She is there now; problem solved.

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Someone ran through the five points on the Complete Monster definition to see if a character fitted... *sighs happily*

Sorry, sorry, but you'd be amazed at how often that doesn't happen.

What's precedent ever done for us?

Minor nitpick: I think it was more envy motivating Scar, not greed. He coveted his brother's throne and wanted it for himself.

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I personally think they both qualify, Zira seems to care about her children at first, but it's ultimately overshadowed by her hatred of Simba.

I think this would be more of a subject for the Complete Monster cleanup thread in the Projects: Long-term/Perpetual subforum.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Maybe, but the troper bumping this thread is a sockpuppet of a troper who has already ban evaded once. So locking.

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