For The Evulz / Live-Action Films

Antagonists who do terrible things just because they can in Live-Action Films.

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General

• Nearly every Todd Solondz character (with the notable exception of Dawn Weiner from Welcome to the Dollhouse) does horrible things just because they can. This says much about the characters, the world they live in, and Todd Solondz films in general.

Specific works

• Several of the villains in 8mm. According to the lawyer of the rich old man who commissioned the Snuff Film, "He did it because he could." Machine, the man who actually committed the murder, sums it up horrifically:
  Machine: Mommy didn't beat me. Daddy didn't rape me. I'm this way because I am. There's no mystery. Things I do, I do them because I like them! Because I want to!
• Air Buddies:
  • In Space Buddies, Dr. Finkle mentions that if the mission fails, he will take Pi's place at Vision Enterprises. He is specifically told that Vision Enterprises would be crippled by the bad PR that the mission failure would cause now the media knows there are pet dogs on board the shuttle. Dr. Finkle continues trying to screw everyone over regardless.
  • The Search for Santa Paws has Ms. Stout, the evil head of the orphanage who hates Christmas. She isn't even given a Freudian Excuse; she just hates Christmas for no reason., and she destroys any toys and decorations that she finds in the orphans' possession. The only thing that she does with an actual motivation is attempt to run off with her boyfriend with embezzled money and leave the orphans by themselves.
• A relatively mild, comedic example occurs in Airplane! when airport-employee Johnny briefly unplugs the runway lights just as the plane is making its emergency landing because he thinks it's funny.
• In Airplane II: The Sequel, Simon Kurtz covers up flaws in the shuttle and leaves everyone on it to die for no apparent reason.
• The opening scroll of Anaconda implies that the Anaconda itself is sadistic, as it regurgitates its prey just for the pleasure of hunting and killing something again. It actually does this in the climax with one unlucky guy, and the victim is still alive after having been devoured.
• Subverted in Anger Management. Buddy Rydell seems to play this straight toward the end of the film but turns out in the end to have good intentions with his Zany Scheme and extreme methods.
• The killer in Angst admits many times that he takes pleasure in killing, to the point where he derives sexual satisfaction from it.
• Assassination Nation: The person behind the hack that sets off the plot is Lily's younger brother Donnie, who even admits that he did it "for the lulz".
• The gang member at the beginning of Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) shoots and kills a little girl while they're robbing an ice cream truck just because she's there.
• Backdraft: Ronald Barlet set some fires for money (insurance fraud), while at the same time his real motive always was just how fun he finds starting them, saying that he would burn the world if it was possible.
• The movie adaptation of Battle Royale features Kazuo Kiriyama, who voluntarily entered the Program, with kids he had never met, just for the fun of it. The others are all unwilling conscripts.
• The Birds: It isn't explained why different bird species (sparrows, crows, seagulls) have organized together, or why they are attacking and killing the populace. As far as the movie goes, they're just evil killer birds.
• Byzantium: This is the Captain's motivation for his kidnapping, imprisoning and repeatedly raping Clara. Throughout the film, it's made clear he that simply enjoys turning innocent girls into sex slaves for his own sick amusement. Clara was just unlucky enough to be his "favorite girl" he'd sold to the brothel.
• Cabin by the Lake: In Return to Cabin by the Lake, Allison (as part of her attempt to get inside the killer's mind) theorizes that there must have been something that drove Stanley to start murdering teenage girls, such as a bad childhood or his previous writing work never having been recognized. Stanley has to explain that there's no reason that he's as evil as he is; he just enjoys killing people.
• In The Christmas That Almost Wasn't, the Big Bad Phineas T. Prune seems to have no concrete explanation for why he does what he does, until the end, when he experiences his Heel–Face Turn.
• A Clockwork Orange: Alex and his droogs partake in rape and ultraviolence for the pleasure of it. This eventually leads Alex into conflict with the rest of his gang. He's fine with just robbing the people he brutalizes for spending cash, but the rest of the gang want to start earning a real profit from their endeavors.
• Cool Cat Saves the Kids: Butch the Bully bullies people simply because he's a bully and finds great pleasure in bullying others.
• In The Crow (1994), Top Dollar gives a speech about how profiting from Devil's Night has grown boring to him and the criminals of the city should sow mayhem purely for the evil of it.
• Creepshow 2: The end of the segment "The Raft" has the Blob Monster simply leap out of the water, pounce on the victim that made it to shore and almost escaped and slip quietly back into the water to digest him. This is after it spent the entire movie acting like it couldn't leave the water like that. All the time it spent just floating on the water trying to tip their raft over, feint them into diving overboard to swim for it, or ooze up between the slats of wood was just it playing with its food.
• Cruel Intentions:
  • Kathryn's reason for destroying her Ladykiller in Love stepbrother's relationship:
    Kathryn: You were very much in love with her. And you're still in love with her. But it amused me to make you ashamed of it. You gave up on the first person you ever loved because I threatened your reputation. Don't you get it? You're just a toy, Sebastian. A little toy I like to play with. And now you've completely blown it with her. I think it's the saddest thing I've ever heard.
  • In the prequel, her twisted relationship with Sebastian was started when he was a relatively normal guy whose father married her mother and Kathryn, "for the evulz", arranged for him to be seduced while simultaneously setting up a fake "true love" to fall for him before revealing the con, turning him into her semi-incestuous male counterpart, as he was in the first film. However, this does attempt to retcon out her reluctance to indulge his semi-incestuous lust for her.
• The Dark Knight:
  • The Joker is the page image for a reason. He does not care about lost lives or pain, including his own. He has no desire for power, wealth or any tangible material gains. He lives without rules and enjoys showing others how stupid it is to live with theirs. He finds destroying social and moral standards as amusing as blowing up hospitals. Every time he puts on the Straw Nihilist act, it's to someone whom he is trying to convince to forsake their moral code. Of course, how genuine he is about his "agent of chaos" schtick is up to interpretation. The page image shows him, having acquired hundreds of millions of dollars, lighting it all on fire in front of the mob bosses that paid him (with the bank exec who laundered it tied to a chair on top of the pile).
  • The Burmese Bandit in Alfred's story (who is the second subject of the page quote) stole gems that were intended to be given by the SAS to various tribes as bribes, and then threw them away, implying that he only stole for the "sport" that robbing the military provided him. Whether or not this was the truth is unknown, as the Bandit was never caught by the English forces... alive, that is.
• Deadpool (2016): Even after Wade gains his powers and there is no need to put him back in the asphyxiation device, Ajax puts him back in the machine, driven by a desire to inflict pointless cruelty.
• The Departed: Frank Costello maintains his criminal empire despite nearing seventy not because of wealth or women, but purely out of love for what he does.
• Scorpio from Dirty Harry starts out asking for ransom money, but as time goes on, he's implied to be more motivated by the "fun" of committing his crimes.
  Scorpio: I've changed my mind. I'm going to let her die! I just wanted you to know that. You hear me? I just wanted you to know that before I killed you!
• A deleted scene in Dogma revealed that the triplets from Hell died when they were being carted to Juvenile Hall for bashing in a baby's head to see what it would look like.
• Dollars Trilogy:
  • Ramon Rojo from A Fistful of Dollars. He just enjoys killing and robbing.
  • In For a Few Dollars More, there is no reason why El Indio tortures Manco and Colonel Mortimer (just for fun) or rapes Mortimer's sister.
• In Doomsday Machine, the Communist Chinese blow up the Earth for no reason... while they're still on it.
• In Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness, Seith and Bezz torment or kill people just for enjoyment.
• In End of Days, Chicago suggests to Jericho that they cast their lot with Satan under the reasoning that their long careers as mercenaries meant they had no chance of "going upstairs" anyway, so they might as well have fun while alive. Chicago having been set on fire and being offered a way out of getting burned to a crisp from the Devil was also fairly persuasive.
• Escape Room (2017): No reason is ever given for why the people behind the escape room are conducting these bizarre, sadistic and extremely complex executions, which must be phenomenally expense to stage.
• Exam: Some of White's actions, such as forcing Deaf to eat his own paper, come from his own unrepressed sadism.
• Castor Troy from Face/Off loves to do evil things just to torment Sean Archer. Best emphasized by his dialogue during his first standoff with Archer: "You're not having any fun, are you, Sean? Why don't you come with us? Try terrorism for hire, we'll blow some shit up. It's more fun!"
• Flash Gordon (1980): Ming the Merciless toys with the people of Earth by causing disasters for no other reason than that he's bored.
  Dr. Zarkov: But why? We are only interested in friendship. Why do you attack us?
  Ming: Why not?
• Freaky: All we hear of the Butcher's past is that he murdered his own mother and spent time in a hospital for the criminally insane (from which he escaped) but given the sheer glee he gets from killing and that he looks for every opportunity to indulge in it (either in his own body or in Millie's), he clearly qualifies.
• The sociopathic door gunner from Full Metal Jacket. While machine-gunning Vietnamese peasants from his helicopter:
  Joker: How can you shoot women and children?
  Gunner: Easy. You just don't lead 'em so much! [cackles] Ain't war hell?
• Funny Games: The two killers give several conflicting backstories and motives, but ultimately, they have none. They exist solely to be the villains of the film.
• Get Out (2017): Rose Armitage really has no reason for seducing and abducting black people apart from her own enjoyment. Word of God confirms that she wasn't being brainwashed and that she would've definitely continued manipulating others even after every single member of her family had been killed.
• G.I. Joe: Retaliation has Zartan play this role. While impersonating the U.S. President he tells the real President (locked up in a bunker) that he likes destruction, pretty much admitting that this is the real reason he works for Cobra Commander. Late in the film, when he reveals that COBRA has built a Kill Sat with powerful kinetic weapons that can destroy cities, he states that they are "none of the fallout, all of the fun".
• Godzilla:
  • Ghidorah, introduced in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster and appearing many times after, seemingly arrives on Earth to destroy it for kicks, like he apparently has for countless planets, including Venus. We're never given a reason why he's been doing this, nor do we know where he's originally come from.
  • Destoroyah from Godzilla vs. Destoroyah is this even more so. At one point, he even brutally murders Junior right in front of Godzilla and then proceeds to drag the mourning Godzilla around by the throat with his tail while laughing. Why? For no other reason than for his own sick amusement.
• Michael Myers from the Halloween films is never given a concrete motivation (they're always retconned) and Dr. Loomis, his psychiatrist, is convinced that Myers is pure evil, plain and simple. Moreover, he isn't even shown to enjoy his actions. Apparently, he murders people for no reason, which makes him all the more frightening.
  Doctor Loomis: I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child with his blank, pale, emotionless face... the blackest eyes, the Devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil.
• The evil scientist from The Human Centipede wants to join together three peoples' digestive systems. Why? Well, why not?
• Hush: The unnamed killer has no apparent motivation.
• In the Company of Men: When Chad is asked why he manipulated a deaf woman into a Love Triangle, he replies: "Because I could."
• John Carter: It's implied that this is more or less the only reason behind the Therns' machinations. Alternatively, it's implied the Therns maintain their power and immortality by stealing resources from planets whose civilizations are on the verge of collapse. However, they don't even try to give their victims a chance to save themselves, and actively sponsor the sides that are the most violent and/or brutish.
• Josie and the Pussycats (2001): As soon as the band and Wyatt meet, he is nothing but rude and dismissive of Valerie, to the point of leaving her by the side of the road when their car starts (He thought she was "already in") and delivering only two party invitations instead of three (Well, she could still come anyway). Towards the end of the film she learns too much, so then he begins to deliberately try to push her out of the picture for the sake of the evil plan, but for the first hour there is absolutely no goal or plan, he seems to be doing it just to watch her squirm. In the commentary, it is stated that Wyatt is less interested in Valerie because of her being the bassist.
• Jurassic World: Unlike Tyrannosaurus rex or Spinosaurus in other Jurassic Park movies, the Indominus Rex kills humans and other dinosaurs for sport.
• Terry Silver in The Karate Kid Part III is an unintentional example. He's supposed to be helping avenge his war buddy John Kreese and restore the dignity of the Cobra Kai, but in practice, he's far too into it given that it's not his disgrace, seems to be aware that his buddy Kreese is the one who stepped over the line, and is neglecting his multi-million-dollar business to get vengeance on a teenager and his elderly mentor. Also, the vengeance is all his idea and is planned and executed by him, with Kreese only getting to jump out from behind a cardboard cut-out to scare Daniel in one scene. It's also shown earlier that his business is built on bad practices, namely burying toxic waste (because it's the '80s) — so as long as he comes out okay, he cares not at all how the goal is achieved. Kreese's only request is that Kreese "make his knuckles bleed" (something that Daniel had nothing to do with), which Silver responds to by laughing in delight over how much fun this will be.
• In Lockout, Hydell is just obsessed with causing as much death and mayhem as possible, and he doesn't seem to care that his actions jeopardize his and his teammates' chances of escaping the prison alive.
• Lycan: The killers murder solely for pleasure, and it's also described as addictive.
• Played for Laughs with the Martians in Mars Attacks!. They even make us think they can be negotiated with, just to laugh at us when we try, right before they kill us anyway, because they enjoy the killing so much. The novelization elaborates that this is basically their entire way of life and basis for civilization; they attack planets completely unprovoked and wipe out all life for fun, then move on to the next planet. Almost justified by the poster advertising the film, which says "Nice planet... We'll take it!"
• In The Missing (2003), the villain Pesh-Chidin/El Brujo, played by Eric Schweig, is an Apache who captures women and children and sells them into slavery in Mexico. Schweig says his character does so to get on everyone’s nerves and because, in Schweig’s words, the character is “a hate junkie.”
• In Mommie Dearest, Joan Crawford reveals the reason why she adopted Christina: she "thought it was good for publicity".
• The Nature of the Beast: Lance Henriksen and Eric Roberts star as a meek serial killer and a brash vagabond. Just before he's murdered, the vagabond finally asks the killer why he chops his victims into little pieces. The killer sneeringly replies, "For the fuck of it."
• Near Dark: Even without considering the large amount of gloating between killing victims, the bar massacre seems to be done mainly out of cruel boredom. Despite their constant need for blood, the vampires are never shown drinking the blood of any of the victims after shooting them or slitting their throats.
• Never Cry Werewolf: Jared used a ritual to willingly turn himself into a werewolf. He has full control of his wolf form and just kills and eats people because he can.
• Nighthawks: This is pretty much Wulfgar's whole motive for his terrorist actions. Although he claims he's a "liberator" and fighting for oppressed people, it's pretty obviously just an excuse, and saying killing is just his job but not something Wulfgar's actually into isn't plausible either judging by how he acts.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger becomes this over the course of the franchise due to Motive Decay. While the first film establishes his Freudian Excuse for being a psychopath as well as his supernatural murders being perpetrated as a Roaring Rampage of Revenge for his death, as the series goes on, he becomes more and more sadistic to the point that he inflicts death and misery purely out of gleeful sadism.
• Katie's demon in Paranormal Activity. Honestly, it slams the door shut then bangs on the other side of it just to fuck with them. Indeed, Katie even acknowledges this trope when she asks "Do you think it would have left footprints if it didn't want to? Do you think it would do anything if it didn't want to?" In the 2007 ending, the demon fucks with them one last time. Just before the police discover Katie, a light down the hall is turned on and then turned off. The police end up shooting Katie because they were startled by the sound of someone slamming a door behind them.
• Phantasm: The Tall Man is a sadistic creature that stole the body of a kindly old man and invaded our world to begin slaughtering everyone and raising an undead army. At first it appears he strives to conquer the world, but it is later shown that he intends to reduce Earth to a nightmarish hellscape where only he and his minions can survive, suggesting he just wants to eliminate all life in the universe and create a dystopia everywhere. The film crew outright say he sees life as a game, and his only confessed motive is "every poor man needs a hobby". He's been shown doing needlessly cruel things like running over a dog for no reason.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest introduces Davy Jones, who... well, it's not the most clear-cut thing ever. He has a sympathetic backstory, and part of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has him being manipulated by another villain, but it doesn't change the fact that he's passed at least one Moral Event Horizon, and most of his actions from that point forward have no apparent aim than simply causing pain and suffering. No other character in the whole canon is as bent to spreading misery and sharing his pain with others as he is.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides brings in Blackbeard, who is almost as nasty as Jones but doesn't have a tragic backstory.
    Blackbeard: No, sir, the fact of it be much simpler than all that. I am a bad man.
• In Preservation, no reason is given why the psycho teens are Hunting the Most Dangerous Game. They just are.
• Reservoir Dogs: Mr. Blonde tortures a cop not to get information, but because "it's amusing" to torture a cop.
• Tom Ripley in Ripley's Game on why he got Jonathan involved in his scheme:
  Tom Ripley: Partly because you insulted me, partly because you could, but mostly because that's the way the game is played.
• RoboCop (1987): While Boddicker's gang are bank robbers and drug manufacturers, and accordingly just out to turn a profit, they could have easily just shot Murphy once to disable him and leave him for dead. Instead, they laugh their asses off while pumping him full of bullets. They only stop when out of ammo (which at least one seems visibly disappointed about), after which Boddicker outright declares, "Okay, fun's over." Later in the film, they gleefully blow up a few shops along a city street just to see what an anti-tank cannon can do, referring to it as a "new toy".
• Schindler's List: Amon Goeth is a Untersturmführer Nazi overseeing construction of a concentration camp who snipes his prisoners during his free time, severely beats and enslaves a woman who, in a different reality, he might have called a wife, blows out the brains of an argumentative engineer because "we're not going to have arguments with these people", shoots a 14 year-old boy for failing to completely clean his bathtub, and when asked during an 'Aktion' (pre-deportation sorting of prisoners) "what's going on", thinks that the question is about his semi-annual medical physical. Schindler explains to Helen Hirsch that "He does this because [his other victims] mean nothing to him." Ralph Fiennes nailed his portrayal so effectively that one Holocaust survivor who met him on set began to shake uncontrollably because he felt so much like the real Goeth.
• This is discussed in the Scream series, in keeping with the Deconstructive Parody of various horror film tropes. Randy points out about halfway through the first film that in various horror movies, "Motives are incidental." Most Ghostfaces claim to have a Freudian Excuse, although Sidney's Kirk Summation in Scream 3 implies that they're all just that excuses to kill people For the Evulz. The exception to this is Jill Roberts from Scream 4, who openly admits that she's a horrible monster and cites that "sick is the new sane".
• Sky High (2005): Penny, Speed, and Lash, apparently. Unlike Gwen and Stitches, they're never given a Freudian Excuse or likable quirk, and they seem to be fairly popular in school, which would write off being kindred spirits to Gwen as motivation.
• Angela Baker in the Sleepaway Camp sequels. She kills the people who commit the standard Slasher Movie 'sins' first, but after that she goes on to kill the regular people, all the while smiling, singing, and even skipping on occasion.
• Spectre: Aside from bullying Bond for being their father's favorite when they were in their teens, which caused him to commit patricide out of pure malice, Big Bad Franz Oberhauser/Ernst Stavro Blofeld claims to be "the author of [Bond's] pain". In other words, he states that he is responsible for all of the tragedies that Bond has faced so far. He also likes to spread wanton chaos and terror as a way to dominate the world, and even finds it funny to sadistically torment Bond several times.
• While the Green Goblin has been long been considered Marvel's resident Practically Joker, the version from Spider-Man truly takes the cake. After suffering a Freak Lab Accident, Norman becomes a diabolical, cackling madman who gleefully commits evil long after taking revenge against his fellow businessmen for removing him from the board. By the end of the movie, he's happy to terrorize an elderly woman and dangle a girl and a tram full of innocent children off a bridge, all to torment his Arch-Enemy Spidey for no good reason beyond causing chaos. Spider-Man: No Way Home doubles down on this. After finding himself in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Goblin immediately becomes one of most the chaotically evil individuals in it — persuading fellow villains to embrace their gifts as gods, killing the MCU's Aunt May in front of MCU Peter simply for evil shits and giggles, and even successfully goading the young Spider-Man into giving into hatred (before the Spider-Man Trilogy Spidey puts a stop to it). However, upon getting his Superpowered Evil Side removed from him in the ending, Norman does show some regret.
• Star Wars:
  • Emperor Sheev Palpatine, the guy who causes the mess of all six film arcs in the first place, doesn't ever seem to justify his evil actions beyond the fact that he is just plain evil. The expanded material doubles on this with Palpatine, unlike so many other Sith Lords he has no tragic backstory or Freudian Excuse, Palpatine had an idyllic wealthy childhood on the beautiful planet Naboo. He turned to the Dark Side just because he was a Enfant Terrible Royal Brat who lusted for power and wanted to cause suffering right from the start.
  • At first, Darth Vader also appears to be this, choking and murdering anyone he happens to disagree with. The later films in the original trilogy hint at a more complex character, but we don't get to see his proper reasoning until the prequel trilogy. However, this is subverted in The Empire Strikes Back when he tortures Han Solo "for information"... and Han later quips "He didn't even ask any questions!" In fact, while Vader isn't trying to get information on the Rebels, he does have a pragmatic reason — to draw Luke Skywalker out of hiding, knowing that Luke would sense that his friends were in danger.
• The three killers from The Strangers.
  "Why are you doing this to us?"
  "Because you were home."
• The Thirteenth Floor: When Jane asks why David became a Serial Killer, his reply is "Because it was fun! Because nothing stopped me!"
• To Kill a Dragon: The Dragon often does this. At one point, he blasts his own bodyguards just for fun. At another, he tortures a townsman via Groin Attack just to show how obedient they are.
  "I was born on a day of a horrible battle! Guards, check this room! [guards appear, run into the room] Since then, I constantly change friends, especially bodyguards. [produces a fireball, throws it into the room with the guards — screams are heard] Every day!"
• The Transporter: Lola from Transporter 2 is outright Ax-Crazy. When the hero asks her why she slaughters people nearly at will, she replies: "Because it's fun."
• Collins, the mercenary leader in Triple Threat (2019), chose to be a professional killer because he was good at it, and enjoys the carnage. Similarly, while part of the reason he wants to eliminate Payu, Long Fei, and Tian Xiao Xian, regardless of whether or not their negotiation is sincere, is that his livelihood and life depend on their deaths, his bloodlust and desire to see them suffer also factors into his decision.
• In the final segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, this appears to be the motive of the gremlin in attempting to destroy the airliner; when it realizes that Valentine is watching it, it starts showing off, and when he manages to actually thwart the attack, it just grins, wags its finger at him and flies away.
• The villain in The Vanishing is an emotional blank slate. The greatest high of his life was when he saved his daughter from drowning. Now he wants to see if he can get a similar high from doing something really evil.
• The Warriors: Luther kills the city's most powerful and charismatic gang leader, Cyrus, before he can unite the gangs together in order to take over the city. Is Luther in league with the cops? The mob? Is he making a power play for himself? Nope! He did it just because he likes to do stuff like that.
  Swan: Why'd you do it? Why'd you waste Cyrus?
  Luther: No reason. I just like doing things like that.
• In The Wedding Singer, Glen cheats on Julia for no real reason other than... because he's a pompous jerk.
• Daisy Pringle, a Creepy Child from The Wicker Man (1973).
  Daisy: The little old beetle goes 'round and 'round. Always the same way, y'see, until it ends up right up tight to the nail. Poor old thing!
  Sgt. Howie: "Poor old thing"? Then why in God's name do you do it, girl?
• The Wizard of Oz: The Wicked Witch of the West. Hey, bitch stole her shoes — that shit don't fly in the merry old land of Oz.
• Wonder Woman (2017): As Ludendorff and Doctor Poison trap the German High Command in a room filling with poison gas, they toss in a single gas mask so that they'll die fighting each other for it... with the winner dying anyway because the mask won't work against the gas they used.
• The World of Kanako: The bullies, Matsunaga, Aikawa and Kanako torture and torment (usually weaker people just because they can.

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