During the investigation of recent hollers in the Complete Monster thread, it's become apparent to the staff that an insular, unfriendly culture has evolved in the Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard threads that is causing problems.
Specific issues include:
- Overzealous hollers on tropers who come into the threads without being familiar with all the rules and traditions of the tropes. And when they are familiar with said rules and traditions, they get accused (with little evidence) of being ban evaders.
- A few tropers in the thread habitually engage in snotty, impolite mini-modding. There are also regular complaints about excessive, offtopic "socializing" posts.
- Many many thread regulars barely post/edit anywhere else, making the threads look like they are divorced from the rest of TV Tropes.
- Following that, there are often complaints about the threads and their regulars violating wiki rules, such as on indexing, crosswicking, example context and example categorization. Some folks are working on resolving the issues, but...
- Often moderator action against thread regulars leads to a lot of participants suddenly showing up in the moderation threads to protest and speak on their behalf, like a clique.
It is not a super high level problem, but it has been going on for years and we cannot ignore it any longer. There will be a thread in Wiki Talk
to discuss the problem; in the meantime there is a moratorium on further Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard example discussion until we have gotten this sorted out.
Update: The new threads have been made and can be found here:
Please see the Frequently Asked Questions and Common Requests List before suggesting any new entries for this trope.
IMPORTANT: To avoid a holler to the mods, please see here for the earliest date a work can be discussed, (usually two weeks from the US release), as well as who's reserved discussion.
When voting, you must specify the candidate(s). No blanket votes (i.e. "![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
to everyone I missed").
No plagiarism: It's fair to source things, but an effortpost must be your own work and not lifted wholesale from another source.
We don't care what other sites think about a character being a Complete Monster. We judge this trope by our own criteria. Repeatedly attempting to bring up other sites will earn a suspension.
What is the Work
Here you briefly describe the work in question and explain any important setting details. Don't assume that everyone is familiar with the work in question.
Who is the Candidate and What have they Done?
This will be the main portion of the Effort Post. Here you list all of the crimes committed by the candidate. For candidates with longer rap sheets, keep the list to their most important and heinous crimes, we don't need to hear about every time they decide to do something minor or petty.
Do they have any Mitigating Factors or Freudian Excuse?
Here you discuss any potential redeeming or sympathetic features the character has, the character's Freudian Excuse if they have one, as well as any other potential mitigating factors like Offscreen Villainy or questions of moral agency. Try to present these as objectively as possible by presenting any evidence that may support or refute the mitigating factors.
Do they meet the Heinousness Standard?
Here you compare the actions of the Candidate to other character actions in the story in order to determine if they stand out or not. Remember that all characters, not just other villains, contribute to the Heinousness Standard
Final Verdict?
Simply state whether or not you think the character counts or not.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 31st 2023 at 4:14:10 AM
While that seems like one of the more misogynistic things to come out of Batman recently, I can't call Thalia a CM for that. Not to mention that her crimes didn't seem that bad in the first place.
I'm not entirely sure how causing the deaths of tons of civilians and decapitating your own son aren't 'that bad' here
Cleric of Banjo
"... causing the deaths of tons of civilians and decapitating your own son"
Or, as the Joker calls it, Tuesday.
Seriously though, she definitely sounds pretty heinous. I'm not sure if that stated reason is enough to confirm a Well-Intentioned Extremist status, doesn't sound like it.
Still, I'd see if/when this gets retconned.
Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki
I've been running into this same issue as long as I've been posting here - when I say something isn't "that bad", I don't mean that the crimes are yawn-worthy. I mean that comparing them to other C Ms, their crimes aren't comparable.
Killing a ton of civilians is pretty much standard protocol for any superhero comic book. Decapitating her son is heinous, but that's one named character in a universe with The Joker in it (not to mention that "decapitating" sounds so much worse than just "killing" - if she'd simply stabbed her son, I would feel even less like listing her). If she also has some twisted sense of moral obligation to do these things, all reason for me to vote for her has vanished.
Well, I've been remiss, so here are the writeups I proposed. I think we have enough to add the Korean film examples, but I'd like more feedback on the old Universal Studios examples
- Man-Seok and his younger brother Jeong-Seok of The Man From Nowhere are a pair of ruthless crime bosses who betray their boss and murder him to take over his operations. Jeong-Seok proves himself a nasty piece of work when he teases a captive woman who'd stolen from them with a blow dryer before using it to torture it by pressing it to her inner thighs. At another point, Man-Seok personally kills a captive when he's bored of questioning him by burying a hatchet in his skull. When the hero Tae-Sik goes after them over the woman's daughter they also kidnapped, he discovers their top operations: the two run a meth ring where they enslave people, including children, to make the drugs and then harvest their organs for the black market once they can't work any more. Because the girl they have is currently too young to harvest, Man-Seok simply gives her to one of his surgeons with instructions to harvest her corneas.
- In The Chaser, we have the Serial Killer Young-min. Young-min at first gives the Hooker with a Heart of Gold Mi-jin he hires the creeps, before she discovers a bloody scalp in his home...and then the garden full of corpses. Young-min ties her up and attempts to murder her by driving a chisel through her head after asking her why he should spare her. When she pleads she has a little daughter, Young-min sneers nobody will even notice she's dead. Mi-Jin manages to escape with luck, but not before Young-min butchers an elderly couple and hunts her down, killing the shopkeeper of the store Mi-jin was hiding in before beating her skull in with a hammer.
- In The Raven (1935), we have Bela Lugosi as the evil Dr. Richard Vollin, an Edgar Allan Poe fanboy, who becomes obsessed with a young woman named Jean Thatcher. Vollin attempts to destroy her entire family in vengeance for being spurned. When a Sympathetic Murderer named Bateman begs for Vollin to change his face so he can leave a life of crime behind, Vollin instead hideously deforms him so he'll be forced to assist Vollin in return for having the procedure corrected. Vollin attempts to murder Jean's entire family, putting her father in a trap designed on the bladed pendulum, and forcing Jean and her husband into a room where the walls will close in to crush them, before even Bateman has had enough.
- Of The Black Cat we have the truly monstrous Hjalmar Poelzig, played by Boris Karloff, who plumbed depths that were barely considered in films in 1934. Peolzig is a Satanist and ruler of a vicious cult who conspires and attempts to sacrifice an innocent traveler to Satan. It's revealed that Poelzig, in World War One betrayed his 'friend,' Dr. Werdegast and had him sent to a prison camp so Poelzig could marry his wife. He later murdered her and kept her embalmed corpse as a trophy...before marrying her and Werdegast's young daughter...and later murdering her as well.
I also noticed the page for Romper Stomper lists its Villain Protagonist Hando as a Complete Monster. As loathsome as Hando is, I don't think he qualifies.
For those unaware, Romper Stomper is an Australian film that featured Russell Crowe himself as Hando. Hando is the leader of a particularly nasty and violent gang of skinhead Neo-Nazis who terrorize the local immigrants, commit various crimes and are nasty hooligans in general. Hando is a racist, criminal, murderer and attempts to kill his ex-girlfriend Gabrielle at the film's climax.
the problem is Hando genuinely cares for his gang. This is conveyed at one point when he gently puts a blanket over one passed out after a night of binge drinking. Hando is an absolute scumbag and the film makes no illusions how vile he and his people are, but he has real affection for them, and considers his second in command his genuine friend. He certainly never cares much for Gabrielle, but his attempt to kill her at the end is brought on by her revealing she betrayed the gang and got most of them killed or arrested. Unfortunately, as horrible as Hando is...I don't think he counts for this.
edited 31st Jul '13 10:02:43 PM by Lightysnake
A total has-been.
Oh boy, look at what I've missed. Time to have some fun!
First off, Commodus gets a ![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
for me.
He's more pitiful than anything else, I could feel a degree of sympathy for him, and he might actually give a damn about his sister
Being pitiful does not disqualify a Complete Monster. When you really think about it, most examples of the trope have something pitiful at their very core that makes them what they are. Audience sympathy doesn't matter if the movie is clearly not portraying him with sympathy, and "giving a damn about" his sister is not the same as truly loving her, especially when he wants to rape her! To disqualify him for that would be like disqualifying Bellatrix for "giving a damn" about Voldemort or her own sister.
his son "squealed like a girl when they nailed him to the cross" and that his wife "moaned like a whore when they ravaged her again and again... and again."
Saying this on top of having done the action is what really pushes him into CM territory for me.
And even if he's limited in body count, the whole "threaten your nephew to rape your sister" thing meets our criteria on its own.
That's threatening to murder a child who's his own family and Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil all at once. Add that to the murder and torture, and what more do we need?
Maybe it's just because I know too much Roman history to judge the film on its own merits, but it strikes me that Commodus isn't nearly as bad as he could be. I'll also note that Commodus' desperation for approval from his father seems genuine, if horribly twisted.
It's a movie with a Historical Villain Upgrade. Judge him on those terms, not by actual history.
Also, do you know who also had a genuine desperation for his father's (and everyone elses') approval, according to the actor who portrayed him? Joffrey Baratheon. He was also very pitiful and might have had some care for Sansa at some point. Guess he's not a Complete Monster then. 
Also adding a no to Commodus. It's all just not quite heinous enough for me. This is a movie named after men who brutally mutilated each other for sport, after all.
This is so simple minded, I don't even think I should bother.
if "has a man's family tortured and crucified, murders his father and threatens to kill his child nephew if his sister won't sleep with him" isn't heinous enough I think one needs to lower their standards.
Exactly this. This brings to light a problem with how vague and hard to define "heinousness" has gotten in general. What's heinous for one person might not be so heinous for another. And this trope is about villains who do things that would be considered heinous by the entire freaking universe, is it not?
While he does some henious things, this is based in Ancient Rome. By the standards of the time he's nothing special and even though they don't go into the Nero's or Catiligia's existances it is really hard to ignore that when judging a Roman Emperor.
That's like saying a Game Of Thrones Complete Monster is not an example because they do heinous things in a story based in Westeros, which is a brutal Crapsack World.
So the bottom line is that one of the subcriteria-things is "are they as evil as they could be given the circumstances they're in", and for Commodus the answer is no.
Disagreed. In this story, by it's standards, he is the worst. Does he have to be ordering the deaths of everyone left and right For the Evulz in order for him to be seen as pure evil and properly heinous?
Complete Monster is not meant to be an easy trope to qualify for; it is supposed to be a very exclusive club of villians that the majority of villians will never get close to qualifying for. Extreme requirements are the name of the game.
There is such a thing as taking this too far, though. A Complete Monster should be uncommon among the majority of villains in any given work, and villains in general. That doesn't mean they have to be super rare and near extinct. Which is what this cleanup seems to be going for. 
Keep in mind the questions "Is this character a CM" and "is it right this character isn't" are separate questions.
I don't think we're allowed to ask that second question, since we're defining what is a CM by the wiki's definition, not our own.
The concept of the Complete Monster is based on a person's actions, not by just their words and attitude.
It's based on a person's actions, words, and attitude in unison. If it were just words and attitude, then any Jerkass could qualify. If it were just actions, then any villain who crossed the Moral Event Horizon could qualify, even if they had redeeming qualities. It has to be a mixture of everything bad that makes a CM. They must be the worst of the worst.
We had that one character whose worst crime was taking a kid's football and popping it, so who knows?
Before that, we had a character whose worst crime was taking out a megaphone to encourage main characters to die in a brief moment that was totally Played for Laughs.
Someone actually did try to list a Dora The Explorer villain once.
YOU LIE!!!
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_down_emoticon_3571.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
for Jeff Fecalman. I tried bringing him up before, but it didn't go anywhere. The arguments brought up are exactly what I said before.
Before his appearance, the writers would often joke about women getting beaten up by men. Just ask Meg. Not only is this hypocritical, but it just doesn't make sense that you would have a villain play domestic abuse seriously while you previously played such a topic for laughs.
What's worse is that Jeff himself appeared in one episode before the one that centered around him and his abuse, and he was Played for Laughs! Seriously, doesn't anyone remember that?
Jeff also tried to kill Peter and Quagmire... But that was self-defense.
Exactly! Everyone who goes "trying to kill Peter, Joe, and Quagmire was such a Moral Event Horizon" conveniently forget that the only reason they were out there was because Peter, Joe, and Quagmire were plotting to kill Jeff. Jeff's sadistic attitude towards attempted murder was vile, but the action itself was self defense. Yet when someone attempts to kill the protagonists, it's suddenly wrong? Even when said protagonists were going to murder him?
However, in the movie, CM Eddy's Brother beats the crap out of Eddy - and it's portrayed as dead serious throughout the whole proceedings, is incredibly realistic, and disgusts everyone who sees it.
Eddy's brother was a case where the only thing "funny" about what he did was the way it was animated. The reactions of the other characters suggests that it's only been animated this way because they wouldn't be able to get away with realistic physical abuse. Not to mention it was on his own brother, as he admits that this is routine for him. And with the other characters, there's usually a reason as to why they'd beat someone else up. Eddy's brother was doing it For the Evulz. These things make his case different from Jeff, where his inclusion as a Complete Monster is extremely problematic since his abuse is the same as all other abuse shown, just cast in a different light, and he does have reasons for it, no matter how petty and unjustified. Really, all he has going for him is being a Knight of Cerebus.
How about Talia Al Ghul?
How about no? Sorry, but I can never think of Ras Al Ghul or Talia Al Ghul as being this trope just because of the heinous actions of one or few more incarnations.
And last of all....Joker. Freaking Joker. Why does he keep on getting brought up?
edited 31st Jul '13 11:24:52 PM by ANewMan
Yeah, I think I'm done hearing about Jeff. for him...
Okay, doing more research...I'm not even sure why we're saying this is played 'seriously.' The whole episode is focused on "Haha, this stupid women who can't leave him" With attempts at surreal and 'dark' humor.
It doesn't work on so many levels. It's tawdry and insulting and just...ugh. Let's never bring this show up again at this point.
edited 31st Jul '13 11:43:20 PM by Lightysnake
He pretty much sets the heinousness standard for Batman villains, so when any new one is proposed as an example, he's the go-to comparison to make.
I have to say that I'm really not seeing the arguments against Commodus.
@ A New Man
Saying this on top of having done the action is what really pushes him into CM territory for me.
So you're basically saying that the one thing that puts him into CM territory is being a dick to the hero.
That's threatening to murder a child who's his own family and Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil all at once. Add that to the murder and torture, and what more do we need?
Him to be as evil as he can be given the means he has avaliabe which...he really doesn't. He kills the hero's family and rapes his sister. Henious, but the man is in charge of the largest empire at the time. He
It's a movie with a Historical Villain Upgrade. Judge him on those terms, not by actual history.
Except you can't just take it in a vacuum, you have to take it in context of the society at the time. And in that society killing off the family of someone you're also killing was par for the course.
We only really ignore real world history of a setting when the work presents that society as being different from it's real world counterpart.
Also, do you know who also had a genuine desperation for his father's (and everyone elses') approval, according to the actor who portrayed him? Joffrey Baratheon. He was also very pitiful and might have had some care for Sansa at some point. Guess he's not a Complete Monster then.
Oh that is such bullshit I honestly do feel insulted by it.
One; Word of God means nothing in this thread, so Word of Dante means even less. Two; Joffrey becomes King of comparable power to Comm, but unlike Comm he takes every chance he can to be as absolutely vile as possible. A slightly drunk guy about to die in a duel on your birthday for your amusement? Have your guards force wine down his throat until he drowns in it. Being told that killing him on your birthday means a year of bad fortune? Stop for the day and have him killed tomorrow. Uncle pays for two prosititues as a late birthday present? Force one to mutilate the other for your enjoyment, and later use the first prostitute as target practice. Etc. etc. etc.
Comm did some truly henious things, but he wasn't screaming Kill Them All to every little problem or being liberal with his slaughters.
Exactly this. This brings to light a problem with how vague and hard to define "heinousness" has gotten in general. What's heinous for one person might not be so heinous for another. And this trope is about villains who do things that would be considered heinous by the entire freaking universe, is it not?
It is not, else we would have to cut three quarters of the current examples before adding back a fuckton of ones we've previously disqualified.
One of the requirements we've identified is "as evil as they can be with what they have." It's designed so that people like The Joker can be listed alongside universe-wide threats like Darkseid; The Joker hasn't hit the same heniousness level as the latter, but that is purely because he doesn't have the ability to and by every given indication if he did have that level of power he would match that level.
If Commodus was just a normal Roman citizen and did what he did he would count, but the man was the absolute authority in the Roman Empire; if he wanted every 13-year-old in the empire tied to poles and burned alive he has the power to make that happen. So limiting your evil deeds to a grand total of six people when you can make thousands suffer at your every whim shows he's not as truly henious as he could be.
That's like saying a Game Of Thrones Complete Monster is not an example because they do heinous things in a story based in Westeros, which is a brutal Crapsack World.
We have cut Game Of Thrones and A Song Of Ice And Fire characters purely because they weren't standouts compared to others around them. It's accepted here that a rapist serial torturer baby murderer is a Complete Monster in a setting of normal people, and is not in a setting of rapist serial torturer baby murderers.
Disagreed. In this story, by it's standards, he is the worst. Does he have to be ordering the deaths of everyone left and right For the Evulz in order for him to be seen as pure evil and properly heinous?
Disagreed is not gramatically correct in that context. In that story he's the worst, that is not the only standard he has to hit in order to qualify. He's evil, but there is a laundry list of acts he has the power to do that we could look at and say "he's outdone himself in evil." A real complete monster, like the description says, has hit a level of such heniousness that really, adding one more henious deed is like giving Bill Gates one more dollar; so insignificant to the overall status it's not even worth noticing.
There is such a thing as taking this too far, though. A Complete Monster should be uncommon among the majority of villains in any given work, and villains in general. That doesn't mean they have to be super rare and near extinct. Which is what this cleanup seems to be going for.
You know it's almost as if you haven't even bothered keeping up with the thread you're so far off the mark. Even if tomorrow we put a blanket ban on new examples period the amount of examples we've approved is nowhere close to "near extinct."
In short for Commodus; as an emperor he doesn't seem to be doing that bad of a job and the average Roman was no worse under him than his father, and to keep using the Game Of Thrones comparison Commodus doesn't use nearly as much power for heniouness as Joffrey does, and Joffrey has the disadvantage of having to compete with plenty of rapists, torturers and pyschopaths.
The guy is the worse person in the movie, that doesn't make him a CM.
About Talia. It was brainwashing hordes of small children into thrill-killing gun-toting psychopathic murderers out of spite that mainly cemented her as a CM for me. There is also her self-statement of her criminal empire doing everything, for example, Black Mask does on a much greater scale.
I also didn't at all get the wibe that she did anything for Bruce's sake. She self-stated did it to "lower herself to his ridiculous level, in her free time, as a hobby project" to thoroughly insult, destroy, and degrade his entire existence, and left him poisoned and dying on the floor, craving that he should beg her for mercy.
About Jeff. I agree with most of the arguments for removing him, and with the assertment that it was vile "humor" in the show.
I also agree with Shaoken about Commodus.
edited 1st Aug '13 1:54:42 AM by CodenameBravo
With Talia, I'm not buying that this will last. It didn't last when Morrison pulled this with Magneto and it won't last with Talia once DC realises that hey, she is more profitable to them not being a sociopathic mass murderer who decided one day to top The Joker.
So, when another non-Grant Morrison writer sticks with this portrayal and DC sticks with her losing every redeeming quality we can talk, but as it stands this will probably turn into Xorneto all over again.
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
So do we have enough votes to cut Jeff?
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
Submitting nay votes for Jeff and Commodus.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
So do I.
Btw: Lightysnake eventually agreed about Mister Dark, so should we re-add him or not?
Thanks for calling me simple-minded, A New Man! That totally makes me want to reevaluate my vote for Commodus! In the future, try not to be so jerkish about things.
And my vote for Commodus is staying no. Again, it's not that killing a family and pursuing your sister when she's not interested isn't henious. It's just not sufficiently heinous to stand up to villains in similar pantheons - like Caligula of the movie of the same title, who has many individuals killed for sport graphically on-screen, throws a baby down a staircase, and humiliates (sometimes sexually) many of his allies just because he can. Hell, that body count makes Commodus less heinous than Shan-Yu, technically.
edited 1st Aug '13 7:18:37 AM by LargoQuagmire
Unofficial Wiki Curator for Complete Monster
Caligula's a different work though. And Shan-Yu WAS voted a CM.
CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts
That's not my point. My point is that there's a heinousness standard in-work, and there's a heinousness standard out-of-work. Commodus doesn't meet the heniousness standard out-of-work.
Lizzid people!
Still, Eddy's Brother counts as a CM even when his abuse of Eddy is cartoonish in fashion. What shouldn't be overlooked about Eddy's beatdown by the hands of his brother and from the other kids is that while Eddy got beaten up by the other kids it was more brief. Eddy would get beaten up awfully by the other kids, yet he'll always be fine in the next part of the episode. There's also the fact that it was children beating him up. Eddy's brother is outright shown to be an adult and therefore he would be more rough on Eddy than the Cul-de-sac kids. It was also outright stated by him that he always abused Eddy like that and shows no remorse for it. While Jeff knocked out Peter and Joe in self defense, he (Eddy's Brother) beats up Edd for no reason at all just because he stood up to him. It was also implied that all the scams that he taught Eddy were supposed to fail in the first place, due to him being a sadist and is outright stated to be a sociopath. Because of his abuse on his little brother, he was the reason why Eddy got into scamming in the first place.
Uh, mate? Abuse seems way too little to qualify for Complete Monster status. Please think that this is a trope for serial killers, rapists and world destroyers.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Lizzid people!
Since when can an abuser cannot count as a CM?
edited 1st Aug '13 8:44:58 AM by AustinDR
Lost in Space
Stacked up against murderers, rapists, and omnicidal maniacs, someone who merely abuses his brother cannot be a CM. It's a matter of perspective. And please leave childish remarks like "duh" at the door.
edited 1st Aug '13 8:45:35 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lizzid people!
I'm sorry, sir.
Okay, I have to protest some of the standards being used for Commodus here. We aren't comparing him to 'similar' works, we're taking Gladiator in a vacuum to itself. Do you have proof Caligula was as bad in this 'verse? Or Nero? There's a lot of debate to this day how much of their evil deeds are actually true and how much was propaganda. Is there a line in Gladiator when Marcus Aurelius goes on about the evils of past Emperors? Something to indicate I Claudius is canon to this world?
If not, then why should it matter? Do we suddenly decide Karl Vorster shouldn't count because we have to look at him in a context next to Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler, or any serial killer ever in fiction because we have to stack them to Ted Bundy or Jeffrey dahmer? This is inventing an entirely new standard. It's something we've never done before. We take the work as individual. Are Commodus's actions heinous by the standard of the film? The movie sure wants us to think so. In essence,what Caligula does matters not at all unless he's in Gladiator.
Commodus's actions include: A. Having a family tortured and crucified.
B. Threatening his nephew's life to rape his sister
These actions are definitely heinous by the standards in the work, and out of it. Largo dismissing this as "pursuing his sister when she's not interested" overlooks this is a form of rape by blackmail. And again, if this isn't heinous enough, what precisely is? I don't really get this.
If you want to vote against Commodus because you think he has sympathetic traits, fine, but I don't think we should go outside our criteria to invent new standards.
edited 1st Aug '13 10:11:29 AM by Lightysnake
To review Hexxus: Counting votes over the past few pages, there are four votes against him (myself, Largo, Duck, and Ambar), one maybe (Hodor), and one vote in favor (Lightysnake) All agree that he's pure evil, but most think he doesn't really have all that much of a personality and/or moral agency. Does that settle that discussion, or are there more arguments that weren't brought up?
As regards Commodus, relevant points are being discussed that weren’t covered in the previous discussion on him, but can we adopt a rule to:
- Always leave a commented-out note (%%) on the work’s relevant YMMV page that the character has been discussed in the thread and either approved or removed, and to only bring them up again with either 1) new arguments, or 2) new characterization.
This is already advised for resolved items, but to adopt this as policy on the FAQ eliminates the need to discuss old characters again. The workload in this thread is high enough as is.
Back to the character:
I get the impression his crimes are being understated – they’re not just limited to patricide, infanticide, incest, and killing a political opponent’s family (whom he considers his brother, I might add, so there's also a Cain and Abel element for good measure). Those are just his person-based crimes. One thing to remember is that Gladiator takes place in a bit of a Politically Correct History version of the Roman Empire. The film posits the idea that the Senate and the people are clamouring for “freedom” and “democracy” to return the empire to its “republican roots” (any history buffs should know perfectly well why that statement is quite silly). The sympathetic elements to Maximus in the Senate and the Army are quite reflective of this. He murders or plans to publically murder every one of his political opponents in the Senate and outside to solidify his despotism.
Marcus Aurelius despises the very notion of Imperial leadership, and only took the crown because he felt he had to. Therefore, Commodus feeling entitled to and usurping the crown is presented as a prime evil in itself, as he is oppressing the people by distracting them with games and bread, and perverting the very idea of Rome so he can establish his own thousand-year incestuous dynasty. Bringing up even worse, historically correct emperors not even mentioned in the film like Caligula and Nero isn’t really a compelling argument. Moreover, EVERYONE in the empire hates him. When Maximus kills him at the end everyone just leaves his corpse lying in the arena to rot, while giving Maximus a ceremonial funeral and heralding an age of freedom.
As for “being as evil as they can be under the circumstances” – correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the way it’s being applied to him right now a misapplication of that criterium (since it seems so important, it might be useful to add to the FAQ besides). From what I gather, that’s for qualifying contrasting characters with different levels of power, so to prevent cases like “Dictator X is a power-hungry monster who starts a genocide and kills millions, but his sadistic Torture Technician only kills five hundred, so he disqualifies”, while both would qualify. Saying that Commodus could do even worse is unlikely to be in his power given the democratic undercurrent in the empire. If he ordered every 13-year old in the empire put to death there would almost certainly be a revolt to topple him. I’m sure if you start second guessing any CM who already solitarily qualify you can make them even worse than they already are. That doesn’t mean they disqualify, especially given the peculiar politically correct history used in the film that makes him worse than one might think as is.
edited 1st Aug '13 10:30:51 AM by Morgenthaler
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"
having now read the final issue, I have to say Talia doesn't count, though. She seems to have done everything out of a twisted love for Bruce: to make him the man he 'should'. A warrior, conqueror and killer