Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Having seen all of Sonny With A Chance (...yeah, I dunno, I like that show a lot), I can safely say there aren't ANY Complete Monster candidates in it. No one qualifies. Penelope is just a bit nuts, and even then, the Designated Love Interest Chad Dylan Cooper acts worse than her in some episodes. Delete her.

Shouldn't we wait until we're done with the Disney examples before moving on to the other pages so as to make things (relatively) easier to manage? Anyway...

Sa'luk: The description indeed doesn't capture how disturbing his actions were. Here's the scene being referred to. I couldn't find a full upload of the movie on youtube in English, but I found one in Hindi, and here's one of the earlier scenes to give you an idea how much darker Forty Thieves is than the average Disney movie. Sa'luk is presented with no excuse nor redeeming qualities either, portrayed as being driven just by greed. Granted, that alone doesn't necessarily imply CM status... so we should be looking at the extent of heinousness as well. Therefore the question is whether being the most brutal of a gang of robbers, willing to turn over his fellow robbers to law enforcement to frame his more compassionate rival for it, and toward the end of the movie, as the description pointed out, after threatening to kill Aladdin unless given the hand of midas, tries to kill Aladdin afterwards anyway.

Coachman: That his victims happen to be bratty doesn't mean that's why he's doing this to them. As is made clear by the "salt mines" crates, he's clearly doing this because of the kids' value in manual labour.

Shan Yu: Definitely an odd example, as far as our typical standards go; he also isn't hated by his army. But still, he's portrayed as being willing to murder whole communities of civilians, including children, and shooting fleeing soldiers needlessly because there will still be enough soldiers surviving to "deliver a message."

edited 11th Jul '12 11:29:10 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

@1627 By that argument, we should go back to Anime and take care of that page's examples first, since the recent Disney push interrupted that.

Besides, if we're trying to encourage people to use this thread to discuss their proposals, it's bad form to then tell them "we'll get to you later."

Also, I know the examples quite well and can defend the votes of the thread off the cuff easily.

Finally, since I apparently have to say this every other time I post, Weblinks Are Not Examples. Please actually list the proposed example or examples' deeds in the thread.

@1626: Assuming you're also talking about the Disney Sitcom with Demi Lovato, then I agree. No one even comes close.

I am, and I can send in an edit request if it's deemed appropriate. Had I seen that one earlier, I would've definitely yelled for a cut.

The weblinks are still helpful, as sometimes text can only communicate so much. The description of coachman, for example, still doesn't capture the shock value of his actions like actually watching the disturbing transformation would.

That said, I added more specifics so that it still works without the weblinks.

Anyway, I wasn't aware it was on anime before, but when I was in the Disney CM thread, when people didn't keep to one example at a time they went all over the place and easily lost track of what people were saying about whichever other characters and it made it hard to make any progress in the thread. We need something more organized than that.

edited 11th Jul '12 11:27:15 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

Including weblinks on top of a description is fine. But without a description, an example is worthless. It holds true in other parts of the wiki, and it holds just as true with this trope.

Well, I can't speak for what happened in the Western Animation subforum. But we have managed quite well so far in this thread taking on new discussions while holding older ones (and to be fair, the One Piece discussion is actually the older one in regards to this thread). It's only a problem if folks complain about addressing example order instead of actually addressing examples (I'd like to think that I've shown it's fully possible to discuss nominees from One Piece and Disney at the same time).

In short - I'll address everyone's pet examples in due time. Don't try to shout down someone else's arguments because you think (in this case, erroneously) that you were here first.

Anyhow, since you also did the poor layout decision of editing a previous post rather than adding examples in a further post (but at least you did alert of the edits)...

Sa'Luk: Given how far Jafar seemed willing to go, I think he falls short of the heinous standard.

Coachman: Perhaps I should have made this more clear - while I actually don't think he's even as evil as you're presenting him, his actions are very low-key compared to other Disney villains, and I'd say he wasn't even as bad as the puppet show master. I say he falls short of the heinous standard regardless of what motives you're ascribing to him.

Shan Yu: We do have the Card-Carrying Villain trope in part to fit the one-dimensional villains with little screen time or character development. There's just not enough there there.

I would also cut Saluk.

The coachman?! So you think that gleefully torturing a bunch of innocent kids, turning them to donkey and taking them away from their families FOREVER, and than sending them to work is Salt mines, and condemning them to Fate Worse than Death till they die is better than simply kidnapping one puppet so he would work for you?!

Shan-Yu has no other tropes to describe him. He is a Complete Monster.

I must have missed the special edition of Pinocchio where there's actual torture of children. Body Horror, yes. Torture? No. Plus, said puppet master did outright tell Pinocchio that he was going to hold Pinocchio captive to work him to the bone, and then kill him when he has outlived his working days. So yes, I do think that he's actually more evil than the Coachman.

That doesn't change the fact that it's still fairly low-key, and neither of them qualify even without going into motives and whether either is an incarnation of karmic punishment.

And if you want to keep Shan Yu, you need a better argument than "yes he is."

I am going to have to second Shan-Yu as a CM. He isn't generic by any means; he's damn near indestructible and seems to operate on a crazed lack of morality. His lack of speech doesn't make him generic. Probably his most horrifying moment is the fact that he destroyed an entire village... that he only went to because he found a doll from that village and said he wanted to return it to its owner. No one in that village was found alive, which leads one to wonder what happened to the little girl who owned the doll, and the village. There's also no way to interpret his actions as simply acts of war, either: he attacks Mulan at the end of the film out of spite for what she did to him and seems to get his kicks from being evil. Even by the "acts of war" defense, there's no excuse for him ordering a mook to shoot one of two messengers to China. Everything he does seems to be For the Evulz; there's not even a reason given for him to want to invade China.

Shan-Yu isn't a funny character. He invades China because he sees the wall as a challenge, and wipes out an entire village of people, and the army sent to stop him. His actions are all played seriously, and the destruction he causes as he cuts a path to the emperor is his Moral Event Horizon (If the shooting of the messenger he sent wasn't). His only good point seems to be that his men respect him (this is mentioned on the works page), and the huns are considered Always Chaotic Evil, so personally, I don't see it as a good point. Also, it's noted that he seems to not have the chauvinistic attitudes of the Chinese (as he tries to kill Mulan when he realized she had beat him), but I, and several other people, take that as Would hit a girl (also, the whole point is part of that reading too deeply thing this forum is encountering problems with). I still think He's a CM.

edited 11th Jul '12 12:19:49 PM by DrPsyche

Seconding Shan-Yu as Generic Doomsday Villain, on the grounds that he just doesn't have enough personality to fit. To be honest, as a kid I always thought he was rather cool.

That said, if consensus goes the other way, I wouldn't object too strongly to adding him (I've specifically said in the past that most CMs likely are fairly one-dimensional characters, after all).

@1635 is doing a much better job for arguing for Shan Yu.

To address the bad arguments in @1636 first, so as to give a better understanding of what not to do in future discussions.

First, nobody claimed Shan Yu was being played for comedy. And that's even before getting into the fact that, while rare, comedy doesn't disqualify someone from Complete Monster.

Second, it doesn't help when you basically point out that the character shares several bad traits (like chauvinism) with the cultural norm of within the story. That actually sounds like you're arguing that the heinous standard isn't met.

Finally, as noted before, if their first action is a terrible action that establishes how evil they are, that's an Establishing Character Moment, not the crossing of the Moral Event Horizon. It's hard to take an argument seriously when tropes used to make it are misused.

Okay, that said, @1635.

To be fair, there's a bad argument to start that off, too. Discussions as to the would-be CM and invincibility would be a discussion for The Juggernaut; it doesn't matter either direction here.

Unless all of the bad guys are constantly talkative throughout the movie (which, given the number of Huns in Mulan, would make for one extremely noisy movie), being mostly speechless is actually a very large chunk of what makes him generic. Though points for at least addressing that issue.

There is a huge issue of how few of his actions are described. The whole think about the doll is a good one, but, to be frank, I need more than that. The "going after Mulan after she beat him" thing doesn't count at all - there have been plenty of heroes who have sought out villains for being defeated. That isn't heinous at all; it's simply vengeance. Vengeance is not a qualifier for Complete Monster; however, the actions one undertakes to get said vengeance can be (and simply attacking them isn't enough).

Finally, the issue of shooting the messengers... well, I know the expression, but that wasn't all that uncommon for where and when said movie took place. Dunno if it was accidental accuracy or not, but I'm not about to give Complete Monster status for doing an action that the heroes of the time also would have been willing to do.

The only thing that keeps me from classifying him as a Generic Doomsday Villain is that by the end of the film, he clearly has it out for Mulan and her particular infantry unit. He narrows his scope a bit, as it were; he has no other reason to attack the Hero Celebration besides a personal vendetta against them dropping a mountain on him. Even then, it doesn't explain why he takes a detour on THAT vendetta for another murder attempt on the Emperor. The end of the movie is kind of sloppy.

I can actually rewatch Mulan tonight, if that would help.

EDIT: I think the context of the messenger shooting scene makes it more appalling. Basically, Shan-Yu promises both messengers to be able to hold onto their lives, and literally the second they're out of earshot, he asks his ready-to-shoot mook how many messengers it takes to deliver a message. The answer: "one". It's not that he simply had a messenger shot, it's that he blatantly lied about his intentions and, presumably, went back on the "rules of war" thing that dictates a lot of the morals of the film.

I hope this post kind of addresses some of the lacks in my previous argument.

edited 11th Jul '12 12:41:07 PM by LargoQuagmire

Nobody had to say Shan-yu was played for comedy, in many cases (though, as you pointed out, not all), the person's actions must be played seriously (It even says that on the Works page for a CM). Second, I listed two examples, while Killing the messenger is probably an establishing character moment, showing how devious he is, Massacring the villagers occurs later, and counts more towards a MEH rather than establishing his character. Finally, discussing Chauvenism... is completely irrelevant to my argument, and you are right there, I just pulled that from the Mulan page, and wanted to see if anyone thought it would disqualify it (I doubted anyone would though).

Okay, lets return to the Coachman whom I think that is much more likely an example than Shan-Yu. I said about him everything I can. So did you 32Footsteps. Now, lets us listen to the opinion of others.

Coachman: not much to say that everyone else has said, he captures the boys and practically sells them to slavery. I honestly can't think of any other reasons than those previously stated by other posters (Again, not going to reiterate them, because re-posting arguments makes my argument diminish, and it's just me going off like a broken record).

edited 11th Jul '12 12:43:55 PM by DrPsyche

Well, only watch Mulan again if that's what you want. That said, in all fairness, I think it's perfectly justifiable to start hunting for vengeance for someone dropping a mountain on someone, regardless of whether or not they're a Complete Monster. The vengeance doesn't matter so much as what they do for said vengeance.

All I know is, if someone drops a mountain on me and I live through it, I think people would understand if I started gunning for said mountain-dropper.

Alternately, if you are going to drop a mountain on someone, make sure that finishes the job.

Part of the reason he went on, was to still prove he could take china. That said, you do make a good point about vengeance, characters from all over the spectrum seek it, what they do about it is what makes them good/evil. Also, I found your comment funny.

Agreed.

Lol, I like Mulan pretty well, so I decided to give it a rewatch anyways. I'm up to the Reflection number, so not a lot on Shan-Yu, but I forgot that his Establishing Character Moment is taking over the Great Wall of China (presumably killing many) and burning a Chinese national flag to demonstrate how serious he is about taking down the country. The Emperor does not treat the Huns as a threat until Shan-Yu's name is mentioned, as well.

Counterarguments so far: none really. He's just takin' over China, like a boss.

EDIT: Up to "I'll Make A Man Out Of You". The arrow scene occured, but I remembered it differently earlier. Basically - two scouts for the Imperial Army are found by Shan-Yu, after an establishing shot of a burning, utterly destroyed village (foreshadowing for the more famous destroyed village sequence?). Shan-Yu threatens one scout with his sword before tossing him to the ground and telling both to go inform the Emperor of their location. Then the scene proceeds as I said - "how many men does it take to deliver a message?" "One." I think there is an implicit sense that Shan-Yu tried to convince both men that their lives were spared, and then the obvious about-face.

Another thing I want to mention - Shan-Yu is very much the strong, silent type of villain. When he does speak, he speaks eloquently, removing the possibility that he's a Hulk-esque chaos magnet. He also mentions that the Great Wall is an "invitation" to invade China early in the film. He's a villain that contrasts with the film's greater overall theme of Honor Versus Reason.

edited 11th Jul '12 1:47:49 PM by LargoQuagmire

Everyone stop dissing Shan-yu, he's the greatest statesman, military leader, and philosopher the Huns ever had.

I find him a hard example in that he doesn't have any positive qualities shown on screen (except I guess being a canny military leader), but he's weird in that he doesn't have any unbelievable or fanciful evil actions and motives- he seems like a pretty realistic portrayal of probably how any conqueror throughout history behaved.

edited 11th Jul '12 2:58:08 PM by Jordan

Another good point. I can't really get the, send all of your men in a possible bloody battle over spite. He seems more inclined to be a conqueror or Warlord, wanting to seize up land.

edited 11th Jul '12 4:02:14 PM by DrPsyche

Sorry for the delay. I finished Mulan and then one of the kids came home and was all, "let's watch Hercules!" So, incidentally, if we have any questions on Hercules, the film, no C Ms there and delete them.

Shan-Yu I'm viewing now as a borderline case. On one hand, every act he commits would be considered an atrocity far beyond the call of war. There is no excuse for him slaughtering an entire innocent village, in addition to a whole army regiment. His entrance into the royal palace is an overt act of malice. Most everything that can be used against him has been brought up. But on the other hand, we don't see a motivation for him, which means that we could read his motivation to be anything. It's been brought up that some of his actions may have been fair for their day, but in contrast to the Chinese army/Mulan, his tactics look extreme. The major problem I have with being definitive here is that we all have differing opinions on the seriousness of war. I feel that Shan-Yu's acts are comparable to something, IRL, like the My Lai massacre, which was an act of evil above and beyond what was required of the US in Vietnam. (Before this becomes a derail, I am American and I do not intend to shame any veterans. I'm trying to use a historical analogy.) There are some who might think his acts, while evil, were required of him because he is a general of a seemingly nomadic tribe looking to gain land.

Personally, I vote Complete Monster. We never see him take any land for his people. His entire army seems to be with him at all times. He has all of his aforementioned violent acts. Most importantly, his only stated motivation is that the Emperor built a wall, and he saw it as a challenge. I think he qualifies, even if we consider that war requires by its nature murder.

I was told this is the place to propose Complete Monster villains?

So, for One Piece (I see the subpage is locked, so I can't add it myself.)

• Caesar Clown, a Mad Scientist specialising in gas-based weapons of mass destruction. Killing underlings who have outlived their usefulness? Pretty standard for a villain. Tricking the victims of his poisons to become his underlings and view him as their saviour? Cold, but it happens. Sending off an injured mook for therapy, that turns out to be a lethal experiment? A surprise gas chamber is beyond the standards of many villains. Performing experiments on children by feeding them growth hormones and getting them addicted to combat drugs? That's a new villain standard for One Piece. Then he tops it when the heroes try to rescue the children, only for them to go berserk with pain when their bodies start needing the drugs. Then Caesar appears, choking the heroes unconcious with his powers, all smiles and smugness, promising the children to take them back to the lab and give them more "candy"... as soon as they club to death all those "nasty people" that caused them so much pain. Truly Oda is a master of pushing the boundries of villainy without crossing to seinen.

edited 11th Jul '12 4:50:50 PM by Mozgwsloiku