When it comes to characters, I am a sucker for villains. Heroes on the other hand, especially in kids movies tend to be single minded, pure of heart, and have no other motivation in life than to do good. Anti-heroes are even better, but villains, I like better than anti-heroes ONLY when they are LEGITIMATELY threatening, and actually scary.
My least favorite type of villain is your basic overpowered fantasy villain. A pompous powersack with pointy layers of armor and some desire or another to control the world/universe/human race etc. etc. etc. But the best kinds, are the ones that hit close to home. As a person, you feel uncomfortable when you associate yourself by accident with a character so plainly the bad guy who you know you are supposed to detest.
The first, in my opinion, truly successful modern version of this, is Alfred Hitchcock’s classic horror film, “Psycho”. Before that, Hollywood puked out an endless stream of mediocre, and a few not so mediocre “monster” movies. E.g. Frankenstein, The mummy, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Wolfman, and Dracula. It was an old, and tired gimmick. Then “Psycho” came around. Its featured villain, to everyones shock, was not some undead zombie creature bent on stealing your fiancee, it was a normal man, who was just losing it and went… well… psycho. But what made it so shocking was that it was about a mentally unstable, and realistic person, whose real life counterpart could very well be out there.
Now, I like games. Many games follow the same generic formulas, then there are the quality companies, both big and small. (I greatly respect Bethesda, Valve, and Frictional Games) Now I had never even heard of the “Far Cry” series before in my life. But I saw a recent E3 trailer for its latest installment, “Far Cry 3.” The series runs on the theme of being stranded out in the middle of nowhere, be in on a jungle island, to sub-saharan Africa. In this case, its an uncharted island in the caribbean. Now besides what looks like awesome gameplay, one thing clearly STEALS THE SHOW. The villain.
I don’t usually geek out about villains, but this guy seriously scared me, and intrigued me at the same time. His name is Vaas Montenegro, who appears to be some sort of smuggler warlord, and he is totally insane. Don’t take my word for it, but check out the trailer, its bad ass. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaGSSrp49uc What a hopelessly evil bastard.
tumblrbot asked: WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU ARE IN A BAD MOOD?
WRITING IN ALL CAPS OBVIOUSLY.
