Few expected Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight to be so brilliant. The initial Internet backlash in the wake of the announcement seems unthinkable now, but the furious question was nonetheless asked - how could this young Aussie actor, principally famous for rom-coms and gay cowboys, fill the shoes of the irrepressible Jack Nicholson? And what the hell happened to Paul Bettany? (What the hell did happen to Paul Bettany?)
And then came his Joker, a devilish sideshow act that flipped the bird to all those who had feverishly left comments like ‘Jokeback Mountain’ (or the slightly more pedestrian ‘this is a terrible decision’) in forums. Ledger had not only arguably delivered his best performance – tragically ever - but served us a reminder of how far the supervillain has evolved from a cartoon foil to an equal, worthy of sharing the hero’s spotlight.
Recently, with superhero movies saturating so many multiplexes and lining so many pockets, we’re seeing Hollywood pay more attention than ever to the importance of the multifaceted, empathetic bad guy.
Let's take a look at what makes a great cinematic supervillain.
In 1978, Richard Donner’s Superman ushered in the first major superhero feature length film, and with it, the genre’s first villain in Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor. Hackman, a gentleman's actor, imbues his Luthor with a businessman’s slick charisma. Here was a villain with style (calling his underground layer a ‘Park Avenue Address’), and a cutting sense of humor (“Do you know why the number two hundred is so vitally descriptive to both you and me? It's your weight and my I.Q.”)
Hackman’s supervillain is charming. It’s an imperative trait for any memorable mastermind, turning their wickedness into something immeasurably watchable, a train-wreck we can’t look away from. We would not love The Joker half as much were he not so eloquent, or Magneto were he not so suave, or Catwoman – Pfieffer and Hathaway’s both – were she not so scrappy in her sexiness. And, let’s face it. How else are they going to attract so many goons?
Like beaten puppies who grow up to be vicious dogs, great supervillains have been led into shadows from the light. Sir Ian McKellen presents X-Men’s Magneto as an articulate and dignified outcast, whose monstrous actions are performed only as a reaction to lifelong repression. (The paradox is, of course, that he was a victim of Auschwitz.)
Similarly, Alfred Molina’s Doctor ‘Doc Ock’ Octopus in Spider-man 2 is a brilliant scientist, mentor and loving husband, whose only real crime was the perfectly modest dream to perfect fusion power. The war he waged on Manhattan wasn’t his fault; it was the fault of the four mechanical mutant arms fused into his body like an internal schizophrenic arachnid overlord!
It might be Michelle Pheiffer’s sad-sack spinster Selena Kyle in Burton’s Batman Returns who most spectacularly embodies ‘villainy is in the eye of the beholder’, when she is pushed into lunacy after being pushed out a window by Christopher Walken. “I don’t know about you Miss Kitty,” she says - all wild hair and frenzied eyes, her transformation into Catwoman a shocking spectacle - “but I feel so much yummier.”
The best supervillains act as yin to the hero’s yang, a Mr Hyde freed from the stifling shackles of morality that bind Doctor Jekyll. Loki is ruthless ambition to Thor’s simple morality. Magneto and Professor Xaviar are together in purpose yet divided by execution. Watchmen's Adrian Veidt is the affluent businessman to Rorschach’s powerless outlaw.
But there is no purer representation of the idiom ‘two sides of the same coin’ than Batman and The Joker. While both are juxtaposed ideologically, circumstantially and physically, both are freaks in their own obsession, costumed madmen focused on the singular goal to destroy the other. Joker is aware of their spiritual kinship, and is determined to strip Batman of his ‘arbitrary’ morality to reveal the psycho within. “Their morals, their code... it's a bad joke,” he articulates in The Dark Knight. “See, I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve.”
Villains who rely solely on brawn don't have the sticking power of those with brains. Genius keeps things interesting, lending itself to wild schemes, pithy one-liners, and best of all, a hubris begging to be undermined. Intelligent villains are frequently matched by equally intelligent heroes (Loki/Tony Stark (The Avengers), Batman/The Joker, Magneto/Doctor Xaviar) a trope beautifully subverted by Joss Whedon in Doctor Horrible’s Sing-along-Blog.
Doctor Horrible, a supervillain wannabe, has found himself isolated by his smarts. We're introduced to him in the 40-minute musical as a shut-in, more attracted to the idea of villainy than its reality, crippled all the while by a consuming case of puppy love. ‘Hero’ Captain Hammer, on the other hand, is a dunderheaded misogynist, charming but too stupid to root for; a cartoon. While Whedon keeps Horrible mostly light, his trademark genre-bending is firmly at play here, eventually upending all our preconceptions of the 'hero' and the 'villain' in a particularly devastating finale.
In the comic book genre - or, indeed, most genres of film - if a villain doesn’t aim high enough, he or she is in danger of letting the whole film slide into the kind of tepid mediocrity miserably occupied by the likes of Catwoman and Ghost Rider (although Wes Bentley and Sharon Stone were only the tip of a couple of crummy icebergs).
While earth-bound schemes can still capture our imaginations, a good world - or at least city - domination plot can really take things up a notch. Look at Batman Begins' Ra's al Ghul, who wants to vaporize Gotham City’s toxic water supply with a giant microwave, sending the citizens insane. Spectacular! Or The Dark Night Rises' Bane, who isolates Gotham from the rest of the world via a fusion core modified into a bomb. Amazing! Or Blade's Frost who wants to enslave all of humanity and harvest them like cattle for his vampire horde. Brilliant!
The Avenger's Loki delivers what could be perhaps the greatest world-domination plot to date, opening a portal in which to usher in an alien race to publicly defeat The Avengers and assert himself as ruler of Earth. Now that's ambition, and he should be applauded for it.
What do you think makes a great supervillain? Let us know in the comments.
Lucy O'Brien is Assistant Editor at IGN AU. You should talk to her about games, horror movies and the TV show Freaks & Geeks on IGN here or find her and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.
Source : ign[dot]com
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