Villains, Part 2

Last post, I looked at some effective villains and outlined what made them work. This post, I'm going to pull up some ineffective villains, and explain why they don't work. I imagine the list could probably be much longer than it is, but these are the ones I can come up with--and some of the entries involve a rather wide range.

1: Caliban.

No image was available. Not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.

For those of you who have not seen Halloweentown, congratulations. You're not missing anything. For those of you who have, my condolences. I myself did not actually watch this movie. I was exposed to it one night in late October, while I was perusing the movies in Hastings for something good to watch while I got used to living alone. The closed-circuit televisions circling the movie department were playing full films at this time, and the movie on was Halloweentown. I was able to ignore most of it--it was not the type that appealed to me--right up to the climax, where Caliban is giving a St. Crispin's Day speech to try and rally the inhabitants of the town to join him. The speech is pretty basic: "Join me, I will give you power, they will not be able to resist us, the world will be ours."
Only he was talking for at least five minutes. Now, I didn't pull out a watch and measure how long he was flapping his gums. I just remember staring up at the television in disbelief, thinking, "He's made that particular point three times already! Is there an archer in the crowd? My gosh, somebody shut that guy up!"
I took something from this, however, so the experience, though painful, was not without merit: the more your bad guy talks, the less scary he is.

2: Marlier

Now, admittedly, a fluffy shoujo like Ah! My Goddess probably won't have a hardcore villain in it. But whenever I watched the show (which is actually pretty good), I thought that Marlier could have been so much better than she was. And we know that a cartoon can have good villains: note the Stepmother and Muska from my previous post. Marlier could have been terrifying. But she tries too hard, and comes off as...trite. Every line is said in a dramatic, half-snarling tone, when a toned-down delivery would work far better. Point to be made: the harder your bad guy tries to be dramatic, the less he (or she) will come across as so. 

3: Loki

Yes, yes. Cue the fangirl squealing. Are we finished? Okay, read the post. 

Yes, the guy is handsome, and yes, he has a fangirl base to rival just about anything else on the Web. Got that. (Can't escape from that.) But once you quit swooning over those smoldering looks and start to evaluate the character, you realize that Loki really isn't that great an antagonist. First off, the guy is conceited. Part of me wonders if one of his weaknesses would be a mirror. Secondly, a smug, smarmy attitude doesn't build up character. Face it, if Loki hadn't been handsome, he would be impossible to watch. I find him impossible to watch even with his looks. Every time he comes onscreen--unless he's being trashed by another character--I leave the room. I don't care what he says, I don't want to hear it. Furthermore, he's clearly under the boot of a more powerful villain. That can be done, and that can be done well: note Saruman and the Ringwraiths. But Loki has none of their confidence and none of their terror factor. With Saruman, you can forget that he's Sauron's puppet. With the Ringwraiths, you're so busy holding your breath and hoping they don't notice you to think about the fact that they have a master. With Loki, it's hard to get away from that. He is in no way in control of what happens. He knows it, you know it, and he's therefore not really as alarming as he could be. Point: less conceit, more confidence, no matter what he looks like or what his situation is. 

4: Any villain from the Mars stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs. 

Don't get me wrong, I love the stories. They're great, and John Carter never makes it look like he's crushing soup crackers. The thing is, none of the villains ever manage to make it past one story, and individually, none of them are all that impressive. The ones who might be impressive as villains wind up befriending him, and the ones who aren't...well, you pretty well know what's about to happen. The only times John Carter is every in any real trouble is when he's being mobbed, and then we're dealing with nameless drones. I don't even remember the names of most of the main villains, which tells you something. (Aside from the fact that I lent out my books and haven't yet retrieved them yet.)

5: 80's Cartoon Villains

Good. Gad. I tried to watch some of those old things on Hulu once. Can we say not impressed? The heroes certainly couldn't be much, if that lot of dippy crackers gave them any sort of trouble. Some are conceited, none of them have any sort of confidence, and every last one of them is given to making overblown speeches at what felt like the drop of a hat. 

6: Lex Luthor 

In other movies, and in the comics, he tends to be a better bad guy. I'm going from the first movie, the one that spawned the franchise ending with Superman Returns. He's...watchable, I'll say that for him at least. And he can come up with grandiose plans, and he's mean enough to make them work. Sort of. The problem is that he's saddled himself with two henchmen, one of whom has no brain, the other of whom still has half a heart, and, rather than working his way around them, he lets himself be limited by them. I mean, come on. He's supposed to be this great genius--and he really lets the minion whose mental capacities don't extend much beyond getting doughnuts enter the codes into the nukes? I don't object to bumbling, comic-relief minions, not in the slightest; I just believe that a really brilliant villain shouldn't be limited by them. 

Like I said, there are probably many, many more. The problem is, a lot of books and movies which don't have really effective villains don't have effective heroes, either, and often not much of a plot. I read a few pages, roll my eyes and mutter something about "You've got to be kidding me," and put the book down or shut the movie off. So, who are the weakest villains you've ever met, and why did they not work for you?