This post contains SPOILERS for Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Neverwhere.

Another category, or maybe just a variant of your category I: someone presented as a heroic character turns out to really be the villain. Neil Gaiman seems to particularly like this one, as he does it with Mr. Wednesday in American Gods and Hunter (and to a lesser extent, Islington) in Neverwhere. While it becomes clear that their actions villainous at the end, this does not entirely overcome their sympathetic portrayal through most of the story.

The other category of sympathetic villains I think you missed are those who try to pursue noble ends through ignoble means. Examples include Magneto from the X-Men comics, and The Operative from Serenity. Depending on the story, the line between this type of sympathetic villain and an anti-hero can be pretty blurred (Magneto has often been portrayed as an anti-hero for instance). I think it really depends on the story's point of view. If the character pursuing a noble end through ignoble means is the protagonist, then he's an anti-hero. If he's the antagonist, then he's a sympathetic villain.

And, plus Vader is forgiving. After all, he did accept Captain Needa's apology.

As Vader says in Return of the Jedi, "The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am."

I know I'm going to get completely reamed out over this one, but I have to throw in the portrayal of Adolf Hitler in Menno Meyjes' Max. I'm not sure if this is what you mean by "sympathetic", but the character was shown as much more human than usual. He's not put up as a figure to be emulated or liked, by any means, but he's motivated by the same human desires and flaws as anyone else -- he just takes them to incredibly terrible extremes. But here we can condemn the man's actions while seeing that he was just a man like any other.

In this respect I say the character is sympathetic. I recognize in him similar professional disappointments and personal recriminations I've felt in myself. To be sure, in my own case the visceral reactions to being passed over for a job or getting cut off in traffic are quickly checked, and never grow into any sort of irrational animosity towards a whole class of people, but I recognize what could happen if I were not careful.

So I propose a fifth category: V. The villain is presented as fatally flawed or evil, but still clearly human, so as to make a point about the banality of evil.

The other category of sympathetic villains I think you missed are those who try to pursue noble ends through ignoble means.

These people, I think, fall into either Category I or Category IV, if their ends really do justify the questionable means. Where they don't, I'm hard-pressed to sympathize with them.

NYU 3L: The Operative is the incarnation of the principle that government is backed up by force -- and "force" doesn't mean friendly cops in spiffy uniforms; it means cold, trained, zealous perpetrators of horror. Hardly a sympathetic sort of villain. Yes, he believes; but so did Himmler.

Part of the theme of Firefly and Serenity is that meddlesome social idealism becomes horror. The Alliance perpetrated a terrible, destructive war of conquest on the Independents, and justified it to themselves as "bringing the blessings of civilization". In experiments to create "better people", they turned a planet into a charnel-house that breeds monsters. And, of course, for the sake of keeping nasty secrets from disturbing the public, they send men who kill children and burn villages.

I suppose it depends on how you define 'villian'.

For example, I always liked Apollo Creed in all the Rocky's. Even the second one.

But perhaps 'villian' in this context is not appropriate (Creed, thought the antogonist to Rocky is not morally corrupt).

I also found Little Bill (Gene Hackman) in Unforgiven hard to all out dispise. I really think Bill thought he was doing the right thing for his town, even though he made some really bad judgements.

Perhaps only a villain in the token sense, but I always sympathized with Wile E. Coyote. Though I never endorsed his actions, I always felt sorry for him in that he put so much effort and ingenuity into catching Roadrunner--and consistently suffered for his hard work and genius. I suspect my sympathy is of a "There but for the grace of God go I" variety; I'd like to think that hard work plus good ideas leads to success. Or perhaps the sympathy is because I recognize and appreciate the message Wile E. stands for: sometimes, hard work and smarts don't yield success, and you just have to redouble your efforts.

My brother, who is a budding fiction author, had some thoughts on the subject he shared with me once. His villain is a brillaint scientist who sees so much human suffering that he decides that the way to eliminate it is to perfect humanity, which will require warping it beyond human recognition.

I think the chapter where he gets introduced is this one:

Chapter Four

Libertarian fans of comic books might get a kick out of the writing, incidentally. I certainly do, even though I'm not libertarian. Then again, he is my little brother...

Macbeth?

As Jeremy mentions, Snape is an interesting example who does not fit neatly into category I, or any other. In addition to Snape, Sirius Black and Kreacher should be mentioned in as possibly examples of Category I characters.

Since njoines introduced Robert E. Lee and George III to the discussion (who are obviously real historical figures), I'll expand on this broadly:
I have always had sympathy, as a Notherner and then Midwesterner, for the South. I think the idea of Southerners as the racist, backwards "villians" of the country to be simplistic at best. I have a lot of sympathy for people from the region who are tired of being derided as if they were an embarrassment to the rest of the country.
And when Trent Lott was vilified for his remarks at a birthday celebration for Strom Thurmond, all I could think was, "Give the man a f'n break."

Brad Dourif in anything but especially Exorcist III, Alien 4, and Lord of the Rings.

J. T. Walsh in anything but especially Red Rock West, Sling Blade, and Breakdown.

Well, I always root for Jason in the Friday the 13th movies. Mainly because the kids are horrible people and they do stupid things like not run away after discovering 5 or 6 dead bodies.

Magneto, in the recent X-Men movie. Just as he expected, the humans drew first blood and violent resistence was necessary. Xavier and the X-men were wrong. It wasn't the time for peace and coexistence.

Unfortunately the studios didn't like the moral ambiguity, so they demanded the scenes showing magneto to be a petty bad guy (abandoning mystique, sending in the level 1's as cannon fodder). Edit those scenes, and it's a very good movie.

In the otherwise forgettable movie The Peacemaker (1997), I thought that the Bosnian(?) (Serbian?) character was more sympathetic because his nuanced portrayal, especially as as compared with the cartoonish portrayal of the main heroes. I am not sure if this was deliberate to make a statement, or just bad filmmaking.

Saladin's character in Kingdom of Heaven is another quasi-type villain who comes across as the good guy and the so-called good guys come across as more villain-like. A group of knights massacre a bunch of Muslims which leads to war. Saladin is merely protecting his people from vicious thugs (the Europeans). That is at least how the movie made it seem. I have no idea historical accuracy of this account.

Maybe if you amend category I to "Based on the villain's beliefs, he isn't acting villainously"?

I think this is true of almost all villains... or at least, almost all real villains and almost all fictional villains who are written with any attempt at characterization and believable motivation beyond "look how evil I am, mwa ha ha."

People don't think themselves villains. People think themselves justified. Villainy is in the eye of the beholder. The rare exceptions would have to be clinically psychopathic... and even then, probably would think other's definitions of villainy to be simply irrelevant rather than identifying with the idea.

I think a lot of villains get sympathy precisely for their all-out, open (at least to the audience or reader), unapologetic nastiness, without fitting into any of the exculpatory categories. I'm thinking of Edmund in King Lear, Iago in Othello, and Moliere's Dom Juan, e.g. I think there's an element of wish-fulfillment there: we'd all kind of like to be able to do whatever we want, without being restrained at all by ethics.
Another category (which, come to think of it, both Edmund and Iago sort of fall into) might be villains who are avenging real injuries, even if their revenge is excessive, taken against innocent people, etc.: Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon, Medea, and Echidna in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (before she turns good) are examples.

There are also characters like Mr. Freeze (from the Batman Beyond or Batman The Animated Series continuity). He is, without a doubt, a 'bad guy', he's usually the worst option in each show he turns up in, he's in control of his own actions, and few would debate the idealogical content (stealing and killing is bad) of the stories he is in.

But he's also portrayed in a very sympathetic light, with explanations for a good deal of his behavior, some understandable and some not.

Klaus Wulfenbach from Girl Genius is another example. He's well aware of his negative actions, considers himself a villain compared to the average hero, and his actions are generally leading to a bad situation... but because we're allowed to understand why he acts this way, and might even agree with him if we were stuck with the same dataset, he's much easier to agree with.

Dexter from Darkly Dreaming Dexter and the show built around that is likewise a horrible, horrible person. Even if you like vigilantism, he's still a self-described serial killer with little emotion, nearly a sociopath. His pet turtle starved to death rather than deal with him. He only kills 'bad people', but his personal situation would make it easier to put them taken out by the police. On the other hand, he's given a viewpoint that you can understand, and that makes it easier to agree with some of his actions.

Ozymandias in Watchman may or may not count, depending on how you perceive him.

I second the nomination of Klaus Wulfenbach from Girl Genius! Fans of humorous SF who haven't yet discovered this treasure should give the comic a try!

Emperor Palpatine -- you don't see any slavery in the galaxy when he's in charge.

Chewbacca was a slave of the empire before Han Solo rescued him.

My contributions:

Professor Weston from C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. He's frighteningly evil in Out of the Silent Planet, but by the end of Perelandra you can't help but sympathize with the guy.

Gaston from Beauty in the Beast. Probably the most realisticly evil of all Disney villains (everyone else is just pure caricature, where Gaston's evil is much more human), yet in the end, he's just a guy who can't overcome his barbaric instincts to win the girl he loves.

I think you're starting with a mistaken premise: all effective villains in fiction are in some degree sympathetic. When they're entirely unsympathetic and have no good qualities, the fiction inevitably becomes melodrama, and not very effective melodrama. Consider Macbeth, Raskolnikov, Ahab, and yes, even Annakin Skywalker and Marc C "Blackie" DuQuesne. (And compare DuQuesne with the Fenachrone, which are never anything but cartoon cutouts.)

Captain Hook.

I mean yeah, he's a pirate, but it's hard to say that little snot peter pan doesn't need a whuppin'.

-m@

First, I agree with Charlie and Lewis Maskell that every good villian, to some extent, is somewhat identfiable. Having said that, my Category IV:

The villian who has been driven to his villiany by being a victim (making the entire story a tragedy, because even when the hero wins, there is still a feeling of loss):

Captain Nemo (yes, he's a villain)
Magneto

I've always considered Nurse Ratched to be unfairly maligned.

After all, she doesn't have a medical degree, yet the hospital expects her to tend to the patients' mental health.

Wolf Larsen in the Sea-Wolf by Jack London.

Fictional B-movie treatment of a real event: The Battle Of El Alamein (Giorgio Ferroni, 1969). It's difficult not to sympathize and find heroism among the Italian troops, and even Rommel (played by Robert Hossein), despite that one is very glad they were defeated in the historical event. Montgomery (played by Michael "Klaatu Barada Nichto" Rennie) is easy to despise even though one is glad he prevailed.

Ilya: "Bryan Caplan asks his readers what if any fictional villains they identify with.
This turns out to be a tougher question than I at first thought. In considering my own list of seemingly sympathetic fictional villains, it turns out that they all fall into one of four categories that undercut their villain status."

Everyone has offered "sympathetic" fictional villains, but I think someone should point out this is quite different, conceptually, and probably different practically, from Bryan's question about what fictional villain a person can "identify with".

For example, one can easily imagine identifying with Lord Voldemort's fear of death and, perhaps at least at times, identify with his undervaluing love. This doesn't mean one necessarily thinks such characteristics make him "sympathetic".

Certainly, Ilya can change Bryan's question, but the way he phrased matters he made it seem (I think) as if they were the same question. They are not. To use Mary Katherine's excellent example, one can easily identify with The Count of Monte Cristo even while, valuing the rule of law, not sympathizing with him. Or vice versa.

People have mentioned Gully Foyle in Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination. I would prefer murderer Ben Reich in Bester's The Demolished Man. Anyone so inventive in a world so stacked against him, and successfully defending himself from the creepiest policemen in fictional history, deserves our respect.

I think some of the commenters are missing the distinction between villains we can empathize with (in the sense that they have motives that we can understand), and those who we sympathize with. For example, I can understand Lenin's or Hitler's motivations for what they did. That's not the same thing as sympathizing with them.

Very interesting. I cannot say that I empathize with Hitler in any sense, although this may be that I haven't read enough writing that was from his point of view, sympathetic toward him or even generally a lot of political history about his rise to power (and it has been some time since I read any at all). However, I have always felt that his story was a lot less "sympathetic" (in this context, empathetic, obviously it isn't sympathetic at all) than the communist story.

It is funny though, that even a I am one of the few still totally stuck in the cold war fighting the good fight against communism, I am very empathetic toward Lenin and toward all of the communists. That is, in fact, why it is my cause. It is because I can empathize with their struggle and their cause, their motives, that I am so driven by it. And of course, the complement to that being that I know how misguided it is, and find the reasons for it fascinating.

Maybe the most sympathetic "bad guy" in all fiction is Crowley, a demon from Hell in Neil Gaiman &Terry Pratchett's "Good Omens." The trouble is, though, that we're clearly supposed to like him, so his status as a villain isn't very real. Same with the Antichrist (same book), who is plainly a good kid from the start, though to me he comes across as too much of a do-gooder to be interesting.

Jeremy Pierce:

The Alfred Bester character in Babylon 5 doesn't seem to me to fit into any of the four categories, and fans love him.

I have not read them but Bester's character may fit better if you include the three books about the Psi Corps.

Perhaps I misunderstand the subject but I am surprised nobody mentioned Londo Mollari. Here is an apparently evil character who is manipulated into starting a galaxy wide war through his own shortcomings and ultimately volunteers to sacrifice his free will in an attempt to ameliorate what he is responsible for.

My own personal favorite is Ellis Wyatt but that depends on if he is considered a hero or villain.

Wow. Someone actually saw Kingdon of Heaven?

You can find out from the books about some of the Star Wars back stories, such as Chewbacca's. This is an interesting book to read. I read it in the middle of my 1L year to break the monotony.

Char Aznable, the masked man from UC Gundam. He's one of the main antagonists in the first series (fighting for the Principality of Zeon, which itself is fighting against Earth for its independence, kind of), then returns as a hero in the second series (fighting Earth's forces again), and in the movie (fighting Earth one last time), he tries to drop an asteroid on Earth, in the theory that this will render it uninhabitable, to force mankind to evacuate into space and embrace the next phase of human evolution.

He's so popular, that one Japanese fellow (Daisuke Enomoto(?)) who was going to go up to the space station planned to cosplay as Char when he got there.

All things considered, though, I don't think there's much that undercuts his villain status. In the first series, covering the "One Year War" in the Gundam timeline, I think he participated in Operation British, in which a 30 km long space colony is dropped on Earth, destroying Australia or something, and killing millions. He was also notable for his involvement in the Battle of Loum, which killed millions of civilians, at the least, and possibly billions. And he's doing it all as part of a circuitous revenge against his (mostly evil) bosses. He also has a penchant for young girls (Lalah Soon, Haman Khan).

Nevertheless, to use the distinction presented here, I think a lot of fans don't merely sympathise, but also empathise. In the beginning of the second series, Zeta Gundam, which is set 7 or 8 years after the first, the new main character clearly sympathises with him, because he points directly to Char's quest for revenge and singles it out as praiseworthy. For whatever reason, that -- and his apocalyptic dream of bettering the human race through emigration into space -- is kind of appealing to a lot of people.

I'd freely admit he's one of my favourite villains. I don't particularly identify with him myself, but I know there are those who kind of do.

What about Old Biff in Back to the Future II?

Wow.

(As a big fan who had a young crush on MJF... I am just shocked that someone even would think of it)

Sure, good choice.

Another villain who falls into Category II for a lot of us, in these feminist times, is Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair.

And that makes me think of another promising topic for discussion: what about really unsympathetic heroes? In Vanity Fair, Becky is really the most likeable character: I, for one, find Amelia a loathsome, worthless halfwit (a common condition, I'm afraid, among Victorian-novel heroines). Anyone else?

First, Gekko's main villainous action is that he's a criminal. Towards the end of the film, we read--"THE U.S. ATTORNEY'S OFFICE TODAY ANNOUNCED CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST CORPORATE RAIDER GORDON GEKKO AND STOCK BROKER BUD FOX, FOR CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT SECURITIES FRAUD, TAX EVASION, VIOLATIONS OF SECURITY ACTS, AND MAIL FRAUD" ... after we've watched him conspire to commit various of those crimes.

Gekko almost certainly didn't do anything illegal, though it's not clear whether the filmmakers realize this. See here.

why do you believe that Gekko's proposed break-up of the airline is "justified" and a "boon to consumers"? He can only make the deal go by lying to his would-be partners (the employees); and it falls apart when they find him out.

Blue Star seems to be a poorly run airline with a bloated workforce. Gekko intends to sell the planes and other assets off to other firms that will use them more efficiently and at lower cost -thereby benefiting consumers. He'll also invest the capital tied up in the pension fund in more profitable investments, thus improving the allocation of resources in the economy as a whole. As noted in the link above, the deal falls apart only because Bud Fox violated his fiduciary obligations to Gekko.

Gekko's rival financier (Sir Larry Wildman, elegantly played by Terence Stamp) puts together a profitable buyout that ousts bad management and keeps the airline flying by dealing honestly. Where's the "anti-market" ideology in that?

There's anti-market ideology throughout the script. That's the whole point of the movie. Yes, Stone seems to approve of the Wildman deal. But that deal is only put together through 1) the actions of the unions, and 2) Bud Fox's violation of his obligations to his client, which is not exactly the free market thing to do. The message of the movie is NOT that things will be hunky dory if only you deal with Wildman instead of Gekko. That's trivializing it.

Third, I can't find any support in the script for calling Carl Fox (Martin Sheen's character) a "neo-Marxist". He's honest, he's a hard-nosed union leader ("The only difference between the Pyramids and the Empire State Building is that the Egyptians didn't have unions") and he's got pretty good read on Gekko ("this guy is about greed. He's in and out for the buck and he don't take prisoners. He don't give a damn about Northstar or us"). And he favors the Wildman deal. Where's the neo-Marxism?



The character makes numerous anti-market comments throughout the movie. The one you quote is one of the best known ones. He also denounces the profit motive and claims that financiers are worthless and don't produce anything of value. Yes, he favors the Wildman deal. But Marxists have always been willing to deal with capitalists when it was in their interest to do so. Remember Lenin's line about buying from capitalists the rope to hang them with. I don't claim that the character endorses marxism in every respect. But he certainly has a class conflict-based view of the world, and Bud describes him as a taking a "workers of the world unite" perspective.

A number of commenters' suggestions here fall into an as-yet-unmentioned category: villains who gain sympathy by opposing a "hero" who's far less appealing than the character's creator seems to think. My favorite example is Alisdair Stewart (played by Sam Neill) in Jane Campion's The Piano. The filmmaker seems to view the heroine as an admirably assertive woman in a pre-feminist era, but in fact she's such a repulsive shrew that she makes Stewart seem like a kind, sweet gentleman by comparison.

Avatar:

If you are the one whose handle I recognized(works for ADV, while went for law school in mid/late 90s, I believe we had already discussed along the same line on rec.arts.anime.misc

Tomino's works certainly challenge the view of good and evil, I got exposure to his "Umi no Triton" at young age.

Museikinin (Toshokan) Kanchou

Professor Somin -

Thanks for a thoughtful reply; but it doesn't convince me, and I'd like to explain why.

Gekko almost certainly didn't do anything illegal, though it's not clear whether the filmmakers realize this.

I once went to an action movie with a physician who complained because, when the hero was brought into an emergency room battered, the intubation was performed unrealistically.

Wall Street is fiction, so it takes some liberties ... with intubation procedures, with securities law, whatever. In the fiction, Gekko commits repeated serious crimes. That's why, when Bud Fox wears a wire, the Federal investigators are so pleased with the results: they've recorded Gekko making statements that are incriminating (in the fiction).

Which comes back to the original point--Gekko is a villain because he's a criminal, not because he's a takeover artist. Otherwise, there's no point to the contrast between him and Sir Larry Wildman, who's also presented as a hard-nosed takeover artist ["when you took CNX Electronics, you laid off 8,000 workers, Jessmon Fruit about 6,000"] but honest.

Blue Star seems to be a poorly run airline with a bloated workforce. Gekko intends to sell the planes and other assets off to other firms that will use them more efficiently and at lower cost-thereby benefiting consumers. He'll also invest the capital tied up in the pension fund in more profitable investments, thus improving the allocation of resources in the economy as a whole.

I'm afraid that a couple of pre-conceptions got the better of you here.

First, your argument rests on the premise that Bluestar is worth more dead than alive, so shut it down and re-deploy the assets more productively [Gekko's plan]. It's undoubtedly "a poorly-run airline". But why do you ignore the equally-plausible view that Bluestar has good market prospects ["we can beat the majors at a price war"] if only management would stop fumbling them? That's presumably Wildman's view--otherwise, why would he proceed with a deal that keeps the airline flying?

Second, where did the "bloated workforce" come from? I don't think it's in the script. I suspect you've been taken in by the standard excuse of failed managements in airlines and elsewhere, who routinely blame their employees and unions for their own strategic blunders.

As noted in the link above, the deal falls apart only because Bud Fox violated his fiduciary obligations to Gekko.

Only true if Bud Fox, as the proposed new president of the airline, had some fiduciary obligation to Gekko, which is unclear (to me). Recall that Bud turns on Gekko when he learns that he won't be president because there won't be an airline. He's been lied to by Gekko, the same as the employees .. and the deal falls through when he reveals that to them.

The [Carl Fox] character makes numerous anti-market comments throughout the movie. The one you quote is one of the best known ones. He also denounces the profit motive and claims that financiers are worthless and don't produce anything of value.

Carl Fox's remarks aren't somehow "anti-market". They're plausible perceptions held by millions of real-life market participants ... very few of whom would favor converting America into a Marxist economy.

As a union leader, he recognizes that he's in an endless tug-of-war with management over money; but also recognizes that he needs them. Rather like Gekko's, or any financier's, view of the people he transacts with.

He's against a money-centered approach to life, but that's hardly Marxist. For example, it's a view that Jesus shared.

And Carl's denunciations aren't of financiers in general, they're of Gekko. Who is, after all, a liar and a criminal.

******************************

Anyway, thanks for the discussion. And for the link to the Daniel Davies post, which was good clean fun.

Villain I identify with:

The witch from Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods.

I have sympathy for the Wicked Witch of the West, who after all was the subject of a "hit" ordered by the Wizard. Note that the proof of her wickedness to Dorothy was that she made Dorothy do chores and threatened that yappy little dog. Besides, Dorothy did kill her sister by dropping a house on her. After her tragic death, Glinda the "Good" witch gets progressively more authoritarian.

Although we don't meet her, the Wicked Witch of the East also has my sympathy since she had to put up with singing midgets who seem to have prospered under her. Besides, wouldn't you be wicked if people kept calling you Ding-Dong?

Gekko almost certainly didn't do anything illegal, though it's not clear whether the filmmakers realize this.

I once went to an action movie with a physician who complained because, when the hero was brought into an emergency room battered, the intubation was performed unrealistically.

Wall Street is fiction, so it takes some liberties ... with intubation procedures, with securities law, whatever. In the fiction, Gekko commits repeated serious crimes. That's why, when Bud Fox wears a wire, the Federal investigators are so pleased with the results: they've recorded Gekko making statements that are incriminating (in the fiction).

Possibly. But it's far from clear even in the context of the movie that Gekko will go to prison. And in real life, his actions would have been legal.

your argument rests on the premise that Bluestar is worth more dead than alive, so shut it down and re-deploy the assets more productively [Gekko's plan]. It's undoubtedly "a poorly-run airline". But why do you ignore the equally-plausible view that Bluestar has good market prospects ["we can beat the majors at a price war"] if only management would stop fumbling them? That's presumably Wildman's view--otherwise, why would he proceed with a deal that keeps the airline flying?

Throughout the movie, Gekko is portrayed as a highly competent investor. His judgment about whether Blue Star is worth more dead than alive is likely to be sound. As for Wildman, what makes you think he won't follow the same approach as Gekko (acquiring control, then reneging on his deal with the union)? He's portrayed as very similar to Gekko in his focus on profit and lack of scruples?

As noted in the link above, the deal falls apart only because Bud Fox violated his fiduciary obligations to Gekko.

Only true if Bud Fox, as the proposed new president of the airline, had some fiduciary obligation to Gekko, which is unclear (to me). Recall that Bud turns on Gekko when he learns that he won't be president because there won't be an airline. He's been lied to by Gekko, the same as the employees .. and the deal falls through when he reveals that to them.

Fox had a fiduciary obligation to Gekko both as president of Blue Star (of which Gekko had become the majority stockholder, if I understand correctly), and as Gekko's broker.

Carl Fox's remarks aren't somehow "anti-market". They're plausible perceptions held by millions of real-life market participants ... very few of whom would favor converting America into a Marxist economy.


Yes, Fox's views are shared by many people. That doesn't make them any less anti-market. His longterm economic ideology isn't very clear in the movie. But he certainly shares many Marxist assumptions, including a focus on class conflict and a belief that financial entrepreneurs produce nothing of value.


As a union leader, he recognizes that he's in an endless tug-of-war with management over money; but also recognizes that he needs them. Rather like Gekko's, or any financier's, view of the people he transacts with.

He only needs them in the sense that he can't get rid of them. Not in the sense taht he believes they have a genuinely valuable role to play.

He's against a money-centered approach to life, but that's hardly Marxist. For example, it's a view that Jesus shared.


Jesus may have been anti-market (in some ways) as well. Nonetheless, it's clear that Fox denounces the profit motive as a whole, not just "a money-centered approach to life." To interpret him as NOT being anti-market, I think, misses the whole point of the movie. It is not merely about Gekko's sins as an individual. It's about what Stone sees as more general flaws in a market-based economy.

Ilya, I think you entirely miss Lenin's point about when it comes time to hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope. What he meant is that capitalists are so short-sighted and greedy that they will do things that are not in their self-interest (sell their executioners the very rope that will hang them) if it will make them a few dollars.

Your statements about the pension fund are very telling. One of the great crimes committed by corporations over the last twenty years or so is underfunding their pension funds. Why should they be allowed to renege on contracts made with employees simply to improve their balance sheets? How is this even legal or ethical? If you found out that your broker was stealing from your stock fund, I am sure you would not be too happy about it and even consider it criminal. How and why is it different when a corporation deliberately underfunds its pension fund or in the case of Wall Street, illegally diverts the funds to more risky investments. And you can be certain that executives make sure their corporate pension funds are fully funded.

including a focus on class conflict

And Gekko didn't focus on class conflict? He reveled in destroying the union. And your hatred of unions and the rights of workers show that you are focused on class conflict too.

Jeebus, to get back on topic I'd suggest Daniel Day Lewis Lewis in GONY, slightly disappointing movie, but Lewis' acting is incredible. His violent tendencies aren't admirable, but he's hardly much more violent than the mob/Tammany Hall which was equally corrupt. And his accent is better than Leo's that kept changing throughout the film. The greatest irony in the film was U2's "Hands that Built America" theme, when all through the film it showed nothing but destruction and mayhem, not exactly an endorsement of how immigrants built the country.

I think there is a fifth category - the villain whe revels unashamedly in their villainy. Examples:-
- Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber in Die hard and Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood.
- Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC
- Iago and Richard III

I nominate Francis Urquhart (also known as “F.U.”) as one of the most sympathetic of villains. F.U. comes to us from the political thriller by Michael Dobbs, House of Cards. However the BBC television production by the same surpasses the book, thanks to a brilliant performance by Ian Richardson. F.U. starts off as Chief Whip for the Tories, and becomes Prime Minister through much skulduggery. His rivals are bunch of Dorks who he knocks off of one by one. While he is supremely evil, you can help but admire him for his wit, intelligence and candor. Richardson was actually upset that his evil character gained such admiration from the audience. One also needs to realize that the BBC, being a bunch of socialists, did change the original Dobbs’ story. Dobbs did not explicitly identify FU as a Tory and the end was radically changed. Nevertheless, the TV version far outclasses the book, which I found somewhat dull.

My second nomination of course goes to the Ming the Merciless, Emperor of the planet Mongo. While he gave me a very hard time, he did have the good sense to provide me with a lab and send that playboy Flash to the arena.

Alex650:
Part of the problem with War of the Worlds (the movie) is that that character is mashed together from two characters in the book, who have opposite flaws. The curate (at least, he's some kind of clergyman; I can't remember exactly) completely loses it with fear, to the point where he's endangering himself and the main character; the other one, the military guy, seems at first like a sensible pragmatic, willing to face what's going on ("This isn't a war, any more than there's a war between men and ants), but you eventually realize that his plans for resistance are just fantasies to keep his spirits up.

Enthusiastic villains with clear agendas are always entertaining. Richard III is wonderful up till he becomes king and doesn't know what to do with himself. Villain energy that's just thrashing around at random (rather than, say, trying to take over the world) tends to leave audiences at a loss.

Probably explains why Nazis make better film villains than terrorists. If terrorists don't have a specific grievance or objective (which they often don't), they might as well be earthquakes or volcanoes.

As a moderate liberal, I want to believe that one can defeat armed Communists without resorting to Fascism.

So communists are de facto bad no matter what--even though of course the fascists were supported by Hitler?

Why is Vidal in the movie a sympathetic villain? Why are the socialists (the Republicans were socialists, not communists, support from the Soviet Union notwithstanding) automatically tainted just because some of their support comes from the USSR. Does that mean the U.S. and Britain are evil because we were allies with Stalin in WWII?

Why does anyone think that Robert E. Lee was a villain? He's practically a secular saint in the south, where I live now, and he was depicted in my history classes in the north as a highly respected man of honor who faced a very difficult choice (to lead the armies of his country or of his state) and who spared the U.S. decades of guerrilla war by ordering the Confederate soldiers to disarm and go home after Appamatox .

The villain I like best is Richard III, both because, as portrayed by Shakespeare he's so self-conciously and unrepentedly evil, and because the historical reality is that he was not at all as portrayed by Shakespeare: he was a good king and soldier, a loyal and affectionate brother to Edward, and almost certainly he did not have his nephews or anyone else murdered--although he certainly did kill people in war. Shakespeare's Richard III is Tudor propaganda.

Or even a villain?

Seeing E. Grim's mention of Hank Quinlan reminded me of Harry Lime in "The Third Man." As portrayed by Welles, he is sardonic, intelligent, and unrepentently evil.

What about the flip side--the protagonist who you end up really loathing?

I thought of this yesterday when watching The Pursuit of Happyness. In this case, though, I didn't loathe Gardner, but didn't particularly like him either.

Someone already brought up Lester from American Beauty. I was glad he died. (I hoped everyone in that movie would die.)

Adm. Thomas Theisman, Peoples Republic of Haven Navy, although it raises the question of perspective. Is he truly a villian, or an (no pun intended) honored enemy?

I would say that he's one of the good guys in that series - especially since he eventually overthrows the People's Republic.

Ilya, I think you entirely miss Lenin's point about when it comes time to hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope. What he meant is that capitalists are so short-sighted and greedy that they will do things that are not in their self-interest (sell their executioners the very rope that will hang them) if it will make them a few dollars.

The meaning I assigned to the quote and the above are not mutually exclusive. Lenin thought both 1) that capitalists are often shortsighted (though this belief was inconsistent with his other belief that they had a clever, longterm plan to dominate the world), and 2) that it was permissible for Communists to make deals with capitalists when it was in their interests to do so.

Your statements about the pension fund are very telling. One of the great crimes committed by corporations over the last twenty years or so is underfunding their pension funds. Why should they be allowed to renege on contracts made with employees simply to improve their balance sheets? How is this even legal or ethical?

If underfunding a pension fund violates a contract, then by all means let the workers sue and win. I have no problem with that. In the movie, Gekko's use of the pension fund money apparently did not violate a contract (otherwise it would have been listed among his alleged crimes in the scenes at the end).

I'm surprised to see only one mention of Ozymandius from Watchmen. I very much appreciated how the outwardly most appealing character was the 'villan' while the repulsive Rorschach ended up being the moral center.

Several good choices (Shakespeare's Macbeth and Richard III, Milton's Satan, Orson Welles' Harry Lime and Hank Quinlan) have already been mentioned, but I'm surprised that no one has cited Hitchcock's villains. The Claude Rains character in Notorious and Raymond Burr in Rear Window are both supreme examples of sympathetic villains.

I'd say I identify with Humbert Humbert, and not for any of those four reasons. Along the same lines, I think a number of people identify with Tony Montana "Scarface".

JF Thomas: What Lugo said. If the Spanish partisans had won, Spain would have ended up somewhere between Yugoslavia and Hungary in terms of repression. Read some Orwell - he was resolutely anti-Fascist, but he had no illusions about who had ended up pulling the strings on the Republican side.

For me, the horror of watching Vidal's vicious methods was compounded, not mitigated, by the thought that his enemies, had they won, would very likely have used equally vicious methods (compare East Germany before and after 1945).

My litmus is not "who accepts help from whom?" - because (as JF Thomas sensibly notes), that would make Churchill or FDR a Stalinist - but "what sort of society would they put in place if they win?" In Spain, by 1942, the liberal democracy option had been swept off the table.

What about Rupurt of Hentzau from The Prisoner of Zenda? Any villian played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. has to have something going for him. And I am surprised nobody has mentioned Hotspur from Henry IV pt. 1.

In the film "A Town Like Alice" based on the Neville Shute novel, the Japanese officer who has the Australian male protagonist crucified for stealing chickens. Steeped in the worst of Bushido, he offers the brave and tough aussie his choice of a last meal. Unable to provide it, he decides that honor requires that he must be spared.

The officer's attempts to be a samurai and follow the values that he has been taught and which he has no particular talent for, make for an interesting and sympathetic character.

A number of commenters' suggestions here fall into an as-yet-unmentioned category: villains who gain sympathy by opposing a "hero" who's far less appealing than the character's creator seems to think. My favorite example is Alisdair Stewart (played by Sam Neill) in Jane Campion's The Piano. The filmmaker seems to view the heroine as an admirably assertive woman in a pre-feminist era, but in fact she's such a repulsive shrew that she makes Stewart seem like a kind, sweet gentleman by comparison.

Another, that I'm surprised hasn't been brought up yet, is The Joker as portrayed by Jack Nicholson, up against the not-quite-dorky, but still pretty bland Michael Keaton as The Dark Knight, in the 1989 Batman movie.

Some commentators have asked about the flip side - unsympathetic good guys. For this I have but three words: Jar Jar Binks.

As for anti-heroes, people clearly on "our" side but not necessarily sharing our scruples, the ultimate exemplar is of course Sir Ian Fleming's James Bond - at least, if you ignore the Roger Moore-era films.

If I may throw in an obscure example - Does anyone remember Roger Zelazny's Amber series, which was reasonably popular in the 70s? The main villian in the first books, Eric, seemed to me absolutely no worse than the amoral protagonist, Corwyn, and his claim to the throne, the reason for their fight, was better.

By the way, have always thought that series would have a made a good pulpy movie or TV series. Pity it was never done.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Dr. Octopus in Spiderman 2. This is a man who had a potential solution to all the world's enegy problems, and to global warming to boot. With his genius and those of his robot arms, surely he could have worked out the kinks in his system and led us into a world of energy abundance without actually blowing up too many major cities. Deep down he was a decent human being led astray by his appendages. Sounds like me.

I've never seen the Gordon Gekko film, I really don't know if Carl Fox made Marxist statements, but this one takes the cake for pure ignorance: "The only difference between the Pyramids and the Empire State Building is that the Egyptians didn't have unions"

The Egyptians didn't have steel. The pyramids were engineering marvels - for unmortared stonework.

What makes The Operative sympathetic is that although he unflinchingly kills people when necessary, the flip side of that is that he doesn't kill them when it's not necessary. So that, even after The Op spends most of the film scouring the planets and killing children to flush out River Tam, [SPOILER ALERT] to keep the Alliance's dirty secrets buried, once Malcolm Reynolds manages to beam the secret out anyway, the Op has no interest in killing River or anyone any more. Most villains (and even heroes) would have given the "kill order" anyway out of frustration and revenge at being foiled, but Ejiofor's character keeps strictly to his mandate.