Adam Clarke is still bitter over messing up his HYDRA entrance exam.
I never wanted to be the villain. My childhood heroes were Mr. Spock, Sherlock Holmes, Spider-Man and the Ghostbusters… all intelligent, capable characters with strong senses of humour, strength and individuality. Villains, despite their odd mix of cool detachment and malevolent chuckling, never appealed to me. I couldn’t understand why some of my classmates would rather pretend to be Lex Luthor than Superman. Remember, the reason Lex Luthor hates Superman is because Supes somehow made him bald. One can only assume that if there was a villain named Hobo whose sole special abilities were to hurl urine-soaked pants at pedestrians and weep uncontrollably each night outside the Peter Easton Pub, the kids in school would have jumped all over it.
Superman made me bald. I must KILL him! Correction: I must invent Rogaine, then kill him.
That’s all changed now, friends. I get it. I finally do. I don’t want to be a piddly little scientist or a misfit with delusions of godhood. No, the greatest villains have always been the leaders or higher-ups in the conspiracies which, unbeknownst to us, affect us in countless ways. I’d like to join just such an organization because I have what it takes to be among their ranks.
Yes, I’m sure there are temp positions, but I don’t want to work my way up through S.P.E.C.T.R.E by removing all the cat hairs from Blofeld’s voluminous collection of Nehru jackets. I shouldn’t have to work in the mail room for the albino monks who try to foil Tom Hanks and his stupid haircut at every turn. No, I’ve got what it takes to be in the big leagues. I know the secret of supervillainery: not making any damn sense whatsoever.
Here are a couple of my favourite examples…
Buffy, The Vampire Slayer
There are loads of poorly thought-out plots that clutter Buffy, The Vampire Slayers’s seven year run. By the show’s final season, one had the impression that the main villain’s motives were chosen at random from a hat full of plot twists written down on Post-Its.
Yet, my favourite nonsensical plot came from the show’s best villain and arguably its best season. After some foreshadowing the previous year, the mayor of the fictional town of Sunnydale, California uses his considerable influence with local and demonic politics to carry out his master plan.
Though unseen in this screencap, Wilkins is consulting the “Baldrick Book Of Cunning Plans” for his brilliant scheme
Now, you may say I’m cheating right off the bat, as Mayor Wilkins wasn’t out to reward anybody but himself. I never entirely got that from Harry Groener’s warm and very funny portrayal of the character who seemed to relish working with his sidekicks and fellow demons. You get the sense that, had he been successful and time had allowed, his flunkies would’ve had some lovely pensions before being devoured.
His scheme: Wilkins yearns to become a pure demon and completes a series of occult rituals to do so. The end result, after a brief time where he is completely immortal, Mayor Wilkins becomes a giant Snake Monster that looks like a rejected creature design from the video game Slaughterhouse. Said monster is killed after about ten seconds of deeply unimpressive screen time.
Why it doesn’t make sense: One of the many rituals he completes makes him immortal. So, you know, why not just attain immortality and keep fiddling with spells so that you can keep said amazing powers. At least there’s a valuable lesson for the budding young evil geniuses out there: if you’re a villainous mastermind and you have a choice between immortality and becoming an easily-killed Snake Monster, always choose immortality!
The Prisoner (1967)
Their scheme: Somewhere in England is a mock society known only as The Village. It was devised and overseen by person or persons unknown, but is overseen by a revolving group of villains all known as Number Two. The Number Twos answer to higher authorities who supervise the progress of each Number Two. For the purposes of this article, these higher authorities a shall henceforth be known as The Village People.
Together the mass of Number Twos and the Village People have kidnapped the man they call Number Six. Six is the man The Village People think might be the one true individual who can properly lead them and presumably run The Village. All he needs is a little coaxing and by “coaxing” they mean torture and by “a little”, they mean “months”.
Number Twos are elected based on style…
…grace…
…and don’t forget the swimsuit competition.
Why it doesn’t make sense: So, the best person to run a covert group of shadowy figures is the man WHO HATES ALL OF YOU?
I like the cut of your jib, son…
By day one, Number Six plots innumerable attempts to escape The Village, alert the outside world of his existence, destroy it, outwit and humiliate his captors all while snarling at and occasionally punching those that get in his way.
Naturally, you want to keep this fire-brand’s free spiritedness and individuality. The best ways to do this? Well, drugging and brainwashing mostly.
Yes, Number Six has his veins pumped full of so many chemicals that it’s a wonder they didn’t just settle for electing Ozzy Osbourne as their leader. I guess if he’s a genius before he’d drugged, he’ll be ten times as smart after a year’s worth of chloroforming.
When that doesn’t work, more unorthodox methods are used, like pretending to be cowboys. The SLA used that same technique on Patty Hearst and look at how well that turned out.
The X-Files
Who could forget the kings of all convoluted plans? Yes, everything wrong with the world can be credited to a shadowy organization devoted to keeping Americans in the dark while carrying out mind-control experiments, human cloning and creating a poisonous breed of super-bees!
Their scheme: Aliens have contacted Earth with the express purpose of enslaving us. However, they also want to make human-alien hybrids. What this group of shadowy figures do is make a Faustian deal with the devil. They’ll develop the alien-human hybrids for the aliens who may or may not be an oil-based lubricant, sure, but they’re doing it for the greater good. With time they’ll create a vaccine for the alien disease to protect themselves and maybe the rest of humanity, too (if they’ve been good). In the interim, they steal children and clone them, hypnotize people into becoming murderers via television signals, implant mechanical chips that give people cancer somehow and kidnap Gillian Anderson. A lot.
EVIL!
Why it doesn’t make sense: To quote Nicholas Cage, “NOT THE BEES!” Also, everything else.
I think I could really fit in with that sort of thing. If that fails and I don’t get a position in one of the conspiracy-driven consortiums, I’d like to apply myself to the sciences… the EVIL sciences. Yes, I’d like to use the power of science to increase my head and brain to such a size that I’d need a special rocket device with mechanical limbs attached to mess with my enemies. I’d dub myself A.D.A.M. or Arial Doombot Armoured for Maiming.
See you in the funny pages.
Posted on Monday at 11 am - Write a comment.