Has anyone ever noticed, in the movies, whenever the villain is having a meeting of all his underlings/rivals/whatever to outline his plan, there's always one guy who decides to oppose him, and is then summarily killed off somehow? I've noticed that a lot of the time, this is the guy sitting at the opposite end of the table from the villain.
In Batman, this was Antoine Rotelli; he sat directly down the table across from the Joker, and had the balls to ask "What if we say no?" Mere moments later, he was on the receiving end of a deadly joybuzzer.
And in Dicky Tracy, there was Spud Spaldoni; he, too, sat right across from Big Boy Caprice and kept asking dumb questions, finally deciding he "wanted out," leading to his explosive death by car bomb not long after.
Why is this? Why do they insist on making it painfully obvious, visually, which guy has the least amount of time to live? The only such boardroom scene that defies this cliche that comes to mind, is the one on the Death Star in Star Wars; but it was a round table and Admiral Motti was already running his mouth off so much they didn't need a visual cue telling us he was about to get hurt (and to be fair, he didn't get killed).
In fact, now that I think about it, this whole cliche really bores me, even when the victim isn't sitting at the head of the table. The cliche of the One Guy Who the Boss Makes an Example Of. They did it in The Untouchables, too, and in The Legend of Zorro, and in Thunderball, and frankly, I'm sick of it. Can the bad guys just have one secret evil meeting without the main villain killing/injuring a member of his entourage for some reason?
(Actually now that I think about it, The Mask of Zorro had a guy in it asking Don Raphael a lot of idiotic questions without being killed for it, but this may have something to do with the fact the hero was present-- from a screenwriting standpoint anyway, considering he was in disguise.)
Yes! A lot of villains do this too much. I guess they just do it to get their evilness "over" with the audience - a "cheap pop" way of making the audience want the villain to loose.
A lot of villains have done this to help establish them as hardasses: Vader chokes out some Imperial fools, Skeletor in Masters of the Universe, some poor lackie in China O Brian (and boy was that a weak villain-bad guy circle), and even the Joker in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. The bad guy in the last piece of Heavy Metal just likes to choke his underlings as he gives them orders, but I don't think he took any of his lackies out (they established him as a hard ass with him whipping the terakian not to mention his line, "death...DEATH TO ALL WHO OPPOSE US!").
And...how does a villian keep from being shived in the back, with that kind of behavior?
I understand Saddam Whossane? was always testing his guards. He had his most trusted aids...and how did he choose such guys, btw?...by haveing them grabbed by guys pretending to be anti-Saddam rebels.
If the guard went over to them, he was killed. Good way to pick the best in the worst,admittedly.
Still...how do such man find guards who won't off them if the time seems right? Look at Michael Corleone...
The guy in thunderball was not sitting opposite Blofeld
(http://www.moviedeaths.com/images/grabs/thunderball-agent_9-3.jpg)
Is this a debate about betrayal or seat position?
Wasn't there something like this in The Phantom? The villain was rather creative with his killing methods too.
It wouldn't work well in real life. It made more sense in Thunderball, since the guy was actually a traitor. A lot of villains kill off their own people seemingly at random, which in real life would work out VERY POORLY for the villain in the long run.
***BANLIEU 13 SPOILERS***
One of the things I like about this film... The main villain repeatedly kills his own men to "motivate" them, essentially. Towards the end, all of his men get fed up and blow him away.
I said, outloud "GOOD!".
**END**
A similar cliche is when the villain is standing beside one of his henchmen after they have just captured the hero. The villain points a gun at the hero and says something like, "Now I will show you the price of failure, Mr. Bond." Then, he turns away from the hero, points the gun at his henchman, and pulls the trigger. Finally, the villain faces the hero again and says something like, "Karl was becoming very undependable," as the camera zooms in on the dead henchman who has a bullet hole in his forehead.
Quote from: Mr. Briggs Inc. on February 28, 2007, 03:55:56 PM
Is this a debate about betrayal or seat position?
Both, really, the former moreso than the latter despite the thread title.