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Who do you think is the most epic and evil villain in history of cinema?

Rudolf

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For me it's Darth Vader :)

Here you can see why -

 
Darth Vader definitely for me as well. But also Hannibal Lecter


 
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It's hard to say but Pinhead comes to mind pretty quickly.
 
^^^ Yep haha. He scared me when i was a kid. "Kaleemaaaa shop dee dee !!!!!!!!!!!!", extracting hearts from bodies and all. Talking about it makes me want to see this movie again actually. Thx for the pic :)
 
pac said:
^^^ Yep haha. He scared me when i was a kid. "Kaleemaaaa shop dee dee !!!!!!!!!!!!", extracting hearts from bodies and all. Talking about it makes me want to see this movie again actually. Thx for the pic :)
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Yeah, when that guy took out a heart in that ritual.. And that epic music... If I would have watched it as kid I would definately be scared.. lol
 
Darth Vader's a good choice, his lines are really epic. :)

Most Disney villains are pretty epic, IMO. Here are a few:


Chernabog from the Disney film Fantasia (1940). This part of the film scared me to bits as a child.


Maleficent from the Sleeping Beauty.


My favorite of all Disney villains: Scar. He's just too cool for his paws. :D
 


Claude Frollo. If not of all cinema, then at least of all Disney cinema. This bad boy even got the Disney crew in trouble with the parents, because some parents didn't think his ethnic cleansing and hypocritical lust were "appropriate" for a children's film. Then again, I'm not sure what exactly possessed Disney into thinking Hugo's novel would make adequate fodder for a children's film. The result of their haphazard attempt at making iconic literature into a kiddie film is pretty decent for Disney, as I absolutely adore HoND, despite it having inconsistencies with the novel (by that, I mean, pretty much the whole film lol). Frollo is especially memorable as a Disney villain because he's not power or money-hungry, as he is the power in Paris, being judge and all. Most male Disney villains are in a sort of underdog position or otherwise hoping to accumulate power or wealth(i.e. Scar being prince while Mufasa is king, Jafaar being vizier while Jasmine's father is sultan, Shan-yu wanting to overpower the emperor of China and conquer the place, Clayton imprisoning the gorillas in Tarzan to make a profit, Hades wanting to overthrow Zeus and rule Mount Olympus, Stromboli wanting to keep Pinocchio as his slave puppet to make money, Edgar wanting to get rid of the cats to get Mme. Bonfamille's money, and more recently Dr. Facilier wanting to steal the power and money from Mr. La Bouff in Princess and the Frog), while most female villains are usually "in the game" out of vanity (i.e. Snow White's step-mother wanting to be the fairest of them all, Cruella de Vil wanting to be the most glamourous, Maleficent holding a grudge over being uninvited to a ceremony, Lady Tremaine being resentful over the fact that her deceased husband's daughter by another woman was more beautiful than her own daughters). The only villains who really cross the gender lines of stereotypical gender-based Disney villainy motives are Gaston, Ursula, and Izma. Ursula and Izma both want to seize power, from Triton and Kuzco respectively, while Gaston's sole goal in the film is to marry Belle for his own ego, vanity, and self-image, which are stereotypically female villain motives in Disney films.

Frollo, however, fits neither the stereotypical male or female villain molds, nor does he fit the generic typical mold (a grudge against a single person/group of people for a known reason, usually the protagonist and/or his/her family, which can be observed even in non-power/money-hungry/vain villains like Captain Hook [grudge against Peter Pan for taking his hand] and Shere Khan [grudge against Mowgli for being human which stems from his fear of fire and guns, later more personal grudge against Mowgli for setting his tail on fire in the first film] despite their not fitting either male or female villain molds either). Moreover, unlike other villains (with the exception of Shan-Yu, whose army kills Shang's father, countless Chinese soldiers, and by evidence [a girl's doll] found in a place Shang's army stops at while tracking the Huns, suggesting he may have killed innocent civilians. [It is unclear as to whether those who inhabited the area deserted it before Shan-Yu burned it to the ground, or died in the blaze as casualties of war, and if they were collateral or intentionally killed by Shan-Yu's army.] The only person Shan-Yu clearly wants to murder/has a grudge against, however, is the Emperor, as he sees the Great Wall of China as being a gesture of arrogance/a challenge against him by the Emperor, so all in all he's a pretty straightforward guy), he isn't hesitant about sacrificing the lives of uninvolved/innocent others (most villains usually keep their attacks strictly directed at the people they're antagonizing and their friends/family, but harm no others) to get what he wants. Some would argue Hades fits the bill in the hurting innocent people category as well, however, I would have to counter with the fact that the monsters he sent out were clearly released with the intent of harming Hercules only, and that in the instance Hercules battled the Hydra, he didn't have the callousness to use real children (he used Pain and Panic, his minions, who disguised themselves as children) to trick Hercules into going to the Hydra's den. So, any instances where civilians who aren't connected to Hercules get hurt or killed (I don't think we are shown any, but they're implied) are collateral damage, such as the time Hades sent the cyclops to distract Hercules while he took over Mt. Olympus. With that said, Frollo is the only one who clearly and intentionally without the shadow of a doubt puts innocent people in harm's way for no real reason whatsoever, and this is shown many times throughout the film. Evidence of this arises as early as the first five minutes of the film, when he kills Quasimodo's mother, a gypsy woman whom he believed (without evidence) was carrying stolen goods, but actually was carrying baby Quasimodo. He finds a trio of gypsies, Quasimodo's mother among them, apparently by chance (whether they were set up or just extremely unfortunate remains unclear), and once he sees the gypsy woman holding a bundle, he assumes it's stolen merchandise and begins a horseback chase against the barefooted mother, which results in her death (assumingly cracks her skull on the steps) when she is kicked to the ground by Frollo in a battle for the bundle at the steps of Notre-Dame cathedral. No personal grudge is ever revealed on his part against the woman specifically, however, we learn early on that he has a xenophobic hatred of gypsies, the source of which is never explained (unlike Shere Khan's hatred of man, which you will recall is rooted in his fear of man-made tools which can be used as threats against him like sticks with fire and guns, and is fairly understandable). Frollo's hatred, however, is never explained, and it remains unclear as to whether his hatred for gypsies is legitimate, or merely a result of being "drunk" on power (he is a judge in the film), and needing a group of people to serve as a scapegoat to feel like he's making a difference/in control of things. Moreover, further deliberate murders of non-protagonist involved individuals exist, some implied to have occurred before the film's setting (Frollo reveals to captain Phoebus that he has been "taking care" of gypsies for over 20 years), and others, most notably the burning down of Paris (implied murders) and the on-screen attempt to murder a French family who was suspected of harboring gypsies (a gypsy amulet hung on their door despite them not being gypsies) by personally setting fire to their house with the family trapped inside after Phoebus refuses to do it (Phoebus saves them, though, and Frollo orders him to be killed as a result). In short, he overwhelmingly deviates from most other Disney villains not only by having innocents killed, but by doing the killing/attempting to kill personally.

As mentioned before, he's also a cruel individual, ordering a disobeying former captain of the guard (whom Phoebus replaces near the beginning) to be flogged and recommending that the person doing the flogging wait between lashes, as otherwise the old sting will dull him to the new.

Of course, if he's that awful to people who aren't part of the plot, imagine how bad he is to those who are. He attempts to kill pretty much all the major protagonists: Quasimodo (attempts to drown him in a well next to Notre-Dame cathedral when he was a baby after he killed his mother because he was ugly [but is stopped by the archdeacon of the church (whom he would be in the novel) who basically guilt-trips him into adopting Quasimodo with religious mumbo-jumbo], and tries to sneak up behind him and stab him with his sword while he mourns a presumably dead Esmeralda), Phoebus (orders him shot down with arrows, although he is hit, the bugger dives to a nearby river and is saved by Esmeralda), and Esmeralda (he tries to set her on fire at a public execution, where she is condemned as a witch).

He also shows a more perverse/complex manner of thinking than the average Disney villain in that he is able to thoroughly manipulate the protagonist (Quasimodo) and "hold his heart", so to speak, unlike other villains who find themselves paired with protagonist figures at the very beginning of the film and are pretty transparent about their feelings towards them (The Queen and Lady Tremaine clearly mistreating Snow White and Cinderella, Maleficent, Scar, and Hades showing their dislike of Aurora's, Simba's, and Hercules' parents, [although Scar does try to manipulate Simba, and mildly succeeds for a while, but he never held as much influence in Simba's heart as Frollo did in Quasimodo's, and Simba's confusion stemmed forth more from Mufasa's death rather than his feelings towards Scar], so since he is Quasimodo's only family, he can't show a dislike towards himself [lol], and the way he manipulates him is via love/torment and contradictory actions which are a staple of master manipulation, such as bringing Quasimodo food and keeping him company in Notre-Dame's belltower, while being the reason why he isn't allowed to go to the outside world, and posing as his "protector", yet deliberately failing to protect him when the crowds tie him down and throw foodstuffs at him during the Feast of Fools, and the whole claiming to have saved him while trying to kill him thing too.

Here's the real kicker, though, and what truly makes him unique in Disney villainhood-his main motivation for most of his actions in the film is lust. Yeah, lust. In a Disney movie. How much do you want to bet the parents loved it?
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As the YouTube clip explains, his torment derives from his lust for Esmeralda, a gypsy girl whose scarf he kept (she teased him with it at the Feast of Fools). I'm pretty sure, given his initial hatred for gypsies, that lusting for Esmeralda must be, to his mind, the equivalent of dividing by zero, lol. The song, however, reveals that he is an incredibly repressed individual, which makes him even more unique in the Disney world of villains, as practically all of them are pretty uninhibited/untormented, consumed only by the grudges they hold against others, and not conflicted/delusional about their own nature. Moreover, it reveals that subconsciously he knows that what he is doing is wrong (the chorus of hooded figures chanting "mea culpa" tell us deep down he knows he's to blame), but he consciously blames it on gypsies/Esmeralda. The entire number, both visually and aurally, is a representation of his conflict against himself in abstract and concrete terms for the viewers to digest, a conflict which has never been witnessed in Disney films until this point, or since). Ultimately, he gives in to his delusions of righteousness, causing him to (ironically) cause more destruction and resulting in his death by falling off the steps of Notre-Dame into a pit of fire. More importantly (and symbolically), he isn't killed by either Phoebus, Quasimodo, or Esmeralda, but dies by his own hand while attempting to kill Quasimodo and Esmeralda (again) showing that his mindset was the true cause for his demise, so it would be fitting that he died by his own sword (his sword causes a gargoyle he ends up having to cling to as he trips in an attempt to swing at Quasimodo to fragment, and it ultimately collapses under his weight, causing him to plunge down into a pit of molten lead and die (since the film has various religious allusions to it [residues from Frollo's true profession in the novel as a Catholic Archdeacon] his descent could be taken as a descent into Hell, while Quasimodo and Esmeralda, the two truly "holy" figures in the film [and novel], watch from atop Notre-Dame.

So, in conclusion, Frollo remains truly unique among Disney villains, and is arguably the most perverse/evil of them all, as his kind of deeds can be [and have been] achieved in real life (unlike most Disney villains, who usually possess magic powers or some sort of magic artifact, making their deeds less realistic). He is also solely the only non-G rated villain in the whole Disney enchilada (it was pretty much thanks to him that parents either boycotted the film or pushed for the rating to be changed from "G" to "PG," some even going as far as demanding a "PG-13" rating). Reviews on Amazon.com will give you further insight into the psyche of some parental units.

Take these examples:
amazon reviewers said:
1.0 out of 5 stars Yuck, March 15, 2004
By "baywatch421" (MD) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (DVD)
this is by far the creepiest Disney movie of all time. It is far too sexual and just all around not fun. Esmerelda's [sp.] dancing is basically a cartoon dancing like a stripper while keeping her clothes on. Frollo's fixation with her is way over the top (re: fireplace scene) and all around it gives me the willies. How do you explain to a child why Frollo wants to "have her" or have her "go to hell"? Seems difficult to me! Another part I found somewhat disturbing was the burning down of the peasant-looking folks' house. Seemed like something you would see in braveheart. If I was under the age of 10 or so, I would have a hard time sleeping after seeing that movie and.or understanding a bit of it.

Should have been PG 13, August 29, 2006
By Sonny L (New Mexico) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (DVD)
I saw this movie and was shocked at the contents, considering that it was aimed at children. It starts out with the gypsy Esmeralda doing a very provocative stripper style pole dance. While no stripping happened, there wasn't much other difference in the style of dance. Later in the movie, one of the men is obsessing over her in a manner I would never want my children to see. (This cracked me up lol!) He sings a song about how she will burn in hell if he doesn't have her, and meanwhile a vision of her provocative dancing is playing out in the flames of a fire. Regardless of the rest of the movie, these two scenes make this highly innapropriate for children.
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Any villain who can cause such a commotion, not only on-screen but off-screen, and who is a lustful, maniacal, tortured soul like he is surely deserves to be called "epic," and Frollo certainly is. Not to mention, he's so sexy. ?__?
 
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Mikage Souji said:
Any villain who can cause such a commotion, not only on-screen but off-screen, and who is a lustful, maniacal, tortured soul like he is surely deserves to be called "epic," and Frollo certainly is. Not to mention, he's so sexy. ?__?
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I was considering putting Frollo in my reply as well but I figured you'd probably do it more justice than I ever could. :D Frollo's an excellent villain and I was surprised that the execs at Disney gave the writers and directors in charge of the project as much freedom as they did. My jaw almost dropped to the floor when I saw Hellfire for the first time.
 
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