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The over the top villian

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54ball

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My reenacting friend is a English teacher. We make long trips and discuss many things. We were discussing things like the "hero's journey" history, and historical movies.

We discussed how lately historical based movies result to these over the top villains. In a sense it's an insult to the audience's intelligence. It's almost like force feeding. The villain has to commit a horrible atrocity. Before the climax the villain some how obtains near super human power, loses all humanity and become a "Boss" that must be defeated in a Matrix/Video game like fight scene.

Bear with me on this....
I was watching a history program about the Holocaust. A survivor from a camp had this to say about a SS man of whom he was his valet...
the valet said:
This man was nothing, nothing! I helped him dress. His trousers his boots his tunic. As he buttoned his tunic and snapped that cap upon his head, then he became a monster!
This is real...there is lot to the above quote. Despicable villain yes,...but still a man.

Villains/Antagonists done wrong...

Tom Hardy as John Fitzgerald The Revenant
Leaving poor Glass as a helpless invalid to die in the wilderness is not enough. No...Fitzgerald has to commit a ruthless horrible act that demands righteous retribution. Hardy's Fitzgerald goes over the top and by the climax becomes a superhuman Boss that must be defeated in a epic struggle.

This robs the audience of the moral conflict that Fitzgerald may have been right. Too, the anger of the slight of being left may have given Glass the means to survive.
Instead of exploring this, the audience is left watching a Boss struggle video game with flintlocks. One that they are not playing.

Jason Issacs Col. Tavington The Patriot
A few unfortunate short minutes destroys this character and makes what could have been a very good historical movie into a insulting farce.
The SS Einzengroupen style burning of the Church is a insult that for me makes the film near unwatchable. This was South Carolina in 1780 involving Tory and British Troops not Lidice Czechoslovakia in 1942 involving Nazis. The insult is just too great.
It is no secret that Tavington is Tarleton. So they should have done Tarleton. A ruthless murderer who give no quarter....
The town scene.... instead he hangs the men in front of the women the Tory and British troops then pillage and rape. As Gabriel's Bride meets her fate off screen...Tavington remarks smugly to the shocked American Tory officer " It seems we have lost control of our men." That would be based on some fact. Instead we get "Fire the Church"
No.....They went full Nazi instead.
Imagine too that instead of the Boss fight, Tavington is wounded by Martin with the soldier bullet but survives. We see him to begin to unravel.
After Yorktown we see him in the streets of Yorktown pulled from his horse as it is taken by a street person...shamed stripped of all dignity pelted with rotten fruit and manure....you know kind of based on what happened to Tarleton.

Villains Done Right
Wes Studi Maugua The Last of the Mohicans 1992
Maugua is not over the top. Maugua has some of our sympathy and understanding. His gentle hand gesturing to save the girl is a moment. We still enjoy the final fight but it's not the over the top Boss fight.

Henry Brandon Chief Scar The Searchers 1956
While Chief Scar is not really a very developed character, in my opinion he is developed enough since the story is told from an American point of view. He is not evil but rather he what he is ...A Comanche War Chief.
Who we really struggle with is Wayne and to a lesser extent Jeffery Hunter. Both of whom are very capable of cruelty.

John Carridine Caldwell Drums along the Mohawk 1939
Carridine has the build, face and voice of a villain. He has charisma in the tavern scenes and his brief spots in the film are enjoyable.

I like what Ford does with the Indians here. When the Mrs McKlenner orders the Indian Warriors to remove her bed from her burning home and they try to comply...It adds a sense of humanity and realism that many may miss.
The chase scene is iconic.
 
If there is anything worse than the over the top villain it's the over the top hero. Ugh.

Hollywood has found the secret of modern tales, you have to paint with a very broad brush or today's audiences don't understand the story.

Spence
 
I think two problems are evidently clear....

1. People don't get enough bran in their diets...

2. Many people cannot distinguish movies from real life...
 
If it comes from Hollywood, one MUST take it with a big grain of salt. Movies are made to entertain, not teach history. The folks who make movies are out to make a buck, not teach history. It is a shame that folks today do not know enough history to recognize the difference. Just ask a kid today about WW II and most can't even tell you who were the Allies and who were the Axis countries. :doh: Sad but true. :shake:
 
Billnpatti said:
If it comes from Hollywood, one MUST take it with a big grain of salt. Movies are made to entertain, not teach history. The folks who make movies are out to make a buck, not teach history.
It is made to deceive & any profit is a happy by product for the creators of new history. They know of the truth, but it is not in them.
Far more than just a bit of molasses on the biscuit.
 
colorado clyde said:
It is a shame that folks today do not know enough history to recognize the difference.

I don't think its a matter of quantity..

True. It seems like the schools today look at history as anything that happened after 1960. Anything prior to that is ancient history and hardly worth more than a footnote. Just pick up any school history book and look for something on the Bataan Death March, Iwo Jima or the Holocaust. Thousands upon thousands of people lost their lives and they hardly get a footnote. Of course, we all know that the history books put their own slant on the history they do present. I have read some of the history books that are in schools today and they made me want to gag.
 
I would add Heavy Eagle in charelton hestons mountain men. Yes it's camp, and yes I still almost know all the one liners by heart, but I had sympathy for heavy eagle.
Still for a year or two we have liked our heroes to over come the worse, King David, Hercules, King Arthur, Beowulf, comes to mind.
The Greeks did a pretty good job of sympathy for the bad guy, Hector was always more heroic then Achilles. And Jason not a real nice guy. I don't know how many times I've watched and read Das Boot and always feel sympathy for the men in the story.
 
54ball said:
Jason Issacs Col. Tavington The Patriot
A few unfortunate short minutes destroys this character and makes what could have been a very good historical movie into a insulting farce.
The SS Einzengroupen style burning of the Church is a insult that for me makes the film near unwatchable. This was South Carolina in 1780 involving Tory and British Troops not Lidice Czechoslovakia in 1942 involving Nazis. The insult is just too great.
It is no secret that Tavington is Tarleton. So they should have done Tarleton. A ruthless murderer who give no quarter....
The town scene.... instead he hangs the men in front of the women the Tory and British troops then pillage and rape. As Gabriel's Bride meets her fate off screen...Tavington remarks smugly to the shocked American Tory officer " It seems we have lost control of our men." That would be based on some fact. Instead we get "Fire the Church"
No.....They went full Nazi instead.
Imagine too that instead of the Boss fight, Tavington is wounded by Martin with the soldier bullet but survives. We see him to begin to unravel.
After Yorktown we see him in the streets of Yorktown pulled from his horse as it is taken by a street person...shamed stripped of all dignity pelted with rotten fruit and manure....you know kind of based on what happened to Tarleton.

I couldn't agree more! It was an OKAY movie up to that point. I remember sitting in the theater and thinking 'what the ---- were they freekin' thinkin' to burn up a church full of people!?'

And while we are at it, sorry this is not villain related....let's get rid of the Spanish mission-looking ruin in the SC swamp and also the darn big 'romantic' Civil War-like Greek Revival ruins in the middle of what was I guess is supposed to be the Cowpens......Sheesh!! I'll stop my rant now. :)

By-the-way, Wes Studi's Maugua is an incredibly good villain!! :thumbsup:
 
Shy of real life history as Patriot was and how many over the top villains there are in movies this time was not far removed from the ”˜kill them all, let God sort them out’ or Vespers in Sicily. Burning a church full of people was in vogue just a few years before.
 
Did any of you gents see the three part series on the History Channel a couple of years ago called "Sons of Liberty"

I thought it was well made, but I would be interested in what you all thought.

I agree with you guys on many points regarding villains in Movies. Some I had not thought of but I now agree. :v
 
IMHO it was horrible. Strayed far from history and facts.

But I'm interested in what others have to say.
:pop:
 
I agree, I don’t know why the exciting true story was replaced by a unexciting fantasy. Shows like band of brothers or from the earth to the moon could stay historical and successful.
 
It is no secret that Tavington is Tarleton.

Actually, I believe you are wrong. Tavington is a composite figure based on a number of different British officers of the period, and while his name and rank are reminiscent of Tarleton, (whom everyone knows) his actual actions seem to be closer to those of Major James Wemyss (who seems to be largely forgotten today). It was Wemyss who made such a career of going after the farms and families of the partisans.

It was also, IIRC, Wemyss who had his men hold the doors of a cabin shut upon a woman and child while he set fire to the house. The woman and her son lived, but were only able to escape after the heat drove off the men holding the doors shut.

Combine that story with the tendency of the British to target Presbyterian churchs, and you can see were the scriptwriters got the idea...

There is also this story: https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/09/presbyterian-rebellion/#comment-54578
I think the patrol in question was Christian Huck's force, but I don't know what book the commenter is quoting.

In short, while a bit over the top, the church-burning in The Patriot isn't quite the stretch that folks seem to think.

Cabin burning story is from Edgars Partisans and Redcoats, I believe. Been quite a number of years since I read it, though.
 
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Probably the most over the top, wildly inaccurate scene in the Patriot, or rather situation, is the warm welcome Mel Gibson and his family got at the runaway slave maroon community. He was a plantation owner, and runaways were not overly fond of slave owners. I don’t know if they’d have murdered him, but they sure as hell wouldn’t have harbored him.
 
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