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fannish5: Scary Characters
Sep. 19th, 2009 11:50 amList the five scariest characters ever.
As the question was about characters, not monsters, I shall try to avoid the obvious (i.e. an old reply of mine). (The Gentlemen from Hush or the Alien from Alien would fall under this category, as would Shelob from Lord of the Rings. That's the difference between monster and villain, too.)
1.) Caligula as interpreted by Robert Graves and John Hurt in I, Claudius. Making genuine madmen scary is more difficult than you think, because of that "oh, he's so funny, and the hero is smarter anyway, so what's to fear?" trap. What makes the Graves version of Caligula the often imitated and copied epitome of genuine mads cariness is, among other things, that Caligula even at his maddest isn't stupid. He's also mercurial and unpredictable so that a successful compliment from last week can be a death sentence this week. Particularly scary Caligula scenes in the tv version of I, Claudius: ( are spoilery if you have neither read nor watched. )
2.) Annie Wilkes, main character from Stephen King's novel Misery. The film to my mind while offering a great performance from Kathy Bates gets a few things crucially wrong, among them that this is a story about writing. ( In which true fannish dedication is explored in spoilery ways. )
3.) Dolores Umbridge, from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Speaking of people I know: to my mind, Dolores Umbridge is the best villain JKR came up with in all seven Potter novels. Voldemort is your conventional Evil Overlord who keeps ignoring the Evil Overlord Rules. Bellatrix Lestrange is flashy fun as far as evil madwoman go. But Umbridge is the banality of evil personified. She's not mad, she's seriously convinced of her own goodness, and the petty kind of sadism she indulges in is so frightening because it's the type you find, minus magical means, in all kind of people in authority. ( Exemplified by a spoilery scene. )
4.) Livia from I, Claudius. Another I, Claudius entry is inevitable because Livia isn't just that great but that scary as well. In a very different way than Caligula. Livia isn't insane, for starters. She's smart, cruel, and when telling her dying husband after decades of pulling strings behind the scenes, killing and/or ruining everyone standing in her way, "All I ever did was for Rome", honestly convinced that this is true. As opposed to the banality-of-evil type of vllain Umbridge is, Livia isn't petty, though, and she's also very witty; with just enough vulnerability flickering up very new and then to remind us she's human in addition to being a mastermind. And a master manipulator till her last breath; the scene I mentioned in the Caligula entry isn't her last one, it's the last-but-one; in her last one, she pulls off another victory, ( which is spoilery ).
5.) Dream of the Endless, from Sandman. Morpheus might not be the most obvious candidate, given his narrative regularly makes fun of his Byronic tendencies, and also, he's the hero of same. But he can be scary as hell. ( Cases in point of a spoilery nature. )
As the question was about characters, not monsters, I shall try to avoid the obvious (i.e. an old reply of mine). (The Gentlemen from Hush or the Alien from Alien would fall under this category, as would Shelob from Lord of the Rings. That's the difference between monster and villain, too.)
1.) Caligula as interpreted by Robert Graves and John Hurt in I, Claudius. Making genuine madmen scary is more difficult than you think, because of that "oh, he's so funny, and the hero is smarter anyway, so what's to fear?" trap. What makes the Graves version of Caligula the often imitated and copied epitome of genuine mads cariness is, among other things, that Caligula even at his maddest isn't stupid. He's also mercurial and unpredictable so that a successful compliment from last week can be a death sentence this week. Particularly scary Caligula scenes in the tv version of I, Claudius: ( are spoilery if you have neither read nor watched. )
2.) Annie Wilkes, main character from Stephen King's novel Misery. The film to my mind while offering a great performance from Kathy Bates gets a few things crucially wrong, among them that this is a story about writing. ( In which true fannish dedication is explored in spoilery ways. )
3.) Dolores Umbridge, from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Speaking of people I know: to my mind, Dolores Umbridge is the best villain JKR came up with in all seven Potter novels. Voldemort is your conventional Evil Overlord who keeps ignoring the Evil Overlord Rules. Bellatrix Lestrange is flashy fun as far as evil madwoman go. But Umbridge is the banality of evil personified. She's not mad, she's seriously convinced of her own goodness, and the petty kind of sadism she indulges in is so frightening because it's the type you find, minus magical means, in all kind of people in authority. ( Exemplified by a spoilery scene. )
4.) Livia from I, Claudius. Another I, Claudius entry is inevitable because Livia isn't just that great but that scary as well. In a very different way than Caligula. Livia isn't insane, for starters. She's smart, cruel, and when telling her dying husband after decades of pulling strings behind the scenes, killing and/or ruining everyone standing in her way, "All I ever did was for Rome", honestly convinced that this is true. As opposed to the banality-of-evil type of vllain Umbridge is, Livia isn't petty, though, and she's also very witty; with just enough vulnerability flickering up very new and then to remind us she's human in addition to being a mastermind. And a master manipulator till her last breath; the scene I mentioned in the Caligula entry isn't her last one, it's the last-but-one; in her last one, she pulls off another victory, ( which is spoilery ).
5.) Dream of the Endless, from Sandman. Morpheus might not be the most obvious candidate, given his narrative regularly makes fun of his Byronic tendencies, and also, he's the hero of same. But he can be scary as hell. ( Cases in point of a spoilery nature. )
