Fictional villains I admire from a distance

Having bored you all (well, I got no comments so I assume it bored or confused you all) with the characters I draw on for my villainous persona, I'd rather turn the tables and talk a little about villains who most definitely are not me, but whom I nevertheless, for lack of a better term, admire. Well, find interesting. OK, tolerate.

1. Maximilian Largo (from the sort-of-last Sean Connery Bond film, Never Say Never Again). You just can't beat the smirking, joking, scene-chewing Klaus Maria Brandauer as Maximilian Largo. His yacht has a screen that keeps minute to minute tabs on his net worth (the number keeps racing upward like the National Debt billboard near Times Square). He has the cheesiest 1980s taste in videogames (he and James Bond play a ridiculous version of something that resembles Tail Gunner (the primitive arcade version) for those of you who have your advanced degrees in paleogaming). He likes nuclear weapons, a key megalomaniac obsession. But most of all he has excellent taste in villainess sidekicks (the mesmerizing Barbara Carrera as Fatima Blush, who reponds to Largo's plans to kill 007 with this line delivered with her unforgettable, hyper-enunciated alto: "Oh, Maxi-millllian. Youh sense of humah issss deeee-licious!")

He's not like me because his villainy is too easy, too Eurotrash, not nearly obsessive, warped, intellectual or driven enough. He wants to conquer the world because...because...pourquoi pas? Not me.

2. Dracula: Drac has lots of traits I like in a bad guy: weird charisma, immortality, thorough sense of history, and he's particular about his beverages. But there is something offputting about him. I can't really say I've roleplayed him to my satisfaction (and I have tried with generous partners, it still didn't work).

I know what the problem is: it's lack of empathy in the character. How can Drac really relate to his heroines? If you really are a different species, and you feed off damsels, how could you not treat them like cattle after a while? I really don't want to objectify my heroines, not matter how diabolical a peril I put them in. In fact, the mere act of planning a diabolical peril requires some basic respect, in a twisted way, for the damsel. It's almost out of character for Drac; he just wants to bite them. After a while, kinda repetitive. I think I'd rather be Van Helsing in this one (and not like in the movie).

3. Agent Smith (from the Matrix movies): Lots of good stuff about this guy. Smart, motivated, malicious, unpredictable. That great line in the first movie, "You are the disease and we are the cure!" -- well, anyone who has played as a heroine defending law and order against me as a villain in RP knows that I love riffing on that kind of sentiment.

But Smith is just implacable, there is a lot of intelligence but no soul there (well, he is a computer programme). It's not just the heroine who has to have a weak spot; the villain should have one too (preferably, if obviously, for the heroine herself).

4.  Liam Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins: Well, first of all, I would want Liam Neeson to play me on film -- he's about my height (ie very tall), quiet, intense, with not an ounce of the fey about him. He's older than me but so what?  And he was married to Natasha Richardson, whom I admired, thought was very pretty, and have direct proof was a sweetheart (no I never met her personally).

Anyway, Neeson's "Ra's" is soulful, brooding, and warped beyond recovery. Hmm, maybe my villainous persona really is like that. I think though that the portrayal is of a character too ascetic to really be me. I have my need for purity (specifically, in freezing cold, on two fiberglass planks at 12 000 ft elevation, surrounded by rock and ice), and I have a deep appreciation for the aesthetics of, for example, Japanese calligraphy. But I don't make asceticism a goal for long unless I am in a really, really foul mood. And in RL I just find that (for me) that is running away from something, rather than reaching for something. For me Zen is a tool, not a state of being. YMMV.

5. Verbal Kint (from The Usual Suspects): I love the whole story of Keyser Soze, the way Kint plays the police for fools. I am just not that good a liar, and don't really want to be. Deceptive, yes. Manipulative, of course. But profuse lying like that? As a villainous character I'd rather distort the truth than completely reinvent it.

That doesn't mean I think the character of Verbal Kint is a level of evil to which I won't stoop (in character of course). Quite the opposite. For a brash lie may require more pyrotechnic skill than a subtle distortion of the truth, but the latter can endure, and can change the victim. Which weapon is more diabolical: a grenade, or a virus?

6. The Operative (from the movie Serendipity):skilled, principled, and utterly misguided. I like his style, his articulate nature, and his dedication to a deeply flawed cause. At the same time, the character is politically naive. And that is one thing I am not.

It has become a cliche that "no villain knows that he is evil." Well, that was a useful corrective to some of the stock Snidely Whiplash characters in the movies, but in a world not of black and white but grey, I think a villain who recognizes his own morally compromised nature is more dangerous, as he can empathize with both heroes and heroines, and find their vulnerabilities more easily. In short, the notion that "no villain considers himself evil" is turning into a crutch to make bad guys static characters. In any drama or literature, characters should go on a journey. If you take the cliche too strongly, that process does not happen.

And I suppose I should supplement this little excursus (having started with a Bond villain) with a comment about 007 as anti-hero. You'd think I, as a guy, would love to be James Bond: Bond gets all the girls, he gets to shoot whomever he pleases, and he looks like (oh, who is it now? who cares).

Well, I don't envy him, not really. Why not? Pretty simple. It's not the anomie of his existence that is so charmless. It's not even his fundamental misogyny (although I just can't relate to that either). It's that his tastes, his peccadilloes, are so...so...pedestrian! Shaken, not stirred? It doesn't make a goddam difference. Only a fanboy could give a monkey's. I do want the car, though -- well, only the Astin Martins -- the DB5, the DB7 or the V12 -- not the stupid Beemers….