Tag Archives: Loki

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The Bad Guy Report 2012

This past Saturday, after I watched Skyfall for the second time, I had some clever thoughts that I believe deserve to be turned into a blog post.  I realize that it’s a little late to be doing 2012 year-in-review summaries, but in my defense, several of the movies I’ll be referencing are probably still in your local cheap second-run theater.  So here it is: The Bad Guy Report.

The year 2012 proved interesting in the villain department.  For example, in The Amazing Spiderman, we saw Luna Lovegood’s dad stop trying to recreate the lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw and move to bigger, higher-tech mad scientist projects, which led to his turning himself into a Godzilla-type creature who enjoyed ravaging New York City.  (By the way, the actor in question may have roles he’d rather be known for than his ten-minute appearance in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One, but I persist in calling him Xenophilius Lovegood because it’s a lot easier to pronounce than his real name, Rhys Ifans.)

Speaking of summer supervillains, this year Batman finally met an opponent with an equally incomprehensible voice.  It’s a good thing most of the confrontational scenes between the Dark Knight and his nemesis, Bane (I guess I could have just said “his b/Bane”), involved more punching than talking.  Despite Bane’s sad backstory, Steelers fans worldwide will hate him forever for destroying Heinz Field just to prove something we already knew: Even a giant fissure opening up in the middle of the field couldn’t stop Hines Ward.

Moving on to movies upon which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deigned to bestow their notice, Django Unchained featured Leonardo DiCaprio’s first truly villainous role.  Seriously, Leo, you’re 38 years old; it was about time you played something other than a golden boy.  Well, to be fair, I suppose Howard Hughes wasn’t, strictly speaking, a golden boy; nor was that guy from Shutter Island.  But it’s good (in a troubling way, I guess) to see that DiCaprio can cross nimbly over to the dark side when called upon to do so.  From what I understand (I haven’t seen the film yet), he does it convincingly.  Oh, speaking of bad guys in Django Unchained, what’s this I hear about Jonah Hill playing a member of the KKK?  I didn’t think the Klan allowed Jewish participants, let alone sweet-looking baby-faced Jewish boys.  I’ll have to see that to believe it.

2012 was also an important year for bad guy philosophy.  Wreck-It Ralph is essentially an extended commentary on the interaction (and sometimes the vast disparity) between the roles we have to play and who we really are at our core.  You probably saw the trailer with the bad guy support group a million times, but the words of the hairy wrestler Zangief bear repeating: “You are bad guy.  But that doesn’t mean you are bad guy.”  (N.B. I never figured out what was so bad about Zangief, other than the fact that he left out his indefinite articles.)  And if you’ll indulge me in one more profound quote, this one from an unnamed zombie: “Good…bad…UGHHHH [zombie sound].  You must love you.”

Now it’s time for the bad guy move of the year.  You know, villains are just like professionals in any field; they exchange ideas through trade publications, discussion boards, etc.  (I was going to say conferences, but they generally don’t like to be in the same room with each other, except in the unusual situation described in the preceding paragraph.)  So some years, you might see two movie villains employing the same strategy, both to great effect.  The 2012 bad guy move of the year is as follows: Get yourself captured and placed inside a glass case right in the middle of the good guy headquarters.  Smile unsettlingly and taunt the good guys.  Eventually, when it’s too late for them to do anything about it, allow them to develop the inkling of the idea that you are exactly where you want to be.  Then, escape and wreak general havoc.

Does this strategy sound familiar?  It should, since it was used by two of the most memorable villains of the year, Loki in The Avengers and Silva in Skyfall.  I didn’t notice the resemblance until the second time I saw Skyfall, which is proof that 2012’s bad guy move of the year is fully customizable to a variety of personalities, styles, and situations–although it seems to work best for villains who fall into the category of mischief maker (as opposed to, say, mad scientist or power-hungry politician).  And now that I’ve mentioned mischief makers, it is perhaps beginning to dawn on you that a very similar strategy, though without the glass case, was used by the ultimate bad guy of the past decade.  Remember?  “I want my phone call”?  In case you need your memory jogged, I’ll close this report with a video clip.  After you’ve marveled at the brilliance of this truly frightening 2008 villain, let me know some of your favorite bad guy moments of 2012.

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Boycott Saturday

My recent post titles seem quite revolutionary: first we resisted the Oscars; now we’re–what? Boycotting everyone’s favorite day of the week? Not exactly. I don’t have a problem with the day itself, but with its name. Here’s why: Saturday is the only weekday named after a Roman deity (Saturn). English is a Germanic language, doggone it. We don’t need any of that Latin crap.

As a review, our other days are named after, respectively, the sun, the moon (note that these are good Anglo-Saxon words–we don’t say Solisday or Lunaday), Tyr (Norse god of war), Woden (the German version of the more familiar Norse god Odin All-Father), Thor (sexy god of thunder), and Freya (goddess of love and beauty and also dead people slain in battle). In other words, the English names of the first six days of the week make you want to go read the Elder Edda while listening to Led Zeppelin.

And then we get to Saturday, which is named after…the depressing Roman god of winter and old age and irony?  (To prove my point, if you don’t know what the word saturnine means, look it up; it’ll make you want to lie in bed all next Saturday, even if you don’t normally do that.)  That’s lame.  I think we need to have a good Northern name for the final day of our week.  I’m sitting here with a copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.  She clearly favors the Greeks and Romans (Norse mythology gets 15 measly pages), but at least her cursory summary will help refresh my memory.  Here are some replacement names I would like to propose.

Baldersday.  I’m actually surprised there isn’t a day named after Balder.  He’s the Christ figure in Norse mythology.  Balder was killed with mistletoe, but according to Wikipedia the all-wise, “after Ragnarök [the Norse Armageddon; cf. Led Zeppelin]. . . he and his brother Höðr would be reconciled and rule the new earth together with Thor’s sons” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldr).  Baldersday would be a fitting name to mark the dying of the old week and the imminent rise of the new one, like the phoenix from the ashes.  But the phoenix is Greek, so never mind.

Valkyriesday.  Cue the Wagner music.  You know the Valkyries–they’re the “maidens” (Hamilton’s quaint word) who show up after battles and get to pick which warriors they want to take to Valhalla.  On second thought, this might not be a good choice.  The day formerly know as Saturday could become very dangerous.

Lokisday. Speaking of dangerous.  You saw what Loki tried to do to our planet in The Avengers.  He’s also the one who killed Balder with mistletoe.*  Loki is a shape-shifter and the closest thing Asgard has to a trickster deity (the Norse were a little too serious for an all-out joker), so at least we could say that the last day of the week would be…er…exciting, and a little more unpredictable than Valkyriesday.  On Valkyriesday, you would definitely die and might or might not get to go to Valhalla.  On Lokisday, you might die.  But you might not.

Heimdallsday. Heimdall is the guy Thor yelled at to “open the Bifrost,” remember?  (All I could think of during that scene was “Beam me up, Scottie.”)  But his name is way too unwieldy (that’s a good Anglo-Saxon word) for a day of the week, so forget it.

I haven’t suggested Freyrsday or Friggasday because those would be too similar to Friday. (Actually, according to Hamilton, some people think Friday was named after Frigga, Odin’s wife, rather than Freya; either way, it’s named after a goddess.  Go women!)  I hope it’s apparent that this is all tongue-in-cheek; I’m really not one of those would-be purifiers of the English language.  I just watched Thor over the weekend and am getting ready to teach a lesson on words derived from mythology in my Advanced Reading and Vocabulary Development class.  But seriously, think about it this coming Saturday.

*Actually, Loki didn’t do the dirty work himself; he got this blind guy named Hoder to throw the mistletoe at Balder.  Typical.