10 Movie Villains That Were Total Fanboys
These movie villains were completely OBSESSED.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 Few movies are complete without a villain to give the hero purpose and let them achieve
00:04 their full potential, but it's also fair to say that most movie bad guys have fairly
00:09 typical generic motivations; to kill the hero, dominate the world, destroy and enslave all
00:15 of mankind, and so on.
00:17 Sometimes though, things get a little more interesting than that, especially if the antagonist
00:21 actually ends up being rather fond of the hero in question.
00:24 In fact, they can sometimes be obsessed with them enough to be an outright fanboy.
00:29 But fanboy-culture is definitely a strange phenomenon, and to see it reflected in movies
00:33 themselves is weirder still.
00:35 Yet given how obsessive people can evidently be in reality, it absolutely makes sense to
00:39 witness it on screen.
00:41 So that's what we're here to talk about today as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:45 and these are 10 Movie Villains That Were Total Fanboys.
00:48 10.
00:49 Kylo Ren - Star Wars The Force Awakens
00:52 Perhaps the single smartest idea in the entire Star Wars sequel trilogy was to make the new
00:57 primary antagonist Kylo Ren a card-carrying Darth Vader fanboy.
01:02 From early on in The Force Awakens, it's made abundantly clear that Kylo is obsessed
01:06 with Vader, to the extent of even worshipping the melted remnants of his mask.
01:10 It's of course worth mentioning that this adoration is only exacerbated by Kylo being
01:14 Vader's grandson, and throughout the sequel trilogy, he desperately attempts to live up
01:19 to the legacy of Vader's tyranny.
01:21 While The Force Awakens perhaps felt a little too much like a soft reboot of the franchise,
01:25 portraying the new Vader figure as a literal Vader fanboy, and a hilariously petulant,
01:30 anger-prone one at that, made for a rather clever twist.
01:33 Some even went as far as to suggest that Kylo was designed to poke fun at Star Wars fanboys
01:37 themselves, what with his childish tantrums and initial obsession with the past.
01:41 That is, until he decided that it was better to burn it all down in The Last Jedi.
01:45 9.
01:46 Aldrich Killian - Iron Man 3
01:49 Iron Man 3's main villain is genius scientist Aldrich Killian, who during the film's opening
01:54 1999 set flashback, is revealed to be a fawning Tony Stark fanboy.
01:59 The nerdy Killian approaches Stark and Maya Hansen at a New Year's Eve party, where
02:03 he gushes his admiration for the pair and invites them to join his company, Advanced
02:07 Ideas Mechanics.
02:09 Hansen politely humours Killian, but Stark cruelly pranks him by promising to meet him
02:13 on the roof, yet never showing up.
02:15 This ends up being a huge mistake on Tony's part though, given that it motivates Killian
02:19 to seek revenge years later, under the guise of the Mandarin.
02:22 When Killian resurfaces, he's shed his scruffy prior appearance and he's been cured of his
02:27 physical disabilities by the Extremis virus, which has also given him superhuman regenerative
02:31 capabilities, making him quite the adversary for Stark.
02:35 And to think, things could have been so different had Tony simply shown some respect and not
02:39 blown him off quite so rudely back in 1999.
02:42 8.
02:43 Richie and Amber - Scream
02:45 The Scream franchise has featured a number of fanboy antagonists, whether obsessed with
02:50 horror movies or franchise heroine Sidney, though the recent fifth film offered up a
02:54 terrifically pointed and contemporary riff to this very idea.
02:58 As it turns out, the killers are Richie and Amber, a pair of literally die-hard fans of
03:02 the Stab horror movie franchise, a series of in-universe films adapted from the original
03:07 Ghostface killings.
03:08 The pair reveal that they met online and, after both being disappointed with the Rian
03:12 Johnson-directed Stab 8, decided to embark on their own killing spree in Woodsboro.
03:17 And the goal here?
03:18 To create the source material for a new Stab movie, while luring out the original cast
03:23 - that is, Sidney, Dewey, and Gale - to get them back into the fold for good measure.
03:28 As commentaries on toxic fandoms go, it's pretty ingenious, revealing the villains to
03:32 be a heightened, nightmarish version of all the social media trolls who make their favorite
03:36 movie franchise their entire personality.
03:39 7.
03:40 Zero - John Wick Chapter 3 - Parabellum
03:43 Though the marketing for John Wick painted antagonist Zero as a typically stoic Japanese
03:47 assassin, he's actually a far more irreverent character in the final movie.
03:51 This is especially apparent later in the film, when he and John meet up within the safe haven
03:55 of the Continental Hotel, where combat is prohibited.
03:58 Hilariously, Zero sits uncomfortably close to John on a sofa, and when John moves, Zero
04:03 awkwardly turns to him to basically start gushing like the Jew-eyed fanboy that he is.
04:08 Zero tells Wick that he's a huge fan and that, amid their scuffles, he hasn't disappointed
04:12 with regard to his legendary reputation.
04:15 Zero then fawns over John as his dog leaps up to his lap.
04:18 It's a testament to Wick's reputation that, despite being charged with killing him, Zero
04:22 can't help but fanboy out, basically being reduced to a quivering dweeb in Baba Yaga's
04:27 presence.
04:28 In fact, Zero's admiration for John extends far enough that he avoids numerous obvious
04:32 openings to kill him during their final battle, and once John has mortally wounded him, takes
04:36 a clear perverse pleasure in John acknowledging that they had a pretty good fight.
04:41 6.
04:42 The Riddler, Batman Forever, and The Batman
04:45 Two separate Batman movies have depicted The Riddler as a shameless Batman fanboy, albeit
04:49 in starkly different ways.
04:51 In Batman Forever, Edward Nygma is a kooky scientist working at Wayne Enterprises who
04:56 idolizes Bruce Wayne.
04:57 And after Bruce rejects Nygma's mind control experiment, he spends the rest of the movie
05:01 psychotically plotting revenge against him.
05:04 While in the recent The Batman, the audience is led to believe that Edward Nashton has
05:07 figured out the Dark Knight's true identity.
05:10 During their climactic confrontation at Arkham State Hospital, Nashton reveals that he's
05:14 actually a Batman fan.
05:15 More to the point, his attempts to expose Gotham's corrupt underbelly were inspired
05:20 by Batman's own crusade, under the impression that the two could eventually work together
05:24 to help clean up the city's streets.
05:26 It ties so perfectly into the film's overall thematic, that Bruce must learn to fight crime
05:31 in a way that inspires not vengeance, but hope, while showing him the ultimate, dangerous
05:35 potential of vigilante copycats.
05:37 5.
05:38 Rupert Pupkin, The King of Comedy
05:41 Martin Scorsese's masterful black comedy The King of Comedy centers around Rupert Pupkin,
05:46 an aspiring stand-up comedian with mental health issues who becomes dangerously obsessed
05:51 with famous late-night TV show host Jerry Langford.
05:54 Following an encounter with Langford, Pupkin believes that his big break as a comedian
05:58 is on the horizon, only to be rebuffed by Langford's staff and eventually Langford
06:02 himself as he persistently attempts to book a slot on his show.
06:06 Rupert's obsession only ramps up from there.
06:08 He ends up going to Langford's home and eventually kidnapping him, holding him ransom
06:12 in exchange for an appearance on his show.
06:14 Though Rupert's routine actually goes down rather well with the audience, albeit under
06:17 the impression that he's joking about kidnapping Langford, he's arrested immediately thereafter.
06:22 While the film's final sequence is steeped in ambiguity, it's nevertheless clear that
06:26 Rupert's delusional fascination with his idol hasn't diminished in the slightest.
06:30 4.
06:31 Syndrome, The Incredibles
06:33 Fanboy villains don't get much blatant than The Incredibles' buddy Pine, who as a 10-year-old
06:38 boy idolized superhero Mr. Incredible and even attempted to fight alongside him as a
06:42 sidekick under the name of Incrediboy.
06:45 But when this results in near disaster, Mr. Incredible rejects buddy, causing him to bitterly
06:49 reinvent himself as a supervillain called Syndrome, re-emerging 15 years later with
06:54 a bevy of high-tech gadgets, which he hopes will make the very idea of superheroism absolutely
06:58 obsolete.
07:00 Back in 2004, the idea of a jilted superhero fanboy turning into a supervillain seemed
07:04 incredibly ahead of its time.
07:07 And in an era where superhero movie fandom and discourse is regularly unbearable, and
07:11 so-called "fans" might often seem intent on tearing down the very thing they supposedly
07:15 love, it's a notion that has aged so very well.
07:18 3.
07:19 Rowan North, Ghostbusters 2016
07:22 The 2016 Ghostbusters reboot featured a villain by the name of Rowan North, a mad scientist,
07:26 a cultist with a God complex, and a major chip on his shoulder about unspecified bullying
07:31 which happened to him in the past.
07:33 His plan?
07:34 To flood New York City with ghosts to basically get revenge on the world he hates.
07:37 And while Rowan himself isn't a scorned fanboy of the Ghostbusters, his character
07:41 was very clearly designed to be a thinly-veiled parody of overzealous Ghostbuster fanboys
07:45 themselves.
07:46 The second that Sony announced that an all-female Ghostbusters reboot was in the works, the
07:50 usual suspects took to social media to moan that their childhood was being pissed on,
07:54 and much of that petulant, misplaced energy feels very apparent in the hateful man-child,
07:59 Rowan.
08:00 Hell, he even ends up literally turning into a kaiju-sized version of the ghost in the
08:04 Ghostbusters logo, not so subtly symbolizing that he's literally made Ghostbusters his
08:08 entire damn personality.
08:10 Hilariously, the director aggressively thumbs his nose at the movie's haters by having
08:14 Rowan ultimately be defeated when the Ghostbusters fire their proton packs right into his dick.
08:19 2.
08:20 Electro, The Amazing Spider-Man 2
08:23 Spider-Man fans were extremely excited when Jamie Foxx was cast as Electro in The Amazing
08:27 Spider-Man 2, but that enthusiasm quickly melted away within minutes of meeting him
08:32 in the movie.
08:33 As it turns out, the baffling decision was made to reimagine Max Dillon as an ultra-nerdy,
08:37 lonesome Spider-Man fan, who after being rescued by the web-slinger at the start of the movie,
08:42 develops a deeply unhealthy obsession with him.
08:44 Max comes to believe that they're the best of friends, and even creates his own obscenely
08:48 creepy Spider-Man shrine.
08:50 But after an accident transforms him into Electro, his newfound abilities turn him into
08:54 a power-drunk bad guy.
08:56 Were he not so pathetically obsessed with Spider-Man, he would have been a sympathetic-ish
09:00 antagonist, and considering how poorly received this aspect of the characterization was, it's
09:05 little surprise that it was dropped entirely for his reappearance in Spider-Man No Way
09:08 Home.
09:09 Hiring an actor as cool and as badass as Jamie Foxx to play a sweaty, fawning nerd is, uh,
09:15 definitely a choice indeed.
09:16 1.
09:17 Mr. Glass, Unbreakable
09:19 And finally, we have Mr. Glass from M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable.
09:23 Now, Glass, whose real name is Elijah Price, suffers from brittle bone disease and finds
09:28 solace in the comfort of comic books, of which he is an undeniable expert.
09:32 Glass seeks out David Dunn, the sole survivor of a train crash, under the belief that the
09:36 pair may be real-life superheroes.
09:39 On the one end, the ultra-fragile yet extremely intelligent Price, and on the other, the invulnerable
09:44 Dunn.
09:45 But at film's end, we learn that Mr. Glass actually caused the opening train crash himself,
09:49 as well as numerous other high-profile air-quotes "accidents", all in an attempt to find
09:53 his superheroic counterpart, the person who would emerge unscathed and give him a true
09:57 life's purpose.
09:59 Price was so desperate for the hero-villain dichotomy of his beloved comics to be real
10:03 that he engineered the circumstances through which himself and Dunn would be brought together.
10:08 Fanboys don't get much more unhinged than that.
10:10 And there we go, my friends.
10:11 Those were 10 Movie Villains That Were Total Fanboys.
10:13 I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in
10:16 the comment section below.
10:18 As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Instagram, where it's @RetroJ,
10:22 and I'll see you in the next video.
10:23 I hope to see you over there.
10:24 But before I go, I just want to say one thing.
10:26 Even though we spoke today about fanboys who were maybe a little bit too obsessed, there
10:29 is one thing that I am most definitely a fan of, and you should be a fan of as well, and
10:33 that is yourself.
10:34 Treat yourself with love and respect, my friend, because you deserve all of the best things
10:38 in life, alright?
10:39 Like love, happiness, and success, and do not let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise.
10:43 Be your own biggest cheerleader, and let's get you out there and smashing your life goals
10:47 today.
10:48 I believe in you.
10:49 As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome.
10:51 Don't forget that, and I'll speak to you soon.