Magnificent Bastard/Film

""I just did what I do best; I took your little plan and I turned it on itself.""

- The Joker, The Dark Knight

Examples of the Magnificent Bastard in film. See Also:

"How about a magic trick? I'm going to make this pencil disappear! * WHAM* Ta-Daaaa! IT'S GONE!""
 * from Tron Legacy.
 * The Joker from The Dark Knight is an unorthodox example of this trope. There's just something about the supreme competence and control he exhibits throughout the entire film that can make one forget (almost) that he's a Complete Monster. Joker Crosses the Line Twice. Hell, he dances a jig up and down the line.
 * When you manage you're a Magnificent Bastard. The best example, however is when


 * Which then leads to some degree of Fridge Logic when the Joker claims not to be a "schemer", and the Fandom supports this.
 * The implications seem to be that the Joker has tons of plans going on at once, that he will only put into effect when it seems interesting or fun to do so, while abandoning others because they're just so boring. He is a schemer, but an incredibly chaotic one.
 * The most magnificent part of the Joker's bastardry extends to meta levels. He managed to convince a very large majority of the fans that he wasn't a schemer, when in fact he had more schemes going at any one point in the film than the entire rest of the cast throughout the whole series.
 * I think that has more to do with the gullibility of certain fans as opposed to anything the Joker did. Indeed, it's hard not to be a schemer, yet be able to come up with all of those long term plans and contingencies.
 * The Book Of The Film gives the backstory of the crime boss known as the Chechen, who rose from being a penniless orphan in Chechnya to being a big fish in Gotham through the drug market and some luck.
 * Addison De Witt from All About Eve. You know you've met a larger than life character when he has "wit" in his name. A Deadpan Snarker, Upper Class Wit and Chessmaster, De Witt is a theatre critic with astonishing power and influence. He can destroy the reputation of top actresses in a single collumn. Smug Snake Eve Harrington makes the mistake of crossing Addison and suffers a Villainous BSOD when he gives her a Hannibal Lecture.
 * Ruthless businessman Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood, though he would be more of a Magnificent Bastard if he were more refined and less erm, hot tempered!
 * Vito Corleone, The Godfather himself.
 * Though possibly more of a Guile Hero, Danny Ocean from Ocean's Eleven exemplifies the protagonist angle of this trope. A persuasive, imaginative, charismatic and highly organized professional criminal with an impeccable sense of style, Danny Ocean pulls off an impressive Plan; robs the central vault of three casinos and gets his ex-wife to break off her relationship with the antagonist.
 * John Dillinger from Public Enemies. There's a reason he's so hard to catch.
 * If you were to read the history of his real-life counterpart, he was arguably more awesome than the film depiction.
 * Also from another Michael Mann crime film, Neil McCaulay from Heat.
 * Keyser Söze from The Usual Suspects.
 * Ozymandius of Watchmen, arguably moreso than his comicbook counterpart as his masterstroke doesn't rely on a fake, alien, psionic squid thing.
 * Hannibal Lecter, who escapes being a Complete Monster by not eating people who are polite to him (which includes not insulting his intelligence by trying to outsmart him).
 * Graham Marshall (Michael Caine) in A Shock to the System.  And does it all with a Deadpan Snarker narration that is 200-proof Michael Caine gold.
 * One word: KKHHAAANNNN!!!!, Star Trek's best example of the Magnificent Bastard, though not the last.
 * Senator / Chancellor / Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. Sith-ness notwithstanding, he managed to shape the entire galaxy in his image, had manipulated every major event for the past two decades or so, and had kept everyone assured of his respectability and trustworthiness while doing so. As he declared himself ruler-for-life (and was applauded by the Senate for doing so) he could justifiably claim to have earned it. And his start to political prominence was over a seemingly minor trade dispute. Which he started. Manages to be both this and a Complete Monster, since it helps he's motivated by pure ambition.
 * While he does get defeated due to not realising Vader cares for his son more than his duty, he still manages to have absolute authority for twenty-five years. Not just that, but he's the first Sith Lord in their five thousand-year history
 * Tony Wendice in Dial M for Murder. After discovering his wife Margot is cheating on him, he creates a complex plan to kill her while arranging a perfect alibi for himself and mentally punishing the man who cuckolded him at the same time. When Margot proves more resilient than he expected and kills the man he blackmailed into doing the deed, he only needs a few minutes to come up with a new plan to make it appear that she committed the act in cold blood. Even when his scheme is in danger of being exposed, he is quickly able to come up with a new way to turn the situation to his advantage. And finally when against all odds his whole plot is exposed, he turns out to be one of the all time great Graceful Losers, pouring wine for everyone who had a hand in finding him out (except a cop who he notes is still on duty).
 * Leslie Vernon, from Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. He's an aspiring spree killer (in the vein of Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger, as the movie is a big Deconstructor Fleet of slasher films) who is chosen to be the subject of a documentary that the main character, Taylor Gentry, is making. She eventually becomes great friends with Leslie, who turns out to be quite charismatic. Then,
 * Kuwabatake Sanjuro from Yojimbo. Not only does he play two rival gangs like fiddles, causing them both to collapse with little suspicion drawn to himself, he's able to turn  to his advantage.
 * Harry Lime from The Third Man. "Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax--the only way you can save money nowadays." And he's played by Orson Welles.
 * Bill "The Butcher" Cutting from Gangs of New York has the hero at his mercy at one point in the movie, but instead of killing him decides to build him into a Worthy Opponent so they can have a Battle Royale With Cheese because having everyone living in terror of him is boring. Well, not quite. He lets the hero live because he considers him Not Worth Killing, who views being left alive by the Butcher as shameful. Which, in fact, may add to this magnificence. It helps that he's played with gusto by Daniel Day Lewis.
 * Bill, namesake of Kill Bill, who drove his former employee/lover to come out of a 4-year coma just to kill him for his magnificent bastardry. Oh, and he put a "cap in [The Bride's] crown" AS she told him she was pregnant with his baby. Then proceeded to adopt that baby. Definitely magnificent.
 * Bill, namesake of Kill Bill, who drove his former employee/lover to come out of a 4-year coma just to kill him for his magnificent bastardry. Oh, and he put a "cap in [The Bride's] crown" AS she told him she was pregnant with his baby. Then proceeded to adopt that baby. Definitely magnificent.

"What kind of fiend are you?
 * Chang, played with brilliant bastardliness by Christopher Plummer, in Star Trek VI the Undiscovered Country. He banters with Kirk at dinner, claiming Shakespeare is best recited in the "original Klingon", and even as he's pounding the Enterprise to death while cloaked, he still has time to quote Henry V, Julius Caesar and finally Hamlet. Classy bastard.
 * Hans Gruber from Die Hard holds a building hostage in order to trick the FBI into helping him steal huge sums of cash from it. That alone qualifies him. But when he's played with deliciously slimy charisma by Alan Rickman, well, Magnificent Bastardry ensues.
 * His brother, Simon Gruber, the Big Bad of Die Hard 3, proves that Magnificent Bastardry must run in the family.
 * Ms. White from Inside Man. She's apparently made a career (or at least a lucrative hobby) of pulling strings and doing favors for the rich and powerful, so she can demand return favors in her own time. Early in the film, after she extracts a demand from the Mayor, all he can say to her is, "You are a magnificent cunt."
 * Dalton Russell would also classify. He takes a bank hostage and creates a foolproof plan to achieve his objective (hint: it's not robbing the bank) while escaping by literally walking out of the front door. Keith Frazier's entry into the plot doesn't even faze him. Russell merely modifies his existing plan and turns Frazier into an unknowing accomplice.
 * Little Bill Daggett of Unforgiven. Play by his rules while in town, particularly by handing over your means of defending yourself, and he's smiling, affable, and friendly; charming, really. Cross him, however, and he'll first put you in a position where you can't fight back and then beat you within an inch of your life or kill you outright for sheer fun. He even has a speech mid-way through detailing that what makes him formidable isn't speed or skill so much as his willingness to stand his ground and count on his manipulation of the odds where other people would piss themselves with fear.
 * He has a speech detailing that what makes him formidable is that he takes the time to aim THE trait that makes all formidable gunfighters formidable to this day.
 * Agent Smith of The Matrix. He "wants everything," and makes a perfect Evil Counterpart to protagonist Neo, as he stands out from other Agents, with actual personality and charisma.
 * The Merovingian from The Matrix seems to fit the trope closer than Agent Smith. The Frenchman is cultured and honourable in keeping his promises, but he is still a bastard. His magnificence is mostly hinted at but he has colourful henchmen, a hot wife that he cheats on, digital love potions, an underground railroad, legions of minions, a chateau in the mountains etc.
 * Also, this is after surviving multiple reformats and rewrites of the reality he inhabits, most designed to (as a side effect) eliminate him or reduce his potential power. He's even gained Vetinari Job Security in the process, being the only undisputable leader for the variety of misfit programs ("monsters") under his control, though this became more relevant in the (defuct) MMORPG than it did in the films.
 * Norman Stansfield in Leon / The Professional is a corrupt DEA agent who casually shoots up an apartment, tells the owner he stopped right in front of him because Beethoven gets boring after his overtures, and even convinces the cops that it was self-defense, despite a single person in the apartment having a gun. He's also played by Gary Oldman.
 * Jackie Brown, who manipulates almost every character in the film against one another, while she steals millions of dollars and is granted freedom from prosecution, with only her lover the wiser.
 * Repo the Genetic Opera has Rotti Largo who . And that's not much considering some of the other stuff he gets away with (and tries to get away with) in the movie.
 * Amber Sweet, Rotti's daughter, has shades of this as well.
 * Evil, as portrayed by David Warner in Time Bandits, particularly during the final fight scene.
 * Also Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate.
 * Jack the Ripper, as portrayed by David Warner in Time After Time
 * The entire premise of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a competition between two con men to see which one is more of a Magnificent Bastard than the other.
 * The Prestige features two magicians trying to beat each other with Magnificent Bastardry.
 * Dr. Frank N Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show is this at times. He's able to manipulate two people whom he's barely met (IE: Brad & Janet) into sleeping with him, tricks said people into eating the remains of someone he killed out of pure spite (Meatloaf, anyone?), and FINALLY brainwashes not only Brad and Janet, but also his groupie Columbia and his own creation Rocky into performing a floorshow with him. All the while, for the most part, maintaining a very charismatic appeal to him.
 * Mr. Potter of Its a Wonderful Life: "I'm an old man, and most people hate me. But I don't like them either, so that makes it all even." Manages to nearly take over an entire town and name it after himself (and would have if it weren't for that meddling George), though he already seems to own absolutely everything in Bedford Falls (including the banks) beside the Building and Loan. ("Congressman Blatz is here to see you." "Oh, tell the congressman to wait.") In his office, there is an oil painting of himself on the wall and a bust of Napoleon (presumably his two favorite people.) The chair where visitors sit is deliberately tiny so he can lord over them, and on his desk is a paperweight shaped like a skull. During the war he becomes head of the draft board (natch.) He is, however, such a bastard that he also qualifies as a Complete Monster.
 * Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Billy Flynn
 * From Thick As Thieves we have Keith Ripley, a master thief who has been manipulating the steps of Miami thief Gabriel Martin (Antonio Banderas) from beginning to end, in order to pull off a heist for some Faberge Eggs from a high security vault, and he does this with so much class that you have to just love the guy.
 * Lacenaire, the poet, playwright and murderer from the French movie classic Children of Paradise is an outstanding example of this trope. He's proudly evil ("I'll hold my head high, until it falls into the basket"), spends the second half of the movie manipulating events even when they don't go his own way and treating the other characters in the movie as if they are figures from his plays, is charming and foppish to the point of dandyism (in the original sense of the word, he lives during the era when the term was coined), he's witty and calm even when the lesser villain, the Count of Montray, has him bodily ejected from a theater and he gets even with the count with first a Crowning Moment of Awesome and then a Crowning Moment Of Badass that must be seen to be believed. His real life namesake and counterpart was pretty salty himself, holding all Paris spellbound during his murder trial and inspiring writers like Baudelaire and Dostoevsky, who used him as one of his models for Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.
 * More like Magnificent Basterd, Standartenfuhrer (Col.) Hans Landa, aka The Jew Hunter of Inglourious Basterds steals the show with his awesomeness and magnificence. Despite being a brutal, sadistic maniac tasked with searching all of France for Jews in hiding, his wit, intelligence, romanticism, and charisma make him the real star of the show, not Raine and his Nazi-hunting Basterds. By the end of the film Quentin Tarantino has remarked that Hans Landa might be the greatest character he's ever written, and considering this is the guy who created Jules Fuckin Winnfield, that's saying something.
 * This character was so complex and such a magnificent basterd, that ol' QT was worried that he'd be impossible to play (Leonardo Di Caprio was originally slated to play him). Luckily, he got the trilingual Austrian method actor Cristoph Waltz (who can also act in 4 languages), who really really got into his role, and won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival with a standing ovation. THAT is how awesomely magnificent he is.
 * Waltz also won the BAFTA, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2009.
 * One of the Jew Hunter's kids is studying to be a rabbi.
 * He's such a magnificent bastard that we are all essentially rooting for a man called the fucking "Jew Hunter." He even says that he likes his nickname, because he feels he's done everything in his power to earn it.
 * Nathan Muir of Spy Game may fit into this category. He demonstrates a certain amount of Chessmaster proclivities, risks his pension and his retirement to get his protege free, and manages to charm his way into the information he needs to get the job done.
 * The scene at the end, where his coworkers discover that, cements it.
 * The best intelligence agencies in the world don't even know his birthday.
 * In Fracture, Anthony Hopkins' character with a bit of Gambit Roulette hatches a plan that allows him to shoot his cheating wife, hide the murder weapon, confess to his crime, have his charges acquitted and be immune against further trial, cause the suicide of the man sleeping with his wife, pull the plug on his comatose wife, and get away with it all. Until the last two minutes of the film anyway...
 * Which in all honesty, wouldn't get him behind bars. The evidence was obtained illegally, and he wasn't technically the one who killed her. The doctors did that, and if her death was ruled a murder, then it would mean that any and all doctors who have ever invoked a patient's "right to death" rights would have to dragged in on counts of murder.
 * Vincent Price's title character of The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Even more so in the sequel.

The kind that wins!"

""Well, Tosca's not for everyone.""
 * Tyler Durden from Fight Club.
 * Bricktop from Snatch, is really a near miss. He doesn't do much for convoluted planning, but he's a Complete Monster who nonetheless is quite funny, carries himself (and gives speeches) with style, is ruthless and willing to kill anyone in a second, and generally always seems to have control of the situation and be one step ahead of other characters. (For example take the following scene: Turkish has failed to come through on a favor to Bricktop and cost Bricktop a lot of money. Turkish runs back to his office, hoping he can get to his safe where he has enough money to flee Bricktop. Bricktop and his goons are already waiting there, they catch Turkish by surprise and have a surprisingly civilized conversation where Bricktop tells Turkish what Turkish will have to do in order to make things right, all while Turkish expects Bricktop to kill him at any moment. Then, just before leaving, Bricktop stops on his way out the door and says "Now, I know you came back here to open your safe" * Bricktop pushes aside a picture hiding the safe* "Well, now you can open it." The next scene begins with Bricktop counting all of Turkish's savings as he walks out to the car, knowing that he's left Turkish no escape and now virtually owns Turkish). Unfortunately, Bricktop's lack of planning comes back to bite him in the end, as he is badly, badly, Out Gambitted by the movie's resident Wild Cards.
 * The original working title for The Good the Bad And The Ugly was The Three Magnificent Rogues. If we assume 'rogues' is, here, an Unusual Euphemism for 'Bastards', it's a much more accurate description of the film's contents than The Good, The Bad and The Ugly ever was.
 * If Mr. White of Quantum isn't a Magnificent Bastard, he's getting very close. In Casino Royale he was an unremarkable "next-link-in-the-money-chain" type, by Quantum of Solace, he's been upgraded to a Wicked Cultured, total Deadpan Snarker who laughs in Judi Dench's face while being tortured, can say "we have people everywhere" and mean it, and gets away scot-free at the end of the movie (though he'll probably get his comeuppance in the next one). Oh, and he was also the only member of Quantum to keep his head down when Bond was pwning all the other Quantum operatives during the Opera scene.

"You can't touch me without cutting your own throat! You know why? Because the president loves my ass!"
 * Dominic Greene. He fools the entire world by posing as friendly environmentalist, tricks Americans into helping Quantum couping Bolivian government for supposedly "oil" rights, and, finally and the most terrifyingly, totally rips Medrano off when the General disagrees with water contract. Should the General backs off, he'd wake up with his balls on his mouth, and his willing replacement stands over him. Medrano is just dumbfounded.
 * Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies.
 * Gustav Graves of Die Another Day.
 * Lee Woo-jin from Oldboy is this, through and through. Imprisoning Oh Dae-su for 15 years was only the start of his plan to ruin his life.
 * Arguably Jareth from Labyrinth. The Large Ham aspect of this trope is definitely present. As is the manipulative part, as evidenced by his plan with the drugged peach. He's also very charismatic.
 * Clyde Shelton in Law Abiding Citizen.
 * Barbara from Notes On a Scandal, who's plan comes nearly to completion, after lots of manipulation. However, she was undone by her diary.
 * Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), the main character in The Bad and The Beautiful. The impoverished son of a legendary movie mogul who died bankrupt, he built up his own studio from nothing and made five Best Picture winners...and cheerfully stepped on everybody he had to in order to get it done. Some highlights: he got his best friend and creative partner to tell him all about his dream project, then stole the credit for all his ideas and gave the directing job to someone else; he recruited the alcoholic and mentally unstable daughter of a Hollywood legend to star in his next big movie, seduced her to get her through production sober, then started boffing one of the extras before the premier party was over; and he got his hot new screenwriter to finish his script by paying one of his Latin Lover leading men to seduce the guy's wife to keep her from distracting him...until the lover and the wife died in a plane crash the day they finished the final draft. So what's so magnificent about all this bastardry?
 * Or maybe they don't; the ending is open.
 * This phrase is used in the film Dead Man on Campus, in a reluctant appreciation of another character's immoral yet effective cunning.
 * Gene Hackman's Herod from The Quick and The Dead. This magnificent bastard not only holds an entire town hostage as his own little kingdom, once killed a group of priests who nursed him back to health and burned down their mission,,  , but he also hosts an annual picnic-and-quick-draw competition where anybody who wants to take a shot at him (literally) can do so (and most likely end up dead for the effort), all with an eat-your-heart-out smirk on his mug the whole time!
 * While we're talking about Hackman, the man whose best roles are MB roles, let's not forget Mr. Royal Tenenbaum, Esq. of Wes Anderson's film of same name. A rotten husband who refuses to give his wife the divorce she requests, who worms his way back into the affections of his children and estranged wife by, who is likely 90% responsible for the failures of his prodigious offspring, who introduces his adopted daughter as "my adopted daughter," who shot his own son (while on the same team, a fact he cavalierly dismisses) with a BB gun, and who starts a fight with the estranged wife's new beau by using antiquated racial epithets is still, somehow,  ! A breathtaking and awe-inspiring bastardy magnificence.
 * Tom Reagan from Millers Crossing is a rare protagonist example as he plays both sides in a mob war to make sure his boss comes out on top.
 * Gordon Gekko evolves into a Magnificent Bastard in the sequel to Wall Street.
 * Major Lemond (Ken Jenkins) in Air America pretty much openly admits to the visiting Senator Davenport that, yes, he is behind the drug smuggling operation in Laos, then delivers a pretty stinging Hannibal Lecture to him about how he'll still get away with everything.

"Jack Sparrow: Me, I'm dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest, honestly. It's the honest ones you have to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're about to do something incredibly...stupid."
 * Everything about M. Bison in the Street Fighter movie is larger than life (except, of course, for his actor Raul Julia's slight frame). He kidnaps AN delegates to ransom them for seed money so that he can, among other things, build a mall (with the help of outside investors, no less!). Not to mention creating his own currency and valuing it against the British pound, with the justification that the British banks will honor that amount after he kidnaps their queen. And when his men capture AN soldiers intent on killing him? He turns them loose one at a time so he can fight to the death on live television! Not to mention that, for him, killing peoples' fathers is just a Tuesday. Raul Julia based his performance on Richard III from Shakespeare's play of the same name who was quite the Magnificent Bastard himself.
 * Oddly (and infuriatingly) enough, Dr. Loomis was turned into one of these in the Halloween 2 remake.
 * The Title character of Cecil B Demented.
 * Lady Van Tassel from Sleepy Hollow. Just, Lady Van Tassel!
 * Jack Sparrow, of Pirates of the Caribbean. Even his enemies can't help but admire his ambitious gambits... savvy?
 * His former Bastard Understudy Hector Barbossa can outwit the rest of the cast when needed, but his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder makes him too predictable to match Jack. Jack lampshades this flaw near the end of the first movie:


 * Barbossa fully qualifies in On Stranger Tides. He actually makes you feel like cheering as he pulls off a Karma Houdini!
 * And who can forget Blackbeard, aka "The Pirate That All Pirates Fear"? Yes, he's a Complete Monster to the point that he flaunts it, but the twist is he's so stylish about it that even when he, you can't help but cheer for him. It also helps that he's one of the few characters in Pirates that can not only outwit Jack, but also outright reverse manipulate him (though Jack would triumph in the end through Xanatos Speed Chess).
 * Riddick from Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick. He routinely makes it appear as if he planned each step. This is especially true when he is
 * Depraved Bisexual Catherine Tramell of Basic Instinct.
 * Matsu, protagonist of the Female Prisoner Scorpion series, has all the basic characteristics, plus a classic death glare and an iconic costume.
 * Sarone in Anaconda, who plays every other character like a fiddle in his quest for the snake. Eric Stoltz is the only person who manages to outsmart him even once.
 * Mike Wilson from How to Be A Serial Killer. A Trickster Mentor and Serial Killer extraordinare, with charisma to spare and standards.
 * Mok from Rock and Rule.
 * Another rare heroic example is Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption. Upon discovering the deteriorating condition of the wall of his cell, he . Meanwhile, he works his way into the trust of the Warden, who is under the mistaken assumption that he is the Magnificent Bastard. Twenty years later, Andy ...all without mentioning a single word of his plan to anyone...not even his best friend. Andy is like the heroic version of Keyzer Soze, and gives us one of the most satisfying endings in film history.