Wicked Cultured: Difference between revisions

* Rotti Largo from ''[[Repo! The Genetic Opera]]'' has a love for Italian culture, dressing in suits from Milan and even hosting his own opera.

* Casanova Frankenstein, in ''[[Mystery Men]]'', who is so smart and sophisticated that Captain Amazing asks him how to pluralize words while they are bantering.

'''Frankenstein:''' Nemeses. }}

* ''[[Star Wars]]''

* Subverted by Otto in ''[[A Fish Called Wanda]],'' who ''believes'' himself to be well-educated and tasteful, but is in fact a thuggish moron.

* Agent Stansfield in ''Leon''/''[[The Professional]]'' has a love of classical music and hard drugs.

* Col. Hans Landa of ''[[Inglourious Basterds]]'' is witty and articulate in at least four languages, often engages in philosophic debates with his quarries, and prides himself on having a deep understanding of the human psyche. One of the first things he does in the movie is massacre an entire family of Jewish people.

* [[Christopher Lee]] as Lord Summerisle in ''[[The Wicker Man]]''. He plays the piano, lives in a castle, sings folk songs, is the go-to guy on local history, wears nice suits...

** In contrast to that the "Good Guy" bludgeoning a man and [[It Makes Sense in Context|stealing his clown suit]].

* In ''[[The Abominable Dr. Phibes]]'', the [[Villain Protagonist]] is an award-winning concert organist, holds two degrees from prestigious European universities (including one in theology), and enjoys composing poetry and ballroom dancing to music supplied by the clockwork band he has built. He's utterly mad and spends the movie brutally murdering a whole bunch of innocent people.

* In ''[[SWAT]]'', the tipoff to the identity of [[The Mole]] is that, while the other officers take their leisure playing with their children or drinking beer and watching TV, he spends it drinking ''champagne'' in a restaurant with a ''[[wikipedia:Sommelier|sommelier]]''.

* Cobb from ''[[Following]]'' is well-dressed, witty, urbane, and philosophical about the fact that he's a career burglar.

* Benedict, [[The Dragon]] in ''The [[Last Action Hero]]'', is much more cultured than his mobster boss and frequently irritated by the latter's ignorance.

* Moriarty in ''[[Sherlock Holmes (film)|Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows]]'' is portrayed as a fan of opera, listening to a phonograph of Schubert [[Soundtrack Dissonance|whilst torturing Holmes with a meat hook]]. Similarly, His [[The Dragon|Dragon]], Moran, regrets not having the chance to see [[Don Giovanni]] in Paris.

* Captain Nemo of ''[[Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea]]'' conducted most of his discussions with Dr. Arronax in his fantastic library, decorated with the finest original and replica art, a catalog of priceless biological specimens, and of course his massive [[Ominous Pipe Organ|organ]], on which he played music by the foremost composers. Only a borderline example, because Nemo isn't entirely a villain.

* In William King's ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' [[Space Wolf]] novel ''Wolfblade'', when Torin fills Ragnor in on the ambitions and [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|conflicts]] of the Naviagator Houses, he observes of one particularly ambitious and ruthless one:

* Captain Hook of ''[[Peter Pan]]'' is generally portrayed as cultured, and often something of an [[Anti-Villain]]. Peter, by contrast, is a feral tyrant, ruling by whim but setting strict rules for the Lost Boys. (In some adaptations this is taken farther: Peter is incapable of learning or memory, and murders the Lost Boys if they don't follow his rules.)

** In Disney's otherwise very loosely adapted version, he speaks pleasantly to Wendy while switching to a prettier gold (with ruby ring!) hook to play the piano -- looking quite dashing in a villainous way.

** Played straight with most of the Wolfram and Hart villains. They're normally a bunch of attractive, human (although occasionally soulless) lawyers who play golf, (sometimes with the devil) go to fancy parties (and {{spoiler|[[What the Hell, Hero?|get butchered]]}}) and drink wine. They're usually played as a contrast with the rougher, lower-class heroes. In fact, when Lindsey {{spoiler|leaves W&H}}, he immediately goes back to his roots in a poor, Southern family.

* ''[[The Wire]]'': Brother Mouzone is a [[Badass Bookworm]] who dresses in the traditional Nation of Islam suit and bowtie, and reads heavy and serious intellectual books and magazines between gang killings. Stringer Bell was desperately trying to climb out of the gutter and get to this trope, before {{spoiler|he was killed by Mouzone and Omar Little}}. The police are stunned when they search his apartment and find an immaculate office that wouldn't look out of place on Wall Street.

* Quite a few of the bad guys on the various ''[[Law and Order]]'' series.

* Jim Profit of ''[[Profit]]'', along with a quite hellish [[Freudian Excuse]] for his dislike of television.

* Half of the killers on ''[[Columbo]]'', which is why they all underestimate the rumpled, blue-collar detective.

* In ''[[Cracker]]'', Albie Kinsella (Robert Carlyle) resents how he thinks people view him as an uncultured and uneducated thug. He makes a point of this when he kills his second victim, a professor, who had dismissed him as such in public, when he recognises the music the professor was playing as Mozart and asked him if he was surprised he knew that (which he was). He both hates that people think of him as scum (in his mind) and blames them when he in turn acts like murdering scum. Unfortunately his first murder was a hotheaded attack on a shopkeeper over being ripped off by 4 pence. In other words he's a [[Deconstruction]] of the Trope, a working class killer who both shows signs of being cultured yet is at the same time is becoming every bad thing he thinks society views him as being.

* Colonel Montoya from ''[[Queen of Swords]]''.

* System Lord Ba'al from ''[[Stargate SG-1]]''. Part of his ascendancy to [[Magnificent Bastard|Magnificent Bastardry]] was that he wasn't just a [[Large Ham]]; he could also churn out charm by the bucket and became almost an expert on human high culture. In one of the DVD movies, he forgoes the "[[Kneel Before Zod]]" speech and actually invites himself to lunch with the President in the ''Rose Garden at the White House''! What a guy!

** Please explain how the character is cultured. Not everyone watches that show, and everything you described in regards to their villainy is really quite low-class.

* Spoofed on [[That Mitchell and Webb Look]] in the "Evil Genius" skit. A construction worker who's been paid to put in a [[Trap Door]] asks the evil genius to call him by his first name:

* This phenomenon is very common in ''[[Soap Opera]]''s. Many arch-villains have been featured in this way, including vaguely Italian mobsters Stefano DiMera from ''[[Days of Our Lives]]'' and Carlo Hesser from ''[[One Life to Live]]'', Swedish-born drug smuggler and arms dealer James Stenbeck from ''[[As the World Turns]]'' and cut-throat businessman Roger Thorpe from ''[[Guiding Light]]''. Such wickedly cultured hallmarks of these characters include the almost painfully stereotypical wearing of finely-tailored suits and the drinking of expensive cognac.

* Some of the villains on ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' fall into this category. [[Evil Brit|Sark]] is fond of Chateau Pétrus (one of the world's rarest and most expensive wines). Also, in one episode, the protagonists drug a bad guy's Cristal at a performance of the London Philharmonic (he goes there on the third Saturday of every month).

**** To be fair, at that point Vandal had pretty much been by himself for a thousand years, so he was half crazy from boredom and guilt by the time Supes reached him.

* [[The Simpsons|Sideshow Bob]] and his brother Cecil Terwilliger. Not surprising, as the voice actors<ref>Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce respectively</ref> portrayed the cultured (but not wicked) Crane brothers on ''[[Frasier]]''.

'''Cecil:''' That would be the Latour, then. }}

* All things considered, ''[[Beast Wars]]'' Megatron certainly fits the bill. From his aristocratic accent to his quoting Earth literature, one doesn't doubt that if it had been possible for him to sip a nice chilled glass of red, BW Megatron would have been. Perhaps while doing the [[Slouch of Villainy]] in his command-chair or soaking in his energon hot tub.