Magnificent Bastard/Film: Difference between revisions
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* 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 [[Manipulative Bastard|quite charismatic]]. Then, {{spoiler|she is surprised when he does go through with the killings, his chosen victims trapped in a mansion that he pretreated to be lethal. She decides to help, but when she goes into the mansion, she realizes Leslie's real plan: she and her crew were also intended to be his victims, and [[Unwitting Pawn|they're playing right into his hands.]] Finally, she is the [[Final Girl|last victim left]], and manages to kill him in exactly the way he said the final girl would. Unfortunately, [[The Chessmaster|he planned this the whole time, taking the preparations required to fake his own death...]]}}
** {{spoiler|And he even '''tells her''' how and by which means he is going fake his own death!}}
* Frank Abagnale in ''[[Catch Me If You Can]]'' is a born [[Con Man]] whose first relatively harmless scheme involved impersonating his French teacher, fooling the entire school for weeks. His later criminal actions consist of acquiring millions of dollars by writing fraudulent checks, sending out fake letters, and posing as air plane pilots, doctors, and lawyers, all to live a lavish lifestyle spent in expensive hotels, throwing parties, and sleeping with numerous women he seduces, as well as a high-class prostitute whom he tricks into paying him for the night spent with her. When the FBI's Financial Crimes unit starts pursuing him, Frank cleverly manages to avoid capture numerous times, such as performing a [[Bavarian Fire Drill]] that convinces FBI Agent Carl Hanratty that Frank is a Secret Service agent, and in his most audacious scheme, smuggling himself through an airport filled with FBI agents by recruiting a group of handsome stewardesses to distract the men supposed to be watching out for him. Although the law ultimately catches up with him, Frank is a [[Lovable Rogue]] who is so good at what he does that he's able to elude the authorities for years and all before he was even 21.
* 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 {{spoiler|his capture, which he didn't plan}} 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.
* ''[[Unbreakable]]'': Elijah Price, aka "Mr. Glass", was born with a genetic disease that causes his bones to be exceptionally brittle. After seeking solace in comic books handed him by his mother, he sets out to fulfill his life's purpose by becoming a supervillain and finding his heroic counterpart. He orchestrates several large-scale disasters such as train wrecks, hotel fires, and blowing up passenger planes, until he finally finds a miraculous Sole Survivor in David Dunn. Elijah proceeds to stalk David and his family, subtly manipulating him into fulfilling his destiny as a superhero until David answers his calling and saves several lives. Only then does Elijah knowingly expose his machinations to David, revealing David's new friend to in fact be his ultimate arch-nemesis, an [[Evil Genius]] who managed to kill hundreds while remaining undetected and was able to hide his true nature even from the hero.
* 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. ''Magnificent.''
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* 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 [[Badass|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 [[Incredibly Lame Pun|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 {{spoiler|he's managed to take credit for killing the Nazi high command and ending the war in Europe, and got a nice seaside house in Nantucket on the side, all while allowing everyone else to do the work for him. The only hitch in the otherwise flawless execution of his plan is the swastika permanently carved into his forehead and Raine's shit on his chest.}} [[Quentin Tarantino]] has remarked that Hans Landa might be the greatest character he's ever written, and considering this is the guy who created [[Scary Black Man|''Jules '''Fuckin''' Winnfield'']], that's saying something.
** This character was so complex and such a [[Incredibly Lame Pun|magnificent basterd]]
* Nathan Muir of ''[[Spy Game]]'' may fit into this category. He demonstrates a certain amount of [[The Chessmaster|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 {{spoiler|he was never married, and he's been lying to all of them for years just for the hell of it}}, cements it.
** The best intelligence agencies in the world don't even know his ''birthday''
* Crop-duster turned bank robber, the titular ''Charley Varrick'' disguises himself as an injured old man to discreetly complete his theft. Discovering the money he stole belonged to The Mafia, Varrick suggests to his friend, Harman, that they lay low, avoiding spending it for four years, to avoid suspicion. When Harman's avarice leads to him spending, Varrick double-crosses him by swapping their dental records and forging a passport to confuse the hitman sent after them. Acting friendly to the corrupt bank president, Varrick leads the hitman to believe they are associates, resulting in the president being killed. Tricking the hitman into trying to retrieve the money from a car he rigged to explode, Varrick kills him, getting away clean.
* 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'' is a cultured, accomplished organist and theologian lashing out after the death of his beloved wife. Blaming the surgical team, Phibes spends years in hiding, letting them believe him dead, until he resurfaces and begins to murder them in a series of killings designed to emulate the Ten Plagues of Egypt. Phibes is repeatedly a step ahead of every attempt to stop or capture him and ends the film almost completely victorious. Resurfacing years later, Phibes once again destroys his rivals as he seeks to restore his Victoria to life, ending up completely untouchable by the end, with his calculating mind seeing him through every challenge.
{{quote| What kind of fiend are you?
[[The Bad Guy Wins|The kind that wins!]] }}
* Tyler Durden from ''[[Fight Club]]''. Much like Keyzer Soze, his status will not become clear until the first viewing of the film is done.
* 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 [[Laughably Evil|quite funny]], carries himself ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3qy4Zv4snI 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 [[No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine|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 Card|Wild Cards]].
* In ''Wild Things'', Suzie Toller is a teenage girl from the wrong side of the tracks, masking her genius-level intellect by appearing as white trash. After one of her best friends was murdered by corrupt cop Ray Duquette, who then busted her on a bogus charge, Suzie vowed revenge. She hatches a plot wherein Suzie, her guidance counselor Sam Lombardo and Kelly Van Ryan, the rich girl Sam was sleeping with, are able to con Kelly's mother Sandra Van Ryan out of millions of dollars by having both girls falsely accuse Sam of rape, then cracking on the stand and opening the Van Ryans to a countersuit. Suzie also ordered Sam to draw Ray Duquette into the scheme by convincing him that he and Sam would get rid of both girls and split the money between the two of them instead of three-ways. After multiple betrayals and counter-betrayals and even faking her own death, at the end Suzie is the only conspirator left standing: a high-school drop-out responsible for several murders with a fortune safely stored away in an overseas account.
* The original working title for ''[[The Good, the Bad and the Ugly|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 of Solace|Quantum]]'' isn't a [[Magnificent Bastard]] yet, 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 [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique|tortured]], can say "[[We Are Everywhere|we have people everywhere]]" and ''[[Paranoia Fuel|mean it]]'', and [[Karma Houdini|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 [[At the Opera Tonight|Opera scene]].
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* Benedict from ''[[Last Action Hero]]'', an action-movie [[Big Bad]] who escapes into the Real World. Toward the end of the film, he becomes so [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]] that he's able to anticipate and exploit the genre-savviness of his rival Jack Slater.
* Xibalba from ''The Book Of Life'' is the ruler of the Land of the Forgotten who has grown bored of his rule. To this end, he proposes a wager with the Land of the Remembered ruler, La Muerte, concerning the love triangle between the childhood friends, Manolo and Joaquin, who tries to sway Maria’s heart. Taking Joaquin as his trump card, he disguises himself as a beggar and gave Joaquin a medal that made him immortal. Years later when Manolo almost made a heartfelt connection towards Maria, Xibalba sends his dual-headed snake staff to put Maria into a coma so that he could lead Manolo to believe that Maria is dead by manipulating his grief-stricken state and kills him. When La Muerte founds out that Xibalba has been cheating all along, he then proposes another wager towards Manolo by forcing him to fight all the bulls that his family had defeated in the past. Despite portrayed as a guy who doesn’t like to lose his bet most of the time, in the end of the day, he accepts his defeat gracefully by honoring the deal and reconcile with La Muerte in the end.
( Miles Jackson is a suave, perpetually cheerful terrorist who masterminds the entire plot pf ''12 Rounds''. Miles has evaded capture and conviction for his atrocities for years, always staying one step ahead of his law enforcement pursuers, and is introduced tricking a mole in his organization into betraying the F.B.I. and robbing them, after which Miles murders the same mole for ever thinking of turning on him. Though imprisoned for several years thanks to a freak accident, Miles breaks out of prison and sets up the game "12 Rounds" to be played with his arch enemy Danny Fisher. Using the excuse that he is getting revenge for his deceased girlfriend, Miles sets up various puzzles and traps throughout the city for Danny to figure out and stop, using the man's wife as a hostage the hold time. Miles' true magnificence comes with the reveal that the entire point of 12 Rounds was solely to serve as a long, complicated set-up to a bank robbery for millions of dollars, and that every round Danny played further assisted Miles in his scheme. Always ready with a quip and possessing a swaggering charisma that draws all eyes on him, Miles is an intelligent, charming villain, one capable of ridiculous amounts of manipulation and strategy, and whose very first scene illustrates his character perfectly by having him win a losing chess game for a stranger on a whim.
* ''[[3:10 to Yuma]]'' (2007): Ben Wade in the remake is a charismatic bandit leader who starts the film by driving cattle to block an armored car and then rob it. Famed for his brilliance and skillful gambits, Ben is eventually caught thanks to rancher Dan Evans and is sent to be taken to a train to be sent to Yuma prison with his former gang pursuing. Ben shows himself to be a slippery prisoner, constantly outwitting his captors and killing the most morally bankrupt of them. When he learns Dan's reasons for trying to get him to the train at the end, Ben even fights to assist in getting himself to the train and after Dan is mortally wounded, steps on board of his own free will, cementing Dan as a legend. Ben also reveals to Dan that he's been to Yuma prison twice-and escaped twice (which he and Dan both laugh over), and the film ends with him clearly planning his escape once again.
* Tom Reagan of ''Millers' Crossing'' is a fine example of a [[Magnificent Bastard]] protagonist. He's [[The Dragon]] to Leo, an Irish-American mobster, but it's clear who has the brains in the operation. Tom is a duplicitous alcoholic who's sleeping with Leo's fiancee and spends the movie double-crossing everyone he meets (and usually being beaten within an inch of his life by them). Then, at the end, it turns out the whole movie was a [[Batman Gambit]] on Tom's part. Everything he did, he did for Leo. He manipulates Leo's enemies into killing each other, personally kills the [[Smug Snake]] who was blackmailing him (with a truly badass one liner no less), ensures that Leo remains firmly in power, and leaves his life of crime behind for good.
* Gabriel Shear, of ''Swordfish'', may in fact be the ultimate epitome of this trope. To examine:
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