Villains, Bad Guys, and Evil Characters – Oh My!
Last night (10.26.07) was another high-brow tournament. This time it was the best fictional villain / bad guy / evil character of all time, again non-seeded and randomly drawn.
Click the tournament picture and you’ll find the results of a few hours of us being idiots.
Things were run very similar as last time with the Greatest Front-Man Tournament. It was Robert, Mitchell, and myself again, Wooly was suppose to be there but something happened and he couldn’t come. I think we had 155 names to start with this time and we had to wean them down to the top 128. Again the names were randomly drawn from a bowl to flush out the brackets, two at a time and then that was the match-up. After the initial 64 match-up the tournament would run as a normal tournament would, well except for out “nah” rule.
Our rule kind of went like this, in the first round each of us were given two “power nahs” in which we were able to say “nah” to any match-up that was pulled out of the bowl. If we used a “power nah” then that match-up would be thrown back into the bowl to be re-pulled in a different combination later. This was typically used to keep heavy hitters from going up against each other too early. For example, if Darth Vader and Megatron went up against each other in the first round then someone might use a “power nah” to throw their names back into the bowl so a big decision like that wouldn’t have to be made too early in the game. After the first round each of us was also given two regular “nahs” that could be used in the second, third, and fourth rounds. What these “nahs” did was basically give the loser of a match-up a second chance. The winner of the match-up had to get a 2 out of 3 vote to stay in verses the normal 50/50 chance – make sense?
Now remember, none of us fully agree with this, this is just what happen when the three of us ran this tournament. It would probably be different with any three people and obviously with any random drawing. There were actually a couple really tough match-ups, a couple that some people totally disagreed with, and a couple that I looked at afterwards and thought ‘how did that happen?’ Regardless, I’m not going to argue with these results, but I am going to say there were a few surprises. If you don’t recognize some of the names go ahead and ask or look them up yourselves, you may be surprised who did and didn’t make the cut. And just for fun, I’ll include the “Jobbers” bracket too. This is the bracket of guys who didn’t make the initial 120 out of the 155 and had to really fight to get one of the last eight spots, whatever. Click on the picture for a larger shot of it.
Happy Halloween!
October 28th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Donna and I take exception to Dexter Morgan being considered for the competition.
He’s got a dark streak a mile long in him, no doubt – but he is not evil, bad, or a villain.
There are a few others that made me laugh. Hans Gruber? Really? Did he have uber-terrorist power or something? I always thought of him as kind of a sniveling sissy… no offense to Alan Rickman who kicks total butt.
October 28th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Yeah, Robert is the only one that watches Dexter out of the three of us and he was the one that mentioned him. We had never seen the show, so we said OK. It seemed a little odd to me because from what Robert says he is much more like Batman, The Punisher, or Casey Jones from TMNT than a “bad guy”. The combination of the two reasonings was basically why he never even made the tournamnet, though he made the list.
Yeah, they’re weird some of the choices and some of the choices that made it so far. One thing we never really did with this tournament was set up a real criteria, it was just villains, evil dudes, and bad guys and your opinion of what made them such over one another. Originally the list was more streamlined, then it spread from there to contain antagonists in general, bad asses who were not 100% evil, and more monsters.
Over all I’m satisfied with the list, maybe not all the results, but I don’t think any one would be all the way satisfied. After the fact I remembered a great one that should have made the cut: Ming the Merciless. Oh well.
October 28th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Yeah, Dexter is an anithero, not a bad guy. Totally different.
Sounds like it was a total blast though – Good excuse to drink down some homebrew inventory 😉 A few of the other notable battles and outcomes that I must comment on:
Terminator – Must be based on Terminator 1 only – He was a good guy in 2 and 3. Vader’s lightsaber skills would totally own his @$$ though – despite Terminator not being subject to the force (which is organic in nature, IMO).
Gollum vs. Predator – Dude, Smeagel never stood a chance. Catfood.
Voldemort vs. Sheriff of Nottingham – What? Did the sheriff tax him into oblivion? I would have expected the sheriff to be a dark stain on the floor here. Ava Kadavera!
Kaiser Sose vs. Hannibal Lector – Oh, this would have been a bloodbath. I would have pay-per-viewed it. Mostly to see Sose torn to pieces – He was nasty, but not Hannibal nasty.
Starscream vs. Norman Bates – Really? Did he catch Starscream changing his oil in the shower?
Jigsaw Vs. Khan – I thought about this one longer than I probably should have. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that Jigsaw would be so preoccupied devising a complicated death for Khan that Khan would just shove a worm in his ear, and Jigsaw would become a non-threat. Is Khan more evil than a dude that spends hours devising horrible deaths for people? No, he’s misunderstood. But he’d take this one.
Dr. Evil vs. Palpatine – Groovy, baby. You’re completely stoned, but groovy.
So I think I’ve probably diverted enough neurons on the subject for now – I’m actually jealous and a little sad I missed out on this one. Bet it would have been a blast.
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