Of Mentors and VILLAINS

mentor
[men-tawr, -ter]

noun
1.a wise and trusted counselor or teacher.
2.an influential senior sponsor or supporter.

villain
[vil-uh n]
noun
1.a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickednessor crime; scoundrel.
2.a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot.

PART ONE )
"WHAT MARVEL LEARNED FROM GLADIATOR."

For many years Comic Book movies were a joke. Trying to get super heroes to the screen was just awful. Bad acting and Poor costumes, no quality effects shots.

There was a Spider Man movie, a Fantastic Four movie, a Howard the Duck movie, all pretty bad.They all were lacking believable heroes.

I have a theory... i think in order to make a good, believable movie HERO  you MUST have Mentors and VILLAINS. You need REAL ACTORS FOR SUPPORTING ROLES 

In the year 2000 Director Ridley Scott debuted a film about a soldier who became a slave and then a "Gladiator" . In a time when EPIC MOVIES were not a trend he took a risk. But he needed a strong supporting CAST to make his HERO A MOVIE GIANT.

In the first minutes of the film we are presented with two  characters: 

Maximus (Russel Crowe) speaking to his troops, and then the Emperor. The one and only RICHARD HARRIS as Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Maximus first mentor.

CONSOLIDATED ACTORS in A movie as supporting characters  deliver epic performances in every take. This gives the rest of the cast and crew the  building BLOCKS from there.  

Such is the case of OLIVER REED as Proximo, Maximus second mentor.

What is a movie without the conflict or the villain. In this film it was masterfully played by, non other than JOAQUIN PHOENIX as  Commodus.

So now that we´ve established  the importance of mentor and  villain in the development of MOVIE PLOT we are not surprised what MARVEL did to be taken serious as a MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE.

IRON MAN (2008)

VILLAIN : Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane

MENTOR: Shaun Toub as Yinsen

CAPTAIN AMERICA (2011)

MENTOR : Stanley Tucci as Dr. Abraham Erskine

VILLAIN: Hugo Weaving as Johann Schmidt / Red Skull

THOR (2011)

MENTOR Anthony Hopkins as ODIN and 

VILLAIN Tom Hiddleston as Loki. 

PART TWO) FOR EXAMPLE

There are too many in movie history, so to name a few from some of my favorite movies:

MENTOR Alec Guiness as Jedi Knight Obi Wan Kenobi in 

STAR WARS  (1977)

 Villain : David Prowse/James Earl Jones as Darth Vader

in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980)

Mentor , "You´re a rocking machine "Burgess Meredith as Mickey in ROCKY (1976)

Mentor Laurence Fishburne as Red PILL/ Blue PILL 

Morpheus in MATRIX (1999)

What if A mentor is the villain?

Liam Neeson as Double faced Henri Ducard / Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins (2005)

Michael Douglas as Greedy Gordon Gecko in Wall Street (1987)

What if the hero is sort of a villain?? and His mentor is a supernatural being dressed as a Crow.

Brandon Lee as revengeful Eric Draven in The Crow (1994)

Or a Zombie killing MENTOR like Woody Harrelson as Tallahasee in ZOMBIELAND (2009)

PART THREE) The Beautiful Silence of not KNOWING

One of my favorite movies of last year was 

FOXCATCHER (2014).

Although it deals with the concept Of MENTORS AND VILLAINS, Director Bennett Miller ,masterfully takes us on a journey we ignore how it will all turn out, but by the end of the film we are emotionally attached to every character. Through all the movie it´s never clear if a character is good or evil, because like in real life we must be careful who to trust and how much we trust. This movie is a hard mirror inward on ourselves and real life. But most importantly , the danger of giving some one the power of authority . A MUST FOR ALL MOVIE LOVERS.

"Coach is the father. 

Coach is a mentor. 

Coach has great power on athlete's life."

-Steve Carrell as John du Pont