ENTERTAINING THOUGHTS IN A WORLD OF HEROES, APPEALING VILLAINS WIN

By YARDENA ARAR

June 16, 1991

To misquote Kermit the Frog, it's not easy being mean.

But sometimes it's a lot of fun.

Ask any actor who ever has played a villain, and he'll tell you that bad guys are much more interesting than good guys.

Trust me, I've heard this from an assortment of thespians ranging from Sting ("Brimstone and Treacle") to Robert Davi, who has played an Arab terrorist and James Bond's adversary in ''License to Kill."

True, there are drawbacks. You usually are shortchanged in the love-scene department. You rarely escape with your life. People who don't know you're really a nice guy might give you dirty looks in the supermarket.

But there are advantages, too. You're less likely to be mobbed by rapaciously adoring fans. You avoid the pitfalls of playing boring, goody-two- shoes types.

If you're lucky, and your talents and the screenwriter's imagination are up to the challenge, you just might upstage the hero.

A good guy always gets his man, but a great villain can bag a greater prize - the audience's attention. "Dallas" didn't last 13 seasons because J.R. Ewing was a sweetheart.

The role of Miles Drentell on "thirtysomething" wasn't intended to last, but David Clennon and the writers gave this guy - and his love-hate relationship with Michael Steadman and Elliot Weston - so much style that he stuck around to the bitter end.

This is turning into a vintage year for movie villains. "The Silence of the Lambs" got it off to a great start with Anthony Hopkins' turn as Hannibal ''the cannibal" Lecter, a performance that was immediately hailed as a sure Oscar contender.

You really believe that he's capable of devouring human flesh, and if Jodie Foster, good as she was, doesn't make it to the sequel the ending cries out for, she probably won't be overly missed.

Now comes "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," with a miscast Kevin Costner pitted against a gloriously evil Alan Rickman as Sheriff of Nottingham. A fair fight? Not really.

On the one hand, we have Costner, playing a Hamlet-like character in search of his soul (not to mention an appropriate accent amid a primarily English cast). He comes across as a sensitive soul, but hardly a man of action - a fatal flaw for the hero of an action film. Morgan Freeman as his Moorish sidekick is far more heroic in the traditional sense of the word.

On the other, we have Rickman, who, with some help from an even more creepy friend (Geraldine McEwan as the witch Mortianna), has a clear agenda, a wonderfully deep and menacing voice that caresses the King's English and a pair of the best rolling eyes in the business.

You can't change eight centuries of folklore, and the outcome is a foregone conclusion. But in terms of screen presence, Rickman definitely walks away the winner.

The next summer action offering is "The Rocketeer," which opens Friday. Here, the mismatch is even more glaring, with a total unknown (Bill Campbell) taking on a nefarious Errol Flynn type played by Timothy Dalton, whose fictional star quality is reinforced by his two outings as James Bond.

Campbell plays a good-looking, resourceful and brave airplane pilot in pre-World War II Los Angeles. But when it comes to the woman in his life, played by the comely Jennifer Connelly, he's definitely a wimp.

Dalton, on the other hand, is the embodiment of suave; when he dons his tuxedo to take Connelly to a nightclub, you wonder why she would give anyone else a second look. OK, so the guy has womanizer written all over him - and that's only the least of his faults; he's still a lot more exciting than the boyish hero.

What makes Dalton and Rickman such appealing villains is that they both seem to be having such a ball on screen while their rather cheerless Dudley Do-Right adversaries are trying to save the world (and their women).

Dalton especially has great material to work with in the Flynn sendup, but it seems as though summer adventures especially demand over-the-top archenemies - hence the casting of Sandra Bernhard and the wonderful Richard Grant as heavies in "Hudson Hawk". The trouble with adventure films where the villains outshine the heroes is that they generally don't deliver what audiences want in the genre.

There are always exceptions: "Batman" did just fine at the box office, thank you, even though Jack Nicholson as the Joker probably made more of an impression than Michael Keaton in the title role. Warren Beatty as the title character in "Dick Tracy" paled against Pacino's frenetic Big Boy Caprice, but the movie paid its bills (although Disney film chief Jeffrey Katzenberg admitted in his famed memo that the movie wasn't worth the tsuris ).

Still, it seems unlikely that either "Robin Hood" or "The Rocketeer" will blast off on the level of the Indiana Jones pictures they so obviously mean to emulate. It looks like "Terminator 2:Judgment Day" will have a clear shot at the summer blockbuster crown despite its relatively late (July 3) opening.

If Arnold Schwarzenegger can't make a great action picture, what is the world coming to?

 

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page - now not accessable