Most Evil Fantasy/Sci-Fi Dark Lord

[Roose Bolton]

Like being a mentally challenged anger spawn due to his family's sister boning?

That, and the torture he suffered at Duskendale.


The guy was a sick man who shouldn't have had the power of being King, he wasn't GRRM's version of Satan or anything.

 

[Marvolo]

I'm with Aztec on this. You can't be a true Dark Lord if you've got a boss who's around that you have to answer to. So no to Vader. Technically Sauron has a boss as well(Morgoth) but he's been tossed into the void until the ending of the world way back at the end of the first age. So Sauron's pretty well running his own show in LOTR. Although Marvolo, you forgot to mention he also got the Numenorean's to start worshipping Morgoth with human sacrifices. To me that puts to shame anything Voldemort or Palpatine did. But I voted for Thanos because he needs the love.

Completely forgot about that. He got king Ar-Pharazôn to take him captive then Sauron became an advisor to the King and soon corrupted the Númenóreans, promising them eternal life if they worshipped Morgoth. With Sauron as his advisor, Ar-Pharazôn had a 500 foot tall temple to Morgoth erected in which he offered human sacrifices. He also got them to cut down and burn the sacred white tree Nimloth the Fair, whose fate was said to be tied to the line of kings as a sacrifice to Morgoth. And he got the King to invade Aman, home of the gods.

 

[mikeboydus]

I think there should have been a few more choices, especially if the question is who is the most evil:

I present some more options:

Pinhead from Hellraiser


Thulsa Doom from Conan the Barbarian

The Darkness from Legend

The White Witch from Chronicles of Narnia

Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon

Ra from Stargate

Xerxes from 300

Alessa from Silent Hill

Skynet from The Terminator series

 

[Doc Ock]

Haha! Ra from Stargate *is a mega Stargate nerd*

The Goa'uld and the System Lords were pretty evil...

 

[Aztec]

I think there should have been a few more choices, especially if the question is who is the most evil:

I present some more options:

Pinhead from Hellraiser
Thulsa Doom from Conan the Barbarian
The Darkness from Legend
The White Witch from Chronicles of Narnia
Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon
Ra from Stargate
Xerxes from 300
Alessa from Silent Hill
Skynet from The Terminator series

Uuuhhhhh...no. Xerxes? Anyone from Silent Hill? Stargate? Seriously?

My choices, which I'll explain again, were based on the following criteria:

1) A major, relevant, epic, sci-fi/fantasy, film series
2) An evil MASTER (note not apprentice)- Sorry Vader fans but he's Palpy's B***H!
3) A Dark Lord who is all powerful, obsessed with conquering death, and whose presence is felt throughout multiple heroes' arcs
4) They had to at least appear in a film as an active villain (hence why Morgorth or any of the other Sith MASTERS didn't make it)
5) Grand schemers
6) Pure evil. Non-sympathetic villains.

These four have a lot similarities IMHO. (Yes we know little about Thanos at this point but we can still glean a lot from the film and the literature. The latter of which you all seem perfectly willing to do for Sauron and Voldemort, FYI.)

They all have:
1) Armies at their disposal
2) An "Enforcer"- Darth Vader, Bellatrix Lestrange, Loki, Witch King of Angmar
3) A Mouthpiece- Mas Amedda, Peter Pettigrew, The Other, Mouth of Sauron
4) An obsession with "conquering" death- Thanos in quite a different fashion, lol.

So that's why I picked these four. I'll call them the "Big Four Dark Lords"; since IMHO they represent the four largest franchises going.

Keep it going gang. Sauron's running away with it at the moment.

 

[lime]

Voldemort. You know you have achieved greatness in terms of fear, when people are afraid to even say your name.

 

[Piper Maru]

Sauron

Maia spirit of a just god.
Former lieutenant of a corrupt god. Taught his evil ways by the god Morgoth.
Tricked various elves to create artifacts allowing him to control and enslave the natural world.
Life withers and rots at his presence.
He brought about the destruction and near genocide of Numenor and its people. Not to mention nearly wiping out creation.
He can alter the substance of the world around him by just his will.
His influence, manipulation, and destruction happened over thousands of years and effected an entire creation.
Can change forms and is a master illusionist.
Can truly raise the dead.
Commands Balrogs (Maiar spirits)
Has commanded and controlled every nasty vile thing that could crawl from the darkest pits of hell.
And it goes on.

I mean if we are talking true evil, and effectiveness of the character it doesnt get more evil and effective than Sauron.

I do believe we have a winner!

 

[Warhammer]

That said, i'd vote Vader if he was here. For everyone who claims "Oh, the prequels neutered Vader, blah blah blah", no, they really didn't. It was always established Anakin was Obi-wan's padawan who fell to the dark side. While I admit, reasoning on his fall could be better, once Anakin turned he wasn't who he used to be, and even barring him being a bit whiney until he was burned, he had 19 years to develop into the Sith we all know and love (and the chrarcters of the films feared.) I think Anakin being immature works with who he is. Anakin always was that little boy from Tatooine, who fell in love with someone off world, and he wanted to do anything to protect that love. Only after he believed he lost everything, did he grow up and realize how horrible the galaxy was, and took responsibility for his actions and twisted it and himself into a cold, unfeeling warrior. Only Luke was able to reach out to this grown Anakin, who eventually acted as an adult and as the good person he once was to defeat the Emperor.

Vader has definitely been tainted by the prequels.

Sometimes, less is more. The more mysterious his background, the more allure his character had. Since the prequels were made, now you have to follow up your terrific villain with an equally terrific backstory. When you take away everything else, at the end of the day....Vader is who he is because he betrayed everything his life stood for in order to make an obviously unreliable deal with the devil to save his wife. He wasn't seduced by the dark side like it was said. His whole transformation was sloppily and lazily written.

But hey, that is another debate that has been debated for over 7 years that doesn't belong in here so I'll stop.

 

[Hunter Rider]

*Must resist*

 

[Doc Ock]

*Must resist*

I love Vader too, but its not a popularity contest! Sauron was never good like young Anakin Skywalker...

 

[kedrell]

Actually Sauron was good before he was won over to Melkor/Morgoth's side. But this all was long before Men, Dwarfs and Elves existed in Middle Earth. His original name was Mairon, meaning 'the admirable' but after Morgoth seduced him to his cause he became known as Sauron, meaning 'the abhorred'. Only Melkor aka' Morgoth can there be question as to whether he was ever good or not. It seems that from the very beginning of things he was adversarial.

 

[PSYLENTGuardian]

I'm definitely gonna pick Sauron.

However, this thread made me excited for Thanos. Seeing him in action is gonna be a wonder to behold.

 

[kedrell]

Thanos definitely has the most potential to threaten as well as the most unique of motivations.

 

[mikeboydus]

"1) A major, relevant, epic, sci-fi/fantasy, film series
2) An evil MASTER (note not apprentice)- Sorry Vader fans but he's Palpy's B***H!
3) A Dark Lord who is all powerful, obsessed with conquering death, and whose presence is felt throughout multiple heroes' arcs
4) They had to at least appear in a film as an active villain (hence why Morgorth or any of the other Sith MASTERS didn't make it)
5) Grand schemers
6) Pure evil. Non-sympathetic villains."

Some of those are major single event films or the series was later watered down.

1. The original Conan the Barbarian, Chronicles of Narnia, Stargate, and 300 were all major epic films. Technically so were Flash Gordon and Legend, but they flopped at the box office. Terminator became a major, epic, and relevant series with T2. Hellrasier and Silent Hill were lower budget, but successful films.

2. None of them are apprentices.

3. All of them are in their films, Skynet appeared in T-3 and more directly in Terminator Salvation.

4. All except Pinhead were grand schemers. Though even that could be argued over.

5. Not a single one has a sympathetic quality. Thusla Doom and Ra are exceptionally malevolent. The first is the high priest of the darkside like cosmic horror Set and Ra is a galactic conqueror and borderline eldritch abomination. Alessa is a pure evil personality incarnate, intended to be a theotokos for a cosmic horror to enter reality. Pinhead is an eldritch abomination. The Darkness is evil incarnate. Skynet has an unnatural and disturbing malevolence, one that shouldn't be present in a purely logical machine.

They also meet the next four sets of qualifications, especially Ra who has the conquering death role to a t. Most of the others are immortal or virtually immortal. All have enforcers or heralds of some kind. Most have huge armies, Pinhead being the exception. The cenobites wield so much reality warping power though, a large force is really unnecessary.

 

[Roose Bolton]

He's absolutely right.

 

[James]

Can Skynet truly be classed as 'evil'?

It's essentially a computer program following it's programming, or at best an A.I/V.I. It doesn't have any true feeling about what it's doing, there's no moral code for it to willingly break. It's just a machine doing what it does. A frightening enemy to be certain, but without that human factor can it be attributed with terms like 'good' or 'evil' in the moral sense.

 

[mikeboydus]

One would think Skynet isn't evil at first glance based on the idea that its AI, but there are things that occur in the films that indicate that Skynet is sadistic and somewhat inspired by the AI from Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

The T-1000 exhibits cruelty and enjoyment of torture in T2. The TX displays similar traits in T3. Skynet in Terminator Salvation displays perverse enjoyment and somewhat psychotic rage when dealing with Marcus.

 

[mikeboydus]

Have a few more

Cobra Commander from GI Joe. Has most of the requirements met.

Skeletor from Masters of the Universe (This version was based more on Darkseid than the actual Skeletor though. Huge homage to Jack Kirby's Fourth World) He fits the dark lord requirements closely.

Khan from Star Trek (Sure he lost his empire, but he was the 21st century equivalent of Hitler or Stalin in his prime) One might argue if he's sympathetic or not.


Now for probably the darkest and actually terrifying dark lord

Kurtz from Apocalypse Now (Sure its not quite Sci Fi, but the film is quite fantastic and has far more in common with a bad drug induced trip than reality) He doesn't really try do the whole cheat death thing though.

 

[Tristan_McClark]

I went with Palpatine. Sometimes deception with the lips is the greatest weapon of all. He convinced the person that was supposed to destroy him and bring balance to the force over to his side. That's saying something.

 

[James]

One would think Skynet isn't evil at first glance based on the idea that its AI, but there are things that occur in the films that indicate that Skynet is sadistic and somewhat inspired by the AI from Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

The T-1000 exhibits cruelty and enjoyment of torture in T2. The TX displays similar traits in T3. Skynet in Terminator Salvation displays perverse enjoyment and somewhat psychotic rage when dealing with Marcus.

But is Skynet actually being malicious, or are those just traits we cast upon it's actions because that then gives it reason and is easier for us to understand?

 

[kedrell]

They never even explained that whole prophecy mumbo-jumbo about balancing the force to begin with so it really can't hold much thematic weight.

 

[Quasimod0]

If only we had an awesome film version of doctor doom.

 

[Gianakin_]

Out of all the poll choices... I must say Palpatine.

Generally? I'll have to think about it more.