Intentionally Blank

Brandon's Evil Overlord Coworkers — Intentionally Blank Ep. 270

Brandon Sanderson & Dan Wells Episode 270

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0:00 | 35:51

Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells discuss their interactions and opinions of the worst bosses ever. From the great Palpatine all the way to Prince Humperdinck, who will rise to the top as the greatest overlord of all? All that and more on today's episode of Intentionally Blank!

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SPEAKER_02

All right, so it's time. Everyone's been waiting. This is our third and final villain tier list ranking.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. We have done the minions. Yep. We have done the lieutenants. Yep. Or as Donald said to me earlier today, lieutenants. And now it's time for the evil overlords. Donald, did he explain what lieutenant is?

SPEAKER_01

Did I explain what lieutenant is? Yeah, so lieutenant isn't our word. We stole it. Lieutenant comes from the other. But you pronounce it lieutenant. Okay, I've heard many people say it lieutenant.

SPEAKER_02

I'm pretty sure that that's an author writing thing. Let us know in the comments. I was told by somebody that that's just an alternate spelling for lieutenant. Okay. And I said it lieutenant for years, and someone said it's actually just lieutenant. That's just the spelling.

SPEAKER_00

I seem to remember that in the Sean Bean Richard Sharp movies, that they said lieutenant.

SPEAKER_02

They said lieutenant.

SPEAKER_00

But I might be wrong.

SPEAKER_02

So this could be someone mistakenly telling me. Yeah. Right? Like, but it would be interesting to hear from the British how they would pronounce that word. Yeah. Yeah. Comments let us know. Left tenant is cooler. Yes. I would like to be able to say left tenant, but I've been told that.

SPEAKER_00

But anyway. Also, the other cool thing about lieutenant is that it implies the existence of a right tenant.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's David. Your flanks are covered. Yeah, David. David is the right tenant. Yes.

SPEAKER_02

David is the right tenant. And then there's the left tenant.

SPEAKER_00

These other people who are the left tenants. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

His wife.

SPEAKER_03

His wife.

SPEAKER_01

So for the audience, some of these characters might look familiar. If you go back quite literally a hundred episodes, we did a what makes a good villain? Some of these are similar. We're doing different categories. This is the overlord, right? What makes a true good overlord?

SPEAKER_02

So a lot of these villains are we're ranking them on their, I'm going to say on their effectiveness and how much of a rival/slash colleague we consider them. There you go. Are they on my level? Dan's not an evil overlord, but you know, these are my colleagues. How am I going to rank them? They come to me for a team up. Do I want to team up with them? Okay. How effective are they? That's how I'm going to be doing my rating. Cool.

SPEAKER_00

Yours fun because usually I'm the one who arranges collaborations. So I guess I'm interfacing with these evil overlords secretaries. Cool.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah. Before we start, I have to preface this. Dan wanted this to be a little more variety. Have a little different variety. So we're gonna we're gonna see how this goes.

SPEAKER_02

I think he did a good job with that. The only thing that's not on here that I would recommend is my man Grew. We can put Gru on.

SPEAKER_00

I'll throw him on the we should get Gru. Gru.

SPEAKER_02

You know, that gives us one little extra bit of variety from a movie. Yeah. So we'll throw him on the back.

SPEAKER_01

All right, all right, let's start. We're starting with Arnold Royalton from Speed Racer. That is who his first guy is.

SPEAKER_02

So I love Speed Racer. Yes. You know that I love Speed Racer. The movie, if you haven't heard for some reason, the movie Speed Racer is unironically a 10 out of 10. This is the Wachowskis at their A game. It was underappreciated when it came out. And sometimes I tell you movies like Cats that you should go watch because they're bad. This is not the case with this one.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I have seen just in the past couple of months, yeah, at least two different like movie YouTubers.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, one is Patrick Willems, which he and I have the same opinion on this. Yeah, I think it's starting to get its appreciation. The reason it did so poorly is I think it was so over the top. And it's just simple, it's not like a complicated morals system. It's it's a cartoon made live action, but it's just fantastic. So, but that said, how good of a villain is he? He is kind of, I don't want to go around him. He's kind of a D. Okay. Like he works in the movie, but as a colleague, this guy, I don't want to spend any time with this guy. That's fair. He's just he's just evil, slimy businessman. He's not very effective. He's lazy because he has a not a lot of money. He could be doing so much cooler villainry, right? He has cool gadgets on his cars to destroy other cars. And he's just doing racing. He's not taking over the world. Like he doesn't have an evil super villain base in space, and he could.

SPEAKER_00

Very disappointed in him. I'm actually gonna put him in F. Yeah. Oh, an F. Just because further, like, while he does have evil racers that work for him, he doesn't really have a horde of minions. Yeah. Right. And they don't have jumpsuits, they don't ride around in underground. He does hire ninjas. That's true.

SPEAKER_02

He does hire ninjas, so he fell into the ninja problem. Yeah. He hired too many ninjas. You need to hire one ninja. You gotta learn from Dr. McNinja's important lessons on this. Christopher Hastings.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Second one. The Borg Queen.

SPEAKER_00

Borg Queen. The Borg Queen. What do you think about the Borg Queen, Dan? The Borg Queen, when she first appeared in First Contact. First Contact, she was fascinating. Yes. I think that giving a face to the Borg made them usable in a way that they weren't before. Being able to have a conversation with one, I do think they eventually overused the Borg Queen in Voyager to the point that the Borg became a very different thing. They weren't space zombies anymore. But I still want to put her in A. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

I am also in A. And that's where I was thinking. So do I want like she's pretty effective, hard to kill, capable of time travel, has giants floating space bases. That's a very good point in her favor. Access to tons of minions, and can turn the heroes against themselves. I like all of these things. Almost convinced Data to join the collective. Yep. The only point against her is First Contact is a fantastic movie. In general, I think she made the Borg less interesting. She made them more interesting for one movie at the cost of making them as a villainous force less interesting in general. I also feel like they overused the Borg in Voyager. Voyager has its flaws and weaknesses, but they're not as big as people think they are. If you give them the few seasons that all the other shows get, like we don't go back to season one of Next Gen and be like, here, watch all of this.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Then Voyager definitely finds its own. Jane was a very interesting captain. But overuse the Borg, it's going to knock her down from S. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So hooray for that. Also, before we continue, I do want to let people know. You can't see our tier list right now, but there's a significant percentage of these supervillains that don't have heads. Yeah. Because Donald got pictures of them and cropped them so poorly. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

SPEAKER_01

I did not crop them. This site automatically does it. I just put them up.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, sure. So yeah, anyway, Borg Queen doesn't have the top of her face.

unknown

All right.

SPEAKER_02

Cobra Commander. Cobra Commander. Cobra Commander of Oh, Cobra Commander. You are just like last time, you're an F, but I'm so fond of you as an F.

SPEAKER_00

I need to put Cobra Commander on a D because he is a worthless joke of an evil overlord, but everybody knows him. He has style. Oh, yeah. Okay, move him up to D.

SPEAKER_02

Move him up. Move him up to D. He does.

SPEAKER_00

He has style. He has style. Fashion sense. He has space bases. Yeah. He picked a theme and he stuck with it. And he ran with it, yeah. Yeah. Okay. And he's not just like trying to run another car off a racetrack. He's out there like World domination trying to control the weather and turning people into giant snake people. Yep. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. D he as you almost persuaded to beat me into a C.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Well, I think I have to go up to a C.

SPEAKER_01

I was going to say, I think he C. Think about his ambition. Think about like if you bring Cobra Commander to the villain's party, you're the cool guy. No, you're not. Oh no, you're not. No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02

Do you know what Sauron was saying to me after he had to listen to Cobra Commander speak about snakes for an hour on end?

SPEAKER_00

Well, he doesn't speak. He shrieks high-pitched.

SPEAKER_02

He is not good at parties. You just made me not put him in C. All right. You're making me remember a very, very poor experience that revoked some of my privileges to go to the evil supervillain conferences because of this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. I'm going to keep him in C. He has everything that a supervillain needs to be awesome except competence. Yes. So, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

All right.

SPEAKER_02

All right. Count Dracula. Count Dracula. This is my first S. Now, you might say, Brandon, Count Dracula has no space base. He does in Dr. McNinja. He does. We have already referenced it is where he keeps the real Tupac. And I believe the real Michael Jackson in his space base after replacing Michael Jackson with a clone. Was that the real Dracula? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Because I thought there was a robot Dracula.

SPEAKER_02

There is a robot Dracula, you're right. But the robot Dracula one that Dr. McNean just surfs down through.

SPEAKER_00

You're right.

SPEAKER_02

That is a robot Dracula, but that's okay because that robot Dracula is a, you know. It's just like a Doombot. Yeah. We know that there's a real Dracula who built it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And plus there's the Dracula moon base. So yes. Yes, he has a moon base. He has minions. He has minions. He can turn heroes against themselves.

SPEAKER_00

Very important. He has a tragic backstory and a tragic existence that has spawned what? 23% of modern media? He is the at least.

SPEAKER_02

If we don't put him an S, what are we even doing? He is. It's like not putting Lord of the Rings an S. Right. Because, you know, these days some people find them long-winded. They're not. Like, you know, yeah. It took him a long time to get a moon base, but he got his moon base.

SPEAKER_00

So I'm going to put him an S as well. Makes sense. And I'm going to give my standard recommendation, which is there's a three-episode Netflix series called Dracula. The first episode is one of the greatest gothic horror self-contained stories you can find. Two is okay and three is terrible, but that first episode is wonderful. If you want to see the Dracula story told in a really interesting way, go watch it.

SPEAKER_02

Great book, too.

SPEAKER_01

Great book. All right. Dan, this is a pick you made. You gotta say this one.

SPEAKER_00

I specifically said, let's make sure that it's not all just Saurons. Yes. Let's have Meryl Streep from Devil Wears Prada. Yep. Who what's the character's name? Oh man. Uh standby. Veronica something. No. Anyway, the point is, I think she is a fantastic supervillain. Miranda. Miranda Priestley or something. Yes, you got it on there. Okay. Yep. She in at least in the first movie, she's not really evil, but she is mean to everyone. She is overwhelmingly competent. She does have minions that do her beck and call. I mean, the first Devil War's Prada is basically her training a minion. So and she has a lieutenant, Stanley Tucci. I haven't seen it. You haven't seen Devil Warse Prada? Wow. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_02

It is really good.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I had no interest in it. I saw the trailer, so I'm like, doesn't seem like a movie for me.

SPEAKER_00

Fair enough. Well. The characters are great. But yeah. I can totally understand that it is not for everybody.

SPEAKER_02

Maybe I'll I'll like it. Maybe it's just the trailers were, you know, not my thing. But office environments, like I've not worked in an office environment. I haven't seen office space. People love office space. I never worked in that environment. I can find them interesting, but that's not part of my shared experience and whatnot. I don't generally find these movies as interesting, I think, as other people do. And that might be part of the reason. It's just like you know, like Stilbert doesn't work for me on the level it works for a lot of my friends. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. I am gonna put Miranda Priestley in B. B. Because while I think she's a fantastic character and a very good overlord, like I said, she isn't truly evil. She's just, you know, pragmatically cruel. So Fair enough. Okay. Okay. Palpatine.

SPEAKER_02

Palpatine. So Palpatine is the very definition of an S for me. Okay. Palpatine is effective. Palpatine has a fantastic evil cackle. He built the biggest darn space base that anyone on here has. His whole many space bases is turning the good guys against themselves. Every definition I have. He even died in a cool way. Yes. Like twice. Yeah. Multiple times. Like, if you aren't enjoying Palpatine, chewing the scenery, cackling, being evil, he's what Cobra Commander wants to be.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

And so he is an S for me. No, I think that that is an excellent argument. I'm only going to put him in A, though. I'm docking him points because I feel like not just Abrams in the final sequel movie, but many Star Wars writers kind of forgot how to do their own villains because he was just too convenient. So again, I'm going to say slightly overused.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, even in my even in the Air to the Empire series, which I love, there's a palpiting clone running around in the house, I think.

SPEAKER_00

Because he's such a good villain that everyone wants to use him. And I think that dilutes the actual story. But you know, he won for decades. Yep. Yeah. He took over the entire galaxy.

SPEAKER_02

And then he went out when he was old, and it's like, you know, I've had my fun and then gets thrown down a pit and explodes. Yeah. Like he actually explodes.

SPEAKER_00

Wonderful.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. It was great. And, you know, as dumb as Rise of Skywalker was overall, and as dumb as somehow Palpatine returned was, seeing him in that very like insectile thing hanging from the ceiling, he looks awesome. Even when he shouldn't be in a movie, he takes over the movie because he's very awesome.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So there you go.

SPEAKER_02

He's my first pick for collaborator on this list. Super fair. Yep. Yep. All right.

SPEAKER_00

Doctor Doom. Dan, you're up first on this one. Doctor Doom. I love Doctor Doom. He is one of, if not, the best Marvel villain, in my opinion. Number two to Magneto, in my opinion, but. Well, okay, you're right. I'll give you Magneto over him. But whereas you can kind of see Magneto's side of everything, you can't with Doom. Yeah. Doctor Doom is just power hungry because he wants to control things. He thinks he knows how the world should be. He does have. He hates Reed Richards. And he hates so many people. He is, depending on which continuity, he is amazing. And eventually he becomes a wizard in addition to the ruler of a nation and a super technological genius.

SPEAKER_02

My only problem with Doctor Doom is that you mentioned this with Palpatine. It's even worse with Doctor Doom. Depending on who's writing Doom, he goes from the coolest villain you can ever read about to a poor knockoff of a villain that is almost Cobra Commander level.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Right? When he's written well as a guy who is actually a good leader of his country and is managing to manage his world domination instincts with a code of morals that for certain people is really good, and that he's like actually balancing these and kind of struggling. Well, he doesn't struggle, he's Doctor Doom. But yeah, you know, like all of these things together lead to a fantastic, fascinating, interesting person. Yeah. But then they haven't been able to do that in any of the movies so far. Yeah. We're doing this before Doomsday comes out.

SPEAKER_00

So maybe Doomsday will be great. Yeah. One of the things they try to do with Doom every time they adapt it into a new medium is they connect him so closely to the Fantastic Four that he becomes much smaller. Yeah. He is no longer the glorious ruler of this entire nation. He doesn't have his incredible backstory. He's just one more dude with a metal suit. And yeah. And it doesn't work. I am still gonna put him in S. Okay. Okay. And I'll tell you why. Yep. Because in a comic book, you just have so many writers. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people have written Doctor Doom's stories. Yeah. And just by law of averages, he's gonna end up looking stupid in some of them. And the other villains here don't have to deal with that.

SPEAKER_02

They don't. So we're letting them have their best incarnations. So, all right, you've talked me into an S. I was gonna go A. Okay. You've talked me into an S. Alright. Hans Gruber. Hans Gruber.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Hans Gruber. He is fantastic. But also he doesn't manage to accomplish anything. He gets taken out by one guy. He has no space base. He fails. He turns the hero against himself a little bit. But oh, where do you put Hans?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's the problem, is that most, if not all, of the other villains we've dealt with, you know, we've seen over time the rise and fall of schemes that these other villains do. Hans Gruber's only in one movie. The hero wins. Yeah. And so even though he has a brilliant plan and he has minions that do what he wants, and he is, you know, practically a shapeshifter. He can convince different people that he is different things, ultimately he never succeeds.

SPEAKER_02

And so which I don't know if we can hold against him too much, but it keeps him from S, at least in my book. If he hadn't pulled off that brilliant turn where he turned the hero into a friend for a short time without that, and if he hadn't outthought the FBI and everything in such brilliant ways, I wouldn't be even considering him. But he did both of those things. Also, he didn't even trick the hero fully because the hero gave him a gun, but it wasn't loaded.

SPEAKER_00

And so well, he tricked him fully until McLean saw what brand of cigarettes he was smoking. That's true. So he did it long enough, but you know. I think that it does, and not just for the other movies. Okay. Because obviously Die Hard with a Vengeance was his brother or something. Yeah. I think even today, decades later, people are still trying to make their villains anywhere near his outside Gruber. Right? They're trying to copy his style, they're trying to copy his smarts. And so I think even with failure, I want to go A.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, A is where I was going to place it. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Super fair. Hard to compete against Palpatine to get you into S when you're Hans Gruber, but I think that's as capable as we're going to get without space base type.

SPEAKER_01

All right. Jared Bowie from Good Old Labyrinth. I don't know what his actual last name is, but you know. The Goblin King. The Goblin King.

SPEAKER_00

The Goblin King. Oh man. So many of these villains are so good. Yep. Like, I feel bad just putting them all in A and S.

SPEAKER_02

Enough terrible villains.

SPEAKER_00

But I see we got a couple terrible ones coming.

SPEAKER_02

I can't put him in S, and I'll tell you why. I don't even know if I can put him in A. He's tormenting children. Mm-hmm. Like, dude, take over the world. Why are you tormenting a couple of children? Because he's a fairy tale villain and that's what they do. Yeah, I know that's what they do, but you can grow beyond that. You can do better than that. Expand your horizons. Right. Doctor Doom, you know, is king of a country. Didn't think I'm just gonna rule this country. He's like, no, I'm they gotta take over worlds, multiverses. Like, how long have you been tormenting children and you know, sticking them them in a maze? I mean, you're cool. You got style, you got flair, you can do that thing with the ball that's so cool. You got really interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Well, we couldn't even do that thing with the ball. That was somebody else's arm. Yeah. So the thing about Jareth, the Goblin King, is that he is not proactive. Yeah. He appears when what's her name? Sarah? Is that the name of the character? I don't know. Jennifer Connolly summons him and he appears. And then he has his whole speech at the end where he's like, I've done all of this for you because you asked me to. You were scared, and so I was scary. You know, all of this kind of stuff. He's just reacting rather than Than enacting any of his own plans. Yep. Yep. Yeah. B.

SPEAKER_01

I think you're being too generous. I'm surprised you guys are so kind. I would put him in D. I don't think he's that good of a villain. Well, he's a wonderful villain.

SPEAKER_02

Problem is, the problem is, Bowie. Bowie and C do not align in any way. Bowie could be standing on the street and he'd be standing on the street at at least a B.

SPEAKER_00

David Bowie could have shown up on set, refused to wear a costume, and just been like smoking and reading his lines off of visible script. Yeah. And he would still be at least a C.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Alright.

SPEAKER_01

You put him where you want. I've said my piece. Yeah, I'll put him in B. Alright. Going into B. Okay. The one and only Prince Humperdink. Prince Humperdink.

SPEAKER_03

Humperdink.

SPEAKER_02

Man, I don't want to put Humperdink very high. I don't either. What does this guy do? This the six-fingered man is way cooler than he is. He chickens out at the end. Wesley just has to talk to him.

SPEAKER_00

He chickens out. He gives away his own deceptions. Yeah. We're talking to Buttercup. And his grand plan is just to marry the hot girl. Yeah. Like he's gaining any power. Yeah. Yeah. So, man, D. Okay. F.

SPEAKER_02

F for me. F it is. F. Movie's not an F. Movie's an S.

SPEAKER_00

He's an F. He has the wherewithal to hire the six-fingered man.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. That's why he believes.

SPEAKER_00

That's why he's a D instead of an F.

SPEAKER_02

That's why he gets on the list. If he didn't, he wouldn't even be here. Yeah. I can't take him to a party. Yeah. I bet he'd be pretty good at a party. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Anyway. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

I have no idea who this is because their head's cut off.

SPEAKER_00

That is Shang from Mulan.

SPEAKER_01

This is Shang from the main villain of Mulan.

SPEAKER_00

Shang's an F. Shang's an easy F. Really? He is kind of competent for a while.

SPEAKER_01

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00

But he A loses at the only thing he tries to do. And Bas everybody here does. He loses in an uninteresting way. He has virtually no dialogue. We don't get a personality from him other than strong and silent.

SPEAKER_02

Come on. He steps on a girl's toy and like is like, ha ha ha ha. Look at these people I heard.

SPEAKER_00

That's his entire character.

SPEAKER_02

He's got the aura. I can't put him in F.

SPEAKER_00

I think he is a boring villain.

SPEAKER_02

He is the worst part of the movie. Okay. Well, I disagree. I don't think he's an amazing villain. But problem is in this category, we're looking at people who are super villain, Caliber. He's just a good soldier.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, right. We have to give credit where it though. He's not exactly Genghis Khan, but he's like right below him in comparison. No, because Khan won. Absolutely not. That's true. Khan did win. But he's a lieutenant. He's like, well, he's not even a lieutenant. He's told to be the commander.

SPEAKER_00

He's the commander of this army that this historically inaccurate army.

SPEAKER_02

I can give him a C. He's average. He's what you expect of an average, monstrous, personality-less villain, but he's less embarrassing to take to the party than Cobra Commander.

SPEAKER_00

Fair enough. Yep. All right. Megatron. I will say this. As an evil overlord, I bet you would hire some to be your lieutenant.

SPEAKER_02

In lieutenant level, he'd be very high.

SPEAKER_00

He'd be incredible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But as the leader, okay. That's fair. Average. That's exactly what I expect of average.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Megatron.

SPEAKER_00

Megatron. Evil Space Space. Does have an evil space space? He killed Optimus Prime. He was the coolest toy because he turned into a gun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Completely illegal toy now. Yeah. He has to turn into a tank instead. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00

And the recent Transformers 1. Yep.

SPEAKER_02

But I understand that that's the same backstory from the comics, which I have read.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

It might be. Similar issue. Not the Gladiator Path. They change it up a little bit, but very similar background. I'll go B. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Like, is he as scary as the Boar Queen?

unknown

No.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Is he scarier than Bowie? Yeah, he's a higher rank of B than Bowie. Okay. But he's no Hans Gruber.

SPEAKER_00

He is no Hans Gruber. So. Let's see. Show me what I have in B. You have Merlstreep and David Bowie. Megatron doesn't feel like he is at that level, does he?

SPEAKER_01

Is he better or worse than Cobra Commander? Here it is. He put Cobra Commander in C. He's regretting it.

SPEAKER_00

I'm not regretting Cobra Commander in C.

SPEAKER_01

One could argue they have very similar leadership styles. All right. We have five minutes left.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, we got a burn. Okay. Put him in C. Okay. And put him above Cobra Commander. Above Cobra Commander. There you go. Okay. Okay, who's next? Sauron. Sauron. Sauron. Sauron, I feel is an easy S. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, he's not as cool as Palpatine, but who is? Right. But he is the definition of fantasy evil overlord. Just like Dracula is the definition of horror evil overlord and Palpatine science fiction. I'll go S. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, he's an S. He, you know, came in and was so good at smithing and magic, he taught the elves how to do it better than they knew how. He ruled for hundreds of thousands of years. Hot, sexy, dangerous boy who could not be copyrighted. Could not be copyrighted. Except in my heart. Alright, Ganon from Legend of Zelda. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

That's Ganon Dorf, not Ganon.

SPEAKER_00

This is Ganon Dorf. Yes. Okay. He's another one who has no head. Points. Yes, yes. He's an unknown for me. He's an unknown? I've never played a Zelda game.

SPEAKER_02

Oh. I mean, he is your faceless evil villain, a lot of them, but in modern interpretations, they give him more backstory and stuff. I'll put him in B. That's a fair. Yeah. Yeah. He is aspiring to be more than he is. And the whole Ganondorf versus Ganon thing is also a little confusing. I mean, you know, Japanese game continuity. But yeah. Okay. Skynet. Skynet. Skynet. Skynet's an axe.

SPEAKER_00

Skynet's pretty good. Yeah. I'm not gonna go S, I'm gonna go A. What's your rationale? My rationale is that I feel like he should have sent way more people back in time. Like the humans, I can understand that the scrappy little human resistance can only afford to send one guy back in time every 15 years. Okay. But he could go back in time. Also, I feel like Skynet had not only the resources to send more people back in time, but also the intelligence to realize maybe I should have sent this guy back 15 years earlier instead of trying to kill teenage John Connor. Yeah, except I should have tried to kill baby John Connor again.

SPEAKER_02

I hate to have to acknowledge Terminator 3. Oh. Do they explain that? But no, they won. Like doing what they did was enough that Terminator 2, they could not stop Skynet. So they won. T2 is a failure. They didn't need to send back more than one. They sent back one and it was enough. And it wasn't stop Judgment Day. And I think even in the continuity, T3 couldn't stop Judgment Day. Like Skynet must have known that they couldn't stop Judgment Day. I hate that T3 exists, but it does exist. And the determination of T3 is we can't stop it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, and again though, that seems like it keeps exposing blind spots in Skynet. Because if what Skynet realized was, oh, we didn't win because we killed John Connor, we won because there was still some microchips or whatever that they didn't destroy. Yeah. Just send a bunch of microchips back in time.

SPEAKER_02

Why do you need to? That might fiddle with continuity more. It might. And then you might cease to exist. Yeah. If you've won, you use the least amount of force that you needed to in order to exist. And I haven't seen T3 in a while, so I don't know what their rationale, but I do know the declusion at the end is John Connor must become the leader of the rebellion. We can't stop.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Judgment Day. Well, I'm going to keep him in A, and I guess my only justification is that he is not personified. Yeah. Right? Yeah. It does not monologue. It does not have an evil villain conversation with anyone at any point. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

All right.

SPEAKER_02

Rapid fire. Rapid fire. We're just going to give letters for these.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. The Prophet from Halo.

SPEAKER_02

Prophets from Halo.

SPEAKER_01

Unknown. Unknown. Yep. I knew you I had a feeling you might, but. B. Okay. Magneto S. Magneto S. Okay. And then Lex Luthor.

SPEAKER_02

Lex Luthor C. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. C. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Because he stole all those two. I do. Yeah, I do have to justify Lex is never effective. I've never read a good Lex comic. I know they exist, but people haven't given it to me. He overthinks everything. In every movie, he's mediocre. Okay. Is there a good Lex Luther movie? Lex Luther movie? No.

SPEAKER_01

Is there a Superman movie where you look and you're like, Lex, you are actually a competent. Yeah. We can include animated series because they did make a good Lex in the animated series. That's good to snow. I haven't seen that. Okay. Because I'd say he was a he was incredibly effective then.

SPEAKER_02

I was disappointed. He was my number one disappointment in the new Superman movie. Despite liking the movie, my biggest disappointment is Lex. I never like him. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I feel like he's stuck in the silver age in some ways, too. Where he always has these really convoluted, goofy plans.

SPEAKER_02

The best thing he did was steal those pies. I mean, he had. I have to, I'm sorry. Go, please. He had the ability to clone Superman. Spoilers for the new Superman movie. Yeah. He had the ability to clone Superman.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And what did he do? The dumbest thing possible. We're going to dress him up and have him fight Superman so that people think a superhero from another country that Superman intervened with has come to cross. Make five and kill Superman and take over the world.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Plus, if you want to make Superman look bad, you've got a clone of a harder way to do it. Like, why not just give evil Superman a haircut and tell him to go out and start like kicking puppies? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You have a clone of Superman Lex.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You have issues, I know. Work them out with a different clone. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You can make pocket dimensions. And yet your plan is this? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I know the defenders really will stand up for him, and he is fun. But man, he's so inefficient. Is he still a C then to you? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

He's a C.

SPEAKER_02

He's a C. He's the definition of the guy who thinks he's too smart villain. Okay. Gru, he wants to be Gru. Okay. There's my quote.

SPEAKER_01

There's your quote.

SPEAKER_00

Uh-huh. Alright, Ultron. Ultron. Okay. I am not a huge Ultron fan, I will be honest. The best thing Ultron ever did was accidentally create the vision.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. V for me. I think he is. I mean, he's he's scary. He's a vengers level threat. I can't put him in C, but Okay.

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna put him in C, but put him at the top of C. Top of C.

SPEAKER_01

Alright. Because we said it last time, Sephiroth.

SPEAKER_02

Sephiroth.

SPEAKER_00

Sephiroth.

SPEAKER_02

Not a lot of evil minions.

SPEAKER_01

He cloned himself a ton, technically.

SPEAKER_02

He might have a space base. I don't know. He just runs around and does stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Does the meteor count as a space base? Yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_00

Jenova's an alien. Yeah. I thought we decided last time that Sephiroth wasn't an evil overlord.

SPEAKER_02

I don't think he is. You don't think so? You think he DNQs? He doesn't qualify. I think he has enough minions. I think he's like the rogue villain on his own. Yeah. Okay. That's fair. And then last but not least, Gru. Gru. Gru. Gru. Gru. Minions. Lots of them. Lots of minions. Obviously, has space based. Plus a mad scientist. Mad scientist of his own. Really good evil laugh and stuff. Good style. When he has to do it, he can fight. Gru is an S. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know if I can count Gru as a villain, though, because they turned him good in the very first movie and he's been good ever since.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, does not qualify. Does not qualify.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Fine. D and Q's. Fine.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, you can you can still have him on your list for you know the first three quarters each of the first movie. He was a villain.

SPEAKER_02

He's doing cool stuff.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. I'm putting back an S. Back to S. I'm not cocked out of it.

SPEAKER_02

He's doing cool stuff.

SPEAKER_00

I'm going to put him in B. Into B. I'll put him at the top of B, though. Top of B. And I and I want you to change Bowie so that he is second in B. All right. Because, yeah, I really enjoyed the first two Despicable Me movies. I haven't even kind of liked anything since.

SPEAKER_02

The first two are excellent. People sleep on how good the second one is. The second one is so good. I like all of them, but one and two are on a different level. The minions movies are trying to do something different, and so I don't rank them against each other. The minions movies are they're just screwball comedies. And the first minions movie was really enjoyable in that context. Watching a minion become King of England is just it's just fun. It's silly. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

There you go.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, Donald, for putting this list together. Thank you, Ben, for not being here.