Category: Actors

Cmdr Annorax – The Krenim Imperium

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Which villain’s backstory was the most understandable for them to become a villain in Star Trek?
I’ll nominate Annorax from Voyager’s two-part “Year of Hell.”

Annorax was a temporal scientist working for the declining Krenim Imperium. He developed a ship with a temporal weapon that, when fired, completely removed an object from the timeline, changing history so that it had never existed. Only ships with temporal shields like his would even remember the old timeline.

The Krenim fired this weapon against a rival species, erasing them from the timeline and briefly restoring the Krenim Imperium to its former glory.

Interbreeding with that species turned out to have made the Krenim immune to a deadly plague that began to run rampant throughout the empire. To correct the error, he fired again and restored almost the entire empire—except for his home colony and his beloved wife.

Annorax, never aging inside his shielded ship, spent the next two centuries rewriting the timeline to restore his wife. Each time he fired that terrible weapon, his species’ fortunes would rise and fall, but the fate of Annorax’s home and wife was never restored.

Through a large portion of the two-parter, Annorax is barely aware of Voyager; the restored Krenim Imperium is simply battering our heroes. Eventually, Voyager develops temporal shields like Annorax’s to protect themselves from Krenim torpedoes, and these shields disastrously disrupt Annorax’s subsequent firing. Annorax sets out to track down Voyager and remove it from the equation; although the ship escapes, he manages to abduct Chakotay and Paris. But he’s impressed by Chakotay, and together, they devise a way to alter history—without additional deaths—so that Voyager never encounters the Krenim in the first place.

With Chakotay’s approval, Paris provokes a mutiny that drops the temporal shields, allowing Voyager to attack and trigger a weapon overload that erases the ship from history. Commander Annorax is finally restored to his home with his wife, and he never decides to build the ship. Following the advice of a less aggressive Krenim patrol ship, Voyager slightly alters its course, unaware of the timeline it had averted.

Annorax stands out as a villain with very relatable motivations. He was not trying to exterminate all life or take over the galaxy; all he wanted to do was restore what he and his species had lost. He was the hero of his own story—always the mark of a great villain.

Flash Gordon (1980)

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In what Hollywood movie does the headliner get upstaged by another actor? How so?

Flash Gordon – (1980) is a film that featured Sam J. Jones as the main star of the film. While every actor pretty much mugged and winked their way through this one, creating one of the most overacted films ever (Gordon’s ALIVE?!), Jones, as Flash, definitely tried his best to give a straight and serious performance. Only to be given a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor for his trouble.

Ming The Merciless was played by the reliably excellent Max Von Sydow, known for playing Jesus Christ in the film The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), as well as starring in The Exorcist (1973) and Three Days of the Condor (1975).

Behind the scenes, Jones and the movie producer, Dino De Laurentiis, clashed over what Gordon’s personality should be. De Laurentiis wanted him to be Ham Fest central and humorous, while Jones wanted to play the character much like how Adam West played Batman in the 1960s — seriously. It was an authentic tug of war and power struggle between the two. Things got so bad that Jones took his ball and went home just before post-production, which would result in much of his dialogue for the film being dubbed over by professional voice and dramatic actor Peter Marinker, whose identity was unknown, even to the main draw of the film Jones.

But Von Sydow, the master of actor gravitas and versatility, a man who played both Jesus and Satan, helped carry more than his part of the load in this film with his over-the-top evil performance. He was the epitome of the 1980s cheesy bad guy. With a stereotypical line such as, while referring to his nemesis:

“‘Ahhh…now my victory is complete. With Flash Gordon dead, nothing can stop me from conquering the universe!’

But somehow, the guy made the line and the character work. Von Sydow’s contribution was the best and most exciting performance in a movie filled with most of the characters hamming it up.

What was also cool about this movie is that Queen did the entire soundtrack. It was the rock band’s first of two soundtracks that they ever recorded.

Who’s got a clue!

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What well-known movies were “stolen” by a great performance from a supporting actor?

The Butler did it!

Anybody who has ever seen the movie Clue knows that the producers paid big dollars to assemble an A-grade ensemble of the finest comedic actors of the time.

Look at that cast! Michael McKean, Martin Mull, Lesley Ann Warren, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Brennan, and Madeline Kahn. Some of the best ensemble comedic performers of the 1980s. Christopher Lloyd was at his Back to the Future peak. Michael McKean had just come off of Spinal Tap. And Madeline Kahn was still killing it in every Mel Brooks movie.

Yet, who stole every scene he was in from every one of these comic stars? Some little-known character actor, best known for vamping in a corset in a midnight cult film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show:

Tim Curry plays Wadsworth, the Butler. This was the first major film in which he showcased his comedic side, and he just killed it!

If you have ever seen Clue, try not to chuckle in recalling:

  • Colonel Mustard: Is this place for you?
  • Wadsworth: Indeed, no, sir. I’m merely a humble butler.
  • Colonel Mustard: What exactly do you do?
  • Wadsworth: I buttle, sir.
  • Wadsworth: I suggest we take the cook’s body into the study.
  • Colonel Mustard: Why?
  • Wadsworth: I’m the Butler; I like to keep the kitchen tidy.
  • Wadsworth: Professor Plum, you were once a professor of psychiatry specializing in helping paranoid and homicidal lunatics suffering from delusions of grandeur.
  • Professor Plum: Yes, but now I work for the United Nations.
  • Wadsworth: So your work has not changed.

…and of course:

If you have not seen the movie, go watch it now. You will see the OTHER movie that made Tim Curry a star.

Curry is one of the few actors who can be funny and terrifying in turn. His IMDB entry lists over 200 roles, including Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King’s It, Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers, Rooster in Annie, and the Lord of Darkness in Legend. In his later years, he continued doing voice acting for cartoons like The Wild Thornberrys and Peter Pan and the Pirates.

If you don’t know why Tim Curry is a star, then you haven’t got a Clue!

Jack Nicholson’s Joker

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Was Jack Nicholson really terrible as Joker?

No. And a little history is important here as context. Prior to Nicholson, the only live action Joker we had was this guy:

A yukity yuk slapstick clown played by Cesar Romero who wouldn’t shave his mustache for the role in a campy, tongue in cheek tv show.

Then along came the Batman movie:

Everything changed. Batman was much darker, more serious and way more violent and he was pitted against a completely new interpretation of a character that no one had ever given much thought to.

Nicholson turned a jokey, sad villain into THE most popular bad guy in the superhero genre. He utterly redefined the modern Joker and everyone who has played the part since has built on his work. The Joker you know today is because of him.

This guy is scary.

Gone was the slapstick, the goofiness, the over the top hamming it up and cartoonishness of Romero’s character. In its place was a sense of menace and casual cruelty where over the top antics were deliberate and deadly.

Nicholson was the first actor to capture the essence of the Joker and cement the character in the mind of the audience. Everyone who has played the character since then has worked off of this template. Without Nicholson’s Joker, no one who has followed him would have even had the opportunity.

Those who see his performance for the first time decades later might be forgiven for not understanding how amazing it was at the time, but make no mistake, your favorite Joker owes everything to Jack Nicholson.