01-15-2020, 08:10 PM | #31 | ||
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: The line between anti-hero and full on villain.
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Dr. Morbius murdered the entire complement of the starship Bellerophon before the movie opens, sparing only his wife. But at the same time, he has no idea he did it. Consciously, all he knows is that the Bellerophon exploded while trying to leave Altair IV. Twenty-odd years later, when a military ship from Earth arrives to investigate the loss of the Bellerophon, we find that Altair IV was the site of an ancient super-advanced technological civilization, the Krel, one that perished, after millions of years of advancement and growth, in the course of a few local days, a quarter of a million years before. There's little sign of it left on the surface, after the passage of that much time, but vast alien machines still operate underground. Morbius is unquestionably an arrogant man. He considers himself more intelligent than everyone else. He's the sort who reminds people of his IQ test scores all the time. And yet...by most metrics, he is smarter than most people, and his IQ has been artificially boosted by an alien machine. He's humble enough to admit that his near-superhuman cognitive power would put him, by Krel standards, at the level of a developmentally disabled child. The captain of the military ship thinks that a discovery on that scale should be under government supervision. Morbius disagrees, and says he intends to dole out Krel secrets, as he learns them, in accordance with his own judgement as to the 'readiness' of the human race. Arrogant as heck? Yes. And yet...if I were in his place, I don't know that I'd report the discovery either. I don't imagine myself a qualified to decide what the world is entitled to know or not...but at the same time, that alien super-civilization died out after millions of years of survival in the course of a day. So caution is called for, and as long as nobody but me knew about the alien records or machines, the genie is still in the bottle. Once everybody knows, it's out. Of course Morbius is an anti-hero because he's blind to his own short-comings. Captain Adams (played by a young Leslie Nielsen in a very serious role) figures out what happened to the Bellerophon, and the nature of the monster that's been attacking them, even though he lacks Morbius' huge intellect. He also lacks Morbius' psychological blocks, and can recognize the Morbius created the monster by the action of his subconscious on the alien machines. It's implied that similar disaster would follow from any human plugged into the Krel machine, only the details would vary. When Adams forces Morbius to face up to the tragic reality of the situation, Morbius is prepared to die to make things right. That makes him heroic, but he's an anti-hero, or a 'tragic hero' or both, because it was his flaws that created the problem.
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01-18-2020, 08:15 AM | #32 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: The line between anti-hero and full on villain.
Probably a better example of a face turn -- villain become hero, or at least having a heroic moment, like Darth Vader. Being a villain for a while and then gaining redemption isn't the same as throughout the story being the protagonist, achieving heroic ends by questionable means or as an unsavory person.
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01-18-2020, 01:13 PM | #33 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: The line between anti-hero and full on villain.
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When he points out the graveyard for the people of the Bellorophon, he mentions that he dug each grave with his own hands, and has no wish to repeat it. That's probably true. He really would rather Adams and his crew survive. But at the same time, he did kill the first crew, albeit without knowing it, and he is controlled by his own huge ego in ways he doesn't perceive. He probably really is concealing the discoveries on Altair IV in part to protect the human race, on a subconscious level he knows what would happen if large numbers of people arrive on Altair IV and get access to that machine. But if he'd been less arrogant, the outcome might have been less tragic, too. It's hard to untangle the good and the bad in Morbius.
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01-18-2020, 01:28 PM | #34 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: The line between anti-hero and full on villain.
I don't think he's an anti-hero. This is essentially a classic Star Trek episode a decade or two early; the hero is the starship captain (Adams or Kirk). And an anti-hero is a type of hero, at least in the idiom you're using (for the original sense of anti-hero, an example would be Captain Mercer of the Orville). Morbius is the equivalent of the people the Enterprise encountered who'd gotten caught up in some alien culture or unwise scheme, whom the captain had to oppose but who wasn't an actual villain.
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01-18-2020, 11:15 PM | #35 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: The line between anti-hero and full on villain.
Morbius lacks an essential feature of an antihero. Unlike his prototype, Prospero he isn't the protagonist.
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01-20-2020, 08:43 PM | #36 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: The line between anti-hero and full on villain.
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That said, though, his status as semi-antagonist through most of the movie also puts Morbius into the running for anti-villain status.
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