Some Tragic Cases
The Scorpion King (The Mummy returns)
Admittingly it wasn't the biggest role in the second Mummy movie, we only got a few basic infos on the Scorpion King - so a prequel might not have been the worst idea. But apart from becoming "Scorpion King" and looking alike, Mathayus and the villain from the second installment of the Mummy series have nothing in common. If people did not advertised them as the same character one would have wondered forever.
Mathayus, which is a pretty name, so I am not going to complain here, however, is cast as the hero. And he is a real hero, he is so good natured it made me feel like throwing up, the first time I watched the prequel.
Here he is an Acadian, one of three remaining extremly feared and expensive assassins. So far it sounds really good, because that might have been a former occupation of the villainous conqueror. Except that this assassin is such a wuss. He gets send out to kill a supposedly evil sorcerer. But then he discovers "Oh, it's a woman" and goes all softie instead of wacking her. Some assassin, hm? Villains turned heroes automatically become dumber - who in his right mind breaks into the tent of a magic user and lets him or her open her mouth?
But the nightmare does not stop there. The guy who later in his career burns down cities, knowing that mass rape will be just one ugly part of the atrocities his armies are going to commit is the ultimate Mr. Understanding. Considering that this is set in some biblical time frame (Sodom and Gomorra are mentioned) it seems so out of place that he is the sweet kind listening sort of lover. Not to mention that he runs around wanting to avange the death of his two brothers and co-assassins, and delays his plan, to save some snotty kid who robbed him just moments before.
This is far from being the worst faux pax, our glorious hero lives by the motto "Live free, die well." Does that sound like the motto of a man who would sell his soul into eternal slavery to escape death? Would a teddy bear like goodie good guy cast revenge on a bunch of children and woman?
This is such a horrible make over, although in a way it is the oppsite, as this character ends as bad guy and started out as good, it still fits the "Reformed Villain" pattern, that occurs so often. First you have this movie, tv show, book or whatever with an cool, nasty villain and then someone realises that a lot of people fancy that character, so they integrate him as a good guy for the next round.
Couldn't they leave well enough alone? It would have been so much more satisfying and unique if they actually made this a movie about the conqueror and how he came to power. Instead we got a brainless campy movie which's only redeeming factor is lots and lots of nice barely dressed Scorpion King scenes (Cassandra was also kind of nice eye-candy).
Cole / Belthazar (Charmed)
Even though Cole is the kind of villain who was kind of slowly developing into a total wuss, it was so painful to watch. I know he was later changing his alignment a lot as this is is quite the common theme in Charmed. Still this is such a typical example. It seems like 17th century French censorship, where authors weren't supposed to write about certain themes and all their protagonists had to have certain standards (which earlier included being of noble birth). Just nowadays it is, that you can't have a bad guy as as a re-occuring character who does not get defeated on a regular basis. If there is a love story, it will always end up with the bad guy coming around.
Season 3 is one compact statement about everything I loathe when it comes to villains crossing over to the other site. It is not even that I dislike bad guy / good girl romances (it's my favourite sub-genre on the romance sector, especially bad guy / ofc ones), but why does the personality of the bad guy has to change. Give me American Gothic any day!
You have this nice outset, that Cole being a half-demon is sent to destroy the Charmed ones and with more luck than brains they always twart his plans. While playing the innocent attorney he gets to closely involved with Phoebe and ultimately falls in love with her. The couldn't have made the outcoming any sappier. From there it just got worse. He started kissing ass walking on bare knees through broken glass shards and still got all this "you're a demon, you don't deserve to be good" crap. He kind of swallows anything, loses the last shred of dignity he ever had and then after saving the day suddenly everything is okay for the remaining episodes of the season. Only to start the tango again.
What was so cool about him was how playful he actually remained even after falling for Phoebe, but then again, that was probably before he crashed the bottom. No self-respecting villain would take that crap from anyone. As it is standard protocol he also got dumber in the process. Good guys are seldom acting smart, but a reformed villain is obviously not allowed one single remaining good comeback reply, even though he used to be a pretty good manipulator throughout the beginning.
By all means let the bad guy fall for the girl, but there is no reason why he has to change down to the very core. But then again what can you expect from a tv show where the most deepest and sweetest relationship was between two warlocks who as was repeatedly mentioned could not feel love. Yet for some reason especially those who can't feel good emotions or be loyal show the most intriguing display of it.
more examples in the future will include Spike (Buffy), Xena (Hercules & Xena), Amanda (Highlander), Tarabas (Fantaghiro) and others ...