Bored in your life? Feeling listless? Well good news, the cure to listlessness is lists! "Ed Ranks Everything" promises to give you meaningless, irrational, arbitrary listicles to fill your existential void.
Sure, go ahead and look around. You need something to do before drowning.
Based on the Apple II version of the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) game The Oregon Trail, there were ten ways to meet your horrible and inevitable death while attempting to settle Oregon. In doing some research, people seem to also claim that there were additional ways to die such as starvation, Indian attacks, yellow fever, and gunshot wounds while hunting. However, I'm unable to verify these legendary methods of dying. There were a lot of versions of the game though, so people might be mis-remembering or remembering some other version of the game. The Apple II version is the most iconic, so I'll stick with these 10.
10. Exhaustion - Really? You died of exhaustion? That's the thing that the public relations managers of celebrities tell the press that their clients have when they actually are checking into rehab for rampant narcotic abuse. Maybe you should just adjust the speed at which you're pacing those oxen, buddy.
9. Broken Arm - I'm not saying that nobody dies of broken arms, but this is pretty weak sauce here. I suppose an infection you got after breaking your arm could kill you. 8. Broken Leg - Like the arm above, but a little more understandable. If you have to travel across half the country but can't use your legs, I can see at least some justification for why you'd just lay down and die at Independence Rock instead of going on with this futile journey. What's so special about the Willamette Valley anyway?
7. Fever - You're going to have to be a bit more specific than just "fever." When people tell me they have a fever, I don't assume they're about to die. I assume it's Friday and they want to have a three day weekend.
6. Measles - Okay, now we're starting to see some actual defined medical conditions. But still... measles? Maybe it's just my bias speaking though the lens of someone living comfortably in the 21st Century, but this one doesn't seem all that fatal. Most people don't die of measles, right? I dunno, I guess things were different in 1848.
5. Typhoid - Now we're REALLY getting legit with some scary sounding stuff. Typhoid fever is caused by a Salmonella bacteria and we all know that's no good at all. It's generally spread by eating or drinking food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person. Gross. Nobody wants to get this, because it means that you ate shit. 4. Cholera - Cholera is horrible. Your entire body is in pain and you have watery diarrhea. As above, this is generally spread by consuming feces. There were lots of ways to die of horrible diseases in old times and many of them involved consuming feces and likewise unstoppable diarrhea. This will not be the last diarrhea-related death on this list, alas. It's treatable today and only kills about 1% of people who get the said treatment for it. Unfortunately, it still kills massive numbers of people - because many in poor countries don't get that treatment. 3 to 5 million people worldwide get it every year, killing between 58,000 and 130,000 of them.
3. Drowning - You should have saved enough money to pay for the toll bridge, you stupid ass. Why did you have to buy so much meat at Fort Bridger and go broke? You could have gone hunting instead and saved a few bucks for the toll. But no. Now you have to think of something witty to put on your tombstone so that everyone in the networked school computer lab can laugh at it. Don't put down "pepperoni," that's so cliché.
2. Snakebite - Goddamn snakes are just the worst, right? There you are, just walking along by Chimney Rock and a prairie rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis) bites you. No problem, right? You'll just take a quick hop over to the Morrill County Community Hospital in nearby Bridgeport and get an antivenin treatment. Well I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but first off didn't I just say above that this year is 1848? The Morrill County Community Hospital wasn't established until 1970. And secondly, the first antivenin for snakes wasn't developed until 1895 by French scientist Albert Calmette. The hemotoxins just injected into you will begin tissue necrosis throughout your body. I would include a picture of what this looks like as part of this ranking, but you'd have nightmares. But you might not have to worry about that for too long, as the venom is also neurotoxic... so you might not even feel your horrible death after all the nerves in your body shut down.
1. Dysentery - This one is just so iconic. Why does everybody remember this one for The Oregon Trail more than the others? I'll tell you why. Because unlike the typhoid and cholera above, which also include violently shitting yourself to death, dysentery ALSO famously involves the shitting out of blood. Lots of blood. Still, this is one of these old time diseases we can laugh about now because it doesn't effect anyone anymore, right? Sorry, no! The bacterial form of dysentery causes the deaths of 74,000 people a year (30,000 of which are children under five) and the amoeba-based form of dysentery still causes 50,000 deaths a year.
Some things become "classics" for absolutely no reason at all. They are horrible trash that should have been forgotten long ago. The burning of the Library of Alexandria is a famous metaphor for the loss of irreplaceable human culture and knowledge. If these 10 books had been thrown in a fire before anyone read them, we'd be all the better off for it. Why do schools force children to read these terrible books? No wonder kids don't actually read them and turn to SparkNotes or Wikipedia instead. Going three pages into any of this drivel will instantly make you jealous of those who are illiterate. These are the eight most horrible classic books, with #1 being the most horrible of all.
8. The Scarlet Letter - This book opens with a clumsily-written, 44-word run-on sentence. It doesn't get any better from there. I mean the opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities is super long too, but at least it's iconic and people only remember the "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" part. Nothing memorable here. I honestly think teachers just assign it because it's relatively short. I guess it's supposed to include "symbolism" for children to learn about, but The Scarlett Letter beats a dead horse with its symbolism, finds a magical resurrection potion to bring the horse back to life, and beats it to death again.
7. Great Expectations - Don't get your expectations too high. Sorry Dickens.
6. The Iliad - The Trojan War is a famous story about, among other things, (1) the birth of an almost-invincible demigod and the un-changable prophesies about him; (2) the Judgement of Paris, where a man hosts a beauty pageant with three goddesses and is given the world's most beautiful mortal woman as his prize; and (3) the 10-year war that said beauty pageant sets off, eventually ending with the Greeks sneakily breaking into Troy (through the famed Trojan Horse) and massacring everyone inside. The Iliad is famous for being "the story of the Trojan War." Guess how many of those things that I mentioned happen in The Iliad? None. The Iliad is a boring piece of shit about a couple of weeks during the war when Agamemnon and Achilles were feuding with each other about women who they kidnapped as war prizes and constantly raped. I can see why Brad Pitt wanted to take his movie version in a slightly different direction.
Go ahead, read all about this for 400 pages
5. Moby-Dick - Ever wanted to spend about 70 hours reading an encyclopedia of whaling terms because you want to know all about the various equipment associated with 19th Century whaling and the respective differences of oil yield between the blubber of different species within the Infraorder Cetacea? You're in luck! This book exists, and it is awful. 4. Don Quixote - "Such a classic!" says everybody. "Remember when he fought the windmills?" If you talk to anyone about Don Quixote, they will mention the windmills fight thing to you. Why? Because that happens near the beginning of this 1000+ page novel (technically two novels - with a Part 1 and Part 2). I'm not sure anyone has actually made it all the way to the end. About two chapters after the windmills, most readers will be like, "Oh, I give up. He's stupid and he thinks he's a knight even though that hasn't been a thing for hundreds of years. Hasn't this just been the same joke over and over again every single chapter?" Well, it is the same joke, over and over again. After a while it just feels like we're making fun of a guy with autism. Some readers might skip a few hundred pages forward to see if the joke has changed at all, or if the story has moved on. It won't and it doesn't. Don Quixote would have been an excellent and funny 3,000 word short story. Instead, it's a 400,000+ word mega-book, usually with additional citations and footnotes just as long as the text itself explaining all the obscure references.
Behold, an asshole who wrote three novels about himself
3. The Divine Comedy - Dante is a petty asshole. This is actually three books instead of one, and this is how it goes: "I'm Dante, I'll make myself the main character in my own novels. Everyone who I dislike or who disagrees with my beliefs is in hell, and everyone who I like is in heaven. My guide through heaven is a dead girl named "Beatrice" who I had a crush on but who friend-zoned me. I have an incredibly unhealthy fixation on her." Who would you guess the primary residents of hell are? According to Dante, it's pretty much just Popes. Hell is, like, PopeTown, in Pope Provence, in the Country of Pope. And what are the chances that Dante DIDN'T dig up this Beatrice girl and have sex with her dead body? Come on, you know he did.
2. Atlas Shrugged - Summary: "Poor people are terrible, rich people are good." Hopefully you were never actually assigned to read this book in school. But who knows? Maybe your teacher was just as awful as this book. I think writer John Rogers' analysis is the most succinct: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." But then again, John Rogers' actually wrote that quote on blogspot, so you have to take quoting blogspot for what it's worth. If the co-writer of Transformers and Catwoman calls you a bad writer, well, it's over.
Man's deadliest instrument of suicide - apparently a sled
1. Ethan Frome - Reading this book will make anyone want to sled into a tree and die. Oh wait, is that absolutely the stupidest method of suicide conceivable? Yes it is, which is why it doesn't work. This is the literary equivalent of an emo kid talking about how suffering and pain is the only thing that they can feel anymore. I am almost certain that "Edith Wharton" is the pen name for a 12-year old girl who locked herself in her room and wrote about wanting to die after she learned that the lead guitarist of My Chemical Romance had a girlfriend, and therefore wouldn't be able to marry her. "I want these characters to be in love, but they can't be together because the world sucks, so they go to kill themselves, but even then they can't kill themselves right and live as cripples for the rest of their life! Just like my heart has been crippled by you, Ray Toro!"
I hit the shift key and randomly typed three letters into Wikipedia without paying attention to what those letters were. I figured I would get a Wikipedia disambiguation page for an acronym. I was correct. This is a definitive ranking of the seven things that Wikipedia says that DNO stands for.
7. Distribution Network Operator - These are companies licensed to distribute energy in Mediocre Britain (formerly known as "Great Britain," prior to the Brexit). Can you get any more boring than that? 6. Dno (air base) - A former air base should be more exciting because jets and stuff launched from there. But this is a Russian airbase, and Russia is just the worst.
5. DNO ASA - A Norwegian oil company, focused on oil and gas extraction from the Middle East and North Africa. See? Even the Nordic countries are raving capitalists trying to take all the oil from the brown people and destroy the world with pollution.
4. Drang nach Osten - This is a term coined in the 19th century to designate German expansion into Slavic lands. Damn Germans and their continual demands to expand! The rest of the world needs to keep their eyes on these lousy Hun bastards.
3. Dutch National Opera - Dutch Opera isn't as famous as Viennese Opera or anything, but I'm sure it's just as interesting. That is, if you're interested by people singing nonsense in Italian for three hours. Still, doing absolutely no research to confirm this, I will assume that Dutch Opera is all about weed and hookers, right? Maybe windmills and wooden shoes too.
2. Director of Naval Ordinance - A British acronym that doesn't suck, this is an official in the British Navy that is in charge of all of their munitions. That includes large guns, gun-mountings, magazines, torpedo apparatus, electrical fittings for guns, etc. Pretty awesome. 1. Danish Nurses Organization - Denmark's trade union for nurses. Danish Nurses. How hot does the membership of this organization have to be?
Yes, it's just a Blink 182 album cover and she's American, but you get the gist.
12. Oscar Pistorius - A filthy murderer. I looked at all the evidence and he didn't have a leg to stand on (I stole the joke from my own Facebook page from 2013, so it's okay).
11. Isaac Mizrahi - This guy's pretty annoying too, but he hasn't killed anybody (that we know about). He did molest all those actresses at the 2006 Golden Globes though. Remember that? No. Okay, moving on...
10. Oscar de la Renta - Not to be confused with Oscar De la Hoya. You could box this guy and win easily. Especially because he's dead. RIP
9. Isaac (bible) - All other Isaacs are named after him, so you think he'd be ranked pretty high. But Isaac didn't really do anything. Other than his dad almost sacrificing him, there isn't much of his own story told. The bible quickly moves on with more begat-ing and forgets all about him.
8. Oscar Bluth - Man that Jeffrey Tambor is funny, right?
7. Isaac Hayes - In the end, the whole Scientology thing knocks him down a bit, but you can't discount all those years that he was the king of cool.
6. Oscar De la Hoya - Not to be confused with Oscar de la Renta. Do not try to box this guy. You will lose, unless you are already a boxer yourself.
5. Chris Isaak - Yes, technically it's spelled slightly different. Big deal! It's not like Bible Isaac guy was actually spelled the English way. This guy had that one song, remember? Yeah. Pretty good. And he was on Twin Peaks or something, right? Look, the 90's were a while ago, I forget.
4. Isaac Asimov - Ever seen a good sci-fi movie? It's probably based on a book written this guy, either an outright adaption or just via lazy stealing of ideas.
3. Oscar the Grouch - This dude loves himself some trash. Anything dirty or dingy or dusty. Anything ragged or rotten or rusty.
2. Isaac Newton - The most influential thinker of the scientific revolution. Formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that finally explained ancient mysteries including comets, other celestial bodies, the tides, and the equinoxes. Laid the foundations for classical mechanics and optics. Helped develop calculus. Built the first practical reflecting telescope. Developed the theory of color based on his studies of prisms dividing light into the many colors of the visible spectrum. These are just a small sample of the things he did. What the fuck have you done with your life?
1. Oscar Isaac - This whole ranking was really just so I could post this:
24. Moonraker - Star Wars came out in 1977, so logically it made sense that in 1979 James Bond should have a space battle with an industrialist who wants to repopulate the world with the Aryan race. Logically.
23. Octopussy - The worst named movie is also the second worst overall. This is a story that involves Fabergé eggs, sound samples from an old Tarzan movie, and has the entire climax featuring James Bond dressed up as a clown. This movie is absolutely not an all time high.
22. A View to a Kill - Noticing a pattern yet? Yes, Roger Moore is horrible. And by the time this movie came out, I'm pretty sure he was already 89 years old. The scenes of him trying to woo young Bond girls in this movie comes off more like Herbert the whistling pedophile from Family Guy trying to get Chris into his house. This movie could easily be the worst but, hey, Chris Walken!
So... who knew Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was such a babe?
21. Live and Let Die - Just so terrible. Did we really need a James Bond remix with a Blaxploitation film? Was anyone convinced by the Mr. Big disguise that Dr. Kananga was going with? He just looked like Kananga with leprosy. And was the racist Southern cop really an interesting enough character that they needed to invite him back for a second film after this? This is clearly a rhetorical question because we all know the answer is “no”.
20. The Man with the Golden Gun - The general concept of Christopher Lee being an amazing assassin with a golden gun (that he can transform into everyday objects to sneak through security with) is great. The concept of him wanting to kill James Bond is okay. Although, I can never figure out why James Bond is world famous when he's also supposed to be a secret spy. The way this entire movie is written and pulled off... is not okay.
19. Die Another Day - Hooray! A Pierce Brosnan movie finally terrible enough to be worse than a Roger Moore movie. Wait. Why are we celebrating this terrible thing? This one was so bad it ended Pierce Brosnan's time as Bond. Yes, we can all agree that Halle Berry is nice to look at coming out of the water. But a Korean villain in whiteface? An invisible car? And OH MY GOD that horrible ice tsunami surfing scene with special effects that are neither special nor effective.
18. The World is Not Enough - Sophie Marceau is great, and I have no problem with the twist where they made her the villain (sorry if that was a spoiler, but the film came out in 1999, so by now it's your own fault). But I have six damning words which will mean that this movie has no way of redemption: Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist.
Didn't I tell you not to trust anyone, Dr. Jones?
17. For Your Eyes Only - Julian Glover (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Game of Thrones, The Empire Strikes Back, Doctor Who) is a great villain. But watching Julian Glover feud with a Mediterranean smuggler and coach a jailbait ice skater is not the epitome of a great film.
16. Tomorrow Never Dies - Some people rank this one a lot lower. And Jonathan Pryce is absolutely hamming it up in this film, almost as a parody of a Bond villain more than an actual Bond villain. This movie is instantly date-able to the 90s with its fascination with the rise of cable breaking news and it's casting of Teri Hatcher. Remember when Teri Hatcher was a thing?
15. The Spy Who Loved Me - Time Out Magazine called this the 5th best bond film, and Rotten Tomatoes names it as the 8th "freshest." I don't care. This is as high as Roger Moore is going to get in my rankings. There is no Roger Moore film that is as good as a Connery, Craig, or even Dalton film. The Spy Who Loved Me is the best Roger Moore Bond film, and that seabase thing is pretty cool. But other than that, it's still just Roger Moore.
Essentially, the good guys in TLD. Oops!
14. The Living Daylights - More simply forgettable than terrible, The Living Daylights features the Afghan mujahideen as the good guys. You know, the guys who would eventually transform into the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20! Still, that milkman with the exploding bottles was pretty cool, huh? And that cargo aircraft scene at the end? And what about that Czech cellist?
13. Diamonds are Forever - This is the worst Sean Connery film (Never Say Never Again is non-Eon and doesn't count), but it's still better than the best Roger Moore film. I don't care about diamonds, I don't care about Mr. Crunch and Mr. Munch (or whatever their names were), I don't care about Las Vegas, and I don't care about the Jimmy Dean Sausage guy pretending to be Howard Hughes. And why is the villain Blofeld? This guy is nothing like Blofeld. Can't we just give him another name and not make him Blofeld?
12. SPECTRE - SPECTRE is a giant bag of wasted possibility. After decades of an inability to use the SPECTRE organization or its characters due to complicated legal issues, Eon Productions finally secured the rights back. There was no way this couldn't kick ass, right? Wrong. We all knew Christoph Waltz was going to be Blofeld, so why even bother to hide it? And the "I want to kill James Bond because I was jealous of him as a child" just went and destroyed everything that might have been interesting - almost undermining the entire Craig reboot. There were two good things about this movie - the opening in Mexico and that car chase with Mr. Hinx. 11. License to Kill - Timothy Dalton did a pretty respectable job as Bond. But he was only given two chances and he can only soar as high as #11. A villain who refreshingly didn't want to take over the world or steal nuclear weapons, Sanchez just wants to be a billionaire drug lord. In a way this movie wanted to be Miami Vice or Scarface, but it works enough to still be enjoyable. With another actor this could have been near the bottom, but Dalton and Law and Order girl elevate it.
"I think he got the point."
10. Thunderball - This one isn't even all that amazing, so I'm not sure why they made it twice. Still, it's got underwater action scenes, pools with sharks, beautiful island locations, and all that good stuff. Sean Connery kicks enough ass to move this one up the ranks, and the whole "facial surgery to look like someone else" plot that begins the story is okay enough. When TBS used to do James Bond marathons all the time, the scene from this film with Bond using the spear gun on the guy on the beach was in every single commercial they ran, and it is a pretty iconic scene. But overall, it's not as successful as others because it seems like we're just having another SPECRTE mid-management villain thrown at us, when all we really want by this time is a Blofeld reveal. Which we will get in the very next film.
Nice jabot, Australian Pirate Bond.
9. On Her Majesty's Secret Service - OHMSS is just weird. An Australian James Bond is weird. The fact that Blofeld and Bond just ignore continuity and and appear not to know each other in this film is weird. The fact that Lazenby jokes about "that other one," acknowledging an actor replacement, is weird. And this film is at the height of the trippy, psychedelic late 1960s. This is almost an Austin Powers film. The "joke" of Austin Powers was Mike Myers essentially over-doing all of the clichés of James Bond - but he didn't even need to. An overly-clichéd 1960s free love trippy James Bond-esque film already existed - and it was this one. Still, Diana Rigg is great. Telly Savalas is great. So this one's still good.
8. Goldeneye - Pierce Brosnan knocked the ball out of the park with his first James Bond outing. It had been the longest stretch in history without a new Bond film, and the Cold War had ended in the middle of that. Goldeneye had to reinvent James Bond for the post-Cold War world and prove that a James Bond film series could still be relevant and interesting without it. Goldeneye did that, becoming one of the best Bond films there was. And how about that video game, huh? Each one of Brosnan's repeat appearances got progressively worse though. 7. Quantum of Solace - This will absolutely be my most controversial ranking. I didn't even necessarily love Quantum of Solace when it first came out. But if you marathon the Daniel Craig movies all in a row, and watch this directly after watching Casino Royale, it's a great and logical follow-up. I know water rights in Latin America don't sound as sexy as they could be, but this is not a bad or boring bond film. It's 65% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is an absolute farce. The film had great action and was gritty, psychological, and dark, which was everything that made Casino Royale great. So the name of the film isn't great? So what! The villain is kind of boring? Pfft. Like Le Chiffre the banker/card player was such a super badass.
There was a time when it was OK for a movie poster to feature a man being
scrubbed down erotically by Japanese girls. That time was 1967.
6. You Only Live Twice - I really like this one, although it shall not be winning any awards for cultural sensitivity. Let's put some tape on Sean Connery's eyes to make them slanted. BY GOD! What happened? Where did James Bond go and how did this Japanese man magically appear here? But beyond that, James Bond being killed at the beginning was amazing, Donald Pleasence's version of Blofeld is THE DEFINITIVE Blofeld. The evil secret lair in the volcano is super iconic and often-copied, and the "let's pit the Soviet Union and United States up against each other and cause war!" is SPECTRE at the height of their awesome SPECTRE-ness. If the SPECTRE film was just an obvious remake of this with a little politically correct updating of the Hong Kong and Japan stuff, and with Daniel Craig's grittiness and realism added, then it would have been the greatest Bond film ever.
5. Skyfall - When Skyfall came out, everyone was immediately like "Greatest Bond film of all time!" No, it's not. It's pretty damn amazing, but it's not the greatest. For one, we have the all-too-convenient "the bad guy wanted to get himself caught!" plot device, which is just the worst and became so over-used. For some reason, every single screenwriter of this era added it to their movies and audiences and critics ate it up. The Joker wanted to get caught in The Dark Knight. Loki wanted to get caught in The Avengers. Khan Wanted to get caught in Star Trek into Darkness. Look, I'm not saying that these films are bad (okay, Star Trek into Darkness is bad), but enough is enough. Other than that - great film with great acting, a great villain, great imagery, and great everything. Bond on the boat to Macau is iconic. The whole Scotland fight is iconic. The ending of the movie transforming so that James Bond walks into the 1960s Sean Connery films is iconic. It's iconic.
4. Dr. No - You've got to start a series somewhere, and this was a good start. Things weren't quite 100% James Bond yet, but Sean Connery needed to ease into the role with this film first before he really mastered it over the next several films. Still, even not at 100% Bond, this was still Sean Connery at a solid 97% Bond. Everything iconic about the film series started with this film and was because of this film. If it had been any other actor, it would never have been as popular and the legacy would have not lasted beyond a few forgettable 1960s spy films. All adaptations of Bond which came after were based on this portrayal. Nobody wants to play the James Bond as written in the Ian Fleming book series. They all want to play the suave "Bond, James Bond" motherfucker from this film. SPECTRE isn't even in the novels, its first mention is here. Bond's introduction in this film is both a seminal moment in the history of cinema and a seminal moment in the history of pop culture in the UK, US, and around the globe. Just as the British empire was waning, this dude came along and proved that the UK had its shit together. Once we realized that we had James Bond on our side, it was a given that the West would win the Cold War.
Honestly not the worst way to go.
3. Goldfinger -Goldfinger is a great and iconic James Bond film. There is no argument there. Look how high it is ranked! If someone asks you to name a James Bond film, this might be the first one you say. It's the one with Goldfinger and Goldfinger's awesome Rolls-Royce Phantom III. It's the one which introduced Bond's Aston Martin DB5 (the most famous Bond car, by far). It's the one with the lil' Asian guy who throws the hat that kills people. It's the one with "Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond! I expect you to die!" It's the one with breaking into Fort Knox. It's the one where they kill the girl by painting her gold. It's the one with Pussy Galore (the most famous Bond girl, by far). So why isn't it ranked #1? Okay, it's got a couple of problems - the main one of which is that we are starting to leave behind some of the "realness" of past films like Dr. No and From Russia With Love and venture into a realm where James Bond villains get plans that are a little cartoony. Contemporary reviews of the film included terms to describe it such as, "preposterous," "hokum," "absurd," "garbage," and "impossible." And those all came from POSITIVE reviews of the film, because it did get overwhelmingly positive reviews and still holds up as a great and well-paced action film. Nobody can honestly say though that the twist at the end where all the soldiers "wake up" because the nerve gas was fake makes any damn sense at all.
2. From Russia With Love - In the second Bond film, Sean Connery has already mastered who James Bond is and will be for the rest of time. From Russia With Love is the greatest Cold War film of all time (sorry Dr. Strangelove) and has everything a great Cold War film should have. Although SPECTRE is mentioned and supports the backstory of Dr. No, they finally show up for real here and everything about them is iconic. We get the unseen Blofeld stroking his cat, and devious henchmen including Rosa Klebb and Quint from Jaws. It's hard to imagine in today's day and age filmmakers having the patience to slowly pay off a Blofeld reveal like they did starting here. Blofeld appears in this film but we never get to see his face, and we also have to sit through all of Goldfinger and Thunderball before finally getting a reveal in You Only Live Twice. That's a four film arc. The new SPECTRE film couldn't even hold off on a Blofeld reveal for the duration of the movie, and even then messed it up because the name carried no weight comes in a continuity where the name means nothing to Bond (just like Khan in Star Trek into Darkness, which, did I mention, was terrible?). It's also relatively gritty and real, and avoids the comic book-ish villains, action scenes, and gadgets that would show up later (although Q does finally show up here - so we have some gadgets - and an appropriate level of subversive Connery humor is added). Did I forget to mention that the whole James Bond pre-title sequence thing comes from this film? Because that didn't exist yet in Dr. No.
1. Casino Royale - After every single Pierce Brosnan film got progressively worse, it was time for a fresh start. And in this case, it really was a fresh start. While every Bond actor up to the this point was seemingly playing the character in the same continuity (with no explanation of why his face changed and why he wasn't 80 years old yet), Casino Royale left no doubt in our minds that this was a 100% reboot of the franchise and all continuity from before could be thrown out. This angered a lot of people, while others were just enraged that Bond would be blonde. Such supposed blasphemy could have made the film go wrong in a lot of ways, but it didn't. It went so right. Sean Connery might be the best Bond, but Daniel Craig has the best film and is at least in Sean Connery's league. The over-reliance on gadgets, ludicrous plot devices, and unbelievable action scenes featuring computer graphics is all wiped away for the most gritty, real Bond film ever. Just because it's gritty doesn't mean that they wiped away the humor. There are still a lot of fun, charming things in the film... but they didn't need to go cranking the volume to 11 with cheesy puns and gags. No, a bunch of assholes playing a poker game isn't quite the same as a cackling maniac stealing nuclear weapons to hold the world ransom. But it purposefully wasn't supposed to be. The way the film opens with Bond getting his first kills to become a 00 is incredible, and if Craig hadn't won you over by then - the way he asks for his martini absolutely should have won you over. If you saw that scene and didn't think it was the most awesome thing that ever happened in a James Bond movie, then you are a tool. And I'd rather watch that realistic Madagascar parkour chase scene 100 times over than any stupid blue screen of James Bond windsurfing an ice tsunami or fighting in space even once. Do I even need to mention how awesome Eva Green is as Vesper Lynd? Yes? Well, she just is.
Captain Hook is a villain because he's bent on revenge. Blood thirsty revenge! For what reason? Because Peter Pan sliced his hand off and fed it to a crocodile. But surely there must be some reason that Peter did this to Captain Hook, right? Oh there is! Because Mr. Smee explains it in the film. It was a "Childish Prank." WHAT. THE. FUCK?! Captain Hook isn't evil at all. Captain Hook is the good guy. If a little shit kid sliced my hand off and fed it to a crocodile, I would kill him and I'm fairly sure that the justice system would find my actions totally justifiable. By the way, pirates in general lived by a moral code that could be considered as more progressive than their contemporaries. Pirate ships tended to be run by democracy, pirates regularly attacked slave ships and freed slaves, and pirates recruited and included men of all races, colors and creeds while the rest of Western society still had a strict racial caste system. Pirate society was a free society that was based on independence, people's rights, equal distribution of justice, and waging war against the oppressors. That and robbing ships for booty. ARRRRRGHHHH!!! Think I'm crazy here? They were originally going to kill Hook in the movie, but Walt Disney himself intervened and said not to, because he was too likable.
A talented and capable Vizier who would
have made Agrabah great again.
9. Jafar (Aladdin)
I mean Jafar is a great character, but he's barely evil at all, and I'm ranking by evilness! Did you see what kind of a worthless shit the Sultan of Agrabah was? Who gives their daughter a tiger as a pet? Those are wild animals and vicious killing machines! He should feel good that Jasmine lived long enough to have suitors who wanted to marry her. If that's the way he's going to take care of his daughter - how poorly do you think he's going to run Agrabah? Fortunately, that's not a hypothetical question because you can watch the movie and see the answer to that. Clearly this sultanate is a land of income inequality, with the poor like Aladdin living in cesspools of poverty. And all the Sultan did was sit around and play with toys all day rather than rule his damn Sultanate. Jafar is the Sultan's Grand Vizier, and if I was the Grand Vizier I'd be pretty pissed off and sure that I could run the place better too. Jafar would clearly be a better Sultan of Agrabah than the current one, and so marrying his daughter just seems like the logical thing to do in order to be a more legitimate heir. Was he also after a magic lamp to try to use its awesome powers for his own good? Of course he was, and you would be too if there was a magic lamp. Don't act like you wouldn't use that thing to get incredible power and a hot spouse like Jasmine.
8. Ursula (The Little Mermaid)
Speaking of characters who weren't even really that evil, we have Ursula. Ariel willingly traded her voice for legs so that she could spread them for some handsome prince. That's on her. Don't act like Ursula took it away forcefully. And wasn't it King Triton who was all like, "Not another word!" to Ariel? Sounds like Ursula was just helping him get his wish. Okay, yes, admittedly after making the deal with Ariel to give her three days to get a kiss from her true love, Ursula engaged in all sorts of shenanigans to try to sabotage Ariel. Still, the rule of the kingdom of Atlantica was on the line. If you could trick some stupid redhead into losing her voice so that you could be ruler of all things, wouldn't you? It's not like she's killing her or anything.
7. Lady Tremaine, AKA Wicked Stepmother (Cinderella)
Lady Tremaine really didn't do anything super evil. She didn't go around setting fires to villages or slowly drowning kittens in rivers. She never even physically abused Cinderella - it was all mental abuse. But someone had to put that pretty bitch in line. Just because Cinderella was pretty on the outside doesn't mean she should always have her way. Essentially all she wants is to make sure her daughters are successful and gain a higher status in life. I mean I'm not saying it's right to be a cold-hearted bitch to your daughter-in-law, but I hardly think ordering a child to do her damn chores means that your nickname should forever be "Wicked Stepmother." Wicked? I'm not sure she ever did a thing in this movie that could even be considered a misdemeanor.
I think it's unfair of YOU to try to
apply human moral values to a fucking cat
6. Scar (The Lion King)
Continuing the theme - can we really say Scar is that bad? If you ask me, it look like Mufasa slipped off that cliff on his own. I have a couple of Hyenas that will testify to that in court. Okay, okay. Maybe not. So let's say he killed Mufasa. So he's definitely worse than Ursula in that sense. But we didn't really see the reign of Mufasa in the movie that much. How do we know that Mufasa wasn't a terrible, murderous autocrat? And are we really going to blame the drought on Scar after he took over? I'm sorry, did I miss the scene in the movie where Scar builds a machine to control the weather? Was that before or after "Hakuna Matata?" Do we blame Franklin Roosevelt for causing the Dustbowl? Do we blame the Bengal Famine of 1770 on the British East India Company? Wait, what? That one was the British East India Company's fault? Well never mind. Let's move on.
5. Evil Queen (Snow White)
Okay, now we're getting into territory where I can't really argue about shades of gray. This lady's name is just "Evil Queen." They never even bothered to give her another name. She seduced and married a king to get power, which is not itself bad (girl power!), but after she took over to rule on her own - her every word was law and all trembled in mortal fear of her. That sounds pretty bad. She also engages in black magic. When she learns from her magical mirror that there is a more beautiful girl than her, she orders a huntsman to go murder her in the woods and bring back her heart. After the huntsman fails, she disguises herself as a hag to give the girl and apple and try to poison her with "the Sleeping death." What a bitch! And while I'm specifically talking about the 1937 animated feature here, let me go on a slight tangent about the 2012 live action Snow White and the Huntsman version. If you are Charlize Theron and you ask the magic mirror on the wall who the fairest of them all is - do you know how it's going to answer back? "You are." Every time. There is no chance that mirror is ever going to say that Kristen Fucking Stewart is prettier than Charlize Theron unless its a damn lying mirror.
Honey, you got real ugly
4. Malificent (Sleeping Beauty)
Okay, forget about that Angelina Jolie nonsense that tries to make her more relatable, I'm focusing just on the animated movie here. Malificent is a petty little asshole who doesn't get invited to the King and Queen's Christening party for their baby daughter, Aurora. Based on that, Malificent decides to put a curse on the little baby girl so that she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. Because tetanus shots weren't a thing yet back then. So instead of the King and Queen simply burning all the spinning wheels in the kingdom (they could totally do that, they're the King and Queen... everyone would be just fine wearing bearskins, right?) they just put her in the witness protection program and let that needle thing happen. Although there was some counter magic/spell thing that lessened the "die" of the curse into a "sleep forever unless she can get a kiss from her true love." Of course back in the 1950's "true love" could also refer to non-consensual first base with an asleep 16 year old. Anyway, that kiss happens and the Prince defeats Malificent. Yay, I guess? So yeah, Malificent and the Evil Queen are about the same - bitches who tried to kill an innocent girl. So why am I ranking Malificent as slightly worse? Well, at least the Evil Queen did it out of jealousy of the girl herself. Malificent did it because she didn't get invited to a party, which is some petty Real Housewives bullshit there. Plus OH MY GOD - MALIFICENT CAN TURN INTO A FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON WITH GLOWING GREEN EVIL EYES! SHE'S PURE EVIL! AGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!! HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! RUN!!!!!
3. Chernabog (Fantasia)
Speaking of pure evil and nightmares... AGHHHHHH! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS THING?! SOME SORT OF WINGED DEMON? IS IT SATAN?! I BET IT'S SATAN! BURN IT WITH FIRE! BURN IT WITH FIRE! NO WAIT, THAT WON'T WORK! THIS THING IS, LIKE, MADE OF FIRE. OH GOD. IS HE MAKING DANCING NAKED FIRE LADIES IN HIS HAND?! WHAT THE HELL?! OH SHIT! I'M SO SCARED. MAKE THIS GO AWAY! WHY IS HE RAISING DEMONIC SPIRITS? MAKE THE DEVIL MONSTER GO AWAY! I'M NEVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO SLEEP AGAIN! And yes, I know that's not the right music in the video. Disney goes hardcore taking down YouTube videos.
2. Cruella De Vil (101 Dalmatians)
Chernabog might be the physical personification of evil, but I mean it's a demon. What choice does it have other than be evil? And it looks like it sort of just does its evil spirit dancing thing and night, but then when the monks ring the morning church bells, Chernabog just sends his evil spirits back into the ground and goes away. On the other hand, Cruella De Vil doesn't get the excuse of being a demon by nature. This is a lady who wants to make a fur coat out of super soft, fluffy Dalmatian puppies. What a horrible woman! Killing you brother to take his throne or trying to kill little girls because you're jealous/insane is one thing - but killing puppies? 101 of them? To make ONE coat?! You're a MONSTER, Cruella De Vil. A MONSTER. That scary demon Chernabog raised spirits from the dead and made them dance, but he didn't do anything close to trying to murder 101 puppies. There's a special place in hell for you, Cruella De Vil. You should have just died in that car wreck at the end of the movie.
1. Elsa (Frozen)
Oh, I'm sorry - are you a bit confused now? Did you think Elsa was good? Well, allow me to enlighten you. Elsa is the most horrible baddie there can be, and for reasons more than humanity being subjected to the Let it Go song by little girls endlessly. First off, let's get one thing straight for all the Elsa fans out there - Elsa isn't the main character of Frozen. Anna is. Why is all the merchandise out there for Elsa? The entire narrative of the story is the classic Campbellian Hero's journey for Anna. Put Anna on the merchandise and sing the damn Anna songs, because Anna is the goddamn hero. Kristin Bell, who voices Anna, even gets first billing. So what does that make Elsa? The hero's sister? No. She's clearly the villain. You think Hans is the villain? Hans is a supporting character, just one of the tests that Anna has to face and overcome on her journey. And he has an illogical face-heel turn. Elsa, on the other hand, is just awful. Accidentally hurting our hero, Anna, as a small child can be forgiven and she didn't do it on purpose. But when they get older - all that terrible stuff she does to Anna is her fault. Find a better coping mechanism for dealing with your powers than abandoning and psychologically wounding your young sister. But that's not the main reason why she's a villain either. What Elsa does is send the entire kingdom of Arendelle into an eternal winter. Yes, ETERNAL WINTER. And okay, it didn't actually last eternally, but it certainly lasted for a while. And the fact that Elsa caused it is just horrible. Think of all the life cycles of plants and animals which were disrupted by a sudden, unexpected climate change event like this? The seasons were all messed up and animals and plants would have no time to adapt to the new conditions. Species will have their mating seasons disrupted, and a generation will be lost - if not the entire species at risk for extinction. Plants won't grow anymore either, as their sensitive pollination and reproduction cycles could be harmed beyond repair. And that's not even mentioning crop plants, and the massive starvation that forever winter would cause to a society that needs grains to grow for food. Cooling climates and glaciation have caused mass extinction events in the past before, such as with the Late Ordovician mass extinction, which was the second worst extinction in history. Cruela De Vil might have wanted to kill 101 Dalmatians, but Elsa might have killed millions of animals, and maybe thousands of people through rampant starvation. Elsa is based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale of The Snow Queen, who is not a good character. And the initial versions of the movie outright made her a villain. Let it Go was initially written while she was still the villainous character, and still contains some lyrical content that, if not clearly evil, at least shows that she objects to concepts of moral absolutism: "No right or wrong/no rules for me!" And even though Disney rewrote the film to make her more sympathetic, I'm not falling for it. I see Elsa for the genocidal extinction machine that she is.
One of these things is a harbinger of global destruction, extinction, and climate change. The other is Chinese factories.
