Is it really true bad guys always get the best lines? To test this theory we checked out some pretty bad guys dialogue of the last decade to see how resolute their words are. Enjoy!
1. 2008-The Dark Knight–The Joker: (Actor: Heath Ledger)
“Oh, you. You just couldn’t let me go, could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible, aren’t you? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won’t kill you because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.”
2. 2009- Inglorious Bastards–Col. Hans Landa: (Actor: Christoph Waltz)
“I love rumors! Facts can be so misleading, where rumors, true or false, are often revealing.”
3. 2010-Inception–Saito: (Actor: Ken Watanabe)
“Don’t you want to take a leap of faith? Or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone!”
4. 2011–The Guard- Clive Cornell: (Actor: Mark Strong)
“Course it’s fucking all there. This is the pay-off, yeah? We pay you off, you and your pals keep your fucking noses out of our business. That’s the dynamic in this situation. Why the fuck would I then cheat you out your money? Eh? Why would I do that? That doesn’t make any sense. That’d defeat the entire purpose of the fucking interaction. Fuck me!”
5. 2011-Irom Man 2–Justin Hammer: (Actor: Sam Rockwell)
“These are the Cubans, baby. This is the Cohibas, the Montecristos. This is a kinetic-kill, side-winder vehicle with a secondary cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine RDX burst. It’s capable of busting a bunker under the bunker you just busted. If it were any smarter, it’d write a book, a book that would make Ulysses look like it was written in crayon. It would read it to you. This is my Eiffel Tower. This is my Rachmaninoff’s Third. My Pieta. It’s completely elegant, it’s bafflingly beautiful, and it’s capable of reducing the population of any standing structure to zero. I call it “The Ex-Wife.”
6. 2012– Cosmopolis– Eric Packer: ( Actor: Robert Pattinson)
“The phenomenon of reputation is a delicate thing. A person raises on a word and falls on a syllable.”
6. 2012-Cosmopolis-Benno Levin: (Actor: Paul Giamatti)
“Even when you self-destruct, you want to fail more, lose more, die more than others, stink more than others.”
7. 2012–Skyfall–Raoul Silva: ( Actor: Javier Bardem)
“Do you see what comes of all this running around, Mr. Bond? All this jumping and fighting, it’s exhausting! Relax. You need to relax… Ah well, mother’s calling. I will give her a good-bye kiss for you.”
8. 2012-The Dark Knight Rises: Bane:Tom Hardy
“Calm down, Doctor! Now’s not the time for fear. That comes later.”
9. 2012-The Avengers–Loki: (Actor: Tom Hiddleston)
“Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.”
10. 2012-Django Unchained-Calvin Candie-(Actor: Leonardo Dicaprio)
“Gentlemen, you had my curiosity. But now you have my attention.”
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Please share with us your most memorable quotes from bad guys.
Everyone-
What makes a quote memorable?
Is it the way the line is delivered, the situation, poetic complex ideas, the brevity (the use of few words to say something meaningful)?
For me, the majority of making a quote memorable is the performance from the actor saying it. All of the actors above are amazing actors. The way they say it, how they move, etc is very important. Anybody can say the line and it’ll fall flat because they don’t have the “it factor” that good actors have. Also a good actor can make a cheesy or bad line, brilliant!
Hi Ozzie!
I’m so thrilled to see u. 🙂 So glad your back.
U make a wonderful point even the most cheesy line can be saved by a good actor. With that said.
Can u give an example of a cheesy line being saved by a good performance?
There are many great bad guy quotes that happened in the last decade. However, I selected the above quotes because they made the most impact on me for these reasons.
1-The Dark Knight- Heath Ledger/Joker-The performance, delivery and situation made it memorable. I wish I had a video to show.
2-Inglorious Bastard, Inception, Cosmopolis, and Django. They all had in common great performance, situation, brevity and poetic complex meaning behind quotes.
3. The Guard, Iron Man 2, Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall and The Avengers- They all have in common. Passionate delivery, situation and intricacy to prove a point.
I love, love “Inception.” I did not select more quotes from that film because we were focusing on bad guys but here is my all time favorite quote. I like it for its simplicity and truth.
Cobb: “What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere. ”
Here are some favorite quotes from Cosmopolis. The dialogue was so poetic and poignant.
https://linkedinhollywood.com/2012/08/13/cosmopolis-whats-your-favorite-quote/#more-4961
“The Guard” is so funny. The film on the surface mocks racism. Yet, the real context of the film can be found in the subtext which examines the socio economic class system using racism as a catalyst. The video I selected with Mark Strong up above (one of the bad guys in the film) takes offense at being mistaken for a low class petty thief suggesting even thieves have a class system. He really establishes what the film is about.
Another great scene which is just plain funny. He does not play a bad in the film but Don Cheadle has one of the best lines. See if u can guess which one it is?