I’m talking about a moment when a villain has the hero at their mercy and then does a move to really show what an utter bastard they are. There’s no shortage of them, but one that really sticks out to me is one line from “Se7en” at the climax from Kevin Spacey as John Doe.
“Oh…he didn’t know.”
Anyone who’s seen “Se7en” will know exactly what I mean. As brutal as that film’s outcome is, that just makes it all the worse.
What’s your worst?
“But for me, it was Tuesday”
By the same token, Thanos’ line of “I don’t even know who you are” to Scarlet Witch after she says he took everything from her. Certainly not true, and cruelly dismissive of her valid pain.
Also, love how she had >!an entire redemption arc in Wandavision (as much as possible, given she held an entire town hostage), but then Marvel just threw that away to make her the Big Bad in Doctor Strange’s next movie. Complete character assassination.!< But I digress…
The very final scene of WandaVision has her hearing the voices of her children. I took this as a sign that things were NOT okay for her, given the events of the entire show being due to her delusions. Right after she just went through everything searching for the real ones only to realize they had been manifestations from herself, not even her real children. And at the very end of the show she was still hearing them call out to her, IMO a clear indication of what the events of MoM would lead to. Wanda was not OK.
For some of the faults of MoM, Wanda was far from it. Despite the fact that the writers of the film had not seen the show, they work together quite well. The entire point of WandaVision is that she herself is a dishonest narrator, from each episode being thematically different to the reveal that she was “the big bad” all along. To continue that makes sense to me, and I don’t think it’s character assassination but just further development. Sometimes people want to be heroes and their desires crowd that potential, it’s all too common a tale.
Now, if they bring back Wanda, that will be character assassination. Finally giving up everything and becoming the hero she wanted to be by sacrificing herself? Only to be brought back because - whoopsie I survived! (I will allow her to appear in the Agatha show, but mainline Marvel movies she should be out.
I do believe Thanos was being honest when he said that. It’s Past-Thanos that says that line, right? And I don’t even think Infinity War-Thanos had the slightest idea of who she was, as he likely didn’t care.
Not a film, but in the Foundation TV series what the emperor does at the end of season 1 is pretty damn cruel.
!He catches a conspirator and has her ‘erased’ – killing not just her family, but everyone who knows her or has been in contact with her throughout her life so there will be no memory of her existence.!<
You asked about film but I’m gonna answer comic books. For me, the X-Men scene where Dark Beast "cask of Amontillado"s original Beast behind the brick wall is my top answer. The comic spends time clarifying that Hank McCoy’s (Beast) nature is inquisitive, and his curiosity so great that merely not knowing an answer is harder for him than receiving a negative answer, so that the cruelty is extra-pronounced when Beast asks Dark Beast why he is doing this and Dark Beast just grins at him and says “Because” before placing the last brick. As a kid, I found that level of taunting truly to be haunting
Lucille.