Your favorite Star Wars villain who dies in the same episode he's introduced

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Tarkin, hands down.

He's a cold, ruthless, classical sort of villain. His iconic scene of villainy is the scene where he orders the destruction of Alderaan to get Leia to talk, and when she finally does talk, he turns around and orders Alderaan's destruction anyway. He has the best dialogue of all the villains. He also is the only character besides Palpatine himself that manages to reign in Vader, which bumps his impressibility up a few notches. He also has the blind arrogance of a great villain: "Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances."

I totally agree. Tarkin is the best.. er... worst.. er.. my favourite villain so far.

But wait: I just figured he might actually not fit into this poll. Didn´t he have an appearence at the end of "Revenge of the Sith"? Okay, it was a different actor, and I am not sure if the name was mentioned, but if we complain about Jabba in IV SE, we can complain about Tarkin in III.

 

[Welverin]

Plus the four lightsabers (which unlike Maul's double-bladed saber, were NOT spoiled in the trailer, yay!)

That was shown in the Clone Wars shorts, so a fair number of us knew about it ahead of time, personally though I prefer how he fought in the first Clone Wars series where he spun around and was all around more acrobatic, which is how I prefer my villains and is why I voted for Darth Maul.

p.s. Thanks for the recommendation of the Annotated Screenplay a while back, haven't picked it up yet, but I shall.

Maul kicked ass, but had no lines (ok, he had all of 1 line in the entire move).

No! He had two maybe three, and I'm not even counting grunts or death noises.

Bah, who needs multiple lightsabers when you can destroy entire planets?

Which pales next to the force.

 

[Shade]

Except that Gary Oldman didn't do the voice. He was originally rumoured to, but that never happened. Instead, it was a Lucasfilm sound guy who's name is currently eluding me. And it wasn't the voice actor's choice to make Grievous sound as he did, that was part of the script.

EDIT: Just looked him up. It was Matthew Wood

Well I'll be damned...you learn something new every day! Thanks for educating me.

And this being a Lucas film...I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the script dictating the rules. He's been known to allow actors to ad lib, change dialogue, and make suggested changes to their characters. I'm not saying that this was the case, but he very well may have changed it based on Gary's suggestion, as the article states, and by the time Gary dropped out he'd already gotten on board with the changes.

But since the injury happened just as he was getting off of Coruscant with Palpatine, there wasn't exactly time for this to happen.

That's plausible. Of course, it still makes him a far less cool villain in Episode III, and for anyone who hasn't seen Clone Wars, he probably comes off as a rather pathetic villain.

Speaking of Clone Wars, were it included in the poll (and treated as one big episode), my vote would be for Durge.

 

[Desdichado]

Bah, who needs multiple lightsabers when you can destroy entire planets?

"The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force."

 

[Kai Lord]

Maul and Grievous were very cool but they are a different kind of villain. Anyone can put together a good fight and look bad-ass but not all villains are truly villainous.

So Grand Moff Tarkin, Carrot Top, Don Knotts, and Margaret Cho can all "put together a good fight and look bad-ass"? Give Margaret Cho some make-up and a double-bladed saber and suddenly she's as bad-ass as Darth Maul? I mean, if anyone can do it, right? I don't think so....

 

[Lord Pendragon]

So Grand Moff Tarkin, Carrot Top, Don Knotts, and Margaret Cho can all "put together a good fight and look bad-ass"? Give Margaret Cho some make-up and a double-bladed saber and suddenly she's as bad-ass as Darth Maul? I mean, if anyone can do it, right? I don't think so....

Grand Moff Tarkin certainly could, if that's the way they'd wanted to go with him. Hand him a lightsaber, and I can't imagine Tarkin couldn't do at least as well as Count Dooku. Except he's still got that sinister flair about him to boot...

The rest of your choices are comedians, chosen for their absurdity I think. I don't think they disprove the point any.

 

[Orius]

I totally agree. Tarkin is the best.. er... worst.. er.. my favourite villain so far.

But wait: I just figured he might actually not fit into this poll. Didn´t he have an appearence at the end of "Revenge of the Sith"? Okay, it was a different actor, and I am not sure if the name was mentioned, but if we complain about Jabba in IV SE, we can complain about Tarkin in III.

Hmm, good point. I think there was supposed to have been a young Tarkin there at the end. In which case I'd have to switch my vote to Maul.

 

[Kai Lord]

Grand Moff Tarkin certainly could, if that's the way they'd wanted to go with him. Hand him a lightsaber, and I can't imagine Tarkin couldn't do at least as well as Count Dooku. Except he's still got that sinister flair about him to boot...

"At least as well as Dooku" doesn't quite measure up to Maul or Grievous when it comes to fighting styles. And Christopher Lee doesn't do a sinister flare? As if.

The rest of your choices are comedians, chosen for their absurdity I think. I don't think they disprove the point any.

You're right. His point still stands. "Anyone" (including absurd looking comedians) could have fight scenes as cool as Darth Maul and General Grievous.

 

[Kai Lord]

Hmm, good point. I think there was supposed to have been a young Tarkin there at the end. In which case I'd have to switch my vote to Maul.

Why? Does Tarkin's appearance in ROTS suddenly change the fact that he still died in the Episode in which he was first introduced?

 

[John Crichton]

So Grand Moff Tarkin, Carrot Top, Don Knotts, and Margaret Cho can all "put together a good fight and look bad-ass"? Give Margaret Cho some make-up and a double-bladed saber and suddenly she's as bad-ass as Darth Maul? I mean, if anyone can do it, right? I don't think so....

The anyone was more referring to the creators rather than any person/actor/shmo off the street. Just about any decent director can put together a good action sequence where the bad guy looks cool and does lots of bad-ass manuvers(especially with CGI the way it is these days) but it's much, much harder to have a villain REALLY make you love to hate him. I didn't love to hate Darth Maul, I thought he was cool but he was more like a pit-bull than a character to me. He was created to be destroyed by a hero. The same can be said (except the pitt-bull part) about all the characters save Jabba in the poll.

Jabba is the only one on the list to really come close to being a villain as opposed to being a bad-guy or simply an antagonist. Tarkin was Pure Villain and one of the best in sci-fi cinema history. No special effects needed to make Tarkin a villain. Take away Maul's fighting and he's nothing. At least Jabba and Jango had some story to em.

Now don't get me wrong, I like all 5. I just like Tarkin far above the rest if we are talking about real villainy.