Alternate Best Supporting Actor 1981: David Warner in Time Bandits

David Warner did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Evil in Time Bandits. 

Watching Time Bandits again it is basically a hodgepodge of moments, that don't exactly have a natural flow and one's enjoyment of it really comes down to how much joy one gets from Terry Gilliam's aesthetic creativity and the various semi-Monty Pythonesque bits. Interestingly the funniest bit actually is from David Warner, although I shouldn't say that since I give him a win for a largely comedic performance, who among the cast certainly skews more towards the dramatic side of things. But what does make it interesting anyways is that Warner is playing literally the villain of the piece as he's simply known as Evil because you know, he's evil. Warner's performance is the funniest in the film actually because he basically plays it aggressively and overly intensely in a certain sense. Warner obviously is well known for his villainous takes, as I recently covered in Time After Time, and is always great at cold cunning. That's not what Warner is doing as Evil, he's just having a blast really as he bellows with heightened intensity with Evil. One of his earliest moments is killing his own man for daring to be said to have been created by the Supreme Being, to which Warner hits the right heightened pitch of being fierce in his anger, yet so over the top with it that is funny in giving Evil a bit of almost bratty quality in this. Warner's wonderful by randomly switching in his manner in a moment suddenly apologizing quite sincerely just as he goes on about his evilness. Warner's simply having the right type of fun with it in being properly the evil villainous type, but a fitting evil villainous type for the farcical fantasy that this film is. Warner's scenes really as written are of the man is just evil, setting up one of the few major plot points of wanting the map our titular time bandits have stolen, and really it would be easy to imagine a very dull version of these scenes had Evil been played straight, or actually if he hadn't managed to go big in the right way. Well almost seems consistent if one knows how to go really small, which Warner can do, one can go quite big, which Warner does so here. Warner is the menace you'd want because his voice alone can sell it without really trying and he makes every overture of Evil properly oppressive. Warner though does that with so much fun, and in turn, is very entertaining in his performance. His bright brimming smiles and dramatic speeches are delivered with all pomposity of a proper villain, who is just a bit too much in the right way. Warner is wonderful in the final confrontation with his evil stares as he blows up his men before switching to a bit of a forced kind face as he notes "He's a reasonable man". Warner basically gives a performance that is as it should be as a man called Evil shouldn't be subtle, and he's not. He's not though in a way that is supremely enjoyable as he manages to bring his typical gravitas but skewed nicely for the ridiculous content.