"evil men don't look evil?''

[Robert E Lee]

title says it all. i was wondering am i the only guy who thinks that most,..but not all, evil men just dont look, well...evil. harad looks and sounds great. but rhun to me looks really not evil. the dragon fire regiments look perfectly "evil", but the rest of the roster just does'nt look like mean at all. same for the men in the OoG faction. they just dont look evil either. maybe make them more like "unkept" or something. im not trying to take away from this great mod which with EB are my favorite, but i just dont get the bad guy feel when playing with these units. once again, im not trying to start a fight, just wondering how many out there feels the same. thx all

[MA5C 7RUTH]

Well a lot of them are just fighting for their own people, My opinion is mostly based of the films I don't remember whether the books depicted them as truly evil or not.

[sanderman2]

If u got an army of 2000 evil men most likely 750+ are not evil at all just fighting for there homeland.
And Evil men means their Heart is evil not their looks even i think the looks are good.

[Miqqolo]

What does "evil" look like?

You're not evil if you're not unkempt?

The Last Alliance should've just brought scissors and buckets of water and cleaned up the orcs some!

[freehothm]

Well a lot of them are just fighting for their own people

[Mikail Mengsk]

Being "evil" doesn't necessarily mean "i have to attach spikes on my shoulder pads, horns on my helm and paint myself in black".

Also, eastern people weren't necessarily evil, they actually did what every real human kingdom did: expanding. They attacked the western people because they were rich; i believe that Sauron didn't necessarily turned them actually evil, just pushing them into doing what they already wanted to. Remember that the LotR is written by the westerner's perspective; if written by the easterner's one, things would appear VERY differently.

[Muffer Nl]

Look at the army that is quite generally accepted as one of the most evil ever, the Germans in the second world war. Their uniforms were intimidating but they were always clean and presentable. Also ~99.9% of the soldiers in this army did not agree with the mass genocide and did in fact not even know about it. To them the Americans and British were evil and they were the good guys.

Now project this onto Rhûn and Harad. They were both large factions with many wars against the men of the west in the past. This would be enough of a reason to have them hate Gondor and take up arms. Not to fight for Sauron but to fight Gondor which they thought was evil. In fact Tolkien says that after the Battle at the Black Gate the men of the east came to understand that Gondor and Rohan were not evil when they were spared when they surrendered.

No one thinks of himself/herself as a bad person and still does what he/she always does.

[maxi90]

Look at the army that is quite generally accepted as one of the most evil ever, the Germans in the second world war. Their uniforms were intimidating but they were always clean and presentable. Also ~99.9% of the soldiers in this army did not agree with the mass genocide and did in fact not even know about it. To them the Americans and British were evil and they were the good guys.

Now project this onto Rhûn and Harad. They were both large factions with many wars against the men of the west in the past. This would be enough of a reason to have them hate Gondor and take up arms. Not to fight for Sauron but to fight Gondor which they thought was evil. In fact Tolkien says that after the Battle at the Black Gate the men of the east came to understand that Gondor and Rohan were not evil when they were spared when they surrendered.

No one thinks of himself/herself as a bad person and still does what he/she always does.

i agree with the general idea of the post, specially the conclusion. although the first part.... let us better not get into it.

[kelsen89]

Now project this onto Rhûn and Harad. They were both large factions with many wars against the men of the west in the past. This would be enough of a reason to have them hate Gondor and take up arms. Not to fight for Sauron but to fight Gondor which they thought was evil. In fact Tolkien says that after the Battle at the Black Gate the men of the east came to understand that Gondor and Rohan were not evil when they were spared when they surrendered.

No one thinks of himself/herself as a bad person and still does what he/she always does.

Well said. Is also important to remember that the Numenorians did a lot of messed up crap to all the locals when they started establishing ports in middle earth.

Before they even started to worship melkor, at Lond Daer they started cutting down all the wood for ship building to the point where they were threatening the way of life of the locals (ancestors of the dunlendings). So of course the indigenous people fought back but were pushed away from their homeland into the hills of dunland.

This didn't just happen here but other places as well because the Numenorians mistook them for dark men because their langauge was drastrically different (they were actually descendants of the house of Haladin, the 2nd house of the Edain).

And of course we all know after they started worshipping Melkor they sacrificed indegenous people in middle earth so even when the Good Numenorians came to middle earth to found Gondor and Arnor a lot of people just saw them as the evil human sacrificing Numenorians.

[LordBlades]

Very few (if any) regular people see themselves as evil. Even in wars, most of them fight for what they think is right according to their education and traditions. The 'evil' guys are always on the other side.

[z3n]

It reads in the unit description for an isengard unit if I remember correctly that they're simply fighting because of a feud that has been going on between them and Rohan for years and that Sauron simply convinced them to openly declare war. Another words these are normal people with a bone to pick.

No one thinks of himself/herself as a bad person and still does what he/she always does.

Except a psychopath.

[Pyres Δt Varanasi]

Look at the army that is quite generally accepted as one of the most evil ever, the Germans in the second world war. Their uniforms were intimidating but they were always clean and presentable. Also ~99.9% of the soldiers in this army did not agree with the mass genocide and did in fact not even know about it. To them the Americans and British were evil and they were the good guys.

Now project this onto Rhûn and Harad. They were both large factions with many wars against the men of the west in the past. This would be enough of a reason to have them hate Gondor and take up arms. Not to fight for Sauron but to fight Gondor which they thought was evil. In fact Tolkien says that after the Battle at the Black Gate the men of the east came to understand that Gondor and Rohan were not evil when they were spared when they surrendered.

No one thinks of himself/herself as a bad person and still does what he/she always does.

Im With you 100 %

[TWWolfe]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[Mikail Mengsk]

Also ~99.9% of the soldiers in this army did not agree with the mass genocide and did in fact not even know about it.

Very questionable, but maxi90 is right: this is not the place for such discussions.

I agree with the rest of the post: it's all a matter of perspective. Orcs themselves refers at Elves as "cruel and fearsome".

[Robert E Lee]

wow i was'nt expecting such deep and philosophical answers! ok, maybe i was just thinking in "hollywood" terms of evil men. like in the movie were the dunlending clan leader making a deal with saruman "looked" like a bad guy. what were they described as looking like in the books?

[.L.]

Dunlendings or Haradrim?

[MasterBigAb]

Beside...even if you are "evil" - that doesn't mean you look like it. There are a lot of evil people in our world, and half of them you think about "wow they do not even look like they would be able to do this and that", so being good/evil whatever is everything else but something one can "see" What one can see is just different culture, the way they dress, have their hairs, what weapons they us, what jewelry...

[Lazy]

Beside...even if you are "evil" - that doesn't mean you look like it.

Exactly!
Does Bill Gates look evil? In my opinion he looks more like an innocent child...
Does George Bush look evil? ok! a little bit...
Does Starbucks look evil? They let Coffee-farmers starve to keep the prizes low! But their shops are so nice!
Does the finiancial market look evil? They are letting people starve right now!

Like someone above said: the gestapo indeed had very nice uniforms... where they evil?

[Gallus]

how exactly is Bill Gates evil?

[MasterBigAb]

How exactly is this reffering to the topic ?
Let's keep it on topic guys