Melissa/MB: Good or Evil?

[KingBroly]

It's a generalized question. If you want to go neutral, you can.

...So it's one of the three?

Actually, I'm not sure I understand the question/not sure it applies. What could qualify her as good? She killed a lot of people and was planning on killing more. But how could she be evil? She had reasons for doing what she did and, in the end, she chose to protect Madeline instead of going for the Feds or running. As for neutral, I'm not even sure what that means in this weird black-and-white context.

It's just a question of what you think about the character, and where you'd put them on a Spectrum from Saint to Devil.

[Phazon Ridley]

It's just a question of what you think about the character, and where you'd put them on a Spectrum from Saint to Devil.

Troid's pointing out a problem with framing the question that way.


Black v White
Good v Evil
Saint v Devil


You're inviting an extreme oversimplification.

[Troid]

It's just a question of what you think about the character

In that case, you could change the title to "What do you think of Melissa/MB's actions/motives/whatever?"

I think she does horrible things while in the midst of what was essentially a psychological break. I think she was quite roughly shoved over the edge of sanity when the scientists grabbed her and began dragging her off to splice some wires into her head and turn her into a mindless weapons-control system who would probably go on to emotionlessly slaughter whoever the Feds pointed her at with Metroids, and her "mother" stood by watching and doing nothing. I think she starts planning her attack on the Federation after the initial anger has subsided and she is more calculating, and then it's less about lashing out and more about revenge. I think her behavior when she confronts Madeline shows she was shaken so traumatically by what she perceived as Madeline abandoning her that she retreated into a methodical "judgment" mindset to keep from falling apart entirely (we saw a small fraction of the fallout from her falling apart in her initial rampage). I think her decision to ultimately protect Madeline, at the expense of her own relative safety, makes it obvious that under all her anger and deadly abilities she was a confused and frightened little girl who had no idea what she was doing in the world.

She was created and immediately put to work developing increasingly lethal weapons which she was forced to control. When she tried to offer her own ideas to further the research, the scientists rejected them and so she felt belittled and enslaved. The only solace she found was from her surrogate mother, Madeline, and from her care of the baby Metroids, and once those things were gone she had nothing. She saw a world full of greedy, hateful, and cruel humans, and--this coupled with the aforementioned shock of Madeline and the attempt to lobotomize her--came to believe it was only right to destroy ("judge") the humans.

Finally, at the end, when her plot had already fallen apart, the army was there with guns blazing, and Madeline (who she'd just reconciled with) was under threat, I think she knew she was going to die. What she did was ensure Madeline stayed alive, as well as Samus, so that Samus could in turn save Madeline from the Feds who would undoubtedly have made her "disappear." And, in doing so, Melissa disappeared herself.

Hey, for all we know she made the lava man appear so Anthony could save himself and then save Samus so she could save Madeline.

She`s a mix but i`d say she`s evil because i`d say she`s corrupted.

[LesserChozo]

^Was that an MP3 reference? Otherwise I might agree. MB may have had a small malfunction affecting her judgement. Although, the way everyone treated her didn't help any. The feds were striving for true artificial intelligence, but what they really wanted was just a smart computer they could control.

[Dementis]

Evil is someones opinion, it's best to say that you can't say that someone is evil for a fact, because whether or not they are is your opinion. Now, I believe the opinion of Samus is that she is evil, considering that she tried to have her killed about.. 3 times?

[Not Authorised]

I really wanted to like this character. But by the time we got to know her true story she was the third female character in the game to be portrayed as emotionally-unstable. What do we know about Madeline Bergman? Well, she developed maternal feelings for her android protegee, she let her feelings interfere with her work, she let her feelings of fear result in MB's feelings of betrayal, and she ran like a coward the instant Samus arrived and had to be talked to like a suicide watch when Samus caught up. And then she completely broke down when MB died.

What do we know about Samus Aran? Well, we certainly know all about her feelings and emotions because we've been listening to her drone about it all game, and we got that wonderful Ridley scene. The text recaps in every chapter (as I just made a thread on. They're really mean to her) also have told us all game that she's on the verge of being emotionally overcome basically all game long.

So when MB arrives as the true villain of the game, and we're told that her turn to evil is ALSO because her emotions got out of hand, and NOT because she's developing into a replica of Mother Brain, my response is not "Ooh, that's interesting" but rather "GROOOAAAN!"

If not for Samus and Madeline Bergman's characters, I would've seen Melissa Bergman/MB as a wonderfully deep and interesting villain. As it is, I can't help but assume that every female character writen by Sakamoto would have "emotional conflict" as their drive to good or evil. Because we all know women are completely incapable of making rational decisions and not having their every action governed by their feelings.

As it stands, my opinion is that MB is evil because she had an awful lot of innocent people killed. Doesn't really matter what the Start of Darkness was, once you start with the killing, you're evil.

[SailorQuaoar]

The whole "AI in an android body who developed human emotions and then a soul but turns against humans" concept is contrived at best (in general sci-fi), but to put that plot in Metroid was kind of stupid.
Metroid already has Mother Brain, Ghor, who is 94% machine but seems to be just fine and dandy (before Phazon corruption of course) and the robots in Elysia were sentient and cool with it.

Exploring the implications of a robot or machine developing/acquiring human emotions/awareness is a perfectly acceptable concept for speculative fiction, but in a series where robot sentience is a normal occurrence, this seems redundant and hard to take seriously.

Like in Star Wars. Most droids are already ridiculously human, so one angsting about whether or not it has a "soul" would be pointless.

'MB taking revenge against the humans" just was not necessary, and perhaps a bit detrimental for a series such as Metroid which already has the Elysians. As I was watching the cutscenes (relating to the whole MB thing especially) I just facepalmed and said "Are you fucking kidding me."

As for MB's morality, I think she was trolling the whole time. Actually, every single person and creature on the Bottle Ship was probably trolling Samus. U MAD?

[KingBroly]

I think of the things that hasn't really been discussed is that at one point in the Metroid timeline Mother Brain was actually good. What caused her to turn evil in the first place? I don't really know, but it's a side that's never really been portrayed in the games before, nor has it been discussed. Nor has it been discussed that Mother Brain and Samus had a close history. For all we know Madeline Bergman could be evil, playing the victim, while Melissa is actually good, having become sentient, realizing that Metroids are universal protectors wants to stop the plans of the evil group, but is frozen by Madeline before Samus has a chance to blow her up with a missile or five.

Since she has the intellect of Mother Brain, she undoubtedly has the knowledge of how to make Metroids and their history, including where they came from, wouldn't she?

But then again, maybe I'm overthinking it. The story has about...20 too many moving parts and not enough is done to tell the full story from all angles. Also, weren't we told that Melissa was the one who sent the distress signal? I don't recall Madeline saying anything about it.

[FacelessGriffin]

I think of the things that hasn't really been discussed is that at one point in the Metroid timeline Mother Brain was actually good. What caused her to turn evil in the first place?

She grew frustrated of the Chozo and wanted to create a perfect world by destroying and rebuilding it and becoming it's ruler.

There.

[RoyboyX]

My opinion of Melissa is mixed. It used to be, when blzdout spoiled me like a bitch (tell him I said thank you, btw), that I thought why was Samus sympathetic for MB? The Metroids are dangerous killing organisms and Samus is incredibly pissed off that she has to kill more (see Queen cutscene, where she does what Ripley did in Aliens). At the very least, she should have said she loved and be like, okay wait. This is Mother Brain with my face, in the android body of a cute little girl, with my eyes which should've been blue in this game, my hair which is strangely lighter, shorter and much less sexy, and my colossal lips. She's killed the (the the , guess what meme I was referencing) and so now I should kill her, no matter what this old ginger whimpering beside me says. I even included her as a subplot in Metroid: Avenger, where Samus encounters her while visiting U-Mos on Aether, having been rebuilt, and she really sours up and gives her a rather ruffian-like murder.

And then, what changed that was Cybersix. An old animated show that I found again based on an Argentinian comic with the titular character being an artificial human (not android) that wanted to be fully human. In the third episode there is a shapeshifting mass of mud named Terra that develops emotions and ultimately uses itself to sand down a burning tower in which Cybersix is trapped. I don't really remember that one from my childhood, but it made me think, maybe Melissa isn't evil. The same happened to the main antagonist of episode 12, a reptilian woman named Grizelda who could turn invisible and stalked Cybersix until Grizelda ended up hanging off a ledge and Cybersix suddenly decided to save her, but they were on a bridge with train tracks and Grizelda let go of the rope to make Cybersix fall back and out of the train's way. Finally in 13, the unfortunate last episode, several creatures are released after Cybersix and one of them points Cybersix to an exit as 15 seconds are left to the destruction of an island-sized bomb, and gives her a little bit of a smile.

Point is, however mushy Melissa and the other two femme fatales of MOM were emotion-wise, she is both good for her motherly bond with the Metroids and attempts to stop the corrupt Galactic Federation, and bad for her attempt to kill all humans for it. Like, what about Phrygisians, Luminoth, Ghor's species, Jovians (not Jupiter people, Gandrayda's species), Vhozon, etc. all the other species that are part of the Federation? Aren't they also part of the corruption? Isn't Samus probably going to have to enlist someone else's help in killing off those who are responsible for the corruption? I don't even think I answered the question of this post, but I tried.

Btw, I think we should have a Melissa smiley. [Attention IE]

[Pirate parylizer]

MB was just abusive of her power in one scenario, but the more likely one is that she was just trying to avoid complete control by the humans, and was just trying to establish her position as an individual and not another robot programmed to serve humans. So I have to agree with Trishbot on this one. She was merely a victim of the fact that the humans were trying to establish absolute control over her.

And on an unrelated topic, it was James that was the deleter, for the following reasons.

1. He and Anthony were the only two that were around for the sequence where samus followed a soldier into the bioweapon research center,

2. He appeared dead in the bioweapon research center before anthony arrived there.

3. He was found in the same room that he tried to shoot MB in in the Bioweapon research center.

[KingBroly]

Why do people keep saying MB looks like Samus? I don't get that at all, really.

Unless of course SA-X = MB in Fusion, but that'd be too weird.

[LesserChozo]

The character designs are similar, and I am sure that was intentional.

[Qazz777]

As far as i'm concerned she is evil, if someone is tortured and then goes on a killing spree your still evil, no matter your motives. yes she was assaulted and was going to be maimed but escape was possible.