CRACKED.com - The 7 Most Underrated Movie Henchmen

CRACKED.com - The 7 Most Underrated Movie Henchmen

I'm not clear on the distinction between a minion, a henchman, and a sidekick.

Can villains have sidekicks, or is the assistant villain always referred to as a henchman? I think Otis would be Lex Luthor's henchman, right? Not a sidekick. But Speedy is Green Arrow's sidekick, not his henchman. Can anyone recall a case where a bad guy's associate is called a "sidekick" or a good guy's a "henchman." Off the top of my head, I'm thinking that henchmen are evil and sidekicks are good.

I assume that those not in contact with the head baddie on a daily basis would be mere minions, and not henchmen. Henchmanliness seems to require a direct reporting relationship.

Now I assume that if you are a minion, you typically have nobody reporting to you. I don't think there is such a thing as a junior minion, or administrative assistant to the minion. However, any self-respecting evil genius will have large armies of minions scattered across the globe, so some of those minions must report to other minions. Or perhaps the minions report to expatriate henchmen, who in turn report directly to the evil mastermind.

I wonder if minions ever get recruited by headhunters. Let's suppose you're an evil mastermind bent on world domination. The first thing you need is an army of minions, but how do you recruit them? It seems to me that the logical thing is to recruit people who have already been trained in minionship by another mastermind, thus accelerating the learning curve. If you were going to open a fast food burger joint, you'd seek out experienced McDonald's personnel, especially from middle management, to handle the day-to-day operations. That has to be cheaper than training them all from scratch. On the other hand, if you think you can take over the world, it means that the other evil mastermind has not yet done so, so perhaps recruiting his personnel would instill a culture of failure in your organization.

I wonder if evil masterminds employ industrial psychologists when they build their armies of minions.