Villains: Better that They Don't Believe They Are "Evil?"

[Timmy]

Re: Villains: Better that They Don't Believe They Are "Evil?"

You can't forget the hero in all this. It's built around the hero, not the villain.

Arguably,
Bane exists to push Wayne's journey and change.
Sollozzo and Barzini exist to push Michael's journey and change.
Vader exists to push Luke's journey and change.

IMO simply a credible threat will do it.
Frodo leaves his Ordinary World simply because of the threat.
Vincent Vega watches himself around Mia because of what Marsellus Wallace might do.

[J Linc]

Re: Forteans Don't Really Believe In "Evil"...

Well, we are a boring lot when you distill everything down. Greed/Selfishness/Self-Centeredness, whatever you want to call it, is the root of all evil. It can obviously take many manifestations, but that's the nut of nearly all villains in cinema...and in real life for that matter.

Again, just going to have to agree to disagree there.

But isn't there a big difference between villians and bad guys?

I think pure villians are archetypes. Not emotionally/psychologically complex in any way. You can't imagine archetypes going home to read the evening paper or play Candyland with their kids. Bad guys can be more complex, they can and some do function within society. They simply refuse to follow society's rules.

The Joker is an archetype -- like the Native American's Trickster, a personifiation of chaos that defies our well-laid plans and our own moral (religious?) constructs about right-wrong/reward-punishment. The Joker/Trickster forces us to consider that the universe is indifferent to our suffering and chaos often rules.

Chigurh is also an archetype in my opinion. He's death carrying around his schythe (sp?) with a little of the Sphinx thrown in (i.e. your fate depends on answering the Sphinx's question correctly). There are similar mythic characters throughout many cultures.

Hans Gruber is a classic bad guy out for money and willing to kill anyone who gets between him and the prize. But if you give him what he wants, you will live. Still, you can imagine he has a normal life somewhere with family who care about him; the sequel shows that.

John Doe from Se7en is definitely more villian-like because his insanity has driven him to think and act like an archetype. He doesn't even have a name. But one could argue that with the right dose of lithium he wouldn't have done any of those things. John Doe personifies society's mistakes coming back to haunt.

I'm wondering that, if you make your bad guy highly emotionally complex, can he ring true? How emotionally complex can a character be and still be bereft of any sense of humanity? Still be soul-less without a conscience? It's something to think about.

To me, there is no difference between the two terms; one describes the other and vice versa.

The Joker to me is as much a flesh-and-blood person as Hans Gruber (who, frankly, can come off as a bit "animated" at times shall we say).

[Mr. Earth]

Re: Forteans Don't Really Believe In "Evil"...

I think that that's simply altogether too simple a view even to encompass movie villains, never mind any meaningful moral framework.

NMS

True, it's admittedly very simplistic and maybe oversimplistic, but putting personal desires before the needs of others is probably the most common example of villainy out there.

[jonpiper]

Re: Villains: Better that They Don't Believe They Are "Evil?"

I think the best villians are the ones we, the audience, detest and/or fear the most. Those are the villians we remember. Their actions are what cause us to appreciate them as antagonists on screen. Their actions cause us to detest them. Not their motivations.

True, the villian's motivations and beliefs help flesh out his or her character, but I think we should write the villian as evil and despicable as we can. It doesn't matter if they do or don't believe they are evil, what matters is what they do.

Gene Hackman in The Quick and the Dead was a great villian.

[nmstevens]

Re: Forteans Don't Really Believe In "Evil"...

True, it's admittedly very simplistic and maybe oversimplistic, but putting personal desires before the needs of others is probably the most common example of villainy out there.

Frankly, I think whether in the context of the real world or the realm of fiction, to describe this as an over-simplification would be an over-simplification.

I think that we are all, in some sense, driven by often conflicting needs and desires -- to have our sensual desires gratified, but also the need to be loved, to be respected and honored, to accomplish things, to be part of and to be accepted within various communities and hierarchies -- family, country, church, business.

The term "villain" is a designation that people assign to other people, just as you have above.

Just as we assign the term "hero" to other people.

They are not terms that most people will assign to themselves. People that others call "hero" generally don't think of themselves as such and don't call themselves heroes.

And neither do villains.

Our goal as writers (at least in my humble opinion) should be to create memorable *characters* -- and you do that from the inside out, not from the outside in.

That's why designations like hero and villain, from my perspective, aren't useful.

I can talk about protagonist and antagonist -- characters in opposition. Not good people and bad people. Those are judgments. And judgments are things that happen from the outside, looking in.

I am interested in what drives a character. What does he need. What, inside himself, keeps him from achieving that need.

When you identify that aspect of the character -- what internal quality prevents your character from achieving his need, you now understand your antagonist -- because the antagonist is a physical embodiment of that quality.

That's how it works, ideally. You have the internal thematic struggle -- aspects of the protagonist's character in tension being worked out internally.

And those thematic, allegorical aspects of the story are mirrored in the literal physical story elements of guns battles and cheating husbands and tumors and space aliens and cannibalistic serial killers -- or whatever it might be.

External story mirrors internal story. External protagonist/obstacle embodies internal obstacle. Ideally, as the story works itself out, as the internal thematic obstacle is overcome, so the external physical one is likewise overcome.

What makes for a memorable villain is the clarity of that relationship between protagonist and antagonist, between internal and external.

NMS

[Craig Mazin]

Re: Villains: Better that They Don't Believe They Are "Evil?"

One of my favorite villains was Dennis Hopper's Howard Payne in Speed. Completely insane, completely driven, completely single-minded. Nothing was going to separate him from his money.

Do you remember why?

[asjah8]

Re: Villains: Better that They Don't Believe They Are "Evil?"

I think in most cases, horror withstanding, villain motivation is there if we dig for it.

Doe wanted the role of God; he was piousness run amok. He didn't think he was evil, he thought he was doing God's work.

Herod wanted control; the town was like his house and he had to pull the strings. He felt his behavior was a necessary evil to maintain the peace.

Howard wanted payback. He felt the system owed him something for the loss of his mangled hand. He felt validated in his belief; and in some ways he was right.

[Mr. Earth]

Re: Forteans Don't Really Believe In "Evil"...

Frankly, I think whether in the context of the real world or the realm of fiction, to describe this as an over-simplification would be an over-simplification....

NMS

That's exactly what I was [trying] to say in an oversimplified way.

I get and agree with what you're saying about protagonist vs. antagonist, but I think this specific thread is making the very specific distinction of villains vs. heroes.

So in respect to that, if you take out the motivations and goals of the "villain," all you're really left with is a character that has about as much depth and development as the shark does in Jaws.

The easiest way to create a villain as a writer (and probably the most common way it's done) is to make the antagonist do whatever it takes to achieve his goal. That sort of selfishness or self-centeredness will automatically make them a villian in the audience's mind. Then you can add interesting layers to that greed and selfishness to make the character more interesting and unique--but at the very core, most of the time, the villain is all about himself.

It's a very basic premise, but I think sometimes the very simple things get lost as we struggle to write our masterpieces. And it helps to keep things simple when staring at a blank page and trying to create interesting characters that have to compete with the great examples of villainy mentioned in this thread. You have to start somewhere, so you might as well start with the easy stuff and make the "villain" a selfish, conniving pr*** and build it up from there.

[wcmartell]

Re: Villains: Better that They Don't Believe They Are "Evil?"

Do you remember why?

That's not a bad question, Burt...

The great thing about Hopper's character in SPEED is that he's *right*. He's 100% justified. He was on the bomb squad, had his fingers blown off, and was fired and refused his pension and screwed over by the city. So he wants the money that is *rightly his* and tries every single honest and correct way to get it... and fails. He's screwed over big time! With no legal ways to get the money that is *rightly his*, he switches to illegal methods. The worst part of this is, the city could just give him the money and he would stop, and no one would die. But they stick by their (wrong) guns and lots of stuff explodes and Hopper loses his head.

He's not a 2D villain, he's a guy who is right who has exhausted all legal possibilities and turned to the illegal ones. *We* wouldn't do that, but he would.

Craig saw the movie, he knew that.

What makes him a great villain is that he is doing what he thinks is right - and that makes him believable and 3D... and more frightening.

- Bill

[nmstevens]

Re: Forteans Don't Really Believe In "Evil"...

That's exactly what I was [trying] to say in an oversimplified way.

I get and agree with what you're saying about protagonist vs. antagonist, but I think this specific thread is making the very specific distinction of villains vs. heroes.

So in respect to that, if you take out the motivations and goals of the "villain," all you're really left with is a character that has about as much depth and development as the shark does in Jaws.

The easiest way to create a villain as a writer (and probably the most common way it's done) is to make the antagonist do whatever it takes to achieve his goal. That sort of selfishness or self-centeredness will automatically make them a villian in the audience's mind. Then you can add interesting layers to that greed and selfishness to make the character more interesting and unique--but at the very core, most of the time, the villain is all about himself.

It's a very basic premise, but I think sometimes the very simple things get lost as we struggle to write our masterpieces. And it helps to keep things simple when staring at a blank page and trying to create interesting characters that have to compete with the great examples of villainy mentioned in this thread. You have to start somewhere, so you might as well start with the easy stuff and make the "villain" a selfish, conniving pr*** and build it up from there.

If we're going to look at any of the great "villains" of drama (some of whom, by the way, are also Protagonists) -- it's hard to think of many who I would characterize, fundamentally, as "selfish, conniving pr***s."

Richard III is clearly a villainous character. There's no question but that he is, by any measure the "bad guy" of the piece, though he is the protagonist.

But to say -- okay, how do we start constructing this man's character?

Right -- start off with a view of him as simply a selfish, conniving etc..

Is that really the optimal way to go about building this guy?

Or MacBeth, who is also both villain and protagonist.

Or taking a huge step sideways, someone like Henry, in Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer, or the Rebecca deMornay character in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, or the Daniel Plainview character in There Will Be Blood.

To say that a "villain" is all about himself - but by the way, we're going to make the definition of "himself" so broad that "himself" can extend to include a Torquemada who tortures for his religious faith, a brutal military officer who'll do anything for his country, a man driven to acts of vengeance because of wrongs committed to his family generations ago, a man who's driven to commit acts of murder by an overwhelming compulsion, and so on and so on.

People are driven to do what others consider to be evil by so wide a variety of causes and circumstances that you can simply acknowledge that this is true, or you can simply create an artificial category and place all of those vast varieties of reasons for why real people actually do real things under a simplifying umbrella -- but to what end?

Darth Vader and Daniel Plainview and Hannibal Lechter and the Joker and Thulsa Doom and Richard III are not simply variations on the theme of "selfish, conniving pr..."

In fact, I wouldn't describe any of their motives as being particularly selfish, as we generally think of the term, with the possible exception of Plainview, but even he is acting in respect to a much broader *world view* that the story of which he is a part is exploring and which he, as a character embodies.

I think that nobody who is crafting a character, whether that character is antagonist or protagonist, whether it's someone who would be viewed as a hero or a villain (and you can have a villain be either protagonist or antagonist) can ultimately do so with complete success, without understanding this.

Every story is not about selfless hero vs. selfish villain. In fact, most stories are not.

And so a paradigm that says -- the foundation of every villain is selfishness is something that is, from my perspective, only going to lead one astray in the overwhelming number of stories where selfishness is simply *not* going to work as the defining quality of the antagonist.

NMS

[Centos]

Re: Villains: Better that They Don't Believe They Are "Evil?"

Do you remember why?

Yep. He got his thumb blown off while working in a bomb squad, and then was treated like crap -- given a golden watch for his forced retirement. Even uses his watch as the timing device on the bus's bomb. Extremely well written villain.

[Centos]

Re: Villains: Better that They Don't Believe They Are "Evil?"

What makes him a great villain is that he is doing what he thinks is right - and that makes him believable and 3D... and more frightening.

Yep, you would be rooting for him, if it wasn't for the fact he was murdering innocent people. And you almost root for him anyhow. Definitely one of the most interesting villains I've ever seen in a movie. With a humdrum villain, Speed would have just been another disaster/action film. And Dennis Hopper pulled it off perfectly.

[Mac H.]

Re: Villains: Better that They Don't Believe They Are "Evil?"

Yep, you would be rooting for him, if it wasn't for the fact he was murdering innocent people.

Nonsense. Plenty of movie heroes murder innocent people and we still 'root' for them.

In Quantum of Solace, Bond is out for revenge and blows up an entire hotel - killing everyone inside except, ironically, the person he was after. But the camera doesn't focus on the poor cleaning lady getting smashed to death by Bond's bloodthirsty need for revenge. The camera never focuses on the 100 or so other staff being killed in the destruction. No other guests in the hotel are even mentioned. And because the camera doesn't focus on it - the audience just pretends that it never happened.

If the main character of 'Quantum of Solace' was an Iranian secret agent who blows up a hotel in New York in an act of revenge .. would the audience have considered the secret agent a hero?

No - because the audience would be identifying with the victims rather than the main character. So you can have your hero murder innocent people, as long as you prevent the audience from identifying with the victims.

Heck - Han Solo even murdered a poor debt collector who was just doing his job.

Mac

[Centos]

Re: Villains: Better that They Don't Believe They Are "Evil?"

Nonsense. Plenty of movie heroes murder innocent people and we still 'root' for them.

In Quantum of Solace, Bond is out for revenge and blows up an entire hotel - killing everyone inside except, ironically, the person he was after. But the camera doesn't focus on the poor cleaning lady getting smashed to death by Bond's bloodthirsty need for revenge. The camera never focuses on the 100 or so other staff being killed in the destruction. No other guests in the hotel are even mentioned. And because the camera doesn't focus on it - the audience just pretends that it never happened.

I've never watched Quanturn of Solace, but if Bond is killing innocent people for revenge i probably wouldn't root for him either -- even if he is, supposedly, the hero. I'm not big fan on watching brutal cops kick the shlt out of bad people either (on those reality shows). It blurs the line too much.

In Payback, Mel Gibson, the anti-hero, is only slightly better than the thugs he's fighting. I don't mind him beating up and killing the thugs, but the bartender, who gets his hand mangled for not giving Gibson's character the information he wants, still bothers me -- but at least he didn't kill him. In my mind, at least, there's definitely a line between killing bad guys and killing innocent people. Cross the line, you're no longer going to get my "vote."

[jonpiper]

Re: Villains: Better that They Don't Believe They Are "Evil?"

One of my favorite villains was Dennis Hopper's Howard Payne in Speed. Completely insane, completely driven, completely single-minded. Nothing was going to separate him from his money.

Do you remember why?

I didn't remember that Payne had been cheated by the system and that's what motivated him to "get his money."

But I still remember why I thought Hopper's Payne was a great villian. He presented almost insurrmountable obstacles. he was driven, focused, intelligent. He did evil things, killed innocent people. That's what I saw and that's what I felt. That's what I remember.