How do you do certain villains?

[Filmmagician]

What do you do when your antagonist isn't a human or tangible creature? Like a disease, laziness, self doubt, etc... How do you up those antes from an antagonistic POV.

What do you think makes the best Hollywood villains?

Thanks in advance!

[wcmartell]

Re: How do you do certain villains?

There must be a half dozen movies where Donald Sutherland looks at a map of the world and explains how fast the disease will spread in 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours... (where the map is now fully engulfed in disease).

But laziness and self doubt (and addiction) are internals. They do not show up on screen, so they don't work well as conflicts for film. Novels? Sure. But not films. The best you can do is show the effects... so you can show a pile of unwashed dishes in the sink growing as an effect of laziness, but you can not show whatever is going on internally which causes the laziness. You can have the actual fight against laziness, because that happens within the character. Best you can do is give us a xerox of a xerox of a xerox of the conflict... not the real thing.

A film needs conflict we can see, or it ends up watered down. Movies about disease usually have a Patient Zero the protag is hunting for (PANIC IN THE STREETS to CONTAGION) which gives us an external conflict. Something that shows up on *the screen* (which is what we are writing for).

Bill

[UnequalProductions]

Re: How do you do certain villains?

Symbolism.

Finding a way to externalize internal conflict is a major part of being a screenwriter. It's part of the reason I love it over prose or poetry. You're confined by writing only things that can be seen and heard on the screen.

Self doubt? How about a cop that carries around a trinket from that little girl who died on his watch? Every time he has to make that difficult decision, he pulls out the tiny metal ballerina. Until the finally, when he has to step up, put the tiny ballerina away and move past the mistakes of his past to save the present.

[Joaneasley]

Re: How do you do certain villains?

Character traits like laziness have a different role in a screenplay. They are your character's flaw, not his antagonist. If, for example, you have a character who is lazy, you might have a plot where the character is faced with a more tangible antagonist, whether it is a disease, a storm, or a person, but he has to overcome his flaw, the laziness, in order to successfully defeat the antagonistic force and achieve his goal.

[Filmmagician]

Re: How do you do certain villains?

That's all great points you guys have made. By disease I meant like cancer, or something terminal. I think it's really cool how some stories/movies don't have a overt antagonist and still happen to tell a compelling story. Like Little Miss Sunshine, 50/50, Lost In Translation, or even American Beauty.

I have a hero who has cancer, but doesn't tell anyone. It gets worse and worse but doesn't reeeeaallly stop him from doing what he wants to do, it just more puts a time limit to it I guess. Externalizing it makes sense. I'll tinker around with that.

thanks

[finalact4]

Re: How do you do certain villains?

Top Gun

That's the first example that comes to mind regarding self-doubt where the internal struggle of a character is externalized.

Mav is arrogant and self-serving. He wants everything to be his way, because he believes he is better than everyone else. And then something bad happens-- his best friend dies and he questions everything he's ever believed about himself.

His self-doubt and loss of confidence is externalized in how he distances himself from people. He places himself in a self-imposed isolation from the other teams in his unit, from the instructor that was helping him and the love interest. He believes he isn't worthy of their confidence in him.

It's further externalizes when he's in the F-14 Tomcat, right? When he's expected to role play war games where he must engage the enemy he is simply unable to do so, remembering that he was responsible for the loss of Goose.

But it's more complicated than that, too. His lack of self-confidence goes deeper as he's always been told that his own father ****ed up-- is the son like the father?

Then he learns his father did do it right. That he was in the worst dogfight ever seen, and he came through for his unit and his men.

And even when Mavrick is faced with the biggest crisis of his career to date, he books under the pressure, right? And it isn't until he channels his best friend's spirit symbolized by his dogtags, does he find his inner strength and return to save the day.

It's a great film.

With a plague, what normally happens is that you find the hero is trying to stop the plague because it is a part of his job: Contagion, The Day After Tomorrow, Armageddon, etc. The key is that, somewhere (in general) at the mid-point the crisis becomes a more personal matter.

Contagion-- first his best friend contracts the disease, but then his wife contracts it and the hero's struggle and the stakes are raised to the highest point. And what does he do? He exposes himself to the virus itself in order to show his wife his commitment and love. To give her something she has lost-- hope. It's a race against time. He takes on the virus one-on-one.

The Day After Tomorrow-- it's when his son is trapped in New York City when our hero, unable to stop what's going to happen must leave his work behind to go save his son, and in doing so seemingly faces insurmountable odds at the hands of the storm, so to speak. It drives the plot and increases the stakes-- will he save his son. Again, it's a race against time. The hero goes up against the storm one-on-one.

Armageddon-- everyone is doing their best and they are left with only one choice, someone has to stay behind to detonate the nuke manually. And it's when AJ draws the short stick that the stakes are raised for Harry and the story becomes so much more personal to Harry. He can't lose the only son he never had and he can't allow his daughter the pain of losing the man she loves. Because Harry Stamper has "never failed to reach a depth that he has aimed for." Harry sacrifices himself and stays behind to detonate the nuke himself. Yep you guessed it, another race against time. And again, he takes on the asteroid one-on-one.

This paradigm works for a lot of disaster films, Zombie apocalypses, and monster films.

If you think about it, you will find movies that successfully take the internal conflict and externalize it.

Hope something helps.
FA4

[Filmmagician]

Re: How do you do certain villains?

Top Gun

That's the first example that comes to mind regarding self-doubt where the internal struggle of a character is externalized.

Mav is arrogant and self-serving. He wants everything to be his way, because he believes he is better than everyone else. And then something bad happens-- his best friend dies and he questions everything he's ever believed about himself.

His self-doubt and loss of confidence is externalized in how he distances himself from people. He places himself in a self-imposed isolation from the other teams in his unit, from the instructor that was helping him and the love interest. He believes he isn't worthy of their confidence in him.

It's further externalizes when he's in the F-14 Tomcat, right? When he's expected to role play war games where he must engage the enemy he is simply unable to do so, remembering that he was responsible for the loss of Goose.

But it's more complicated than that, too. His lack of self-confidence goes deeper as he's always been told that his own father ****ed up-- is the son like the father?

Then he learns his father did do it right. That he was in the worst dogfight ever seen, and he came through for his unit and his men.

And even when Mavrick is faced with the biggest crisis of his career to date, he books under the pressure, right? And it isn't until he channels his best friend's spirit symbolized by his dogtags, does he find his inner strength and return to save the day.

It's a great film.


If you think about it, you will find movies that successfully take the internal conflict and externalize it.

Hope something helps.
FA4

Great points. I've actually done something similar with the hero and his dad having the same inner conflicts and demons. I'll re-watch Top Gun as a re-fresher.
Thanks! Helped a lot