^
Hell, during the final episodes of the 4th season Dexter is damn near the Dark Knight himself.
Hell, during the final episodes of the 4th season Dexter is damn near the Dark Knight himself.
Why can't we just have evil villains?
- Thread starter Agenda
- Start date
Villain and antagonist are two different things. A villain can be a protagonist - villain-protagonist: you're not going to tell me that Tony Soprano or Vic Mackey are heroes? What about Richard III or Macbeth? What about Jim Profit? And an antagonist does not have to be a villain at all. Were the FBI agents villains on The Sopranos? Was Kavanaugh a villain on The Shield? More like anti-villain.
^ Well, most of the time, the audience is meant to sympathize with the protagonist. (Maybe not in Shakespeare's time, but nowadays, yes.) Most fans of The Shield were probably cheering for Vic; same goes for Sopranos fans and Tony. (Don't even ask me about Natural Born Killers. Just...don't.)
.... says who?
I know plenty of Sopranos fans. Not a one of them were actually "rooting" for Tony or thought that he was an okay guy. Most Sopranos fans I know thought it was interesting because Tony was such a horrible person.
Nowhere Man
Commodore
So Dr. Evil would be your cup of tea?
I like both complex villians and just plain asshole villians both, I guess it just depends on the movie and the mood.
I like both complex villians and just plain asshole villians both, I guess it just depends on the movie and the mood.
I'm familiar with the term. Never liked it. I prefer antihero most times.
Sort of sells my point though, no? The good guy antagonist is an anti-villain. The bad guy protagonist is a antihero. And so on. After all, if villains aren't defined by being antagonists, what makes an anti-villain an inversion of a villain?
I don't think villain and antagonist are interchangeable, but I do think that villain should be a word typically confined to antagonists.
Last edited:
Complex villains are interesting not because we want to emulate them, but because we either want to sympathize with the villain's goals (even if we disagree with them), or at least understand the purpose behind his/her villainy.
It's just human nature to want things to make sense, and to me, a villain who is evil for the sake of being evil just makes no sense. Real people don't act that way.
Kegg: "protagonist" and "antagonist" are relative terms and speak nothing to the moral bearing of the characters. The protagonist is the star of the story. The antagonist is whomever (or whatever) stands in the way of the protagonist's goals. That doesn't mean the protagonist has to be the hero and the antagonist must be the villain. You can just as easily flip it around.
The movie Falling Down is one of my favorite examples of this. The protagonist is, in essence, the villain of the story, even if he doesn't realize it until the very end. "I'm the bad guy? How'd that happen?"
It's just human nature to want things to make sense, and to me, a villain who is evil for the sake of being evil just makes no sense. Real people don't act that way.
Kegg: "protagonist" and "antagonist" are relative terms and speak nothing to the moral bearing of the characters. The protagonist is the star of the story. The antagonist is whomever (or whatever) stands in the way of the protagonist's goals. That doesn't mean the protagonist has to be the hero and the antagonist must be the villain. You can just as easily flip it around.
The movie Falling Down is one of my favorite examples of this. The protagonist is, in essence, the villain of the story, even if he doesn't realize it until the very end. "I'm the bad guy? How'd that happen?"
That's my point?
I've said one or two times now that villains are 'bad guy antagonists'. The assumption is that antagonists aren't inherently bad, which is true.
I'd say the protagonist of Falling Down is more of an antihero - he's a protagonist, the audience is invited to sympathy and identify with him, and so on. Also, it was sort of obvious to me he was the 'bad guy' when he made racist quips and then trashed the crap out of the Asian's store. That he did it with a snappy comeback about inflation doesn't really condone that sort of insane behaviour.
So Dr. Evil would be your cup of tea?
Sometimes, yes.
I suppose it's a good thing for a villain to be complex, but at the very least, the things that the villain does should still be obviously bad. They should not be sympathetic - it should be clear that the villain is doing the wrong things and deserves to be brought to justice because of it. They should still be criminal.
That's another thing I have a hard time wrapping my mind around. But I'm getting there.
So Dr. Evil would be your cup of tea?
Sometimes, yes.
I suppose it's a good thing for a villain to be complex, but at the very least, the things that the villain does should still be obviously bad. They should not be sympathetic - it should be clear that the villain is doing the wrong things and deserves to be brought to justice because of it. They should still be criminal.
A villain can do bad things and still be sympathetic. I think you have to trust your audience. What you have to be careful with is making the leap from sympathy to justification. Understanding why someone did a bad thing isn't the same as condoning it or believing it to be right.
Nevertheless, some of the best stories don't make it clear exactly who is right or wrong--and sometimes nobody is right. Those are the ones you're supposed to come away thinking about.
You caught on faster than me, let's put it that way. I still take awhile to separate those concepts.
And ones that I tend not to enjoy, because I'm a very literal and linear person. It's a hard habit to break.
I like room for both concepts. Most of the time I want exactly that idea of the characters being as interesting as the story they're featured, but there's other times when I wouldn't mind just seeing basic good and evil kick the crap out of each other for a couple of hours.
It's dangerous to have all of one concept and nothing for the other. You run the risk of losing the ability to appreciate the complex while also running the risk of having nothing but cookie cutter stories and dull-as-hell characters.
I think there should be a balance. People should have a choice according to their mood.
If the villain is really nothing more than a plot device for the grander story, like Joker was in TDK, then it's alright to have them be somewhat shallow "evil" types. Heck, Joker really is an undeveloped villain in all his adaptations including the DC animated shows. He works because he's more an archetype than a character.
Villains like Spidey's bad guys, well they need a teensy bit more depth to them seeing how the audience would all WTF at an atomic physicist with metal tentacles suddenly deciding he wants to be a crimelord, or a rich businessman deciding to dress up in green while riding around on a metal bat.
Villains like Spidey's bad guys, well they need a teensy bit more depth to them seeing how the audience would all WTF at an atomic physicist with metal tentacles suddenly deciding he wants to be a crimelord, or a rich businessman deciding to dress up in green while riding around on a metal bat.
One of the reasons I so enjoy Whedon's work is that he knows that the outer universe gives a fuck about good and evil - and he understands that most of the time other than when they're chatting about, neither do most human beings.
^ That reminds me, I'd like to see a "Blood Will Tell"* - style retelling of Firefly. This time, from the POV of the Alliance. 
* for those not in the know, Blood Will Tell is a series of Trek comics presenting classic TOS episodes involving Klingons, but this time told from the POV *of* the Klingons. You'd be surprised as to how different they seem.
* for those not in the know, Blood Will Tell is a series of Trek comics presenting classic TOS episodes involving Klingons, but this time told from the POV *of* the Klingons. You'd be surprised as to how different they seem.
Really? Not from my experience. David Chase even talked about how surprised he was that so many people wanted Tony to die.
In some way, Avatar isn't that much different from Star Wars though. Star Wars features a mixed human/alien group of rebels fighting the all-human forces of an evil empire. Avatar features a mixed human/alien group of rebels fighting the all-human forces of an evil corporation. (So Pandora is Endor, basically.
)In any case, the whole "good humans, evil aliens" thing must be one of the most widespread Sci-Fi clichés ever. After all, we're the species who invented Auschwitz. If there's extraterrestiral life there's a fair chance that (to paraphrase Charlton Heston from the original Planet of the Apes) they're better than us... or at least I hope so.
Forest Whitaker was apparently bemused by his character's reception, wondering why he was seen as a villain.
In the circumstances, I think we are supposed to see Vic as the moral, best option. He's making deals with people who aren't such bad criminals, and taking the child rapists etc off the streets his way. Kavanaugh, while trying to do the legally correct thing, was getting in the way of this.
You think that's what we're "supposed" to see (whatever that means)? Did you happen to completely miss the last season?
