Some time ago, in fiction having villains become villains because they’re truly awful people or for simple, self-gratifying goals (power for power’s sake, easy cash, immediate satisfaction…) was perfectly fine and many villains from that time are still extremely popular today.
– Tom
But today they’re immediately marked as a sign of poor writing skills, bad/annoying characters, and they’re expected to always have good qualities, complexities, well-thought out goals…
And while I myself greatly prefer the later category too, I still think getting somewhat rid of the former is a loss of flavor, diversity, and possible teachings (as some IRL people really ARE that awful and without excuse), but I don’t see any way to make them more palatable for the present public.
Is there a way to make such characters feel credible and valid? Can a character be uncomplicated and deeply awful without twirling his mustache?
Hi Tom,
Great question. To answer this, I’ve separated out several different types of villains, so I don’t conflate one villain trait with another.
- Villains with simple, self-gratifying goals such as cash and power
- Villains who are 100% evil with no other dimensions to their personality
- Villains who have no strengths or candy
Audiences have no problem with #1. They often want nuance and complexity, but that doesn’t require villains to have elaborate or non-selfish goals. They can be polite and donate to charity but still want to control others or horde everything for themselves.
It’s easy to mix this up with being a one-dimensional mustache-twirler, because so many popular stories use a noble motivation to give their villains some redeeming quality or make them more complex. The overuse of this tactic has actually led to certain types of villains that are themselves becoming cliche, such as the leader of an oppressed group becoming ruthless in the pursuit of equality and justice. This evil-oppressed-group pattern is a form of gray-washing, because it takes an issue that is actually black and white and treats it like it’s gray.
How about #2 then? Do audiences hate these evil mustache-twirlers? Much of the time, but not always. The biggest problem with these characters is that they’re uninteresting – but that can be fixed. You just have to give the character a bunch of novelty. The terminator antagonists from the terminator movies, the Joker, and Darth Vader all have features designed to increase their novelty. It also helps to make these villains mysterious. This makes them scarier and doesn’t give the audience any time to see how boring they are. Sauron is a great example.
Finally we get to #3. These are villains who the author tries to make detestable in every single manner. That means not only are they evil, but they’re not good at anything, and just to add some lookism to the mix, they’re ugly too. If you look back at the villains people treasure today, I doubt you’ll find many of these. That’s because not only are they caricatures, but they don’t work very well for stories. Their incompetence means they struggle to be threatening, so they aren’t effective antagonists. Instead, they’re just annoying. They also suggest the author seriously hates whoever they’re supposed to represent, which in some cases reveals author bigotry.
The third villain is something you just don’t want in your story, and much of the time it sends unsavory messages too. There may be a few rare exceptions where you might use it for groups you really have to avoid glorifying, like Nazis. Even then, you should skip the lookism, and do you actually need to include Nazis in the story?
Altogether, I don’t think we’ve lost anything. I think we just have higher standards for villain portrayal.
Happy writing!
Chris
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I mean Emperor Bealsus from The Owl House Is well liked, and if anything is far more hateable (but more interesting) once his back story is revealed.
The wolf from Puss and boots may some legitimate grievance, but it ultimately acting for a very pety motivation.
And both are modern, adored villians
Handsome Jack. Absolutely pure evil, but fantastically acted and written to be a villain you love to hate.
Yeah Belos is a case of he doesn’t believe himself evil, he believes he is cleansing the world of sin, so wrapped up in his own delusions. But he is so obviously wrong and does horrific things without any kind of “tragic backstory.” So he’s not the cliche mustache twirler because he believes he is doing the right thing, however twisted. But he also isn’t sympathetic, he’s detestable.
I haven’t read/seen the Owl House, so can’t speak to this particular example. But I’ve seen a few villains who are super evil, and yet say something along the lines of “I’m the good guy who heroically rids the world of this terrible thing”, where I’m just…. nah.
The writer is just trying to have their cake and eat it too – both 100% evil villain with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and have them be psychologically realistic by having them justify their own actions and believe in their own cause – and maybe that’s POSSIBLE to pull off, but it’s way harder than just giving your 100% evil and detestable villain a line in which he says he’s a good guy. I think a lot of the time, it would have been better to cut that line.
Making the villain completely horrible and then have them spout some “might is right” ideology to justify themself in their own head is probably easier to make believable.
“By their acts you shall know them”. No matter how many “good” qualities a character have, if their acts are evil, they are evil. My main villain, being from a spy setting, is not specially evil, not more than the rest of the characters, but his goals are dicectly opposite to my MC goals. Of course the story being told from my MC’s point of view, makes him thousands of times more depicable than from an objective POV (they are ALL spies, they all kill when needed; they just think is needed at different points).
Ultimately this is going to depend on the type of conflict you have. For example, if it’s Character vs Nature (say, someone trying to escape a blizzard while being hunted by predators on a mountain), making the “villain” unlikeable is fine. It puts us–reading from comfortable climate-controlled homes–into the head of the protagonist (or, in a few really interesting stories, the antagonist POV character). Similarly, if it’s Character vs Divine Being that being can be the embodiment of evil, with nothing to soften the blow.
I think the issue here is that people forgot how “Embodiment of Evil” villains work. They work as setting, not characters. Take LOTR. Sauron was pure evil (well….it’s far more complicated, but for the purpose of the story he is). But we never see the characters in direct conflict with him, or anything at all from his perspective. We only ever directly see the characters in conflict with his agents, who are far more human. One of my favorite chapters is when Merry and Pippen were taken by the orcs, because you can absolutely see normal humans talking and acting like this (orcs just dial up the violence a few notches). Or, take “The Fifth Element”. The ultimate conflict is with the evil thingy, sure–but the plot revolves around the conflict between the characters and Zorg, who has a very relatable and even rational view of things.
When you have the Big Bad too big to attack directly this can work because the minions are humans or at least relatable. It’s when you have the heroes attack the Big Bad directly–when they become characters, not setting–that you have any obligation to make the character relatable in some way.
“There may be a few rare exceptions where you might use it for groups you really have to avoid glorifying, like Nazis.”
JoJo Rabbit did this, but I thought they did it too much for my liking. The Nazis in the early part of the movie (the “real” ones, not the one JoJo imagined in his head) seemed silly and almost endearing, which took away a lot of the horror of the indoctrination of JoJo, then it felt disjointed when the plot gets much more intense later on.
“Hogan’s Heroes” played the Nazis as silly as well, but that was intentional. The actor who played Colonel Klink was Jewish, and as I recall his family escaped Nazi Germany. One of the generals had a scar on his face from abuse suffered as a prisoner, and the Frenchman was in a concentration camp (had the serial number tattooed on his arm). Their whole goal was to show Nazis as ineffectual, bumbling idiots, in contrast to the propaganda f the Ubermench. Learning that adds a whole new level to that show.
A villain can be straight up evil if their motivation is entirely selfish, destructive and cruel – but they should still have that motivation, and they should stick to it. Once a villain forgets what they’re actually trying to achieve in order to engage in some random genetic “evil”, that’s when they lose their credibility in my eyes.
*Generic, not genetic. Curse you again, autocorrect!
Genetic sort of works for your point anyway.
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest watching YouTube videos where people read posts from Reddit like AITA or EntitledPeople or IDon’tWorkHere or other similar items. If you want examples of awful people. Like today I saw one where the not-favored child was told to give up his house for the favored child and his family because they “need” it more and would be “allowed” to live in a camper in the back provided he followed certain rules like having a curfew. Some of these stories can be translated to a novel.
Of course, we don’t know exactly how many of those stories are true and how many are creative writing assignments gone horrible wrong.
Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter is, without a doubt, the best example of a well-written, 100% evil villain that everyone hates. I recommend inspiration from her to anyone with this question.
For me, the important qualities for evil villains are competence and style. Truth be told, the audience doesn’t need to sypathise with a character to enjoy having them on screen. That’s just one way to do it.
Consider Azula from Avatar AtlA. For the vast majority of the show she isn’t particulary likable. But the fact that she keeps being a huge threat to the heroes makes her scenes very enjoyable. And it doesn’t feel contrived – she’s just so good that Aang and company are outmatched every time.
And this doesn’t need to be about their combat skills. Another great example would be Tywin Lannister from Game of Thrones – and the book series, but Charles Dance really nailed the character. We’re talking about a warmongering patriarch who treats his children like garbage, wages war just for the sake of good PR and breaks Geneva Convention several times a day. And yet, Tywin dominates every scene he’s in, runs half of the war effort by himself and succesfully opposes the main cast for three books. No wonder everyone thinks he’s entertaining.