For hypothetical example; Father/son duo are criminals, harming, killing, and stealing innocent civilians. Superhero fights them, resulting in the father dying. Son is now portrayed as a sympathetic villain because all he wants is to avenge his father… despite all the fathers of children they murdered whilst comitting crimes.
Side question; do you feel sympathy for the villains portrayed like this?
Because humans are complex creatures able to have a multitude of emotions at once while also not feeling other emotions at all. Our brains are masters at compartmentalizing. Think of those at the tops of the nazi regime, the elites. They had family members, and would be devastated if their family members died, but they also knew the truth about how many jews they were slaughtering and torturing per day. A great movie example is The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, where a nazi government official overseeing a death camp has so much genuine love for his family, while having no issues overseeing the task of killing mass amounts of jews in the day-to-day.
Villans in the stories we tell are no different. A character, whether good or evil, is only interesting if their emotions are as complex as real humans’ are, otherwise they feel flat, like cardboard, or boring and unrealistic. Real humans who have personality disorders where they don’t feel emotions tend to learn quickly how to pretend to have them. Isn’t that wild?
I’m really struggling to remember any instance of this, although admittedly I’m not that much up on superhero comics.
But that said, I’d look at:
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Is the hero responding with an appropriate amount of force, given the capabilities and crimes of the antagonist?
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Is the villain also affected by some larger system or circumstance which makes their actions, when examined on a larger scale, sympathetic?
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Does the surviving villain understand that what they are doing is wrong?
I think this was Black Manta, his dad and Aquaman in the Aquaman movie.
that’s also the same movie where the hero unleashed an army of piranha zombies on both sides of a civil war he was trying to stop and made out with his girlfriend for like 30 seconds while his pet kraken massacred his soon-to-be subjects… it was an enjoyable action film, but nuanced writing wasn’t it’s strong point imo, haha
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It wouldn’t make much of a plot for the bad guy just to be after money. It doesn’t even work. If your goal was to make money, and didn’t have scruples, you wouldn’t spend who freaken knows how much effort learning martials arts, making rayguns, and you definitely wouldn’t go into a car throwing ramapage.
You would just get a job at Goldman Sachs or Wells Fargo. One thing I liked about Better Call Saul, he is in it for the money. A simple motivation that is not sympathetic.
People form bonds with other people, in a way that doesn’t happen between every person and every other person.
