[three characters looking awfully bland] The protagonists:
- Annoying goody two shoes leader who’s a paragon of virtue
- Nerdy scientist with no backstory who keeps doing poor puns
- Super bland dude who’s an obvious self insert for the writer
- People die because they’re “good” and refuse to break the rules
- They win battles through plot armor and the power of friendship
[a cool looking grizzled character smokes a cigar in a spaceship interior, a foot up on the controls, while a spaceship blasts a mega laser outside in space] The super evil antagonist:
- Played by the most charismatic actor available on the market
- Keeps doing the coolest looking things (but you must hate it)
- Has the coolest secret lair and his henchmen love him
- Is named Adolf McMurder and genocides with a smile
- Says an awesome one liner before murdering an orphan
[a nerdy dude in flannel points at a storyboard of the two previous images] The naive screenwriter:
- At least this time he’s not writing women, phew
- Has too much trust in his audience’s media literacy - About to give the super evil antagonist yet another zingy one liner
- Surely if we show him killing an orphan the audience will hate him
- Right, guys?… Right??…
Just art imitating life. Humans aren’t a simple as just “good guys” and “bad guys”. Villains could be awesome people but it’s their bad moral choices that make them the villains.
We like fictional villains because they’re fictional. Someone liking fictional villains doesn’t mean they’ll like real life villains.
If only…
Thank you! This type of post reeks of the “we should dumb down our fiction for the lowest common denominator because anything else is dangerous” mindset way too common in media criticism today.
the main joke of the post is that the average screenwriter doesn’t realize the standard audience will fall for the coolness factor over morals. It’s also making fun of the formula being overused with these specific archetypes, the lack of morally complex heroes, etc.
Although what another commenter said stood out to me more, the fact that a lot of lower quality media will make a character with obviously good aims who also does random evil stuff for no reason just so we still know he’s supposed to be the bad guy. It’s like they’re trying to make a morally complex villain, but put in none of the effort and just create a nonsensical villain instead.
So combining those ideas, I think the situation is that writers try to create a charismatic villain to fit with the norm and maybe add complexity to the experience. Except they don’t give the villain an adequate reason to do evil things - They just come up with 1 common sense point for the villain to make and say “oh he took it too far and somehow murdering orphans is the natural result of that, don’t question it”. So in the end the audience sees a charismatic villain with a decent point who’s only flaw is the random evil stuff they do for no reason. And it comes across as a lazy bad decision because that’s what it is. People just aren’t given a reason to dislike the villain when the evil stuff seems more like something the writer made them do than something that would actually occur.
A higher effort example that doesn’t mess this up is the new superman movie as another commenter said, the villain is also charismatic and also does comically evil things but the audience is actually given an understanding of him and how he thinks, which is convincing enough for people to accept that the villain really just is that evil.
Yeah I always think Leo Dicaprio’s character in Django Unchained is almost an awesome dude… handsome (it’s Leo) friendly, extremely hospitable, and has a fun curiosity. Except! There’s one problem with that dude… and that one problem is why he’s a villain. And to me that’s what makes a great villain.