The Perfect Villain

An article by Ekanem Ukpong.

The long philosophical monologues, creepy lairs, the evil laugh…these are just some of the stereotypes that come to mind when we think of the villain in a story. From the bedtime stories read to us as children, to the many power-hungry individuals in history who committed mass atrocities, we are primed to find stories incomplete without a bad guy; someone/thing we can hate on and want to see brought to justice. Due to this, we automatically start to see any character opposing our Hero as the Villain, even though the character may not be “bad”. This is why I avoid referring to the villain as the ‘bad guy’ and instead call it by its dramatic term - The Antagonist. The antagonist is a character or force which another character struggles against. The main antagonist, therefore, is what or who our hero must overcome during the course of the journey (story). In this article, I'm going to look at the key elements that make up the perfect villain.

One reason why so many villains are forgettable is because we, the audience aren’t clear about the antagonists goals and motivations - not just in terms of what they want but why they want it.  For example, consider Jesse Eisenberg’s performance as Lex Luthor in Batman V Superman. Now it’s easy for me to list reasons why it didn’t work (and trust me there are a lot!!!) but the main reason why we weren’t convinced by his performance was that we didn’t know why he wanted to kill Superman. His intentions were clear but we had no idea about the reasoning behind it. Sure he hinted towards a dislike for God - various “gods” even, but there was never any clear explanation either from his character or the movie in general as to why he did. So essentially what we were left with was a very underwhelming and cringy performance (bordering on comedic at times). What sets iconic villains, like Sylar, apart is that their characters have well defined goals and clear motivation(s). This helps us to connect with (but not necessarily agree with) them and as Empathy is the most powerful emotion we experience, Understanding our villain amplifies the feelings we have as they come on screen and is what makes their performances feel so real. It’s why it's still hard to see Sylar (Zachary Quinto) in real life and other films/shows & not get chills down your spine.

  

                                                                      - "This is usually the part where people start screaming."

Our antagonist also functions to provide conflict greater than our protagonist can handle so that in rising to the challenge (to best such conflict) our hero grows and changes at the end of it. This growth is important as our hero has to change at the end of his encounter or there would be no point to the story. Thus, it's very important that the villain be the center of the plot. Let’s consider the plot structure of The Dark Knight, arguably the greatest comic-book movie to date. If I were to try and roughly explain to you what goes on in the movie it would be like this – The Joker robs a bank full of mobsters’ money which leads to the crime bosses’ need to have a meeting.  The Joker threatens to kill the DA and Head of Police thus Batman & Gordon have to stop him and so on. Everything that goes on in The Dark Knight is directly or indirectly related to something the Joker did and it's one of the reasons why we all say the Joker 'made' that movie. Therefore, our antagonist needs to instigate crucial events in the plot, ideally events that present conflicts for our Hero to react to. The very best villains actually force our hero into making tough choices, i.e. – like Joker did when he made Batman choose between Rachel and Harvey Dent. This is important because these tough choices reveal the true nature of our hero (as we define them by their actions),  Important information about them as characters (E.g Bruce chose Rachel’s life over Harvey’s, we know now how he cares for he so much that he’s willing to give up his duty as Batman for her) and serve to push the narrative forward. Below is a short video examining this more in depth.

The “best” examples of antagonists to draw on are actually those from history – The Hitler’s, Bin Laden’s and Idi Amin’s of this world. When you consider how most of these guys started out and what they wanted, they weren’t actually bad people but it’s when the ideologies they believed in were taken to dangerous extremes that we began to see the evil in them. (What’s important here is that these guys thought they were doing the right thing and that leads to another point – The Antagonist must believe he is the hero of the story.) However, the flip side to this is that after the fall of these bad men, society reaches a balance. For example, Let’s consider the catholic church in the middle ages. When balanced,  Religion should be a blessing to society. Most religions preach tolerance, respect and love for fellow human beings. However, when religion is taken to extremes it can be hypocritical and dangerous -  Wars fought under the guise of “holy crusades”, Progressive scientists silenced and killed for ‘blasphemy’, the list goes on and on. But what happened as the political power of the church diminished as time went on? People saw and realized the importance of Christianity but were very aware of the harm that could be caused by military-like enforcement of it and therefore sought a balance. This lead to the creation of peaceful (in most cases) missionaries who brought aid and education to poorer regions saving many lives. History has shown us then that after an encounter with an antagonist our protagonist can learn, grow and achieve a balance. Therefore, our villain must have an extreme ideology (preferably, opposite to our hero’s own) and our hero must learn from whatever encounter she had with him.

The greatest antagonists are those with the ability to keep the stakes relatively small and make things personal. It’s no secret that majority of Star Wars fans will tell you the original trilogy from the 70’s is better than the prequels from the early 2000’s. Aside from the boring plot, annoying dialogue and lifeless acting, many fans felt the new trilogy lacked the presence of a threat as iconic as Darth Vader. What made the 70's films work so well was that at its core underneath all the visuals and spectacle, it was a story about family – an orphan who finds out he has a sister, works with her to help his father see the error of his ways and redeem himself. This is an innately relatable concept and brings me back to my earlier point about empathy. We all understand the concept of family & the struggles we face in being a part of one. This relatability adds emotional weight to the story and is why the scene where Darth Vader reveals to Luke that he is his father is so memorable.

Finally, the perfect villain must attack what our hero cares about most. I cannot stress how important this is. It's why some villains work better in some stories than others, i.e. Heath Ledger’s Joker is the great villain for Batman because attacks the two things he cares about the most – Gotham, his city and Rachel, the love of his life. The Joker didn’t want to take over the world, enslave the human race or terraform its atmosphere into Krypton (Yes, I’m looking at you Man of Steel kmt!) yet with such relatively simple goals he’s easily the most compelling villain of all time.

What do you guys think? Who's the greatest villain of all time? Drop a comment below and let me know. Till then, I'll leave you with who I feel is The Perfect Villain.