I’ve been thinking about this for a while. As far as my resources can confirm, there are two school of thought on this one.
Evil, Pure and Simple
This is why Lord Voldemort dominates! Like a plain and simple hero, sometimes a villain works best if that character is just evil, no further explanations needed. Drama stories often use this archetype to clink out dispensable characters for bullet fodder. But, let’s face it, we love evil because 99% of reality gives us the gray area. There’s a reason and it’s realistic, but sometimes realism is not synonymous with entertainment.
My appreciation for this type of villain comes from my fascination with abnormal psychology. Sociopaths are truly very rare, but they are almost the bridge between fantasy and reality for me because they don’t behave like normal human beings. So, when a baddie comes along with this untainted background of malicious enjoyment, it’s juicy to watch because we never, ever want that in real life.
The Tragic Villain
Self-aware, intelligent, and dark, the villain with a history often gets our sympathy because their story hits closer to home. They are not villainous be nature, but through a series of unfortunate events, they end up on the wrong side of the bench. Benjamin Linus from Lost and Alex Karex from Grey’s Anatomy are good examples of why this type of antagonist works. It’s not that you’re rooting for the bad guy. Very much a reflection for our own desires, you’re rooting for others to understand why they are a bad guy. If done just right, the villain can grab our attention and make us feel all the complications of life and its circumstances.
Not everyone sits well with paradoxes like these characters, but they also ensure an interesting journey for viewers. After all, with villains often come the good ol’ redemption story, and suddenly the bad guy becomes something else altogether.
What do you think? Why are villains so darn interesting?
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I love the way you are able to decipher the differences between villains. A very well thought out analysis. It gave me a new point of view.
Haha aw shucks. It’s how I’ve conceived villains for a long time. Villains are the backbone to a good story after all.
To me, it’s the ambiguity that makes a villain. Ben on LOST and (perhaps) Rush on Stargate Universe and Baltar on Battlestar Galactica. All characters I love because they’re not unequivocally evil.
Sure, it’s fun to root against (or for) the Saurons and the Voldemorts, but I find the sympathetic villains much more intriguing in the long term because they’re fleshed out and become three dimensional.
I would agree, although I’ve had a few instances where the contradiction makes the character hard to like. The main character from Dexter is a good example. However, mostly I find the villains with a background story to be far more interesting. Usually with pure and simply evil doers are balanced with complex protagonists.
I don’t care much which type they are, I like them all – but I do indeed prefer them to have a good backstory. (In Harry Potter, for instance, I never gave one fig for the rather bland Voldemort at all, but I’m quite fascinated by the few things learned of his earlier life as Tom Riddle – but of course, I’m an oddball who aren’t crazy about those books to begin with).
Your separation into the two categories does tell me one thing; though – I always root for the ones you call tragic. And I don’t mean “like them and would like them to be understood”. Nono. I want them to _win_. Kick the rest of the characters’ collective behinds, outwit the halfwits, soldier through with their ingenious plans. Ohyes. Go them. No ending to “Lost” would make me happier than Ben simply fooling everyone and getting out of it alive with all his mysterious plans fulfilled. The Saurons of the world, on the other hand, I’m more able to side against. (That said, old Annatar does have some good qualities and might not be the best example of pure evil – he seems surprisingly loyal to the fallen Morgoth, for instance, as proven by him building his old master a temple on Numenor) So while I enjoy both, I guess that’s a big difference. I see the second category as far more protagonistic – usually even more so than the actual protagonists.
I remember you telling me how you enjoy the bad guy winning. So…do you like the horror genre? I can’t imagine you getting the satisfaction of that all that often
Oddly enough, no, I do not enjoy the horror genre, as I’m far to faint-hearted. Isn’t that ironic?
The single most interesting and compelling attribute to a villain is. Most of the time they think they are a good guy. They act in ways that they think are right, their perception of reality is usually skewed.