5 Worst Villain Cliches (Writing Advice)

get ready because today I'm going to discuss my top five most hated villain cliches by the way my name is Brandon McNulty I'm the author of bad parts also the author of Entry wounds and welcome to my writing Channel everybody loves a good villain but even some of the best ones are held back by tired and annoying cliches today I'll be discussing five of these I'll explain what they are why you should avoid them and I'll give you an example of each also I'll be discussing a number of different stories today I'll put them up here on your screen and consider this your spoiler warning first cliche that I hate is the selectively dangerous villain and this one drives me nuts I've talked about it on the channel before it's when villains are deadly and Unstoppable until they encounter the hero or some other important character then all of a sudden our deadly villain gets hesitant and clumsy they can't fire a gun or swing a sword or even walk in a straight line and this cliche sucks because it's usually the result of lazy writing instead of forcing the heroes to outsmart the villain the writer forces the villain to act like an idiot for an example let's look at Alice in Borderland and if you're not familiar with it it's a death game story where people have to compete in a series of dangerous contests in order to survive some of the games involve strategy others involve intelligence and then there are games that involve physical combat in season two there's this great action sequence in which a villain known as the King of Spades begins slaughtering people in the streets the heroes have to defeat him somehow but for now they're just trying to find cover then at one point the group gets split up and a major character falls to the ground the king closes in on her he aims his gun at her and then for some reason he decides to shoot a random NPC before doing everything he possibly can to let her escape and this is just silly I hate when villains pull punches like this it takes me right out of the story and if you're writing a scene like this and you need a certain character to survive create a scenario where the heroes can fight for their survival don't have the villains handed to them second cliche that I hate is the throwaway villain and these are underdeveloped villains who get killed off or dropped from the story way too soon typically they get cast aside for the sake of other villains or plot lines and oftentimes they're stylish intriguing or well designed and once they're gone we're left with Loose Ends Mysteries and what-ifs and oftentimes the audience will feel cheated because the villain had so much potential Darth Maul is probably the most iconic example of this his design is just incredible you got the horns the yellow eyes the tattoos you take one look at this guy and you can't wait to learn more about him who is he where is he from why did he join the Sith the questions just Mount and mount but in episode one you don't get any answers instead Maul gets chopped in half and that's the last you see of them in the prequel trilogy and yes I know he appears in other Star Wars stories but you hate to see a character like this get dropped so soon in the prequels third cliche that I hate is the join me proposal and this is when the villain recognizes that the hero is powerful and then the villain offers the hero a chance to team up in order to accomplish something and it's not a terrible idea from the villain's perspective but the problem I have with it is that the hero almost always declines the offer it's just simply too predictable morally good Heroes always refuse because they oppose the villain's methods and smart Heroes refused because they know the villain will eventually stab them in the back later on and at best this cliche might cause the hero to second-guess themselves but the offer itself doesn't have much impact and it usually ends up looking ridiculous for an example of this let's look at Spider-Man one and in the middle of the movie The Green Goblin captures Spider-Man and takes him to a rooftop before lecturing him on how Heroes eventually become hated by the people they serve the goblin then offers him the opportunity to team up so they can create destroy or rule the city or whatever and of course Spider-Man refuses I mean what's he gonna say yeah hey I'd love to kill some people let's do it no he's not going to say that and let me be clear about this this is actually one of the best scenes in the movie but the offer itself Falls flat because we know Spider-Man is never going to take it fourth cliche that I hate stupid convoluted plans and this is when the villain's plan is ridiculously complicated and also unnecessary to some extent and oftentimes the villain ignores easier Solutions and the plan May undermine the villain's actual goals and typically these plans exist in order to stretch out the plot for an example let's look at Incredibles 2. I recently talked about this movie in my bad versus good plot twist video but I want to go back to it here because the villain's plan is pretty sloppy now the movie opens up with superheroes causing tons of collateral damage while trying to stop crying afterwards the government cracks down on them and the public even starts hating them just like the Green Goblin predicted so in other words at this point it's a bad time to be a superhero now the villain in Incredibles 2 is a brilliant inventor named Evelyn who holds a grudge against superheroes because her father died after putting too much faith in them on the other hand her billionaire brother adores supers he wants to restore their reputation by having them tackle secret missions while wearing special body cameras that only Evelyn can design now given Evelyn's Grudge you'd probably expect her to refuse to help her brother after all the only way that superheroes can return to their former glory is if she helps him instead what Evelyn does she supports her brother's project while also creating a super villain known as the screen slaver that she hopes will further damage the reputation of superheroes and this of course backfires because it gives the heroes a chance to save the day and at the end we're left wondering why Evelyn even got involved to begin with remember at the start of the movie supers were already outlawed and public opinion was at Rock Bottom at that point Evelyn had virtually nothing to gain and everything to lose by carrying out her plan fifth cliche that I hate fatal monologues and this is when a villain has an opportunity to kill the hero but instead the villain stops to give a speech and then gets killed and the worst part about this is that the speech is always unnecessary the villain becomes arrogant they start showing off they start mocking the hero they do this at the worst possible time and then they get killed the villain's Victory ends up being wasted and the hero's eventual Victory looks unearned for an example of this let's look at the Hunger Games I'm sure most of you are familiar with the concept of The Hunger Games it's a post-apocalyptic World there are 12 districts and each district must send two teenagers to compete in a death match where their can be only one winner and the hero of the story is Katniss Everdeen and she faces off against the number of lethal enemies one of whom is a ruthless young woman named clove who's deadly with knives then toward the end of the story Katniss needs to obtain medicine for her friend Peta she tries to grab it and that's when she gets attacked by clove the two girls fight it out until clove gets the upper hand and she puts a knife to Katniss's throat game over right wrong because instead of killing her clove launches into a speech that lasts until another participant pulls her off Katniss and kills her and that's it that's how you lose the Hunger Games and that's how you leave your audience with a bad cliche so I hope this helps question of the day what villain cliche do you hate the most let us know in the comments section below thank you for watching if you want to support the Channel please pick up a copy of either one of my books bad parts is great if you like small town horror it's about people trading away their sick and injured body parts in order to get healthy again and then entry wounds is great if you like Thrillers it's about a guy who picks up a Haunted Gun and he cannot put it down until he kills six people with it I'll so be sure to check out my other videos like share and subscribe and as always remember to keep on writing

Channel: Writer Brandon McNulty

Views: 209,202

Keywords: Writing, Writing advice, Writing Tips, Fiction, Creative Writing, How to write a book, How to write a novel, novel, book, darth maul, star wars, the phantom menace, villains, villain cliches, cliches, tropes, cliche, trope, storytelling, movie, movies, alice in borderland, hunger games, spiderman, worst villain deaths, worst villain tropes, worst villains in movies, incredibles 2, stupid villain plans, stupid villains, villain monologue, worst, villain, how to write villains, green goblin

Id: H4KyJ20uWVw

Length: 7min 5sec (425 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2023