How to make Pure Evil Villains work

you're not gonna shoot a puppy are you jack yeah in the face why contest is over give that man a ten thousand dollars over the last decade plus change people have increasingly used sites like Twitter to discuss all manner of media which in turn has had the effect of them becoming increasingly invested in the quality of the stories they look at admittedly this is a bit of a double-edged sword on the one hand there were people even among the most casual popcorn munching audiences looking at the rise of Skywalker and saying wow this plot is absolutely terrible and stupid on the other hand there are plenty of people who look at this movie and say that it's a deep and intellectual Masterpiece that's how we're gonna win but also it's a dumb space Wizard movie for babies if you ever criticize it yeah you try and figure out how that works why does it always come back to these three movies I I need to find other sources of garbage I can point to there's an endless procession of hot takes around media these days on just about every topic you can think of but for one reason or another villains are very popular to discuss but one element that I do see crop up from time to time is the idea that if a villain is completely unsympathetic or pure evil they're automatically bad as a character uh bad in terms of quality not not morality the idea being that a villain in a current day piece of work needs to have at least something going for them be that sympathetic motives or Origins goals that are at least partially understandable to the audience or some shot of them having a Redemption Arc down the line hello Zuko here now of course none of these elements are inherently bad and many of them can be done quite well though I do say this as someone who is more than a little bit sick of stories that say well the antagons was sad one time Ergo you need to treat them with kid gloves yeah um no [ __ ] that noise this old Crone got off way too [ __ ] lightly where was I going with this oh uh yeah right villains the question you may be asking yourself is does a villain having sympathetic qualities automatically make them Superior to a pure evil unsympathetic villain or is a work automatically more mature and deep if rather than having a villain it focuses more on a concept being an antagonist like generational trauma the answer is no like with most things this is largely dependent on execution but no there's nothing inherent about these things that make them automatically Superior to just having a regular ass pure evil villain if you'd like you could try and ask all five people who went to see Strange World what they thought of the narrative structure of that movie they're currently having a convention on the planet of people who don't exist if anything the harder one leans into being morally complex when it comes to their antagonists the more likely they are to absolutely [ __ ] up the landing what matters most is the quality of the writing and when it comes to villains who are pure evil in nature it's very important to ensure that they are at least entertaining in some capacity what did he mean by this well I'll tell you Dave many people will say that having a villain totally devoid of any sympathetic or understandable qualities runs the risk of them being incredibly boring and I can certainly see the logic to that for instance if your main antagon is just some sort of vague nebulously defined Darkness or an evil force of nature yeah I can understand that being seen as incredibly dull but really there's only two things you need to do if you want a pure evil villain to be engrossing to the audience firstly they need to be entertaining to watch by which I mean they can either be funny slash charismatic or their Antics can just be enjoyable slash engrossing for the viewer to watch or both the second key factor is sooner or later they need to suffer karma for their terrible actions of course it's all too easy for a Creator to fail in making an engrossing pure evil villain and when such Endeavors fail they tend to fail pretty damn hard Ramsay Bolton is undeniably one of the worst aspects of Game of Thrones aside from the final season the guy was Pure Evil and irredeemable no doubt but his Antics weren't enjoyable to watch because the universe itself seemed to bend over backwards to let him do Insane nonsense boy this medieval fantasy show that wanted to present itself as being grounded and realistic sure was eager to have him win a shirtless knife fight against a bunch of armed soldiers and sure Ramsay eventually met consequences for his actions when the showrunners were done jerking off over the guy but by that point he'd gotten away with so much logic bending [ __ ] that it wasn't even satisfying it was just a case of God get this guy off screen he sucks I need 20 good men but what by my estimation constitutes a good irredeemable villain well I do happen to have a few examples on hand so let's go through them dear God no Dio Brando is undeniably the single most influential villain in the entire JoJo's franchise so much so that every single part has at least some sort of tie directly towards him while it can certainly be argued that Dio in part 3 and certainly in part 6 has more debt to his character Phantom blood Dio is very much a mustache twirling [ __ ] the literal second deal becomes a vampire he starts eating people and merging human heads onto dog bodies just because he thinks it's really really funny to do that he's a funny little guy just having a fun old time really you know a character is going to be a horrible [ __ ] when their very first proper act on screen is to kick a dog in the face for basically no reason the interesting thing about Dio is that his background does actually have some sympathetic elements and yet you really can't even bring yourself to feel bad for the guy sure he comes from an abusive household where his dad looked like the main bad guy in an NTR story but then he falls ass backward in one of the richest households in England but that isn't good enough for Dio oh no ruthless ambition drives him to seek more and more plus you know the whole dog kicking thing Dio spends so much of his screen time just being a huge [ __ ] or doing reprehensible things while bragging about how great he is that it really makes him enjoyable to watch and equally enjoyable to despise did it and similarly that's what makes it so enjoyable whenever good boy Jonathan gets to beat the crap out of him and while Phantom blood is often regarded as the weakest part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Dio's Wicked Charisma and terrible Antics easily make him the high point of it similar to Dio Frieza from Dragon Ball is a character who has a massive effect even in story arcs he's not physically a part of a character cell massively terrifyingly powerful that so much of his initial story arc involved the protagonist doing everything they could to run away from the guy and knock it in his crosshairs when the time came to finally throw hands with the guy Frieza steamrolled the heroes like continuously whenever it looked like they got even close to having the upper hand bam new transformation and fresh ass kicking Frieza was able to exude an immense presence just from how incredibly overpowered he felt relative to the heroes and was furthered Along by some amazing voice work similar to Dio dude precisely when ants battle a dinosaur who do you think emerges the Victor the dub voice actor who took over for Frieza around the time Kai started airing Chris Ayers gave him an immense amount of Charisma and it's a real shame that he's no longer with us Frieza spends a large portion of his screen time switching between being Sinister yet charming and doing terrible atrocities to the main characters the man is unironically the CEO of racism and yet what's Most Fascinating is despite all these years we've really never learned anything on frieza's backstory beyond what we already knew on Namek we know that he was born immensely overpowered and that he became the ruler of a Galactic Empire but that's about it no real tragic backstory or anything to justify his actions he's just like that but man Reviving him as a recurring character is definitely one of the smartest decisions that was ever made with the Dragon Ball IP every time he shows up it's always cue for the hype of [ __ ] imaginable to cite a more modern example and to prove that this list isn't exclusively weeb [ __ ] let's take a quick look at Big Jack Horner from Puss and Boots too a movie that was far far better than anyone dared to believe possible while death was undoubtedly the most popular villain to emerge from that movie Big Jack Horner is undoubtedly great in his own right partially due to how great John mulaney's performance was we're gonna frame you for murder the character was able to get his own fandom even if he was being overshadowed by furry bait so that's no small accomplishment just about every single second of screen time that Jack Horner has is dedicated to him being a terrible horrible [ __ ] but being absolutely hilarious in the process it's pretty telling that even though the movie is still relatively new quite a few scenes involving Jack Horner already have memes around them the guys as quotable as he is irredeemable foreign what took you so long idiot they even took the time to Mark the whole concept of a tragic backstory which is a very welcome thing to see in this day and age and as a character he certainly serves as an example that you can have a villain who is funny intimidating and totally irredeemable in equal measure I could go on I could mention examples like various incarnations of the Joker where he is basically less Society man and is just evil and funny but otherwise lacking in depth Beyond being an evil clown man or Lalo Salamanca from Better Call Saul who can effortlessly flip between being a Charming gentleman and cold-blooded psychopath and is always enthralling to watch as a result I am I'm legally required to mention the Breaking Bad franchise at least once per video it it's a very serious problem but by now I'm sure you're all hard to know is the pattern that I've been pointing towards that it's entirely possible to have an engaging and engrossing villain that's pure evil and irredeemable provided there are some entertaining aspects to the character not that every villain needs to be like that you understand but it's also kind of ridiculous that creators try and run away from having pure evil antagonists speaking from my own personal interests however I think at this point I'd watch a hundred stories with a bad guy like big Jack Horner before I suffer through a single thing with a kylo ren styled villain

Channel: Prospero Ch.

Views: 24,143

Keywords: frieza, dbz, dragon ball, dragon ball super, mauler, cj dachamp, trash taste, critical drinker, jojo, jjba, dio, dio brando, big jack horner, jack horner, puss in boots, puss in boots the last wish, the last wish, jojos bizarre adventure, efap, gigguk, anime, movies, reaction, hololive, persona, bleach, one piece, shonen, shonen jump, saiki k, demon slayer, mario movie, mario, yongyea, breaking bad, better call saul, bcs, avatar, tla, cartoonshi, Cartoonshi シ, disney, schaffrillas

Id: Kp4jMHO6Ljo

Length: 11min 30sec (690 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023