Storycraft: Antiheroes, Villains, and Anti-villains

a Vokes David Stewart here I just wanted to say a quick bit about anti heroes and villains and even sympathetic villains maybe we'd call them anti villains this is a little bit in response to a video I made a couple nights ago about American beauty and English Patient where people ended up assuming that I didn't like anti-heroes or didn't like stories about evil characters like you know Godfather Scarface or IPS like berserk were mentioned and the truth is I actually really liked anti-heroes in fact one of my favorite characters is is Elric from the Michael Moorcock's Elric series a very classic antihero I liked the Vampire Chronicles stuff in my youth so I've always liked the anti heroes and I liked Godfather Part one and Part two not so much part three so I've always liked the anti heroes but I could see why people would think that maybe I don't because of some of the things I said about the characters and those two other two movies in American Beauty and English Patient namely that I said that they were doing bad things so they were bad people and I kind of meant that a little bit in that Nietzschean sense like good versus bad and good versus evil you know that master slave morality dynamic where I view these characters and their actions as as contemptible and petty and not in any way interesting or virtuous whereas an antihero I think is something very different I don't think the characters in English Patient are anti-heroes even remotely antihero is usually a hero that doesn't have all the normal qualities of a hero like he's not good necessarily he might do bad things he might have something about him that's weird you know he might be an alcoholic or something but usually people think of antihero is like it's it's from the bad guys perspective and I don't think that that's quite true if you go and you look at let's look at Godfather Part one and Part two is a great example of this this sometimes fluidity between an antihero and a villain and what really makes them work we have a really cool character named Vito Corleone or Corleone II and he's an antihero I think in that first movie and in a great way and the reason he's an antihero is were introduced to him he's has a very powerful presence Marlon Brando did a great job with that performance he has a strong presence he's very calm and we understand he's very powerful in those opening scenes where somebody's asking for a favor and we see him sort of manipulating the scenes as things go on we see a virtue to him and that virtue is patience understanding planning we get that he's he's sort of a mastermind of this criminal organization and it's very interesting to kind of watch him at play we kind of root for him to succeed and the reason we really root for him to succeed is who is played against the antihero Vito Corleone's his opponents are not the good guys right it's not a bunch of nuns right it's not it's not like the reincarnation of Jesus it's other bad guys it's other criminal families it's drug dealers it's corrupt cops none of the people in godfather none of the central characters and Godfather are good they're all somewhere in that evil category they do bad things however Vito Corleone eight also has his own set of ethical standards he's like a lawful evil if you want if you want to put it in like RPG terms and there's a part that you know there's a scene where they're having a meeting with all the families and he says you know I don't want drugs being sold to white kids you know you can keep it with the blacks and now we may see that and be like oh that's that's not virtuous that's his that's his own weird little ethics that he's sort of asserting that he has some sort of ethical standard about what kind of business his criminal family is going to be getting into and he didn't like drugs he thought drugs were kind of dirty that a gambling was better and if you have drugs and you're giving him to white kids you're doing some something specifically worse and bad to the community versus gambling which he viewed as like you know providing a service in a sense so you have an interesting set of things and the people on the other side are are in a lot of cases worse and we're very sympathetic towards Vito because of his his character and his strong virtues that are exhibited to us and his like loyalty to his family and we it's very important that opening we see him being both powerful and kind and that comes into play later throughout the movie as we as we start to to to really kind of pull apart who he is and get to really see him act um at the same time you have his son Michael and he has an arc from a real sort of neutral and good character to an evil character in that movie and that's continued in the second movie so he steps across a threshold and he kills this corrupt cop we don't want the corrupt cop to live we want the corrupt cop to die because he's corrupt we don't care about him so the antihero and is not acting against a good guy he's really acting against another bad guy but maybe a bad guy that we like worse we think is worse because he's part of this drug dealer ring there's lots of unsympathetic characters in the in the drug dealer enemy camp in Godfather and then he becomes kind of an antihero where he's doing these sort of objectionable things but we want him to do those and he comes back and he takes over the family and he orchestrates like the cleaning of house and and that's an interesting moment because it's like a it's like a satisfying execution of evil in a sense and that continues in the second film the second film you see the you see the cycle completely come close that's what Godfather 2 is about because you have these preview you may have Robert De Niro playing young Vito and he comes to America and he does all these things that are there to protect himself and and to further you know his community and and whatever he's going to do he's kind of applying his ethics even then although he's doing all these bad things but he's doing things that he thinks are necessary and at the end of it he essentially has become a wicked person and we see the same thing with Michael Michael's picking up where he left off on the first movie and is completely becoming depraved towards the end to a point where we understand that he actually kills his own brother and at the end his wife basically tells him that she aborted his child thus letting you know that like he's become so depraved like he can't even command the loyalty of those he once loved and that this this person his wife who loved who he was and has now seen what he's become an something it's something awful that he's crossed the line from an antihero a sympathetic and to hear and become a true villain by committing some of his some of his heinous acts so it's a very interesting closing of the circle that we have with those two and Francis for a couple of does an excellent job playing this gradiation between you know villains that we that we have some sympathy for all the way to true villains like anti-heroes to true villains at the same time you can also have a character that's like in a really sympathetic antagonist or really sympathetic villain and I think a really good example would be Tommy Lee Jones in the fugitive Tommy Lee Jones is is the cop in the fugitive right and he's trying to catch Harrison Ford's character who's I don't remember the character names right now but him he's trying to catch Harrison Ford's character and we don't really want him to because we want Harrison Ford's character to succeed the the main conflict and the plot goal is for Harrison Ford to clear his name Tommy Lee Jones we don't dislike him he's a good guy he's highly sympathetic he's trying to do his job he's trying to maintain law and order all things that we think are virtuous and right and good but he is opposed to the actual protagonists and the actual protagonist has to kind of act outside the law he has to you know he has to fake IDs and do all these other different sort of illegal things to stay out of jail in order to clear his name this kind of a means versus ins thing and where those things are gonna lie so really Tommy Lee Jones is kind of an antihero he's a really sympathetic villain he's not evil he's just set against the protagonist and I think that that's an interesting element in lots of different stories you could trust all this with with the way the characters are in the English Patient and they don't really exhibit any specific virtues when when people just sort of decide to cheat on their spouse for no reason and like that's sort of the centerpiece of this story you end up having an attempt for that because you don't see any of the virtues of what the person really has and I and I don't remember the name of the main character in lose patient but I just remember him doing a bunch of things that I like didn't show any kind of strength or virtue something cool about reading Elric is like Elric is really powerful and and sometimes he you know there's a part in like fortress of the the at the end where he unleashes storm bringer his like demon blade and just kills all his enemies in this one town just wipes out all the all of this noble class and it's really satisfying even though he's like he just murdered a bunch of people it's like yeah but they caused all these problems and they're wicked and they're evil and and oh just kill him and that's what makes an antihero is who's he's setting against is somebody that we really we really tend to not like him but anyway that's sort of what I think about that so leave me your comments down below tell me about some of your favorite anti-heroes or maybe highly sympathetic villains or protagonists that don't fit that normal mode of good guy and tell me what drew you to them and made them highly sympathetic what made them interesting to you and made you maybe root for their goals because it's you're gonna find I think in these stories there's lots of different variations for how that works but I think the main thing is you see some sort of strength there you see something redemptive or virtuous or interesting or or whatever that or you haven't like an ID to here that's set against something that's worse so you end up really viewing the wrath of the antihero as something as something good and cool and interesting one last one I mentioned I don't know if I mentioned this actually but Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice you have this antihero of Lestat he's really not a good guy he's a vampire he kills people like every single night right that should be bad but because he's a vampire and there's something bound up in his nature or spirit to do these things we tend to just find his being more interesting than impressing upon him judgment for his actions it's likely he's a vampire that's what vampires do you know we kind of tend to let that go as the audience and kind of focus on what makes the character interesting because that's something that's part of their part of their I guess in great being is that they have to do that so that's the last one I'll mention but you'd give me yours down below I really do appreciate the conversations in all the comments on on the last few videos particularly about Hollywood and I hope you guys will leave me more and give me some info about what made you think that an antihero was a cool character in something that you read or something that you saw and with that I will bid adieu to you and I will see you next time

Channel: David Stewart

Views: 39,007

Keywords: writing, novels, movies, story, storycraft, villains, heroes, antiheroes, anti-villains, characters, scripts

Id: fp1tCTPG6BA

Length: 11min 20sec (680 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 14 2018