We Love Writing Heroes That Kill

foreign hey guys stories with hero characters have been around forever I mean there's literally an entire narrative structural practice called the hero's journey so to go along with the ubiquitous nature of hero-centered narratives are a bunch of rules and guidelines that writers often follow they create the Paradigm that we've all become accustomed to when interacting with Adventure or action-based fiction and more than anything else fictions are obsessed with creating commentary around murder I'm hard-pressed to think of any topic more frequently presented in fiction adventure stories than the ethics of killing it's almost certain that every major villain in your traditional Quest narrative is going to have an evil plot centered around or at least consequentially causing the widespread deaths of thousands of people sometimes billions and because of that the heroes stand in their way opposing that evil plan and hoping to save all those lives that will be lost I honestly feel like I don't even need to give examples of this it's literally like everywhere and this has traditionally created an interesting dichotomy between heroes and villains the villains represent those who do not value the lives of others and therefore are free to solve their problems through taking the lies of those that stand in their way if a writer really wants to press home how little the villain cares about life they will have the villain kill one of their own men I I was just kidding so was I no I wasn't this traditionally means that Heroes who must stand opposite of the villain therefore must value life above all else this has led to many Classic Heroes having a personal code where they will not kill even the criminals or the villains they fight against the narrative moral stance of this position is that killing is what separates the villain and the hero in fact a lot of animations will either have the villain be deathless no matter how bad the piss is beating out of them or more frequently have the villain die by their own hubris or their plan backfiring this allows our hero to maintain a position of the moral High Ground by avoiding getting their own hands personally dirty with killing and this roughly becomes the Baseline of the vast majority of action adventure fiction well at least the action adventure fiction aimed at kids adult targeted action adventure narratives have a bit of a different approach they generally have a villain who wants to commit some world-shattering atrocity for selfish or personal reasons again the villain's plan usually involves the death of a lot of people in order to accomplish this plan most times the villain often needs dozens of cronies and henchmen to handle the little stuff the hero however is usually either alone or accompanied by a small group of Elites usually they're friends and the most important part is that the hero in these Elites will kill countless henchmen in order to stop the villain now this is a distinctly different moral calculus than the children's based action adventure here with adult oriented fiction the message is that some people because of their choices in life or the harm they could cause deserve to die specifically though the heroes in their search to protect the world are killing people in self-defense which is Justified and permissible now I'm not gonna get into like the real world politics or morality of the situation because that would be a much longer video but I will say that there is a certain amount of suspension of disbelief that comes with this messaging when we engage with fiction where the good guys are ruthlessly mowing down dozens of men we're not supposed to think of these victims as real people in fact we're not supposed to think of them deeply at all in fictions know this if I must kill a man because he has done wrong do I really wish to know that he is a devoted father what the narrative is calling us to do is Envision these henchmen as literal personifications of bad morality and Injustice the heroes aren't fighting and killing people they are Waging War against the idea of evil itself and the deaths of these henchmen represent the incremental progress towards the vanquishing of the evil threat as a whole this is why in so many kids oriented fictions containing the villain henchman Trope the henchmen will actually be robots or nameless monsters or mindless creatures this is so that they can be slaughtered by the hero without any concern for the value of their life now obviously there's a bit of a disconnect between the kids-centered heroes can never kill and the adult-oriented heroes can kill the right people as both paradigms became cliches within their own rights various subversions arose to play and make commentary on the tropes on the adult side some fictions started overtly pointing out the hypocrisy of the main character indiscriminately willing just to stop the villain from indiscriminately killing how many men have men have you died other fiction simply leaned into the Trope and made it a central figure of the hero character's identity they call you Peacemaker I cherished piece with all my heart I don't care how many men women and children I need to kill to get it on the kid's side the subversions were just as diverse some fictions actively engage with the conversation about the necessity or lack thereof concerned and killing I've only kill many kids oriented fictions attempted to have their cake and eat it too by treating the henchmen as if they were just injured instead of murdered but you tell me do you think Mr Incredible didn't murder these guys or this guy do you think Aang didn't kill all of these men by throwing them off of a mountain this aspect of kids based fiction was so prevalent that entire sketches were formed around it sleep no wait what you guys don't know this but uh when criminals fight me it's exhausting because I'm good so they often have to nap afterwards wait wait you you can't be this you think you think they're sleeping look at that poor little guy he's all tuckered out these were not the only ways that these tropes were subverted in some cases the hero killing even those who seemed immoral is meant to show that the hero themselves is being corrupted in other fictions The Narrative will make no Illusions about the idea that the hero is actually not that good in these instances the hero was simply less bad than the villains leaving the hero to kill anyone in his way without the narrative morally endorsing the idea that killings are Justified then there are the fictions where the hero is just a literal weapon of Justice creating a scenario where the killings are fundamentally excusable and finally some fictions showcase the hero killing by showing that it's their last great Resort something not to be repeated and emotionally agonizing oh never all right [Music] each of these subversions attempt to meet the established Paradigm where it's at and create an in-universe acknowledgment of it however there have been modern twists to even these subversions and they became most frequently used in superhero movies where knocking out a henchman or a villain is seen as innocent though juvenile killing a henchman came across as dark but mature writers who understand this difference can successfully control the tone of their fiction or completely transform it think of how silly and kid-centric Marvel heroes used off to be presented it was hard to take any of them seriously simply because the comics didn't want you to so when tasked with bringing those Marvel Comic characters to the big screen to be played by real people in watch by real adults what is the writer supposed to do well you make the villains take the silly hero seriously and how do you do that you have the hero kill them mercilessly foreign [Music] thank you [Music] the first Iron Man was the initial for Ray into what would become the gigantic Marvel Cinematic Universe and it all started with presenting Iron Man in the darkest grittiest fashion possible Tony Stark would kill you just straight up no negotiations No Remorse he'll just murder you and people really vibed with seeing something that they knew so well in one way being represented well in another the childish takes on a whole new reality when converted into the series that is why people lose their mind over Darth jar jar to the point of making like the really epic fan art of him but back to Marvel characters the movies used Heroes killing as a method to portray how serious and realistic this new iteration of the characters were Captain America has like a kill count in the hundreds the opening scene in endgame is the heroes proudly decapitating the villain after lopping off his limb and again this worked many of the heroes that came off as circus performers flipping in spandex tights became armored assassins that you wouldn't dare cross it felt cool for the people we rooted for to be the scary effective ones but like how all Cycles work this too became the norm in Marvel movie after Marvel movie leading to its eventual subversion as well heroic killings and the ethics thereof became the centerpiece of Civil War you think you fight for us yes fight for yourself who's going to avenge my son Stark he's dead and I blame you it was simultaneously a subversive step forward for the franchise and a revisitation of the classic action adventure moral questioning of where does the line between hero and villain stand we need to be put in check whatever form that takes I'm game if we get accept limitations we're boundaryless we know better than the bad guys this investigation of the morals of killing have become a centerpiece of many of Marvel's biggest and best films Spider-Man no way home saw Peter wrestle with whether or not he should have murdered Green Goblin Guardians 3 centered itself on the value of animal lives and what life even intrinsically is still throughout the 80s 90s and 2000s and beyond all these different narratives wish to create a distinction between villainy and heroism the simplest distinction was one side kills the other doesn't but as things became more complex it transformed into villains in Joy killing heroes are pushed to kill this has been the number one way that writers have kept their heroic protagonists likable and relatable the heroes are meant to stay in the position where they don't want to kill but the villain gives them no choice as soon as a character starts seeking to kill outside of what is immediately necessary they are perceived as a villain and we stop rooting for them [Music] foreign but there is an exception one that interacts with every single ruling guideline that I mentioned here previously but somehow in its own unique way I'm talking about Michael Bay's Optimus Prime this is another one of those kids oriented characters that for a long time was part of a fictional series that was really unserious and silly Transformers is literally just based off of toys and the cartoons with Optimus Prime were just thwarting hapless Decepticon plots and overall protecting Earth nobody really died or even got that hurt the shows weren't really meant to be about violence and War it was meant to be more of a simple moral introduction for young young kids Optimus was The paragonda Virtue all good all the time a leader and a man you could count on a true hero Megatron was the unrepented villain evil self-centered and conniving but Michael Bay understanding that if he wanted to make a Hollywood Blockbuster level movie couldn't appeal appeal to that traditional simple Transformers presentation don't get me wrong he needed Transformers to steal appeals to kids but also be realistic and serious enough to attract older teens and adults and remember how we said to do that it's killing and Transformers had a built-in safety net for its Heroes to kill while maintaining a kid-friendly atmosphere we previously went over how many fictions want to show the heroes killing henchmen without actually paying a moral cost so they have them kill robots Star Wars might be the most famous example for this but Samurai Jack does it as well along with a bunch of other action adventure narratives killing a robot doesn't mean anything to an audience so the heroes can slice them down with impunity so thinking about that Transformers is all robots Michael Bay basically had a get out of jail free card with his violence Optimus in his quest to save Earth could viciously murder the Decepticons and keep fan favoritism even still though the first movie was pretty restrained Optimus only has one on-screen kill and the big bad Megatron is actually taken out by Sam the human via a cube induced heart attack the heroes kill yes but in a very minimal restrained way however things start to change over the course of the series Optimus began to get more and more brutal with his kills punk ass Decepticon and a last words not today I'm talking about ripping a decepticon's face in half and then insulting his corpse [Music] in fact Optimus Prime seems to have a thing for faces [Music] still these kills were against villains as an act of self-defense for himself and Earth but little by little Optimus started to get even more hardcore we will kill them all paradoxically this only made people like Optimus more though he was the good guy that was just as ruthless as the villains just on our side we enjoyed seeing a hero who would hurt the villains just as bad as they wanted to hurt us the robot enemy Trope allowed Michael Bay to push optimus's horrific killings to their absolute limit Optimus Prime started enacting Mortal Kombat style fatalities on his enemies foreign 's corpse spewed red oil which is 100 supposed to be a stand-in for blood and gore if Optimus were a human doing these things to other humans we would think he's a monster he honestly seems to relish the idea of killing Decepticons and not just because of a protector mindset but because he has a deep-seated hatred for them but because it's all robots we couldn't care less in fact to each year look at him just executing a defenseless villain begging for his life oh this is where Optimus Prime just murders him Optimus is written and portrayed as one of those Justice incarnate characters I talked about an Incorruptible pure Soul meant to dish out righteous Absolution to evildoers Optimus Prime on a thematic level is not meant to be viewed as a flawed or relatable character he's not a human like Batman that must struggle with their convictions he is an unwavering steadfast machine he is meant to depict the physical embodiment of virtuous anger and Vengeance meaning that whoever and however he kills is Justified and this presentation is solidified when he moves past killing robots he obliterates human henchmen and the villain without a second thought or any moral repudiation yeah there are no good aliens or bad aliens Yeager it's just us and Them and you chose them he is both a guardian angel and an angel of death and he will Gore you in the most foul ways if you stand against him because it's his duty and to his right amen yeah Optimus is one of the most interesting cases of the heroes that kill because no matter what he does we all seem to still trust and love him as Watchers he stands nearly alone amongst the vast plethora of characters that kill for quote unquote good reasons as someone who seems to Revel in Murder but also maintains our respect character complexity like this I would say is much more of an accident because I don't think Michael Bay really planned this but it still goes to show how Limitless the bounds of character variability really are Anakin Daenerys Tony Stark Naruto Legolas Wolverine and so many others each present a different execution of the hero that kills hopefully with this semi short breakdown today you all might have a better understanding of how to accomplish such things in your own writing and have a higher appreciation when you see it yourselves in others anyway thanks for watching all the way until the end if you like what you heard leave a like comment and subscribe if you really want to be a homie check out my patreon it really matters or check out my website for my books or my professional editing Services I will leave links in the description below as always it was a pleasure and I'll talk to you all again soon

Channel: Savage Books

Views: 245,854

Keywords: writing advice, dialogue dive, optimus prime, creative writing, darth vader vs obi wan

Id: UY_IM52nQWU

Length: 19min 30sec (1170 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 22 2023