What Happened To Our Villains?

allow me to regale you with a story dear viewer back when i was about 13 i mean back when i just reached the legal drinking age in scotland one of my mates challenged me to drink a half bottle of chinese moonshine no i'd never tried this stuff before and as i found out later neither had he but anyway i duly popped the cork which was secured with duct tape for some reason and got fired in about sets now i've consumed some unpleasant beverages in my time let me tell you but this stuff tasted like liquefied decomposing dog but a challenge is a challenge and only a [ __ ] [ __ ] backs down from something like that so a few minutes later i duly raised the empty bottle in triumph then i promptly threw up pissed myself and passed out next to a dumpster behind tesco the point here is that without overcoming the challenge of that shitty drink i never would have become the witty intoxicated raconteur you see before you because when you get right down to it every hero needs a good villain what would superman be without lex luthor what would batman be without the joker what would captain marvel be without brie larson is that like a personal attack or something the antagonist of a story is actually a pretty interesting thing from a writing point of view they can come in all different shapes and sizes from physical powerhouses to calculating intellectuals from honorable warriors to evil murderers but whatever form they take they all serve the same basic purpose they're an obstacle for the protagonists to overcome something that can challenge them to become better and stronger than they were before they're basically the driving force behind the hero's journey but it's more than just that a good villain can challenge the very nature of who and what a hero is and what the audience believes them to be they can have justifiable motivations and complex personalities all of their own the best ones can even make the audience question just who exactly the real villain is in fact the villains are often cooler and more memorable than the hero themselves why because unlike the hero writers don't have to worry about making their villains likeable and relatable so they can afford to take risks with them they can indulge their wildest writing fantasies creating the most despicable psychopaths terrifying monsters evil dictators or cunning criminals imaginable the more evil they are the bigger the threat they pose or the harder they test the protagonist the more satisfying it is when the hero finally prevails the problem is that good villains seem to be a dying breed these days the awesome antagonists that used to dominate the screen and push our heroes to the very limits of their endurance are gradually being replaced by weak flaccid forgettable limitations with none of the power and menace of their predecessors and because they no longer present a challenge there's no real payoff when they get defeated now explaining how and why this is happening is gonna take a bit of time so strip in and prepare yourself for the drinkers writing workshop first up i'm gonna give you an example of a well-written antagonist that everyone knows and where better to start than darth vader he's basically the quintessential movie villain right from the first moment he strides onto that rebel ship surrounded by dead bodies you know this guy isn't [ __ ] around in fact george lucas played just about every trick in the book to make you afraid of this guy he's huge and powerful he's dressed all in black armor his face is hidden behind an inhuman mask so you've got no idea what he actually looks like and he speaks with a deep booming voice that just seems to radiate power and menace where are those transmissions you intercept what have you done with those plans [ __ ] man you can even throw people around like rag dolls physically he's big and intimidating but he's also intelligent and ruthlessly efficient making smart logical decisions based on the information he has and almost never losing his cool for example he uses his force powers to punish subordinates who fail or disrespect him but it's never done out of anger or malice he's either proven a point to men who doubt his power or removing ineffective commanders who compromise the success of his mission when vader acts it's always in service of a higher goal and never because he's lost control of himself the overall effect here is to create a villain that you absolutely would not want to [ __ ] with a man who basically dominates every situation and plows through every opponent over three movies right until the final act when look at last manages to overpower him but even that counts as a kind of victory for vader whose objective was never to beat luke anyway but to provoke his rage and anger and well that's exactly what he does the point here is that george lucas managed to create a villain that was smart powerful dominant ruthless interesting and extremely well written a character that maintains his air of danger and menace almost until his final moments before redeeming himself and sacrificing his own life to save his son damn no wonder he's so iconic now let's take a moment to consider his modern day counterpart kylo ren i mean superficially the similarities are there they both wear masks and black armor they both make their entrance in the middle of a battle they both use lightsabers and they're both strong with the force and for the first few seconds everything's going pretty well for kylo ren he strides out of his ship he kills an old guy that looks like he should be important and he stops a [ __ ] blaster ball in mid-air damn even darth vader couldn't do that then it all starts to go wrong when he tries to interrogate paul so he talks first you talk first i talk first the old man gave it to you it's just very hard to understand you with all that what the [ __ ] is this if you want us to take this guy seriously you really shouldn't have people throwing snarky comments at him unchallenged it's like the script is actively making fun of him and encouraging us to laugh along with them and it only gets worse from there whereas vader was cold and efficient kylo frequently loses his temper and lashes out in childish rage he makes dumb illogical command decisions and pursues his mission in the least efficient way possible he brutally punishes people for asking completely logical questions this fleet what is it a gift what is he asking for in return in fact the only reason he even catches up to our heroes is because just about everyone in the galaxy seems to be a [ __ ] snitch he regularly takes his mask off destroying the mystery of what lies behind it he's openly conflicted about the path he wants to take hesitating at crucial moments and endlessly brooding over his choices worst of all every single time he goes up against the hero he loses first he fails to probe her mind with the force then he gets his [ __ ] ass kicked in a fight and it's only sheer dumb luck that stops him from getting killed from that moment on any threat or danger he might have posed is completely annihilated because if your antagonist starts out weaker than the hero then what the [ __ ] is there left to strive against the impression you get from kylo ren is that he's a weak immature conflicted man child desperately pretending to be something he isn't exploding with childish displays of emotion whenever things don't go his way and unable to commit to a course of action a man who can't even master himself never mind those around him and consistently loses every time he tests himself against the hero in short he's a villain without teeth never mind though at least snoke has a bit of potential oh well there's always hux he started out pretty ruthless and supreme oh you see how the script doesn't even have the decency to produce competent villains not only are these guys evil but they're evil and inept you're not supposed to fear them you're supposed to laugh at them and it's not just star wars that has this problem either consider yonrog from captain marvel a man who loses his first fight against her then does basically nothing for the rest of the movie until she finally gets bored and zaps him with absolutely no efforts because i have nothing to prove to you at no point in this movie does he ever present the slightest threat to her so why the [ __ ] should we care when she beats him or how about roman cyonus from birds of prey a sadistic nightclub owner who pouts and cries and screams his way through the movie and needs constant emotional validation and reassurance from his henchmen a man who comes across as insecure unstable needy and generally kind of pathetic and never gets to present an actual threat to the hero or what about max lord from wonder woman 1984 a shady businessman desperate to hide his failures behind a veneer of ballsy 1980s arrogance who revels in the idea of power and success but crumbles like a wet paper bag the moment his life is put at risk and who is never able to threaten wonder woman in any way and of course let's not forget about rowan from ghostbusters 2016 a sad middle-aged socially inept loser with a superiority complex that's angry because everyone in the world looks down on him or how about buzzley from charlie's angels played by a frail actor in his late 70s whose plan gets easily uncovered and foiled by people who are clearly far more intelligent than him before knocking him out with a single punch the point i'm making here is that all of these characters make for shitty villains either because they lack the self-control fighting ability intelligence or sheer physical strength to be genuinely intimidating they never present a tangible threat to the hero in fact they're basically treated as weak pathetic straw men that can be easily brushed aside once the script decides it's time for them to lose the writers in this case lack the one thing that every creator should have for their antagonist and that's respect for their creations darth vader hans gruber hannibal lecter the terminator the list goes on and on but the thing that ties all these characters together is respect the writers were smart enough to build their antagonists up so they became a genuine threat for the hero to overcome instead of trying to break them down and belittle them right from the beginning now the thing you might rightly be wondering is why why is this happening what exactly has changed well quite a bit as it happens see the real problem here is that there are pretty strict rules around what you can and can't show in mainstream movies and i'm not talking about boobs and violence like in the old days i'm talking about the unwritten rules behind the scenes that basically exist to make sure their movies don't incur the wrath of journalists the news media or the endless twitter mobs just waiting for the next thing to get offended about in this case one of the golden rules is that women are never allowed to lose to men at anything for any reason whether it's a physical fight a test of skill or intelligence or even a simple argument pick basically any scenario where a woman gets pitted against a man and i can pretty much guarantee you the woman will come out on top she'll either outsmart the man in a battle of wits or get the last word in in an argument or kick his ass in a fight regardless of their relative size and strength whatever it might be the rules dictate that no man can beat a woman in a balanced engagement because the natural implication would be that men are smarter or stronger or generally better than women and we certainly can't have that now this is all well and good but it creates a very obvious problem when your hero happens to be female and your villain male traditional storytelling requires the antagonist to start out stronger and more dangerous than the hero forcing them to grow and improve themselves in some way before finally prevailing at the end but naturally this process requires demand to be dominant in the early stages and as we've already discussed that's not allowed to happen anymore even if it's just a temporary thing so how exactly do you get around it well if you happen to write for disney marvel dc or lucasfilm you don't instead you're forced to make your villains weak and pathetic either unfairly elevated beyond their abilities or jealous and envious of the hero's success it's basically a form of projection allowing the writers to vent their frustrations about imagined enemies and rivals onto a weak straw man that can be easily swept aside by an all-conquering heroine unfortunately this whole mindset creates more problems than it solves weak villains make for weak stories because they rob the narrative of its tension and drama even worse it actually undermines the hero themselves because if they're never really tested by a worthy opponent then they haven't really achieved anything a hero is only ever as strong as the villain they defeat and what's really interesting is that the problem still exists even if you reverse the rules take thor ragnarok for example the villain in that movie is a woman which is perfectly fine at the beginning when she gets to kick thor's ass but it becomes a real problem near the finale when it's time for him to win you definitely can't show thor hammering a woman into the ground because that brings up all kinds of unpleasant accusations of glorifying violence against women so instead the movie takes the best alternative and has a third party step in to win the battle for him notice how they carefully managed to sidestep the uncomfortable issue of thor defeating her in a fair fight just a little something to think about there the point i'm making is that the reason people didn't warm to characters like rey or captain marvel isn't because of their gender it's because everything's made so [ __ ] easy for them that it's basically impossible to feel any empathy it's the same exact problem with ghostbusters or harley quinn or charlie's angels if your heroes do nothing but plow their way through a collection of unthreatening neutered enemies then you'll never get your audience to care about their struggle because they don't [ __ ] have one so what exactly is the solution here well ironically enough the solution is equality and i mean really quality not the [ __ ] hollywood version that makes one side artificially weaker just to make the other look superficially strong if you want your female heroes to be respected equally then you have to put them through equal struggles against worthy enemies you need to stop nerfing your villains in a vain attempt to avoid offending people on social media because honestly the more you try to appease them the more you compromise your ability to tell a decent [ __ ] story if you want kick-ass heroes that people can look up to then you need to give them kick-ass antagonists they can be afraid of in short you need to give your villains their [ __ ] balls back anyway that's all i've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 1,110,408

Rating: 4.944037 out of 5

Keywords: star wars, kylo ren, darth vader, ghostbusters 2016, paul feig, kathleen kennedy, rian johnson, feminism, SJW, Rey Skywalker, mary sue, thor ragnarok, birds of prey, harley quinn, roman sionis

Id: vnRP7SKzOgk

Length: 14min 36sec (876 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Pollaski]

Agree with most of this... save for Kylo.

I think it could (and should) be argued that Kylo IS the protagonist of the New Trilogy, with Rey the deuteragonist.. Hes the one who has to overcome things- from his immaturity to the self imposed shadow of his grandfather to this Force prodigy who immediately shows up and starts kicking his ass. Hes the Salieri to Reys Mozart, and he resents it. But unlike Salieri, whos resentment ends up psychologically destroying him, Ren realizes that he needs to become someone else, fuelling a turnaround that leads to his redemption.