Do We Need More Iconic Villains in Media? (mini essay-ish)

[HMARK Center]

I've been thinking about this topic lately: a lot of media nowadays, even when telling traditional hero stories (e.g. comic book movies, fantasy fare, etc.), has spent a bit more time either "rehabilitating" the images of older villains by giving them tragic backstories or some redeeming qualities, while newer stuff sometimes doesn't even really focus on having any full-scale villain for the protagonist to take on to speak of.

Then I saw this Lindsay Ellis video from this past winter and I saw someone putting my thoughts into words much better than my lazy ass was managing:



Ellis spends this video focusing on the change in Disney villains in recent years, and how it's interesting how we can have Disney films with more standout, iconic villains whose presence somehow ends up hurting the overall story because they feel a bit shoehorned, but then we might have less memorable villains in better stories, as they serve as a storytelling vehicle for the character arc, development, etc. of the protagonist. But whereas before we had the deliciously hammy Rattigan, the petulant Prince John, the suave-yet-ill tempered Captain Hook, and the imposing Maleficent, it seems that ever since, let's say, Scar or Frollo we haven't seen many new truly iconic villains rise up Disney's rank - by "iconic" I mean they stand out in some significant way, become characters in their own rights that people latch onto either because of their style, their charisma, the fear they inspire, or the sheer magnitude of their evil.

So as much as Disney markets their villains, they haven't really tried to make as many of late as they continue the Eisner/Katzenberg era trend of stories where protagonists are "trying to find their place in the world." This got my mind going in a slightly different direction, and I'm curious what you guys think about that in the larger media world.

Storytelling in a lot of escapist media today is notably better in many aspects than it used to be. It seeks to touch on slightly deeper issues, it seeks inclusivity (e.g. giving villains understandable motivations is part of a larger lesson of humanizing people different from oneself), it looks to peer a bit deeper into the protagonist's inner conflicts, which gives us less time to develop really iconic, memorable villains, something seen a good deal in a lot of Marvel movies where the villains tend to be a bit more forgettable because the main story is the hero's internal struggles.

A lot of this is admirable, in my opinion, and a good deal of it was needed: people deserve stories that don't exclusively deal in black and white morality and don't present cardboard cutouts and demand we accept them as leading characters.

And yet...

I can't help but feel like we're not getting much in the way of new Darth Vaders in today's media landscapes; not many new Wicked Witches of the West, nor Draculas, etc., villainous characters who are just flat-out bad, or who might be redeemable but are still immensely fearful and imposing in the meantime, or who might just be so damned lovable because they have style and personality coming out of their pores and demand your attention. Maybe it's because I've got a deep voice and love impersonating a lot of villain characters, but I can't help but feel that a lot of the great villains I grew up with in the 90s were part of a dying breed - ReBoot's Megabyte, so suave yet so cunning and brutal and blessed with Tony Jay's smooth baritone; Sonic the Hedgehog SatAM's Dr. Robotnik as played by Jim Cummings, the thing of a child's nightmares yet so hammy and theatrical at times; Tim Curry as Skullmaster in the MIghty Max cartoon, a pure embodiment of evil with no redeeming qualities, only driven by power; and Megatron in Beast Wars, yeeeeeeeeesssss. Let's not even get into discussing Batman's rogues gallery in The Animated Series, or we'll be here all day.

Again, I get it: today's media calls for more complexity, and villains have adjusted to that, but...isn't it hard not to get nostalgic for a villain you just love to hate, and whose defeat feels like the ultimate pinnacle of the hero's journey? Even my favorite modern animated shows, the two Avatar series, couldn't really nail a "Big Bad" villain just right most of the time (though Azula and Zaheer deserve more than (dis)honorable mentions), especially when you remember that Mark-friggin'-Hamill played Fire Lord Ozai and then barely got to do anything with him, because his role in the story wasn't to be a particularly big character on his own, serving instead as Zuko's major emotional obstacle and Aang's challenge to open up his full powers.

But, again...I'm nostalgic for a few more real, honest-to-God Satan "You can't ignore me" bad guys. Playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild had my hands sweating as I made my way through Hyrule Castle, that intense music blasting, to challenge the ancient evil of Ganon, so corrosive that his very presence was a corruption of the world around it, and I feel like we could use some more of that.

Honestly, I think our best chances for it might be the soon-to-be realized on screen presences of Darkseid and Thanos, but I'm not so sure how well they'll be realized; for example, Darkseid works so well as a foil to a hard working yet still idealistic Superman, which is not the characterization the DC movies have given Supes thus far, and Thanos will have to stand out in a Marvel cinematic universe that has not yet placed a lot of emphasis on its villains as real forces to be reckoned with, again, outside of the role they play in the hero's internal struggles.

What say you guys? Has the pendulum swung too far toward more nuanced storytelling in recent times and taken away more iconic villains? Is it alright if that's the case? Can we have both iconic villains and these better "internal struggle" narratives AT THE SAME TIME (perish the thought)!? Any villains in film, TV, comics, gaming, etc. right now that stand out to you that way? Or has the ship sailed on all of that, and perhaps we should be searching for an even newer style of presentation?

[BorneAgain]

I think the avoidance of villains is due in part to an effort to avoid being too formulaic. Disney specifically may have gotten sick of having to devote time to introducing a villain, possibly doing a song, setting up the collision course with the hero, and then doing the clash at end... whey they could utilize that time for character development of the cast.

Live action television itself has shifted to shades of gray characterization and villainous protagonists, muddying the concept even further. Game of Thrones has managed a few effective love to hate villains, but its worth noting the attempt to make the likes of Ramsay into a Big Bad led to a lot of eye rolling and accusations of story contrivances to justify his status.

I think the glut of media has also made otherwise very memorable villains fall a bit on the wayside simply because so many new stories then come along and get the attention. Koba from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes specifically has a sympathetic backstory but his actions in the present are so indefensible an audience wants him brought down. 20 years ago he would have been huge, but these days he's just well written villain in a sea of blockbusters.

Its funny, evil clowns are considered a bit cliche, but within the last ten years I actually the Dark Knight's Joker and the more recent Pennywise have managed to achieve some major iconic status via memorable looks, presenting genuine terror, and being very hatable as antagonists.

[Deleted]

This is another one of those "yes and no" types of responses.

While the art of the antagonist is still important, there aren't many people willing to step into the shoes of a monstrosity, and even fewer that can dance between brilliance and ham.

Most villains today are either complete afterthoughts (I.e. the show or film or other media doesn't advertise them in lieu of "character tension"), obligatory bullet eaters (most MCU villains), or presented as spastic individuals that are presented as sociopathic but with a random so story thrown in.

The other problem is that stuff like The Walking Dead or Breaking Bad have made it where the anti-hero is cool & more captivating, while villains aren't given any dimensions due to how expendable they are. In the era of seasons being 8-12 episodes annually, why waste much time building up your bad guy when you know his brains will be splattered against a wall at the end of the story arc?

The problem I have with your discussion, HMARK, is that during the 90s, it was actually hard to find new villains. Sure, we got T-1000, but most of the iconic pop culture villains had been established in the previous decades, along with that era also having an anti-hero bent, causing there to be a drought of antagonists that maintain that notoriety & didn't degrade into meme territory (like the ID4 aliens, or the Scream Guy, or any villain in every big action film). Plus, that was also where the "cool villain" began, & I'm not saying that because of the nWo. The "cool" antagonists had to look awesome to the point where you cheered them instead, defeating their purpose.

[HMARK Center]

Oct 5, 2017 18:55:36 GMT -5 @jdogindy said:

This is another one of those "yes and no" types of responses.

While the art of the antagonist is still important, there aren't many people willing to step into the shoes of a monstrosity, and even fewer that can dance between brilliance and ham.

Most villains today are either complete afterthoughts (I.e. the show or film or other media doesn't advertise them in lieu of "character tension"), obligatory bullet eaters (most MCU villains), or presented as spastic individuals that are presented as sociopathic but with a random so story thrown in.

The other problem is that stuff like The Walking Dead or Breaking Bad have made it where the anti-hero is cool & more captivating, while villains aren't given any dimensions due to how expendable they are. In the era of seasons being 8-12 episodes annually, why waste much time building up your bad guy when you know his brains will be splattered against a wall at the end of the story arc?

The problem I have with your discussion, HMARK, is that during the 90s, it was actually hard to find new villains. Sure, we got T-1000, but most of the iconic pop culture villains had been established in the previous decades, along with that era also having an anti-hero bent, causing there to be a drought of antagonists that maintain that notoriety & didn't degrade into meme territory (like the ID4 aliens, or the Scream Guy, or any villain in every big action film). Plus, that was also where the "cool villain" began, & I'm not saying that because of the nWo. The "cool" antagonists had to look awesome to the point where you cheered them instead, defeating their purpose.

Eh, I can see that; the 70s-80s were a nice boom period for large scale movie villains, and the 90s kind of introduced more deconstruction (sometimes much needed!) and expectation swerving, e.g. how even a really loathsome character like Agent Smith in The Matrix gets the "I hate this place" monologue. I'll admit, a lot of my examples were from TV animation, so my vision might have been a bit narrow on that front.

Still, even just on that level, I wish we were getting some more moments like these, which haven't come along as often:



Yes, it's a classic superhero and a villain created multiple decades before the show, but it's still a great use of the villain style I'm talking here...and that last part really would've hit even harder if they had stuck with Jonathan Kent being Darkseid's victim, but still.

[BorneAgain]

I wonder how much popular culture with villains in the 90s was affected by broad world events. A post cold war, new era, and of history feeling may given rise to stories without a singular evil figure. Outside animated films its notable that the top grossing movies feature either natural phenomenon/man's arrogance as the antagonist (Jurassic Park, Armageddon, Twister, Titanic) or more nebulous enemies without specific personalities (Skynet in Terminator 2, Aliens in Independence Day, AI in the Matrix). Agent Smith is kind of exception, but he's still an avatar of a computer concept at that point.

An overall less emphasis on evil or devious forces against the heroes, and more that our collective mistakes (either in unstable creation or lack of respect towards mother nature) will do us in.

[Ryback on a Pole!]

I actually kinda prefer more shades of grey villains than outright, the next satan evil for the sake of been evil types. Or at least, even if they are evil with little redeeming qualities... A good motivation for why they're evil and a good backstory.

The evil for evils sake, cackling whilst wearing black and sat on a throne of skulls I find kinda lame.

['Foretold' Joker]

I think I had a similar thread to this a few years back, the memorable evil villain is a dying breed - there are a few exceptions but they are certainly not appearing in animation.

Recent memorable villains who were evil or selfish that come to mind:

Joffrey (GoT)
The Vulture (Spider-Man: Homecoming)
Kingpin (Daredevil)
Purple Man (Jessica Jones)
John Kramer (Saw Franchise)
Darcy (The Green Room)

Unfortunately my favourite villain type which is being evil for evils sake and completely over the top while doing it I haven't seen in ages.

Characters like Ming the Merciless, Castor Troy, Skeletor, Bennett, Emperor Palpatine are a rare breed.

[HMARK Center]

Oct 6, 2017 4:24:48 GMT -5 'Foretold' Joker said:

I think I had a similar thread to this a few years back, the memorable evil villain is a dying breed - there are a few exceptions but they are certainly not appearing in animation.

Recent memorable villains who were evil or selfish that come to mind:

Joffrey (GoT)
The Vulture (Spider-Man: Homecoming)
Kingpin (Daredevil)
Purple Man (Jessica Jones)
John Kramer (Saw Franchise)
Darcy (The Green Room)

Unfortunately my favourite villain type which is being evil for evils sake and completely over the top while doing it I haven't seen in ages.

Characters like Ming the Merciless, Castor Troy, Skeletor, Bennett, Emperor Palpatine are a rare breed.

And heck, even Vulture was given a backstory where you really understood where he was coming from in his anger, despite his obviously going way, way too far with it.

And yes, I don't mean to imply that the types of villains I'm discussing can't have anything interesting going on in their backstory or what have you, just that, I don't know, I guess there's a real terror that comes with a villain who functions off of the concept of "power for power's sake"/"riches for riches' sake" or some variation thereof, the fear that they can't be reasoned with and can't have a softer part of them appealed to, at least not until deeper into a story (e.g. Darth Vader only beginning to be humanized once his relationship to Luke was revealed). This type can still work as a Magnificent Bastard adversary (again, Rattigan from Great Mouse Detective works well here), so they don't have to be one singular type in terms of personality.

[Clash, Never a Meter Maid]

Villains should be interesting and memorable, but they need a sympathetic hero to counter them. People talk about the inverse of it a lot, but I think every antagonist needs a good protagonist.

I don't mind some moral ambiguity in heroes, but if the writer forces in too much, things go off the rails. If I find myself flat-out rooting for the villain, then the story usually sucks.

[Deleted]

Thanos is on his way.

[Mochi Lone Wolf]

Oct 5, 2017 18:07:04 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

I think the avoidance of villains is due in part to an effort to avoid being too formulaic. Disney specifically may have gotten sick of having to devote time to introducing a villain, possibly doing a song, setting up the collision course with the hero, and then doing the clash at end... whey they could utilize that time for character development of the cast.

Live action television itself has shifted to shades of gray characterization and villainous protagonists, muddying the concept even further. Game of Thrones has managed a few effective love to hate villains, but its worth noting the attempt to make the likes of Ramsay into a Big Bad led to a lot of eye rolling and accusations of story contrivances to justify his status.

I think the glut of media has also made otherwise very memorable villains fall a bit on the wayside simply because so many new stories then come along and get the attention. Koba from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes specifically has a sympathetic backstory but his actions in the present are so indefensible an audience wants him brought down. 20 years ago he would have been huge, but these days he's just well written villain in a sea of blockbusters.

Its funny, evil clowns are considered a bit cliche, but within the last ten years I actually the Dark Knight's Joker and the more recent Pennywise have managed to achieve some major iconic status via memorable looks, presenting genuine terror, and being very hatable as antagonists.

Those weren't accusations. That was the truth. There's nothing wrong with putting an "evil for evil's sake" villian in a show like Game of Thrones. Joffrey showed that they can work perfectly. The problem was that Ramsay Bolton was a complete Villian Sue who could do no wrong and could get away with making the dumbest decisions possible without any consequence. That was the issue most people had with him.


You can have pure villains without having to turn everyone into bumbling idiots to make them look better than they need to be. I mean, for f**** sake, even Littlefinger became an idiot when dealing with him. Here's a man who knows literally everything about everyone in the series. Ramsay, however? Nothing. No read at all.


Villians, no matter their status or type, must be well-written first and foremost. If you have to pull all sorts of contrivances or conveniences out of your backside for their role to make sense, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

[BorneAgain]

Oct 6, 2017 8:25:02 GMT -5 Mochi Lone Wolf said:

Oct 5, 2017 18:07:04 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

I think the avoidance of villains is due in part to an effort to avoid being too formulaic. Disney specifically may have gotten sick of having to devote time to introducing a villain, possibly doing a song, setting up the collision course with the hero, and then doing the clash at end... whey they could utilize that time for character development of the cast.

Live action television itself has shifted to shades of gray characterization and villainous protagonists, muddying the concept even further. Game of Thrones has managed a few effective love to hate villains, but its worth noting the attempt to make the likes of Ramsay into a Big Bad led to a lot of eye rolling and accusations of story contrivances to justify his status.

I think the glut of media has also made otherwise very memorable villains fall a bit on the wayside simply because so many new stories then come along and get the attention. Koba from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes specifically has a sympathetic backstory but his actions in the present are so indefensible an audience wants him brought down. 20 years ago he would have been huge, but these days he's just well written villain in a sea of blockbusters.

Its funny, evil clowns are considered a bit cliche, but within the last ten years I actually the Dark Knight's Joker and the more recent Pennywise have managed to achieve some major iconic status via memorable looks, presenting genuine terror, and being very hatable as antagonists.

Those weren't accusations. That was the truth. There's nothing wrong with putting an "evil for evil's sake" villian in a show like Game of Thrones. Joffrey showed that they can work perfectly. The problem was that Ramsay Bolton was a complete Villian Sue who could do no wrong and could get away with making the dumbest decisions possible without any consequence. That was the issue most people had with him.


You can have pure villains without having to turn everyone into bumbling idiots to make them look better than they need to be. I mean, for f**** sake, even Littlefinger became an idiot when dealing with him. Here's a man who knows literally everything about everyone in the series. Ramsay, however? Nothing. No read at all.


Villians, no matter their status or type, must be well-written first and foremost. If you have to pull all sorts of contrivances or conveniences out of your backside for their role to make sense, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

I'm inclined to agree, I just wonder if the well known criticism of Ramsay's writing would have been as prominent if the show aired 20 years ago or if people's tastes have gotten the point where having a fairly hatable villain won't disguise their contrivances in the minds of an audience.

[Mochi Lone Wolf]

Oct 6, 2017 9:00:38 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

Oct 6, 2017 8:25:02 GMT -5 Mochi Lone Wolf said:

Those weren't accusations. That was the truth. There's nothing wrong with putting an "evil for evil's sake" villian in a show like Game of Thrones. Joffrey showed that they can work perfectly. The problem was that Ramsay Bolton was a complete Villian Sue who could do no wrong and could get away with making the dumbest decisions possible without any consequence. That was the issue most people had with him.


You can have pure villains without having to turn everyone into bumbling idiots to make them look better than they need to be. I mean, for f**** sake, even Littlefinger became an idiot when dealing with him. Here's a man who knows literally everything about everyone in the series. Ramsay, however? Nothing. No read at all.


Villians, no matter their status or type, must be well-written first and foremost. If you have to pull all sorts of contrivances or conveniences out of your backside for their role to make sense, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

I'm inclined to agree, I just wonder if the well known criticism of Ramsay's writing would have been as prominent if the show aired 20 years ago or if people's tastes have gotten the point where having a fairly hatable villain won't disguise their contrivances in the minds of an audience.

I don't think there's a time where a hateable villian, or any compelling character for that matter, can't get away with a few contrivances here and there. Those are needed in fiction at times. The question then becomes one of extent. You should never let it get to the point of becoming farcical.


As far as the overall question of villains, I think it just comes down to what fits the story someone's trying to tell and how they relate to the hero. A villian only exists as a "shadow" to the protagonist. Whatever the hero values, the villian(or villians) should represent the opposite and should present themselves as what the hero would be if he or she had made different choices.


In that regard, there's room for all sorts of villians and even in the modern landscape, there's no reason for storytellers to limit themselves if you follow those principles.

[Baby, it’s Jes outside]

As much as I love the them, I think super hero movies are partially to blame. All of the iconic villains from the comics are either watered down (Lex Luthor, Dr. Doom) or one and done (Red Skull, almost EVERY Spiderman villain). Then there are the ones who become something else, not quite heros, but certainly not villains anymore (Mystique, Loki, Catwoman). The only exceptions are really Magneto, who is pretty much spot on, if overrused, and Joker, who has so many iterations, he's almost a joke of a character. The problem is that villains aren't really marketable. And that's the key thing with movies now. Not how compelling can we make someone's nemesis, but how many t-shirts can we squeeze out of this thing.

[chrom]

We need more villains who are actually villains and enjoy what they do, instead of giving them sobbing wangst filled backstories like everyone in Naruto for example

[Cela]

We definitely need them back. I miss being able to just hate a villain most of the time, without them needing to have a tragic backstory, or clearly being bred to eventually join the good guys and have their centuries of genocide forgiven instantly minus one minor character on the team distrusting them before eventually bonding with them in an episode where they are both trapped underwater in a box or something.

Also, if possible, can we outlaw "Dad was mean to me/Dad liked you more" villains? I always roll my eyes when they show up.

[Malcolm]

Not every villain needs to be sympathetic, but vilains should have a motive for their villainy instead of being evil just because(unless it's a parody). Even something simple as "he wants to rule the world because he's spoiled and used to getting his way" or "he's evil because doing evil things is fun and it's all just a game to him" works for me.

[cabbageboy]

I'm glad this topic was brought up. Right now movie villainy is at a crisis point. It sucks. It's funny but the 1990s mention is a bit odd because to me it was not the beginning of the end of good heels, but it was actually a treasure trove. Movie villainy to me was about at its best from 1987-95. After that you start seeing the more mainstream action films that start having bigger name actors playing the bad guy (Travolta in Broken Arrow, as well as in Face/Off along with Cage where they took turns) or had a noble intent (Ed Harris in The Rock). I thought back to 1993-95. It seemed like every movie that came out had an awesome bad guy. In Tombstone alone we got Michael Biehn as Ringo, Powers Boothe as Curly Bill, and Stephen Lang as Ike Clanton. Or how about Dennis Hopper in Speed? Good grief even a silly comedy like The Mask had a pretty awesome bad guy. Or Michael Wincott as Top Dollar in The Crow? Gary Oldman in Leon the Professional (or Gary Oldman in anything really during that era, ditto Alan Rickman). Tim Roth in Rob Roy may well be the greatest movie villain I've EVER seen. Seriously I hated Archibald Cunningham so much that I'd probably want to punch Tim Roth if I ever met him, haha. That's how awesome he was. Or John Malkovich and Jeremy Irons in a bunch of stuff.

I guess some would say Agent Smith was a great villain but I dunno. To me it's hard to fully despise a computerized construct the same as I would an actual man acting of his own volition.

I guess some of it is an over reliance on PG-13 now. It's tough for movie bad guys to really do awful things.

[Red Impact]

I wonder how much of it has to do with story-telling trends, because I think I can count on one hand the number of truly memorable movie villains I've seen in the past decade.

- Stories more often need to have some type of twist in the story, which sometimes throws a villain into it halfway into the movie, if not later. That makes it harder for a villain to have an impact on the story and the audience, compared to say, a Darth Vader who was in it from the very first scene.

- The desire to create a shared universe out of everything, which makes villains just generic stepping stones to the next movie. Logically, it should make it easier to give a villain more time, but these movies rarely commit to that because their main focus is setting up more movies more than it is making each encounter feel like it matters.

I'm sure there are many others, but i'd be interested if the differences in how stories are presented in mainstream films has led to weaker villains overall.

["Cane Dewey" Johnson]

Do We Need More Iconic Villains in Media?