Villains, bad guys, antagonists. There are a lot of words to describe the guys who oppose the main character. Over my not inconsiderable movie watching career, I’ve found that there are generally two types of villains (yes, this is the term I shall be using): the larger-than-life megalomaniac, and the “human” villain. I’m here to tell you that the human ones are some of the best out there.
Everyone loves a good villain. Darth Vader is perhaps the most popular Star Wars character. Bond movies are said to live and die on the strength of the villain. But something these villains don’t do is inspire hatred. I mean actual, gut-wrenching rage when seeing the character. But these types of villains exist. And they usually have certain things in common.
First, they are usually people. These types of villains haven’t been viciously scarred or mutated or anything like that. They are, and look like normal people. The kind of people you’d bump into on your daily walk. Think of Dolores Umbridge from The Order of the Phoenix, or Judge Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or (and permit me to invoke this) Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones. All of them, barring Joffrey’s resting asshole face, all looked like regular people. Nothing particularly special about them.
Second, these “regular people” have been granted some level of power over other people. In the examples I listed before Umbridge was High Inquisitor/Headmaster, Frollo was a powerful minister, and Joffrey was King of Westeros (my God, that show used to be great). Now, bad guys having power isn’t particularly special. They wouldn’t be able to be bad guys if they didn’t. What is special is that these people use the power given selfishly and/or to make the lives of the people below them some kind of hell.
So, why? Why are these species of villain “better”? Well, as with most of cinema, the answer is relatability. Movies, TV, fiction in general has always acted as a sort of mirror for society. It’s why you hear people talk a lot about how certain characters were relatable. And the same holds true for villains. It’s easy to feel detached from the larger-than-life goals of a Voldemort, but almost everyone has had a teacher that seems to have it out for them. Everyone has either personally experienced or read stories of powerful people abusing their power for corrupt reasons. And still on the relatability take, there’s no difference between the viewing audience and the villain. It’s hard to imagine yourself ever becoming the Joker, or The Night King, or a Blofeld-type villain; but there’s not too much distance between you and Dolores Umbridge. They’re not villains because of some wild external things that fundamentally changed them. They’re villains because of simple human nature, the very same nature that resides in every one of us.
You may think I’m wrong. You may think that the over-the-top, facial scars, I-Want-To-Take-Over-The-World villains are the best. All I know is, my skin never crawled watching Vader. It did with Umbridge. And that’s why I think they’re the better bad guys.
