Oct 22 2008
Three qualities of interesting villains
One of the signs that your villain doesn’t suck is that he’s interesting enough to handle a scene on his own. No, we don’t need to hear about his pathetically traumatic family history or the byzantine machinations of his evil organization. Readers just need some sign that your villain has the competence, style and/or ambition that mark a good villain.
Competence
Your villain should not be out of the hero’s league. In fact, for most of the story, the villain should probably be winning against the hero. One common misconception is that the hero will seem less impressive or likable if the villain beats him a few times. No! A hero that defeats a crazy-competent villain will resonate more. For example, the only reason anyone remembers Luke Skywalker is because he defeated Darth Vader.
Fortunately, you can make your villain competent fairly easily. When your hero attempts some course of action, take 15 minutes to list anything that could go wrong. Then list anything that your villain could do to make the hero fail even more spectacularly. Your villain only has to exploit one glaring weakness in the hero’s plan to look competent. Does the hero’s plan require logistical support from his Batcave? Whoops. Even if your villain can’t take down the Batcave, he could try something like an EMP or sunspots to interfere with communications signals. Is the hero unable to teleport around town? Throwing him off with a decoy could buy the villain enough time to carry out his real plan.
Style
Style is harder to pin down than competence, but there are still a few discernable signs of style. A stylish villain tends to dominate his scenes, even if he doesn’t have many lines. For example, there were a few scenes in the first season of Heroes that Sylar dominated even though he wasn’t actually present.
One scene that particularly sticks out is when Parkman and his FBI partner were fumbling around one of Sylar’s icy murder-scenes. First, there’s the horror factor. Sylar is obviously an extremely depraved killer. But more importantly, the gruesomeness of the murder is contrasted with the incompetence of the cops. They have no idea what’s going on. Sylar was more of a presence because he was obviously playing out of their league.
Ambition
I recommend giving your villain an overarching and genuinely sinister plan. If your villain’s plan is only to get revenge against a few people, the stakes of your hero failing will be very low. For example, the first Spiderman movie dropped the ball on this one. What would the stakes of Spiderman not fighting the Green Goblin have been? Pretty much nothing, unless you were on the board of directors of OsCorp.
This doesn’t mean that the villain’s plan has to endanger the world or universe. That gets cheesy very fast. But this goes to competence: a villain that’s only playing for small stakes (like trying to kill a few OsCorp businessmen) probably won’t seem very competent or frightening. In contrast, Dr. Octopus’ plan was more ambitious and interesting even though it wasn’t particularly evil. He wanted to perfect a crazy-ass scientific theory to redeem himself for killing his wife the first time. Octopus’ plan had significantly higher stakes for Spiderman because he endangered many more innocent victims. (Sorry, ruthless businessmen, but readers just don’t care about you).
Nothing says “competence” like mowing down redshirts. This also sets your villain up for comeuppance.
Big deal, the Decepticons can transform into police cars. Oh, and they can also *obliterate Army bases at will*. Big deal, Nightcrawler can teleport. Oh yeah, and he can *hand the entire Secret Service their hindquarters without breaking a sweat*. Big deal, Hans Gruber can hold a bunch of investment bankers hostage. Oh yeah, and he can also take on the entire Chicago PD at once. etc, etc
(Hans Gruber: one of the best movie villains of all time.)
Nightcrawler is an ideal example of the three qualities of villainy. His one-man rumble through the White House was a perfect example of competence and style. However, it was wholly disappointing when it was revealed that he was just a mind-controlled puppet. Ahem… he lacked ambition!
These guidelines are really helpful! There is only one villain who I find an amusing exception to these rules. Doctor Evil. He’s just so incredibly stupid, clumsy and is played strongly by stereotypes all at the same time.
Dr. Evil: Scott, I want you to meet daddy’s nemesis, Austin Powers
Scott: What, are you feeding him? Why don’t you just kill him?
Dr. Evil: No Scott, I have a better idea. I’m going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death.
Haha! What an idiot.
Yeah, I would say that Dr. Evil is definitely an exception to regular guidelines for villain-creation. Parodists have leeway to play with the conventions of their genre. Also, as a comedy, the Austin Powers movie was able to pretty much just skip past the fight scenes. “Judo chop!”
What about the Joker? (The 2nd greatest villain of all time).
He was all competence. His ambition was that he hated humanity. As for his style, well… he was completely psychotic, he knew it and he loved it.
If you like TDK’s Joker, you might like this article about Batman, American culture and Joker.
Very good article. I was surprised I knew what alot of those big words met. I love the references to the “war on terror.”
See, I figured that the Joker’s ambition was that no one got the joke. Therefore, Joker wants everyone to get the joke.
Except in The Dark Knight. There, I think the Joker just wants chaos.
Also, these three reasons are why Dr. Doom is my favorite supervillain.
1. Competent. He’s easily on par with Reed Richards as one of the world’s smartest men; he’s an expert in physics, mechanical engineering, nuclear engineering, civics, and perfected the synthesis between magic and science. Few could take Doom on, and even then it usually requires a team (four or more).
2. Stylish. Just look at him, first of all. He’s in a suit of powered armor. Not to mention he has a code of honor. He doesn’t kill women or children, or innocent civilians if it can be helped. He easily could. Again, most heroes are out of their league when dealing with Doom (one-on-one).
3. Ambition. Yeah, he wants to rule the world, but mostly because he feels he can do a better job, and he wants to rid the world of circumstances like those that took his parents (this seems to be an anti-genocide stance; Doom is from Gypsy stock). Hell, he even succeeds in global domination, then gives it up because it turns out that ruling the world is boring. “I came, I saw, I conquered, but only for the weekend.”
Anyway, enough geeking out on my part.
I’m a fan of Doom. In fact, sometimes I feel like he’s the only thing in the Fantastic Four series that’s worth keeping.
You don’t always need a team to defeat Doom. Sometimes all you need is the ability to get dozens of small furry rodents to come to your aid (ala Squirrel Girl).
I love Squirrel Girl! She’s trashed so many major-league villains (Dr. Doom, Modok, Terrax) that Deadpool says his loss to her is proof that he’s reached the big time. Haha.
You can see more of SG here.
Do you think any of the following are good villians?
Brainiac
Freiza
Lex Luthor
Of of those, Lex Luthor is my favorite. First, he has no powers. Second, he takes on one of the strongest heroes. Third, he has a unique style of doing things.
Oh yes, definitely Lex Luthor.
I loved Freiza when I was eight years old, but hindsight has shown me how ridiculous s/he was. (Seriously, I know he was a guy, but he was rather effeminate). He could blow up an entire planet with his finger but he didn’t have many dimensions.
Of the three, I also like Lex Luthor best. He’s the easiest to relate to and strikes me as the only one with much depth. His motive (greed/megalomania) isn’t particularly inspired, but it’s marginally more interesting than trying to destroy everything. (Yeah, I know Brainiac has a deeper agenda, but it usually entails the destruction of everything).
Lex Luthor is definetly a great villian and Freiza was an excellent villian in my opinion. He wanted immortality and he would even murder his own henchmen. He would do anything to get the job done. He was very manipulate as well. My list goes like this.
Frieza
Brainiac- He’s seriously one of my favorite villians in the DC universe.
Lex Luthor
I have finnly thought of a name for my villen how douse Bori sound?
What kind of impression are you going for, David? Bori sounds kind of cute and not very threatening to me.
Well, I kind of want a frightening name, but I always thought Bori was good. Oh well.
Any suggestions?
Simply something a mother would name their child but could still be threatening because then you’d have Cara calling him Uncle Bori or whatever.
Hmm. I think you’d have more leeway to do scary/threatening with a last name than a first name. However, as far as first names that can be sinister sounding, I’d recommend something like Uriah, Lon, Orson, Paltiel, Xavion, Pedavel, Jasper, Omer, etc. (I drew those from US Census information on some names that were among the 500 most popular in 1910).
i like Omer
hmm uncle Omer ok cool thanks
My favourite villains are in no particular order:
The Joker
Ra’s al Ghul
Bane
Two-Face
All have grounded, realistic motivations as villains. I like Ra’s that he sees the world as corrupt and decayed so he wants to wipe out 95% of the population and then re-start the world – a new eden. Sure, he wants to rule the world but first he wants to kill most of it and then re-start it in his own vision, very twisted indeed. And you can understand his viewpoint, very similiar to Magneto.
I notice you have a very Batman-centric cast. Not surprising… Batman’s villains strike me as powerful enough to be interesting but weak enough to feel believable. Also, they’re unusually stylish.
Most other DC villains are mediocre. In particular, Superman has a load of suck. Brainiac? Toyman? Metallo? Lex Luthor? I think the main problem is that they’re too weak and/or unambitious (Lex Luthor, particularly in the movies, and Toyman) or just totally removed from anything that helps them connect to readers on a human level (Brainiac).
Whilst the others I’m in agreement in, I think Brainiac deserves more credit. Not much more, but he is a good villain.
As for my favourite villains, if we’re just looking at comic books I’d say The Joker, Doctor Octopus (if for no other reason than his name is awesome), Doctor Doom (again, awesome name) and Ozymandias (if for no other reason than he actually wins). I’m sure I’m forgetting loads of my favourite comic book villains but for now that’s who I’m sticking with.
As for non-comic book villains, Darth Vader and The Emperor, Megatron (again, the name is awesome), Princess Azula and Fire Lord Ozai from Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Master from Doctor Who and again, a lot more I’m probably forgetting.
Venom and the Joker are the only two that come to mind for me, actually, as far as supervillains go. I like Smallville’s Lex Luthor, but mostly before he’s evil. Like, season one.
I’m probably in odd territory, but I enjoyed the Smallville version of Doomsday. I also like Sylar (pre-parent issues and emotional imbalance), Frenzy from Transformers, and the Spider-Man 3 type of Venom.
I was thinking about how Arkham Asylum seems to have a revolving door for its criminals and came up with this idea for my resident asylum for criminally insane super-villains.
The doctor who runs the facility uses his psychic abilities to sell the “services” of his patients to the rich and powerful. If someone wants their enemies attacked, they can pay the doctor to insert a desired target into the mind of one of his patients. After that the doctor arranges for the criminal to escape and attack their target. Once captured they’re returned to his care for the process to repeat.
I feel this will explain why criminals are always escaping, and why they never seem to receive the appropriate mental health care. Thoughts?
I like the Joker out of all comic book villains (especially Heath Ledger’s performance in the latest movie)
For Western animation I like Azula and Ozai.
For live action the Master is my favourite (partially because he was played by John Simm, one of the best actors I’ve ever seen, and because the part where he danced to “I Can’t Decide” was pure, utter win)
For anime/manga it is definitely Light Yagami/Kira. Very few people can commit genocide while avoiding the world’s best detective and looking like a male model. Light must make a lot of money from his police work, because most of his clothes look like they’re tailored. (I think Light probably spends more time getting his hair and outfits just right than he does writing in the Death Note, haha. Please don’t kill me, Kira, I was just kidding!)
That’s an interesting idea, Chevalier. DC will probably steal it. Haha. They could add another layer onto an already convoluted history of comics. That’s the main reason I don’t read many, because I’ve missed heaps and will never catch up.
I don’t know if this happened anywhere else in the Batman mythology but in the TV show The Batman Dr. Hugo Strange was doing… dubious activities with the Arkham inmates. As we all know, Strange is a villain, but in The Batman he starts off seemingly as a good person who is in charge of Arkham. Really he is obsessed with studying the psyche of Batman, and goes as far as creating the perfect villain and releasing him on the city, just to study what Batman does. Of course later he gets incarcerated in Arkham (talk about getting hoist by his own petard), but whilst he was the head of Arkham he provided a plausible reason for the ‘revolving door’ they’ve got going there.
I’m surprised they called him Dr. Strange. Doesn’t DC already have a fairly prominent character named Dr. Strange?
I think he’s distinct from Marvel’s Strange in quite a few ways. Firstly, he’s not supernatural, secondly, he’s evil, thirdly, he usually goes by Dr Hugo Strange. I don’t even know what Marvel’s Dr Strange’s first name is.
But then again there’s loads of cases of both companies sharing names, Captain Marvel springs to mind, and don’t forget, he’s not Shazam!
Ugh, the comparison between Marvel Strange and DC Strange made me notice that despite how vehement they are about their copyright stuff, both DC and Marvel create vaguely similar characters.
I don’t think there’s any similarity between the two Stranges other than the name. Neither are particularly strange either, well, compared to some of the other characters in the two universes anyway…
I think Marvel Strange’s name is Stephen, last I remember. One thing I do remember is in Ultimatum, Dormammu constricted him like a boa and caused his head to blow off. Gross.
I’m once again late in the comments but I have two things to add:
1) I think Magneto is the greatest supervillain in Marvel (the Joker rules DC) because he’s not necessarily evil. He has a good cause and what not.
2: In my novel (which will probably never see the light of day) the main villain(s) are a group known as the Zodiac that want to keep humanity “pure” by killing off homo superiors/people with powers. So they plan to kidnap the main character and using her power in a machine to send out a death pulse. Is this at any rate cliche, not a good idea, or something along those lines? Thanks.
“…using her power in a machine to drain her and then send out a death pulse…” It sounds a lot like a plot from the X-Men movies.
Also, I think that it’d be more interesting if there were a weaker connection between the protagonist and the villains. It sounds less like the hero will be an adventurer making her own breaks and more like she’ll be acting in self-defense to save her own ass. I’d recommend making her proactive rather than responding to a group kidnapping her (or targeting her for kidnap). For example, perhaps she’s investigating a bizarre crime and discovers that it’s only the start of something much bigger and more sinister.
At the very least, I’d have the group target her for kidnapping rather than someone else because of something she does in the story.
PS: I like Magneto, too. I’m not surprised that the X-Men movies come back to him again and again… they don’t have anybody else that fills the Primary Villain role with nearly as much style and flavor. That said, I find it tiresome that he keeps comparing efforts to cure mutants to the Holocaust and annoying that no one else challenges him when he does so.
How about a bratty villain who just wants the whole world to himself and be their ruler? not origanal but Im a work in progress. any advice?
@The ReTARDISed Whovianon
‘For anime/manga it is definitely Light Yagami/Kira. Very few people can commit genocide while avoiding the world’s best detective and looking like a male model.’
You can add to that Johan Liebert from Monster. He was pure evil.
I didn’t agree with Goblin not being ambitious enough – the guy was nuts and he obviously had no qualms about killing civilians. After he got rid of the board of directors of OsCorp, who can tell what he would have done? I have no doubts his body count would be much higher after he achieved his original goal.
Other than that, this article has helped tremendously. Thanks!
@ Mrs. Marvel
Yes, the bratty villain has been done in various incarnations, however, the idea is still able to be reinvented well. I’d have to know a little bit more about the villain’s overall character to make a decent judgement, but the concept seems workable.
Personally, what I’d like to see is a literal child villain – a villain with the mind of a child and the powers of a god. The world needs a few genocidal four year olds to keep things interesting, y’know? XD
As to villains in general, villain superpowers for me have always been hard to create. I’ve seen pyrokinetics, umbrakinetics, guys who can kill people by looking at them, and the odd evil genius, merely because these powers are easily associated with the typical villain archetype. One of my favorite villains, power-wise, is the movie version of Mystique. Why? Merely because she took a power that I’d never thought of as anything special – human/humanoid limited shapeshifting – and yet did so much with it. She’s the primary reason I made one of my major villains a shapeshifter.
Of course, the sheer asskickery factor helps. It always does.
- Wings
“I didn’t agree with Goblin not being ambitious enough – the guy was nuts and he obviously had no qualms about killing civilians. After he got rid of the board of directors of OsCorp, who can tell what he would have done? I have no doubts his body count would be much higher after he achieved his original goal.”
He was keen to act exactly like Darth Vader from A New Hope (“Come, spidey! Join me and we can rule together!” “You’re not my father!” “Neither was Ben, so you’re probably going to kill me now.”) but he was crazy and reacting to the negative stimulus supplied by the board of directors, if he had wiped them out, he most likely would have self-destructed, much like he did, before he presented any real threat. It wasn’t like he was capable of achieving anything beyond the brute force that the suit allowed him to. He wasn’t ambitious, he wasn’t smart or conniving, just a monkey with a pumpkin grenade. You’re right that he might have killed more, but he never would’ve accomplished anything and that’s where his flaw lied.
One advantage of relatively unambitious villains is that they may actually be able to attain their goal. The vast majority of villains that try to destroy or conquer a city will fail to do so. However, if the villain is content merely to become the city’s most powerful crime lord, he may actually succeed. Alternately, Magneto successfully turned one Senator into a mutant (in the first X-Men movie), but unsurprisingly failed when he tried to turn all the world’s leaders into mutants.
Yes, I love all these villains… if ‘love’ it the right word. I agree with everyone but, someone had to bring up Disney villains.
Yeah, I’m weird like that– inspiration for a baddie? Go to Disney, of course!
Y’know though Judge Claude Frollo fills all three of these, competence; he follows Phoebus to find Esmeralda, and follows Quasimodo to find the Court of Miracles, etc. style; oh, man, does he have style, ambition; he believed hat he was doing was right, killing all the Gypsies and his lust for Esmeralda (the song ‘Hellfire’ pretty much lays all three of the traits down, right?)
Most villains know they’re evil but, this man was so fueled by what he believed was evil he didn’t realize he was the evil one.
I really got to stop fangirlin’ this movie. It’s controlling my mind.
I think Disney has a lot of classic villains. I find Pixar’s storytelling superior in most every other way, but Pixar villains sometimes strike me as a bit lackluster. My only complaint about The Incredibles was the weak antagonist. Cars’ villain was an utterly formulaic Stuck-Up Rival. I loved the Captain Ahab-like villain of Up, though. Captain Ahab + an airship named the Spirit of Adventure – peg leg = awesome.
How would you create a plant-based villain without her being a total Poison Ivy ripoff?
She could have the ability to create clones through plants? I don’t think that’s been done before.
“How would you create a plant-based villain without her being a total Poison Ivy ripoff?”
–Different personality?
–Different background/backstory? (IE: instead of being a scientist, maybe she’s a businesswoman or a rogue cop or something).
–Different goal? (What she’s trying to do).
–Different motivation? (Why she’s trying to do it).
–Different limitations on her abilities and/or resources?
–Maybe a different relationship between her and the protagonist(s)?
I think you’ve got your work cut out for you. When I hear “plant-based villainess,” “Poison Ivy ripoff” is the first thing that comes to mind. In particular, how are you going to differentiate the fight scenes?
I think another avenue that could be explored is a different relationship between her and the plants. Poison Ivy in most of her “mature” (by which I mean, well-written, non-pinup girl appearances) is a eco-terrorist at heart, she is fighting for the freedom and protection of plants. She can literally talk to them and hear them talk back. She often reacts to incidents in which they are hurt, such as experiments or logging camps.
She could admire plants just as Ivy does, but feel ostracized and left out or even hated by the plants because of her human side, however large or small that might be. The plants, if you want to go pretty far with it, might even make attempts on her life when she is not actively controlling them. This doesn’t require plants to be aware within your universe, however, as she could be doing it without knowing it. This would lead her crimes a much higher level of desperation and allow you to focus on her attempting to terra-form large areas for the propagation of plants.
Another direction would be the reversal of the above relationship, she could be highly allergic to plant allergens, had a bad experience with a plant (a car accident?) or any other such thing that might cause hatred and just have a completely negative relationship with the things at her command. This could lead to her committing crimes in which she targets plants, and subsequently human life is caught in the balance.
Although both of the above examples, I offered suggestions about how they might influence her motivations, there are quite a few ways you could drastically alter her relationship with plants, perceived or real, and use that to differentiate from Poison Ivy, while leaving her motivations wide open.
Good stuff, LM! I like your thinking, particularly the concept of her holding plants in contempt and/or the plants hating their would-be slavemaster. In a garden, plants are hard enough to manage. Let alone the weeds!
I have a plant manipulating hero myself. When I hear “plant manipulator”, I think “down to earth vegetarian hippie”. Therefore, I worked to create the polar opposite of that, and I came up with Synth as he is today: a lover of slasher films and meat who talks to a Venus flytrap. To go by TV Tropes, he is also a Chivalrous Pervert. As the story developed, he also became very laid back and gained a slacker mentality. At the same time, he is arguably one of the most honestly heroic members of the Six, outstripping even Hikari. Not bad, considering his original concept was just a bit part character created to fill out the Six.
I am in full agreement with Lighting Man’s concepts here, although I’m guessing that creating a villainess who hates her power would have to be well written in order to avoid Wangst and annoying-ness.
- Wings
I agree that writing a character that hates her powers is tricky, but I didn’t quite get that LM’s proposed character would hate her powers. I think there’s a subtle difference between hating one’s powers (like plant control) and hating the subject of one’s powers (the plants). I suspect that the first is more likely to cause excessive angst (“why meeeee?”) than the second (“dammit, plants, when I want your opinion I will give it to you!”)
An example that seems sort of similar to me would be the difference between an athlete that is disgusted by the fans and/or the game and an athlete that hates his athletic talent. (Maybe he’s one of those freakishly tall basketball stars that will probably die of heart failure before the age of 30).
The original idea I had was that she’s a doctor, and quite friendly actually. For instance, in the middle of a fight, when someone agonizes out loud (“My hand!”) she’d interject instinctively with advice (“I’d recommend diluting the acid with running water”), because the only reason she’s even out being evil is because she’s under another villain’s influence.
But, I did like a lot of those ideas.
I’ve had a couple of ideas for villains in my head for at least two weeks, so i figured I’d post ‘em here and see if they’re workable.
The first one is Mary-Anne. She’s seven years old, and is equipped with almost every psychic superpower I know of (except astral projection). Her primary motivation is finding someone to play with her (tea-party and the like), and whenever she’s unable to find a playmate, she throws temper tantrums strong enough to level a city.
The second is Omni. His primary power is power absorption, meaning that by the time the heroes face him, he’s about as powerful as the modern Superman. (My opinion is that if Superman turned evil, nothing in the known universe could stop him. Which is another reason I hate him.) His motivation is kinda cliche, I guess – he wants to completely purge baseline humans (called Normals) from Earth. (I’m not really sure about this villain… I like his powers, though)
That’s all I have right now. What do ya think?
I think Omni sounds mostly interesting. Not feeling Mary Anne. I think it’s really hard for a child villain to have the emotional and/or logical depth to drive a plot. Unless maybe the kid is prodigally mature? (However, if her main goal is putting together a tea party or something similar, I’m pretty sure that she’s not).
One slightly more mature goal that comes to mind is that she wants to make the world better and decides that adults are the problem. (Maybe she’s been abandoned by her parents, or they did something that made her run away, or she was really upset that they lied to her or failed her in some way, or is sick of being patronized, etc). Her plan might be to just kill off everybody above a certain age, or to make adults into kids somehow, or whatever. (One advantage of the second plan would be that she might actually pull it off, whereas killing everybody is almost certainly not going to happen).
i thought up Mary-Anne in a moment of sarcastic abandon. (For some reason, a villain that happens to be a little girl in a pink dress and a pink hair bow really cracked me up.) but i hadn’t been able to come up with a real scheme for her, so i just grabbed the first thing that came to mind.
Which is better: A team of supervillians or a lone villian, possibly with one or two lackeys?
“Which is better: A team of supervillains or a lone villain, possibly with one or two lackeys?” I think this is personal preference, but personally I prefer single villains because they’re easier to develop. Also, villains usually do not get much face-time, so wasting what little they have to introduce a sprawling team of villains is probably not terribly effective.
I think it might make sense to have a team of supervillains if one of the villains is a point-of-view character. Then having more supervillains would add more room for villain vs. villain conflict.
Depending on your preferences, you could give the lieutenants and/or henchmen some individual characterization without making them villains in their own right. For example, the villain’s lieutenants are particularly important in the story I’m working on now because the villain starts the story completely inexperienced and unwilling/unable to get his hands dirty.