Recipe for Evil - Round Table

Sharby · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 9:50 am Post subject: Recipe for Evil - Round Table

This time we're still sticking with the recipe them but instead of beans or rattlesnake recipes we're going with Villains.

What ingredients are needed in making a good villain rather than just your average day cookie cutter one. Dimensia, disfigurement, world domination, cool costume or just down right evil. What makes one villain stand out from all the others, and who's the best?

The floor is open people.....all hail the villains!

digitalmagi

Well the issue here is that Villainy is as diverse as Heroism. Is the punisher a good guy? Well yeah, but he is also a bit of a mad dog killer. . . personally i think highly of teh developed evil doer. i mean carnage was fun the girls are fun when you are sixteen. . .great to look at, entertaining to play with but not a lot of depth yanno. Now Dr. Doom there is someone with the potential for evil, Magneto. . my two marvel pics but even they are not truly evil.

The Red Skull
Evil incarnate. Skilled, intelligent, classicaly educated and driven to hatred not just for a particular hero but an entire nation and philosophy. Ruthless, yet capable of honorable behavior. Tenacious, obsessed, at times hedonistic although i do not think hedonism is necessary to an evil villain. The Skull is definately an excellent example of evil.

The Joker
The other end of the stick. Psychotic, ruthless, merciless, focused but not obsessed, indifferent to life his or anyone else's. Hedonist, no redeeming qualities what so ever, depraved probably deviant yet often capable of charm above and beyond his physical disfigurment.

Joseph_OBrien · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 3:31 pm Post subject: Re: Recipe for Evil - Round Table

The really great villains tend to have a strong bond with the hero. Nearly all of Batman's major antagonists are connected to him in a fundamental way. Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's dad. Norman Osborn was the father of Peter Parker's best friend. Magneto was once Xavier's best friend and colleague. The point was articulated beautifully in the movie Unbreakable, and Smallville's entire premise is based around the idea.

ArthurOPodd · Forum Newbie Joined: Sep 09, 2004 Posts: 2

Motive is everything. On some RPG sites there are long arguements about "you can't be evil unless you do this..." Poppycock! Not every villain has to be obsessed with racking up the highest body count. As mentioned earlier, it can be argued that an antihero is kind of a villain. Consider Frank Castle (again) or Elric of Melnibone. You could consider them "heroes", but I would NOT want to fight by their sides (especially Elric). Give me depth of character and a belivable motive anyday, over the brainless splatterfests.

Examples of good villains?
Professor Moriarty (y'know, I don't remember ever reading Conan Doyle where we see more of him than falling off a cliff grappling with Holmes. But that's the beauty, he's so good at crime that he is totally off the radar)
Dr. Doom (nuff said above)
Magneto (ditto)
Frankenstein's Monster (original book version where he can think, talk and have motives, not the movie crap that trashes any depth and condenses it to "there are things man was not meant to know")
Hannibal Lecter (CREEPY!! Even when he's "nice" he creeps you out, cause you just don't know what he's up to. Until the ending of Lambs II, even Clairice didn't know if he'd keep her as a foil or stalk and eat her)
Lex Luthor (rarely. When more depth is shown, like John Byrne's reigh on the comic, he's good. There are few villains as asinine as "Superfriends" Lex Luthor)
Ras Al Ghul (maybe the only BM villain with consistently greater depth than "Steal/kill in relation to my obsession - like cats, riddles, jokes, birds, etc.")

OrcaDesignStudios · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 9:44 am Post subject:

Hasdrubal · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 4:37 pm Post subject: Re: Recipe for Evil - Round Table

I agree with what has been written here about fiction and comics villains, but no one has addressed real life villains.

The most alarming aspect to evil people in real life is that they often have very ordinary human qualities to their lives that make them like everyone else. One of the witnesses at the Eichman trial collapsed in the court when she realized that such a monsterous war criminal was an ordinary man.

The other aspect of evil that fiction rarely deals with is that it's an attractive thing. In the uncannonized early church books Lucifer is recognized as the fairest of angels before God cast him out and allowed him to assume his role as the Devil. Similarly evil can be an attractive thing when considering the luxurious life style of the Nazi leaders, Stalin, other dictatorships, organized criminals, corporate embezzlers, stock swindlers, and Martha Stewart.

Joseph_OBrien · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 5:20 pm Post subject: Re: Recipe for Evil - Round Table

The important thing to remember about villains, either real or fictional, is that no one considers themselves to be "evil". Everyone is the hero of their own movie, so to speak; villains behave the way they do not because it's sinister, but because they, like any character, have a goal in mind (unless they're a poorly-conceived character, a moustache-twirling villain-for-villainy's-sake). When that goal, or the means used to achieve it, runs counter to the hero's, you get conflict, and ergo a villain.

Vadlor · Forum Member Joined: May 09, 2003 Posts: 332

I think the recipe for villany varies with the story itself.

I often see villains as a source of fear. It's what the characters fear the real villain of a story, not the person who embodies it.

Star Wars, for example. Darth Vader, in the end, saves the day by killing the Emperor. He is not the villain (taken into the context I just laid), but a personification of it, as it is the Emperor. The real villain in the Star Wars movies is The Dark Side. That thing we should avoid, that easy path, which we will ride through.... Fear. The Dark Side, represented by Darth Vader first (in A New Hope) and by the Emperor later, rules the galaxy. The heroes are rebelling against them, but really oposing the Dark Side of the Force, what they represent.

I don't know if the point is clear, it's late, I'm sleepy and waiting for the Malasyan GP on TV, so be gentle when disagreeing with me

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Joseph_OBrien

Thanks for the Behavioral Science 101 lecture; I was aware of all of those things when I researched serial killers ten years ago for a film I wrote. In any case, your information doesn't really invalidate my point; Manson says things like that because it gets him press and he craves attention. The other disorders you talked about do not make people evil, nor think that they are. We characterize others as "evil" because people are fond of easy labels to define complex behaviour they don't have time to think about.

Within a fictional context (which is really most germaine to this discussion), characters behave evilly for the sake of being evil are underwritten and cliched. Characters like the Joker and Magneto change depending on who's writing them, and they are invariably at their best when written with some depth (i.e. Killing Joke) and assigned motivation that stretches beyond narrative shortcuts.

As for the "short-sighted" comment, it's not appreciated. This is a discussion, and personal attacks are out of line and completely uncalled for.

Hasdrubal · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 3:12 am Post subject:

Charlie Manson could be a topic all by himself. He ordered his brainwashed idiots to do his dirty work for him. If he had tried to attack Sharon Tate by his lonesome, she could have beaten the tar out his runt sized body. Charlie knows he can say anything he wants to now that he's locked up for life. Certainly he's evil, but the lack of personal will in his followers is another type of evil that compliments charismatic evil leadership. "All that's required for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing."

The most disgusting form of evil is when a good man, who should know better, devotes his life to an evil cause. Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments and Production, should be more despised for his role in those times. He was the only man in Hitler's inner circle who didn't start out as a street thug. In his old age he never repented for his loyalty.
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digitalmagi · Last edited by digitalmagi on Sun Mar 20, 2005 2:24 pm; edited 1 time in total

digitalmagi · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 2:22 pm Post subject: Re: Recipe for Evil - Round Table

Hasdrubal · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 2:44 pm Post subject:

I disagree with your thoughts on Charles Dickens villains. People in those times really could be that cruel although they may seem like charactures to a modern audience. The class structure in England at that time encouraged all sorts of outlandishly cruel behaviour. The best example I could give would be to read about the Irish potato famine or some biographical material on the Duke of Wellington and the corn laws. He was a great hero while leading at Waterloo, but proved to be nothing but contemptuous and evil to the lower classes when he became a leader in parliament. It's little wonder that Marxism was created as a response to the world and class structure that Dickens knew.
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Joseph_OBrien · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 5:01 pm Post subject: Re: Recipe for Evil - Round Table

Digitalamagi, I simply stated that people do not consider themselves to be evil. No one does something to be "evil", they do it to satisfy a desire for something, a goal. Fictional characters who are characterized as evil for evil's sake are two dimensional and underwritten.

Your statements about control issues, etc. do not alter the fact. Villains, like all characters, have a goal in mind, something that drives them to action. Even the most apparently random behaviour has something driving it. It doesn't have to be a "mission", as you put it. Achieving control is a goal. Feeling powerless is a motivation.

There are plenty of fictional characters who are underwritten and behave out of plot convenience rather than carefully-devised motivation. Real people behave the way they do because they have goals and motivations, even if those goals and motivations only make sense to them. They don't even need to be aware of them much of the time, but that doesn't change the fact that they exist. Writers ignore this simple fact at their peril. Not all reflections are created equal.