Superhero movies find it tough to strike a balancing act. The special effects driven mythology stories of our times are populated by colorful characters and interesting worlds with many many stories to tell. The problem of a movie vs a TV show or a comic is that the stories can’t drag on too long of build up as effectively as possible in other mediums. This causes an overshadowing of hero or villain by the other. The 1989 Batman film was a Joker showcase more than a Batman film. Can you name the villain in the Green Lantern film? For the first entry on how to fix this problem, let’s construct a villain.
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1. Know the Hero
Who is your hero? Start there. A good villain opposes some fundamental characteristic of the hero. To use the recent Batman trilogy: in Begins, Scarecrow & The League of Shadows both employ fear & trickery like Batman, but for selfish reasons instead of justice. The Joker was Chaos to Batman’s Order. Bane was the law by numbers and force, instead of Batman’s solitude and tactics. You need a driving reason for the important conflict in the film, instead of just having them dislike one another.
2. Make it Personal
You stand the greatest chance of getting hurt by someone you know rather than a stranger. To craft a good villain, they need to tie to the hero personally. In Iron Man, the villain Obadiah Stane was also Tony’s mentor and old friend. In Iron Man 2, Ivan Vanko had his father betrayed by Tony Stark’s father & sought revenge. In Iron Man 3, the Mandarin attacks Tony’s friend Happy Hogan and Tony calls him out on it. All the villains relate to Tony in some way, they don’t attack him for the sake of boredom.
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3. Credible Danger
A good villain is also a scary villain. In monster movies, the monster isn’t scary if you have to give it a gun. A supervillain needs something to give them the edge over a thug. Loki is a trickster and illusionist, attacking Asgard from within. Thor manages to defeat him after the loss of the Bifrost and an invasion of his kingdom. Loki returns, and brings an army. Thor and the rest of the Avengers thus need to team up. The key to a good villain is believing they could maybe win.
4. Numbers Game
Spider-Man 3, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin. These movies are commonly regarded as “bad” films. They share a common problem, which is villain overload. It seems to be the process that when the filmmakers are in doubt, they simply add in another villain to escalate the threat. This mostly serves to cheapen the threat instead. Villains rarely play nice together, so expecting them to last a whole film is stretching credibility already. It’s easier to throw out three lame villains than one good one, but it also serves to weaken the film.
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5. Heart
A good villain isn’t evil. The best villains are misguided. They represent something that could be good turned to the wrong path. Lex Luthor would be one of the greatest humans ever, if his greed and insecurity didn’t drive him into conflict with Superman, whose existence itself dwarfs the limits of humanity. Loki is just a lost boy with family issues, which manifest as ambition for attention. Allegedly, the Joker was a normal family turned to crime out of desperation, until a bad day with a chemical bath changed him forever. The audience needs to feel for the bad guy to make them have any impact.
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