Some of this can be put down to a laudable attempt to step away from simplistic narratives concerning white hats vs. the black hats. As The Guardian pointed out last week, we’ve seen more darker-tinged heroes like “Suicide Squad” in mainstream cinema in recent years, and more subversions of the notion of super-villainy, including family movies like “Despicable Me” and “Megamind.” And if you were being really generous, you could suggest that some of it comes from a greater level of nuance. There are fewer truly dastardly villains, because there’s more effort to understand the motivations of, say, Toby Kebbell’s twisted ape challenger in “Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes” or Cate Blanchett’s wicked stepmother in “Cinderella” (both characters are among the better recent bad guys in film).
To some extent, you can also credit (or blame) the diminishing of villains to Christopher Nolan. Early superhero movies like the Tim Burton/ Joel Schumacher ‘Batman’ films were driven much more by the villain than by the hero, but when Nolan rebooted the franchise, he broke some new ground by making an entry in the genre that was more interested in its hero than its bad guys (even Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” films, which helped pave the way, come most to life when its bad guys are onscreen: see Willem Dafoe going full Gollum as the Green Goblin in the first Spidey film, or Alfred Molina as Dr. Octopus in “Spider-Man 2”).
Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow and, when finally revealed as the antagonist, Liam Neeson’s Ra’s Al Ghul are fine in “Batman Begins,” but they’re essentially functional: they are there because they’re thematically convenient and because our hero needs someone to oppose rather than because they’d look good on a poster. Nolan had more time to develop his Batman and actually make a character that can often be dull be interesting, and it felt utterly refreshing at the time.
Focusing on heroes, particularly first time at bat, is understandable, and Marvel writer Stephen Markus defended the shift away from villainy in an interview with Joblo. “I get the criticism, but the early phases were all origin stories. It tends to create a similar villain. When it is no longer an origin story, I think you might have a little bit more freedom to create different villains,” he explained.
But in truth, Hollywood’s had something of a villain vacuum for nearly thirty years. For years, spy actioners and the like could easily find candidates thanks to the Cold War. But when the Berlin Wall came down, 007 and the like were left without an obvious villain to fight, and soon bad guys were found lurking in evil corporations, secret organizations or corrupt government officials (it’s notable that Jason Bourne, in the franchise that redefined spy movies for the 2000s, has always faced his greatest threats from the CIA).
The world had a villain in real life from 2001 onwards, when Osama Bin Laden became the globe’s most wanted man. But with terrorism hitting all too close to home, and worries from many that it could be seen as racist to deploy Middle Eastern archetypes as antagonists in movies (worries that proved to be pretty accurate with this year’s “London Has Fallen,” in which Gerard Butler tells a terrorist to “go back to Fuckheadistan”), action movies have mostly shied away from using Al Qaeda and more recently ISIS as fictional threats —it’s hard to make that fun. Instead, we got Christoph Waltz in “Spectre” or, in probably the very worst example of this tendency, Michael Nyqvist in “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol,” characters who are almost nothing on the page, who feel small and petulant, and who are left to talented actors to try and enliven, often with little success.
Villains reflect the times in which they’re created, and the films with the most interesting antagonists of late have reflected that. Justin Marks and Jon Favreau’s interpretation of Shere Khan saw him not as a base animal, but as a protectionist and isolationist deeply afraid of the outsider (sound familiar?). Our increasingly divided political system has led to two films that pit beloved superheroes against each other (one more successfully than the other).
And unexpectedly, the villain of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” had fascinating real-world echoes. Kylo Ren is an antisocial loner with rage issues who likes to wear black, coming across as much as the star of Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need To Talk About Kylo” as he does a super-villain. But he’s also a radicalized young man torn between the values of his parents and those of a sinister mentor, and we’re surprised that the echoes of the kind of young person that makes up much of the membership of ISIS hasn’t been commented on more.
But the vast majority of modern blockbusters see villains become either dull megalomaniacs that even great actors can’t save (see Oscar Isaac in “X-Men: Apocalypse”) or walking portals in the sky. “Suicide Squad,” a movie ostensibly about villains, is an example of the latter, wasting both its principal villain and the occasional fleeting appearance from Jared Leto’s Joker.
Hopefully better things are to come. Seeing a great villain vanquished is one of the most cathartic qualities a story can provide, and in dark times such as these, with Donald Trump a nominee of one of the major political parties in the U.S., Vladimir Putin stronger than ever, racism on the rise, and ISIS one of the greatest threats to the world since the Nazis, that kind of catharsis can be a powerful thing. At least writers and filmmakers have plenty of inspiration, we suppose…
“the twist behind Idris Elba in “Star Trek Beyond” was a good one”
I stopped reading after this. I haven’t seen this movie. Try to keep these things spoiler free if there is no need to spoil a film (seems to me there is nothing else to say about this Beyond twist but “it was a good one”).
The answer is simple really. Because the same people are writing the same stories. “The Nice Guys” I’m sure was a great buddy cop film, but let’s not pretend we all didn’t think Shane Black was copying his “Lethal Weapon” days a bit. Suicide Squad looks to have Leto playing basically an extreme version of Ledger’s Joker (The voices even sound the same). I actually thought Adam Driver’s performance in “The Force Awakens” was mildly interesting. He gave it his all, playing a character who clearly looks twisted in knots on the inside. His facial expressions when he faces Han Solo were pretty impressive, he looks genuinely conflicted and on edge. But the basic issue is everyone is trying to emulate everyone else. That’s my point. You watch “The Hunger Games”, Donald Sutherland plays off Snow like O’Brien from “1984”, even if you haven’t seen 1984, the genetics are there. The dystopian dictator (Or symbol of it) who works to destroy the main character as a reminder even though the main character is utterly powerless and no real threat. Heck, in “Mockingjay”, Snow does to Peeta what O’Brien did to Winston in “1984”, mentally turning him against his love interest by torturing him with animals. Part of great writing is writers take their real experiences, their real life, and that uniqueness, created in real life through chaos theory where nothing is the same, and put that to paper. But Hollywood has such a framing device of what it is, what it’s films are like that nothing new can ever come of it. I’ve seen stories that fellow writers have made that are unlike anything else I’ve seen. And they won’t get published because Hollywood won’t take the risks. Not really their fault. Hollywood is a business that needs to keep the lights on. It’s ultimately the audiences fault for not taking risks. I could throw in some parallel here to life in general but I don’t want to distract from my point. Hollywood needs new talent, new blood. The best filmmakers and writers out there are doing indie films for $2 million a budget who work outside the machine to make their own works. Jeff Nichols is a major example, check out all his films and try to tell me otherwise. Five films, all five critically praised and well liked. Just saying, time to switch it up. Let new voices in.
*whew* you almost had me putting Kylo Ren in the header. He was the most interesting character in the movie.
Going after Sam Rockwell for Iron Man 2 is borderline criminal. The man is a goddamn joy in the midst of that nothing of a movie.
One idea I always had about movie villians is that the good, memorable ones really dominate the movie. Even when they’re not on screen, their presence can be felt. All the great horror/sci-fi movie guys like Predator, Alien, Terminator, Freddie, Jason. TDK’s Joker or Scar from the Lion King or Eve Harrington from The Lady Eve manipulate everything and every one to their advantage. Sometimes they just need a couple really stand out scenes by a great actor, like Laurence Oliver in Marathon Man or Orson Welles in The Third Man or Christopher Walken in True Romance. They also need to score a big win in the movie. Scar gotta kill Mufasa, Drago gotta kill Apollo, that prison Warden from Shawshank Redemption gotta kill Tommy.
I can go down the list ya know, Vader in ESB, Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, Commodus from Gladiator, Biff Tannen in BTTF, Gruber in Die Hard, Noah Cross in Chinatown, John Doe in Se7en, Agent Smith in the Matrix, Amon Goeth in Schildiner’s List, Nurse Ratchet in Cuckoo’s Nest, etc etc. These characters have a dominating presence over the movie’s world and our protagonists. They make their presence known. They are the ones controlling this world. They cant just be this anonymous vague threat waiting at the end of the movie.
Krall was a real shame, cuz Elba has the physicality and he gets that huge win over our heroes early on, but they wait so long for his motivations to become clear that he basically has no real presence in the movie’s big middle section until its time for the third act scrambling and punching scenes.
I think you mean “All About Eve.”
The best example of what you were saying about the villain’s presence being felt even when off-screen is Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Anthony Hopkins had a fraction of the screen time that Jodie Foster had, yet still won a Best Actor Oscar, because he dominated the film whether we saw him or not.
Other villains are memorable for being sly or deceptively charming, like Chris Sarandon in “Fright Night” or subtly manipulative like Angela Lansbury in “The Manchurian Candidate.”
This is the most interresting list of keywords i havent read in a long time..
The most iconic villain of the last couple of years was Dr. Heiter from the Human Centipete
The problem with Movie villains is they have to be really really bad and right now, society is so terrible there is no way to portray that…R ratings wouldn’t be enough.
It’s pretty simple. Alan Rickman died, that’s why.
Simple, there is no talent anymore.