CS Weekly Archive > Son of a Pitch > 08/12/04

Writing Bad (But Not Badly)
Part One: Three Shades of Mean

By David Michael Wharton

Having said all we had to say about protagonists, we put on our black hat and talk bad guys in the first of a multi-part series.

It's a well-worn truism amongst actors that the real fun comes in playing one of the bad guys. The same is often true from the writing side. Sure, the tower of idealized nobility we know as Atticus Finch was and is amazing, one of those roles that will still be bowling people over decades from now. And conflicted characters, like Lethal Weapon's Martin Riggs, must be fascinating to take on, letting the actor play in the moral and emotional gray areas. But I bet Anthony Hopkins had more fun playing Hannibal Lecter than either Gregory Peck or Mel Gibson had. Luke Skywalker gets to blow up the Death Star, but Darth Vader gets to blow up an entire planet. Clearly, when it comes to movies, it's good to be bad, and the same goes for the writing side. Scripting stirring moments that enlighten and inspire is all well and good, but there's a certain sadistic glee to having the villain shoot out a bank of windows so John McClane has to run across the glass barefoot. If nothing else, writing villains saves writers thousands of dollars a year in therapy bills.

Every story has a protagonist, but not every story has a hero; similarly, every story has an antagonist, but not every story has a villain. An antagonist is merely the thing that attempts to prevent the protagonist from reaching his goals. It could be Darth Vader trying to destroy the Rebellion. It could just as easily be the forces of self-doubt that keep the protagonist from rising above the accidental socio-economics of his birth (paging Will Hunting). It could be racism or sexism or any other -ism that stands in the protagonist's way. But for our purposes here, we're talking about villains, in all their larger-than-life glory. Just as there are some universal questions to ask yourself when you're writing your protagonists, the best villains share a few common characteristics. In this multipart series, we'll take a look at some of the traits that we should keep posted on our mental whiteboards in order to prevent the villains of our stories from descending into Snidely Whiplash territory.

Sympathy, antipathy, or fun?
The audience needs some way to engage with the bad guy. That typically happens in one of three ways: they're either sympathetic enough that we can hope they'll turn from their wicked ways and find redemption, so despicable that we can't wait for the hero to deliver a suitably ignominious death, or else so delightfully bad that we find ourselves rooting for the bad guy.

Returning to Darth Vader for a moment, he represents the first type perfectly. For the first 1.5 movies, Vader is an ominous and malevolent force, going through subordinates faster than most people go through changes of clothes. By the time Luke confronts the Emperor in his throne room in Return of the Jedi, we know him to be Luke's father, a fallen Jedi whom the younger Skywalker hopes to redeem. We, like Luke, really want to believe that "there is still good in him." The moment on Endor when Vader confesses to Luke that "It's too late for me," fans that flame of hope, setting us up for a spectacular catharsis when Vader chooses his son over his master and lobs Captain Sparkfingers down the Death Star's central core.

Another excellent example is Roy Batty, the replicant villain of arguably the best science fiction movie ever made, Blade Runner. As Batty puts it, he has done "questionable things," but in the end his goals are very human: to understand who and what and why he is, and to live as long as he can, because he is afraid to die. However vicious he may be in pursuing his goals, there is never any doubt as he cradles Pris' dead form in his arms that he truly cared for her. Whereas a lesser story would have us steadfastly cheering heroic blade runner Deckard as he blows away the last deadly android, instead we find ourselves conflicted as Deckard tries to finish a job he doesn't want, while Batty tries to avenge the murders of his friends. Beautifully written though it is, Batty's "time to die" speech wouldn't be nearly so emotionally gutting if he weren't so masterfully written up to that point. I don't think there's ever been a villain's death scene that is more heartbreaking. Hell, I'm tearing up now just thinking about it. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe…"

Then there's the third category: the bad guy we just can't help but like. Alan Rickman excels at these characters. His Hans Gruber set a standard for action movie villains that has been often imitated but rarely equaled. Make no mistake: he's a ruthless, cold-blooded bastard, perfectly content to blow away Mr. Takagi the instant it's apparent that he won't cooperate. But because he's so intelligent, because he never makes any plays from the "Stupid Clichéd Villain Mistakes Handbook," we can't help but smile as the vault yawns open to the strains of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," and a little part of us hopes he gets away clean. Of course, he brings his fate on himself by endangering the hero's wife, but what a shame to lose such a wonderful bad guy.

Hannibal Lecter, the erudite sociopath of Silence of the Lambs is an even more extreme example. Here is a guy, charming and well spoken though he may be, who is a sadistic serial killer and cannibal. A predator who feeds on not only death of the body, but corruption of the mind and spirit. The blood on his hands isn't theoretical -- we've seen him spill it when he killed those cops and EMTs. Yet, when he escapes at the end of the film, I don't think anyone in the audience is upset that he's getting away; rather, when he announces he'll be having an old friend for dinner, we just enjoy a sick little laugh and leave the theater feeling fine. Lecter feeds the part of us that thrills at horror movies, at roller coasters, at the thought of monsters lurking in the dark. Were he to kill Agent Starling, he would cross the invisible line of sympathy and we would demand his death. But he leaves her as he leaves us, bearing the mental scars of her encounter with him, and the lingering dread that he is out there, somewhere, always.

Love them, hate them: the one emotion your audience shouldn't be able to feel toward your villain is indifference.

Now, go write.

David Michael Wharton is a freelance writer and journalist from Texas, and is assistant editor of CS Weekly. When not slaving away in the editorial salt mines, he somehow finds the time to write his column Son of a Pitch, as well as occasional movie and DVD reviews. He is, of course, working on a screenplay.

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