The GOOD, BAD, and the UGLY
Intro...
What makes a bad villain so good that we love to hate him, or so bad that he simply doesn't work for us? What makes one villain so good that he makes the movie work, and likewise another so ineffective and weak as a dramatic tool that his credibility as a character overshadows a potentially good story and weakens the movie to the point of dramatic failure?
That is what this topic is to be about, a discussion and study of cinematic villainy; what makes them work well dramatically, what do some lack from a story telling standpoint which weakens the film's dramatic value to the point of failure. And what do we as movie fans look for in a well-structured, honest to goodness, love-to-hate-'em movie bad guy?
Not all movie villains need to be a physical, mustache-twirling foe, for there are other types of villains in films and TV which provide a threat for the hero or heroine to overcome.
For instance, in war films there are often a specific villain to be defeated, an opposing commander or assassin. But there are times when a specific human villain is not shown, and the true villain is depicted in another fashion. Such as in Master and Commander, where the enemy captain is not shown giving orders or announcing his intent to defeat the English ship that had been sent out after him. Instead, only the enemy vessel is shown, attacking the hero's ship, chasing it, and being fired back on. The enemy ship came out of the fog to attack, and the villain throughout the film was the mysterious dark colored French vessel. The ship itself was the villain, not the captain commanding it. It was an interesting fashion in which the villain was portrayed, because throughout most of the film I kept waiting for the French captain to be introduced, only to realize that it was the ship itself, as mentioned already above.
Yet despite whoever is revealed as the enemy commander, in any war movie or battle situation, the ultimate villain is the act of War itself. It turns good people on both sides into necessary killers, and depending on which side you're advancing from, it makes the other side evil from your perspective. It causes suffering among the combatants as well as the innocent noncombatants, and in many cases it haunts and pains the survivors for the rest of their lives. War simply is, by its very concept, the ultimate villain.
Before I get this party rolling, here comes a little bit of humor. We all sit in front of the TV or movie screen and think or yell at the villain, "That is so stupid, no villain would say that, do that, expect that, succeed in that, etc." Yeah, many movie villains do dumb things that you know will be their downfall. Like capturing the hero and rather than killing him right away, sending him to a jail cell with 2 or 3 buffoon guards who will inevitably be knocked out by the hero in his escape. Or, revealing his entire plot and list of secrets to the hero before killing him, and then being befallen by his own admission to the wizened hero. Yeah, those villains always seem to follow a pattern of goof ball mistakes that lead to their undoing. Here is a funny and interesting list of many of those goofball patterned mistakes made by movie villains:
Peter's Evil Overlord List
Okay now, time to talk about villains and evil masterminds, the bad guys of the movies I either enjoyed or felt disappointment due to the villain's strengths or weaknesses within the dramatic storyline.
Proceed to Part 2…