User blog:Queen Misery/Villains - A Question Of Evil

We all known roughly what makes someone a villain, yet what makes someone a good villain is a matter of debate and perhaps is ultimately futile as it is down to personal taste and a lot of bias: however as a person who has studied villains for a long time (coming up to 5 years) I still find myself indulging myself in these debates.

So let us begin the age old topic of what makes a villain stand out from the rest - please note all comments made on this blog represent the thoughts of individual users and not the community as a whole so take everything you read here and make your own decisions..

First of all I shall get my views across and allow others to go forth afterwards:

''' What Makes A Villain Good? '''

1 - Plot (this is important to me - a villain means nothing without a solid plot to give their character depth, we all heard of the overlords of hell and the mighty warlord but these are not enough to merit a good villain: a good villain should have a rich and diverse history or at the very least a history that allows us to understand them as more than a 2-dimensional being - remember this: very few beings are born evil, their evil is formed by either injustices or personalities that develop due to experiences in their lives, if we as viewers don't see this then the character loses a lot of "humanity" and tends to fall into the cliche of being yet another 2-dimensional cackling madman from a soap opera)

2 - Personality (a villain should have more to his or her personality than malevolence, even beings of "pure evil" should have certain charisma - Emperor Palpatin is a horrible, diseased creature yet he is a good villain due to the fact he has a very strong personality, his laugh is filled with malice and we can get a sense of his sadism in the way he encourages others to fight, manipulating them for his own gain: on the opposite end of the spectrum we get a slightly more interesting personality from a villain like Magneto, who would be noble if not for his pride and rage - without a strong personality villains simply aren't that memorable.)

3 - Influence / Power (a bit of a controversial one here but I personally believe a good villain should hold a great deal of influence and/or power - this way they pose a geniune threat to a hero, at the same time a villain that is completely omnipotent is in danger of becoming boring unless they can counter it with their personality: such as Mad Jim Jaspers did.. a villain who lacks influence or power may be interesting for a while but they will not be much of a threat to a hero and will likely fade from fan radar quickly as a result)

4 - Interaction With The Hero (a good villain should have a strong interaction with the hero of the story, they may hate one another or they may share sympathy - without the ability to interact with a hero a villain becomes fairly useless fairly rapidly: in my opinion - at the same time I am of the school of thought that a good villain doesn't simply try and crush all opposition with grunting and flexing, a good villain should either toy with their opponents or try and convert them: after all any two-bit thug can destroy something but it takes a true villain to make a hero's life hell.. or even better to turn a hero into a villain themselves..)

5 - Intelligence (going back to the grunting comment I believe a good villain should be intelligent - leave the mindless destroyer to the henchmen or monster category, a primary villain should have intelligence in order to combat his opponents, it is also somewhat of a common myth that a villain with mental illness has impaired intelligence (the infamous murder-spree syndrome some villains have) - while this may be true for some the opposite is often true: for an example of a good villain who is insane yet intelligent look no further than Hannibal Lector)

6 - Ability To Adapt (a good villain should be able to adapt to society's ideals of right and wrong - this is where many villains fail sadly.. as times move on our idea of villainy changes drastically and as a result previously iconic villains have slipped away.. however truly iconic villains will be able to survive such changes, villains such as Frankenstein, Dracula, Professor Moriarty and the Evil Queen are classic examples of villains that will remain, for the most part, timeless.)

These are my ideas and may not reflect your own, so feel free to add your own comments below but keep things civil - we may be a community about villains but we should debate instead of flame-war..