Every so often YouTube recommends the latest Film Courage video featuring Chris Gore, co-founder of Film Threat, to me. I have generally enjoyed his takes on movies on that channel, though this latest video on the popularity of villains felt limited to me. I think the topic of why people are drawn to both heroes and villains is a fascinating one, and often for different reasons or impulses.

Simultaneously, I’ve also felt that the obsession with villains has avalanched from the late eighties and into the nineties, culminating in massive corporations like Disney not only trying to reinvent many of their classic antagonists, but creating a young-adult dramedy franchise with the villainous progeny.

Perhaps the best way to perceive the obsessive counter-cultural identity of the early-to-mid 90’s was not through the rise and fall of Grunge Rock, nor the release of recontextualizing novels such as Wicked. Instead we need only look at the career of Tim Burton, a man whose entire filmography centers on the misunderstood misfit and the awful and imposing values of traditional Americana. While Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice would put him on the pop culture radar, it was Batman in 1989 that really captured Tim Burton’s fascination with the outcast by focusing more time on the villainous Joker, interpreted excellently by Jack Nicholson. Films such as Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, and The Nightmare Before Christmas would solidify not only Tim Burton’s trademark preference for villainous – or at least villainous looking – characters than what society considered pretty and prim, but it would also embody a lot of the tone of the 1990’s.

Which is why it is fitting the new Millennium begins with his awful and embarrassing take on The Planet of the Apes, but that is a digression for another day.

Nevertheless, I think Tim Burton reveals a part of what can make a villain so appealing, especially in contrast to what kind of characters have historically and traditionally been perceived as heroes. From my perspective, many of the greatest heroes are aspirational while our greatest villains are indulgent.

Chris Gore identifies Hans Gruber, the villain of Die Hard played by the late and great Alan Rickman, as one of the more popular villains across pop culture, and he is, I think, a perfect example of what I mean. Yes, Hans Gruber is cunning and intelligent, but his indulgence in thievery and the manipulation of the law is perceived as morally wrong by the norms of society. For good reason! Such indulgence not only costs lives, it is an entirely selfish act that does harm to others for the sake of one’s own gain.

Yet there are other dimensions to the character as well, such as the bond he shares with those on his team. This is not the sort of villain that does away with his own henchman. He is a leader, and his work and respect for those in his care earn him that position while also humanizing him. It is an element of the film rarely spoken of, and yet the camaraderie between the henchmen is crucial to what makes Die Hard work. They are many and hero John McClaine is just one, yet each thief taken down by our lone hero has a visible impact on the morale of our group of antagonists.

Ultimately, however, John is the hero we aspire to be, and I think a good villain really helps draw those aspirational qualities out. That John is bloodied and bruised more and more as the film progresses allows the audience to connect and sympathize with him, but it also provides greater and greater obstacles for our hero to overcome. That he struggles and even has doubts are crucial to that aspirational quality, as we all face trials and struggles throughout our lives. Yet John is able to muster the strength not through ease, but great willpower and cunning in order to overcome.

I want to make sure it’s clear why I chose the words “aspirational” and “indulgent”, however, though the latter is not always the case in describing great villains. It certainly helps explain why certain antagonists have become popular, however. As I see it, a hero ought to have qualities that we ourselves wish to work towards: positive, often altruistic properties that put the good of others before the self and a willingness to suppress or overcome their own faults and weaknesses so that they might come out the other end successful. Even if the hero barely succeeds by a thread, they never give up and have often come away stronger or wiser for having suffered the ordeal. We members of the audience ought to yearn to face our own trials with such strength, no matter how difficult it is to muster.

Which is where a villain’s indulgence can serve not only as a challenge to the hero’s values, but a contrast to what makes the hero so aspirational to begin with. This is one of the reasons I consider Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight to be the perfect Joker film, as it best illustrates the contrast between Batman and the Clown Prince of Crime. Joker’s entire goal is to find the breaking point of every individual in Gotham. We witness many characters perform supposedly altruistic actions, such as Harvey Dent claiming to be the Batman or James Gordon feigning his death after shielding Gotham’s mayor from a bullet. However, true altruism requires sacrifice and loss, and once Harvey’s lost his love – and, admittedly, half of his face – all of his good will is broken. Bruce Wayne loved the very same woman, but is still willing to continue fighting on. He still does not give up on the people of Gotham.

It is this true altruistic nature that the Joker latches onto and becomes so fascinated by, which in turn allows him to indulge in all the things Batman chooses to repress. He cracks a joke before shoving a pencil through a man’s eye, laughs maniacally as his own toady electrocutes himself trying to remove Batman’s mask, burns a mobster’s money just to sow more chaos, and lets loose bloody violence throughout the city. It’s easy to do such things when everyone’s lives – including your own – hold no value compared to the thrill of the moment. Batman can only be so aspirational because he must face an indulgent, selfish, twisted villain like the Joker.

Of course, such defined villains are not always necessary to provide such an obstacle for our heroes, nor is success. Frodo Baggins from The Lord of the Rings is a beloved hero not just because he is played by the charming and charismatic Elijah Wood in the films, but because, in both the page and the silver screen, he is always willing to stand for what is right despite the heavy burden and horrific dangers cast before him. Author J.R.R. Tolkien never spends much time characterizing the villains as the entirety of the story is spent in the perspective of our protagonists, yet the seemingly insurmountable odds are enough to challenge our heroes and elicit empathy. Nevertheless, Frodo still fails at the end, but the audience does not think less of him for it. He still tried, and he got further than many seemingly more impressive men would have. Frodo is still an aspirational character.

Note that I have not really emphasized any sort of aspect of power fantasy in our heroes, and there are multiple reasons for that. For one, such characters are rarely interesting. Yes, we may laugh at a film like Commando, but Predator is the far more popular and enjoyable Arnold Schwarzanegger film due to how out of his depth the protagonist Dutch is. The Predator itself, however, is beloved due to how clever it is. While it certainly has the technological upper hand, the audience gets to see it acting in an adaptable manner, and even honorable as it removes such high-tech weaponry to fight Dutch with little more than bare fists. The ability to find such appealing qualities in a villain – even an alien one – can cause the audience to relate to the protagonist and antagonist together.

Regardless, I do think there is a power fantasy element when it comes to the appeal of certain villains to certain audiences. When you consider the indulgent nature and status of power, a villain can come off as quite a power fantasy until that scrappy little hero comes along to ruin everything. If I may be allowed to be an old man yelling at clouds, I cannot help but wonder and be troubled if the obsession with villains over heroes has emerged from a difference of aspirations. However, it’s not enough to just want to be the villain. Instead, the villain must be misunderstood, and it is instead society that is the true evil. If only society would be more open-minded, then this villain would not be a villain at all!

Or, at least, that’s how it comes off to me. I’ve never read Wicked, though aspects of it and the musical have been described to me, where those “good fairies” are not so good after all. This sort of treatment of legacy heroes and villains leads to characters such as Cruella de Vil being reimagined to possess a tragic backstory where ferocious dalmatians attacked her and killed her mother. Now her cruel willingness to make a coat out of a particular breed of dog has been explained! Y’know, aside from Cruella simply thinking it would look gorgeous to have such a coat and having no scruples against killing an animal she has no emotional attachment to. No, dalmatians must instead be represented as having been cruel to her and earning her detachment for their life for the sake of fashion.

I do not believe it to be a cultural pandemic, but such films existing indicate to me that there’s a decent amount of people that perceive the villains as being more aspirational than the heroes, but simultaneously understand that these characters require a sympathetic quality or reinterpretation in order to make them less evil. Note that this is not the same as redemption, which I think is something audiences should want for good villains. Darth Vader made an impression on audiences for his stylish appearance, intimidating posture and mannerisms, and James Earl Jones’ excellently deep voice. I would assert that it was the reveal of his parentage to Luke Skywalker that made the largest impact on audiences, as it established a desire for Luke not to defeat the man, but spare and redeem him. The plot twist of Empire Strikes Back recontextualized a villain audiences first wanted Luke to defeat into someone they wanted for him to save.

A villain choosing evil due to tragic circumstances can be redeemed, and I think that is a worthwhile villain to write. However, there are many that forsake redemption in life just as they do in art, and such villains can continue to provide interesting moral quandaries and challenges for our heroes. Sometimes, such as in the book trilogy A Song of Ice and Fire and the television show Avatar: The Last Airbender, the hero is able to find a solution that does not compromise their values while still bringing the conflict to an end. Other times, the hero has no qualms about letting the villain die, though Hollywood often refrains from giving the protagonist the final killing blow. Once again, it was not Luke that took the life of the Emperor, but Darth Vader, a man that had already fallen to the Dark Side. Luke was spared that final dark act and permitted to maintain his place as a Jedi rather than Sith.

...not that it stopped him from killing plenty of Jabba’s mooks, of course.

Marvel’s most boring villain in a film that didn’t need one: the protagonists were all their own obstacles to overcome. Ronan exists only to give them a reason to stick together.

Sith may deal in absolutes, but I want it to be clear that I do not wish to do that myself. Sometimes heroes really are just simple power fantasies, and other times villains are two-dimensional cut-outs of bad people doing bad things because they are bad. The Marvel films have gotten plenty of criticism for their villains because they rarely have enough screen time to explain or justify their motivations in a manner that’s satisfying. It works for most of the Marvel films because the heroes are the real star of the show, and the villains mostly exist to serve as a reflection of that hero’s flaw, and the overcoming of that flaw is the backbone of the film’s narrative. Sometimes our favorite heroes are one step away from being villains themselves, straddling the line of indulgence and aspiration while encouraging us to root for them to perhaps become a bit more heroic.

I don’t necessarily think it is a problem when the villain outshines the hero, either, but it depends on the reason. To return to the character of the Joker, he works as well as he does in The Dark Knight due to what he represents to Batman. His indulgent and sometimes comedic antics are far more charismatic than the brooding contemplations of Bruce Wayne, but without the bat, that Joker would be less of a character. Tim Burton’s Batman, on the other hand, is far more interested in the comedic indulgence of the Joker than it is in… well, anything focused on Batman. Our hero exists, and his tragic past is slowly revealed with a sloppy and loose connection to our villain to further incentivize the conflict, but the only reason Batman wins in the end is because that’s what is expected. That Tim Burton zooms in upon the grinning corpse of the Joker at the end has me wondering if he was calling back to King Kong, whose final quote suggests it was beauty that had killed the beast.

Only this time, it was the bat that slew the clown, and to Tim Burton’s camera lens, that may have been the real tragedy of it all.

Not that I’m about to write a whole thesis on that theory. At the end of the day, I think a good story requires both a hero and a villain we can relate to, as the one allows us someone to aspire to while the other allows us to fantasize a wicked indulgence… or, perhaps, yearn for the redemption of. At the end of the day, however, I’d rather we not go and aspire to be our villains, or else we lose sight of that which makes good heroes… well, good.