Suddenly, Bondage Night became serious. |
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What is it about a great supervillain that has so much appeal? Before you go into a superhero movie you usually know beforehand who the hero and the villain are going to be- after all, when the movie is called SPIDERMAN it's kind of a no-brainer as to what it's going to be about. And word gets out via the previews- ‘Oh cool, he's fighting Doctor Octopus this time!' You already know, walking in with your popcorn, who the bad guy is. It might as well be written in flashing neon letters on his big black hat- ‘This person is evil! They want only bad things for you and I!'
Villains, the good ones, have an agenda all of their own as opposed to ‘Kill the hero.' That kind of simplicity is no fun at all, and went out with the days of the black and white melodramas (unfortunately, the twirly moustaches went with them). The best kind of villain is the one who has a personality and plans of his own, and who clashes with the hero only because the hero wants to put a stop to them, not because it's simply what heroes and villains do. These are the villains who leave you, at the end of the movie, thinking ‘Man- I hope that guy comes back in the sequel.'
The supervillain who has had the most airtime during the recent spate of superhero movies is the perennial X-MEN bad guy, Magneto. One of the best moments of the trilogy (sure, all three of the movies had their weak points, but I know that I paid MY money to see a bunch of mutants zapping each other) was the grim opening scene of the first instalment, as a young Erik Lenscher frantically tries to overcome the guards of a concentration camp. If the rest of the films could have continued in the same vein, they may have become classics for years to come.
Neatly playing both the good and the bad with his LOTR role as Gandalf and his X-MEN role as Magneto, Ian McKellen brought all of his dramatic flair to the role as the master of magnetism. Ably aided by some excellent special effects work, he was able to show limitless disdain with the raise of an eyebrow, or throw cars with a wave of his hand. And it was a nice way to return to the cultured villain of yesteryear, instead of the kind of villain who just snarls and throws some curse words around.
But the crux of it is is that Magneto, as a villain, isn't out for money or fame or power. OK, well, maybe a little power. And everyone likes money. But, like his opposite number Professor X, he's an idealist, pursuing his dream of safety and security for mutantkind. Of course his methods differ in that the extinction of the human race is more his cup of tea than peaceful co-existence. But that's where the depth of the character comes in. Throughout the movies 
Moment earlier, the guard had commented unkindly about Gandalf. |
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we are reminded that his determination was forged by years served in concentration camps, and reminded that maybe he has kind of a point.
In the movies, as in life, everyone gets their fair share of dealing with assholes. Of course, it's a fair bet that the guy who cuts you off on the morning ride to work probably can't control fire with his mind.
Probably.
Which is why every now and then you get the villains who are motivated by nothing more than a lust for power. These are the guys who can't be reasoned with, who can't be counted upon to have a change of heart right at the end of the film and suddenly throw themselves in the way of a speeding comet to save the Earth and die with some semblance of honour. Enter your Dr. Doom type.
My case might be stronger if I had seen FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER. But after seeing the first one, it was very definitely a wait for the DVD to come to my local video store for the sequel (sorry to all the Fantastic fans out there). For all it's faults, though, Julian McMahon was by far and away the best thing about FANTASTIC FOUR. As Victor Von Doom, the man who was slowly turning into metal and who discovered the ability to control electricity, McMahon slowly sank into a brooding insanity that demanded he destroy everyone that stood in between him and conquest.
He wasted a bunch of guys, and he was more than happy to unleash all manner of military hardware on his enemies, all in the name of looking out for number 1. Now that's taking selfishness and self-interest to a new level. The thing about villains is that they usually have very common human drives, just elevated to the epic level.
The best study in villainy to hit the screen in recent years is SPIDERMAN 3. Yes, the script needed to be re-written. Yes, I was astonished to see that an alien symbiote knew both how to play the piano and how to dance. Yes, I wanted Aunt Mae to shut up so that there would be more screen time for super-powered heroes and villains giving each other a kicking. But as always in the Spiderman films, Raimi got one thing right, and that was the bad guys. SPIDERMAN 3 had not one, not two, but three of them, each one coming from a different place of motivation. Sandman was the tragic villain, the New Goblin was out for revenge for the death of his father, and Venom was full of rage and despair and more than happy to take it out on his polar opposite, Spiderman.
The Sandman storyline in SPIDERMAN 3 was the classic tragic villain piece. Forced by one moral code to break another, he is, in his own words, not a bad person- he just has bad luck. The character of Flint Marko moves from pathos to fury and back 
And no one from That 70s Show messed with Topher Grace again. |
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again throughout the course of the movie- his daughter's sickness and his own transformation into Sandman are both beyond his control, but he accepts both and tries to deal with them as best he can. He gets sidetracked along the way after run-ins with both Spiderman and Venom, but at the end he earns some kind of redemption and forgiveness. The tragic villain's character arc always ends this way- they have to acknowledge what they have done and show sorry, often learning their lesson just as much as the hero does. Even if they have to mess up the town first. Sandman was misunderstood, down on his luck, and misguided- but not necessarily evil.
The New Goblin wasn't a tragic villain so much, but he too earned forgiveness by the end of the movie. Thinking that Spiderman had killed his father, the Green Goblin, and also operating under a number of crazy-making drugs, the problem with the New Goblin was that he was just so bad at being a villain. Twice he had a showdown with Spiderman, and twice he gets his ass kicked. He did manage to mess up Spiderman's relationship with Mary Jane, so that's at least one notch on the scoreboard. But when the hero's best friend turns bad, you know that there's really only two ways it can end- either the best friend will turn out to be the most dangerous villain ever, or he'll come to his senses by the end of the movie and help save the day. Of course, by this point he's generally caused the hero no end of grief, and so he has to die to atone for his sins.
Which is where Venom comes in. SPIDERMAN 3 gave the Venom character a criminally low amount of screen time, but Raimi did get the dynamic between the secret identities of hero and villain right. Peter Parker and Eddie Brock Jnr. are as similar as black and white from the outset of the movie- where Peter is humble, Eddie swaggers. Where Peter is honest, Eddie is crooked. Where Peter has fulfilling relationships, Eddie loses his girl after about a scene or so. And so it makes sense that the final showdown should be between the two of them- the good and the evil are just flip sides of the same coin.
And that's the big lesson of villains. While a hero might be the personification of all that is good about humanity, villains are the dark side of that. They don't have all-new emotions and ideas and drives- they're simply a collection of the worst traits of humanity- greed, jealousy, anger, hatred. Wrap those factors up and give them the ability to control magnetism, or electricity, or sand, and you can usually tell, at the least, an interesting story.
Next time, the supervillains of DC!
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An in-depth look at the different kinds of characters that make the movies, how they've changed over time, and how they reflect the best and worst of us.
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| Simon Smithson |
Simon was crushed when he found out that 'Ghostbuster' was not an actual vocation, and so went with the next best thing - writing columns for Internet movie sites. He's working on a proton pack of his own, but it's going to take some time.
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