Originally posted by King Kandy
It seems the point of her as a villain. But she didn't stand out in terms of vileness, and she didn't stand out in terms of deeds. She actually didn't even stand out with her competency since McMurphy made short work of her dominance over the institution and the majority of her plans to stop him didn't work at all.
You're an idiot, who obviously has no idea about any sort of complexity in literature or cinema. Stick to Batman.
For one, a good backstory for why they became a villain. I hate villains that are evil for the simple sake of being evil. They need to have an understandable, but sympathetic reason, except special cases like Joker(who in the comics is at least Batman's intellectual equal). This is the only problem I have with Palpatine, no real reason behind his madness.
They need to be irredeemable as well, although they may not have once been evil, they are far past the point of no-return.
They need to be efficient. I hate how in videogames incompetant morons like Bowser and Sephiroth are given so much credit as a villain, but a competant and intelligent villain like Ganon does not.
They need to be badass, I mean seriously, everyone loves a badass. 😄
A good villain does not have simple mindless goals like "control the world", if their goal is world domination, the goal should be made more complex than that, like Ganon.
They need to look cool. Seriously, villains like Kuja are good...But the dude looks like a chick in a thong. That kinda stuff just bothers me. I personally like the big and muscular looking villains. Bit of a sick fetish for me actually.
Originally posted by chillmeistergenI quoted no villain, I only mentioned Ganon so many times because he is my favorite villain. Because in my "opinion" he is what a villain should be.
A fair few people. To make it clear, I've got nothing against comics, or video games. I just don't like it when people can't see beyond one means of entertainment or literature, it'd be like me only quoting villains from poetry; there's only so far the book of Urizen can go.
Originally posted by Dark-Jaxx
I quoted no villain, I only mentioned Ganon so many times because he is my favorite villain. Because in my "opinion" he is what a villain should be.
By quoted I meant mentioned, obviously. I didn't mean quoting a monologue of theirs.
Why have you put opinion in inverted commas?
Originally posted by RocasAtoll
A good villain is just someone you can hate and despise. It doesn't matter if its a 10 year old's villain or a real literary villain.
Disagree completely and utterly. To make a good villain, in my view there should be something very human at the root of them, and also a degree of charisma. Hate can come too easily, to evoke two emotions at the same time for one character, is much more of a feat and an experience for the reader.
The responses have been intruiging so far and we seem to be very divided on certain points. Some say that the best sort of villains are the ones that you can't stand and wish would die and others believe that villains require charisma and something irretrievably human at their core.
Based on these answers, let me ask you all this: In Star Wars, the two most popular antagonists are Darth Vader and the Emperor. We see that Vader, despite his brutality, is more victim than villain, and is a pawn. He ultimately cares more for his children than he does for the Emperor's promises of power, though we also see that his cruelty is laced with dark ambition [his beseeching of Luke to join him to overthrow the Emperor and rule the galaxy as tyrants themselves]. The Emperor, as stated before, is evil in its darkest, purest form. Cold intellect and ambition, though he also seems to have a sadistic joy to his manipulations.
My question is, in such an epic, would it have made sense to portray Palpatine -- the main villain -- as anything but irredeemable? Or should all villains have a little good in them?