Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "status-quo"
Villains with good points, and why they don't do it for me
Stop me if you've heard this one. A guy has some deep concerns about the world, the society, and the future. He (or she) attempts to make changes through the usual ways, only to be stonewalled. Nothing gets better. So he decides to save the world his own way.
And because he's the bad guy, this usually involves killing a whole lot of people.
So the good guys get together, begin their quest, face their challenges, grow and get better, then finally face the villain in his lair, listen to him prattle on about saving the world by killing off ninety percent of humanity, then cap his ass and go celebrate. The world is saved.
Only, no. The villain's original motive was perfectly valid. He had a good point with the whole thing, and the world is a real mess, and after his defeat, continues to be a real mess. You thought you made a change for the better... when really, you just returned things back to the status quo.
At best, the heroes decide to look into it themselves and maybe try and do better. But most of the time they just pretend it was a happy ending all around, and leave it at that.
This never sat right with me, and having seen Kingsman: The Secret Service today, the whole issue popped right back to the front of my brain. I figured I'd talk about it a little.
Why is it always like this? Why is it that these well-intentioned world-savers always go for the very craziest and most irrational solution they come up with? Couldn't they tone it down a notch? Couldn't they maybe compromise with the heroes and find a better way to solve things? Or maybe it's the heroes that come up with a fine solution, and the villains attempt to stop it? None of these are seen all too often at all - I can't think of a single example on top of my head. If you can, let me know.
In Kingsman, for instance, Valentine could have just used his usual pretenses to put up a chip inside the head of every corrupt politician and filthy-rich corporate dickbag... then instead of seeking to keep precisely these people alive, just blown up their heads. World saved at far less casualties! But no. Perhaps the folks in charge don't want to give us any ideas.
Or, more likely, it's just easier to write villains that way. Give them at least a pretense of sympathy and humanity. Just that it doesn't really work on me: it's unrealistic, full of holes, and just doesn't work. I'd rather have the usual greedy self-centered douchenoggets: you don't need to poke holes in their plans, at least not as many.
I guess I did the exact opposite with Starving Saint. You had a villain who claimed to have good intentions, claimed to make things better for everyone, and made some good points about why he was needed and how everything was a mess... but it was obvious that he was only in on it for his own benefit, and the heroes rejected the notion primarily because he was a self-centered dick. And then they managed to make a positive impact anyway.
But most of the time my villains are just plain pricks.
And because he's the bad guy, this usually involves killing a whole lot of people.
So the good guys get together, begin their quest, face their challenges, grow and get better, then finally face the villain in his lair, listen to him prattle on about saving the world by killing off ninety percent of humanity, then cap his ass and go celebrate. The world is saved.
Only, no. The villain's original motive was perfectly valid. He had a good point with the whole thing, and the world is a real mess, and after his defeat, continues to be a real mess. You thought you made a change for the better... when really, you just returned things back to the status quo.
At best, the heroes decide to look into it themselves and maybe try and do better. But most of the time they just pretend it was a happy ending all around, and leave it at that.
This never sat right with me, and having seen Kingsman: The Secret Service today, the whole issue popped right back to the front of my brain. I figured I'd talk about it a little.
Why is it always like this? Why is it that these well-intentioned world-savers always go for the very craziest and most irrational solution they come up with? Couldn't they tone it down a notch? Couldn't they maybe compromise with the heroes and find a better way to solve things? Or maybe it's the heroes that come up with a fine solution, and the villains attempt to stop it? None of these are seen all too often at all - I can't think of a single example on top of my head. If you can, let me know.
In Kingsman, for instance, Valentine could have just used his usual pretenses to put up a chip inside the head of every corrupt politician and filthy-rich corporate dickbag... then instead of seeking to keep precisely these people alive, just blown up their heads. World saved at far less casualties! But no. Perhaps the folks in charge don't want to give us any ideas.
Or, more likely, it's just easier to write villains that way. Give them at least a pretense of sympathy and humanity. Just that it doesn't really work on me: it's unrealistic, full of holes, and just doesn't work. I'd rather have the usual greedy self-centered douchenoggets: you don't need to poke holes in their plans, at least not as many.
I guess I did the exact opposite with Starving Saint. You had a villain who claimed to have good intentions, claimed to make things better for everyone, and made some good points about why he was needed and how everything was a mess... but it was obvious that he was only in on it for his own benefit, and the heroes rejected the notion primarily because he was a self-centered dick. And then they managed to make a positive impact anyway.
But most of the time my villains are just plain pricks.
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