Heroes and Villains have been with us since… well, day one, when God and the devil emerged donning the original white and black hats. Read the full post.
Mar 26
2009
04:13 PM ET
Heroes and Villains: Why so many these days? And why so dark, too?
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Any discussion about the ambiguity about hero vs. villain should be complete without mentioning Tyler Durden (Fight Club). Technically not an anti-hero, he’s the ultimate hero, sacrificing himself and his own ego to make a difference.
In terms of villans …Denzel Washington’s Alonzo in Training Day and Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber in the original Die Hard. Both are calculating and patient …amongst the scariest traits of any villan.
Movies are a reflection of society.
As we see more corruption in our governments and less heroics from the common populous, our entertainment reflects it. After all, artists usually try to create an image of what they observe, to tell a story about it.
In addition, people like complicated heroes and villians because they provide more “meat” for analysis. You look at a straight forward, “boy scout” hero, it provides little to debate. it does good for goodness sake. They make for very short conversations. And in this society, complexity equals sophistication. Sophistication equals prestigue. We are raised to favor prestigue, so we seek out sophistication. We often complicate things in an unneeded manner. Hence the majority of our “heroes” have unneeded traits added to their character, to make them seem more complicated. And in turn, this makes them more “desirable” as characters.
Mind you, it does make them good characters, just more popular.
That last line was a typo. It is suppose to read:
Mind you, it doesn’t make them good characters, just more popular.
The difference isn’t in the heros, it’s in the writing. Heros have always been complex and needing redemption (look at the fictional Sherlock Holmes shooting up cocaine when bored back in the 1890′s or the very real Winston Churchill “never being without alcohol in his veins”, as a biographer said). It’s just that we’ve only been ready to write realistic screenplays recently. And a realistic hero is a much more inspiring hero.
– Pleonic, http://www.AFewParagraphs.com
I think it’s not about darkness. It’s just that people can’t believe a character would do good without a drive. Since some of the easier drives to write are things like revenge(Batman) or survival ism (Die Hard), it’s a little wonder how many antiheros there are. It’s all trend anyway. It’ll turn around.
I’m a little disappointed that Mr Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life” didn’t merit mention in the villains list. Evil personified, and possibly the very first movie bad guy who didn’t get his comeuppance by film’s end.
I feel that we need heroes and villians. To put it another way, we are both heroes and villians. It depends on the situation that is at hand. One thing’s for sure, I always root for the good guy, no matter what.