"A Story is only as good as it's Villain"

[Geek Nasty]

Good question made me think

Hero story lines are about the conflicts in a hero during the quest. Normally, those are about the villain, but they don't have to be. A lot of those anti-hero type stories are more about the protagonist trying to walk the line between doing good and not giving a fukk or their own flaws.

 

[Fillerguy]

Groundhog day
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Her (my top 10)
Gump
The Martian
40 yr old virgin
Love and Basketball

 

[Cadillac]

This is dumb logic on how good a story can be

 

[semicko82]

Some of the James Bond movies prove this to be false

 

[Whips-n-Chains]

Plenty of dope movies don’t have a villain, or the main characters themselves are the villains. Off top, GoodFellas, The Irishman, Mean Streets.

 

[Won Won]

The Batman Begins slander

 

[richaveli83]

The Batman Begins slander

Batman Begins gets slepted on so much.

 

[Art Barr]

quick example - game of thrones is a stand out popular franchise because protagonists and antagonists change hats from one chapter to the next. that complex back and forth emphasis lets readers love, hate, and most importantly respect a variety of aspects from that world due to perspectives that they wouldn't normally encounter in straight forward story telling. you've got characters defined by how they maneuver in a political environment, through war, through surviving in harsh settings, through identity crises, etc. martin shows consistently that he's not going to let readers off with simply labeling anyone a 'villain' without considering all they are attached to.

nolan essentially rolled out batman with a bunch of assumed knowledge and used villain introduced conflict to fill in the blanks for what's a decades old established character.

Game of thrones sucks and all you fools fell for it.
It sucks and ended stoopid cause it has no hero.

No hero the shyt stoopid.
fukk the villain.


Art Barr

 

[MajesticLion]

In the context of comics(or any mythological-style storytelling), absolutely. How are you a hero with no nemesis? Without threats to struggle against and overcome, what's to be truly considered heroic?


A spiffy costume?

 

[Wild self]

In the context of comics(or any mythological-style storytelling), absolutely. How are you a hero with no nemesis? Without threats to struggle against and overcome, what's to be truly considered heroic?


A spiffy costume?

Hence why it took decades for Ironman to blow up, because he had no memorable villains outside of Mandarin

Comic book heroes with great rogues galleries like Batman, Spiderman, and The Flash make timeless stories and make the heroes into household names.

 

[BillyBamDontGiveADamn]

I agree...villains portray humanistic traits better than the hero...albeit extreme they are usually more humanistic...this is usually their Achilles heal...their understanding of "people" fails with the hero because the hero is bigger than the person in the costume...lotta schizophrenia on both side ... the crazier the villain the better the movie/novel