Saturday, February 4, 2012

FOR GREAT EVIL!








If you have saw a cartoon or anime at any time in your life, you knew that the heroes victory was very close every time that specific background music started playing. It was usually the opening theme or some orchestral, upbeat song. Battlefield 3 added this to the multiplayer. You always know if you are close to victory or defeat depending the song playing at your last tickets. A nice addition that more games need to use.

Now, to the main theme of the comic. Most villains in general media, games, movies, comics, etc, are of three kinds.

The first one is the whiner villain. His reason for being a villain is usually some small, petty trouble. 'My wife is dead so I will kill everyone to get to her again'; 'I got fired, so I must destroy my former bosses'; 'Someone disagree with my point of view, I must endanger existence to prove me right!'. Things that are troubles for common people like you and me are raised to stupid levels by the villains. Got fired? IF it was an unfair termination, sue the guys and find a new job! Holding the building you used to work is not like the sensible thing to do.

The second type is the evil guy for the sake for evil. It is the guy who kills the messenger, destroy entire civilizations just to show his power and drown kittens in the sink for laughs. He have no other reason to be evil than world domination-slash-destruction. He do it for the pleasure of being evil.

The third type is the good guy who, in the need to defeat evil, comes up with an extremely convoluted plot involving lying and deceiving to get the hero to do  whatever good intention he have to. Why he just don't ally himself with the hero and go for the harder, less efficient way is a mystery.

All of those villains are collections of cliches and lack of originality. But there is one kind of villain that is very little explored in fiction. The villain who is in fact a good person, forced to do evil deeds because of the circumstances.

It is the guy who have to invade the secret facility to recover that vaccine to save his people. Or that one who must steal that bank to pay his brother's debt with drug dealers. This kind of 'villain', the one who is forced to be evil, is rarely explored in fiction.

Villains can be very interesting figures and show us some facets of humanity we don't want to see. If explored wisely.

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