Blaze
artyom
mindbleachDisagree. Some antagonists are bastards, and you can obviously make a good movie where people oppose them.
The bad guys in Star Wars are Nazis. “You do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them.’”
While the original movie was called Star Wars, many people refer to the series of movies as Star Wars.
Being pedantic isnt gonna help your argument here.
The whole fucking argument is that you don’t need relatable villains for a good movie.
Acknowledging that woobifying Vader happened later isn’t pedantic, it is the point.
You don’t have to empathize with Palpatine. He’s a manipulative dictator. You don’t have to empathize with Tarkin. You don’t really need to empathize with any of the generals Vader chokes in the original trilogy. You are not expected to wonder about the inner life and emotional state of the bounty hunters who must be told, “no disintegrations.”
It is fine for a movie to have bad guys who are just fucking bad guys. Sometimes - that’s how it is in real life.
Emphasizing is a much lower bar than thinking they’re justified, though. I emphasize with Lex Luthor, but don’t actually think he’s right.
As opposed to, say, Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, who was totally correct that something needed to be done about the evil mutated aristocrat kidnapping and imprisoning people from the village.
he was right, he was also an asshole though.
those ain’t mutually exclusive
ShaggySnacks
Trope Talk: Pure Evil
Did Marvel really have a lot of those? I think the main issue is they had too many villains, period. Most of which aren’t misunderstood, merely forgettable. Hero’s Journey + Scary Villainous Antagonist is not the only story template out there.
The problem is most marvel movies aren’t trying to tell a meaningful story with (inter)personal conflict and character growth, but to move their characters along from hijink to hijink using rote storytelling techniques.
There’s nothing wrong with having a BBEG, or a nuanced villain, or even a morally correct antagonist that is only pitted against the protagonist through happenstance. There are Great stories that use all of those tropes. The only relevant question is what story is being told and which antagonist best helps move it forward.