My Superhero graphic novels “The Valiant Heroes” is available @ www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-valiant-heroes#/ My Sword and Sorcery graphic novel "CROM: The Destroyer" is available @ www.indiegogo.com/projects/crom-the-destroyer#/ Find me on Twitter @rjoftheisland
Villain: World did me wrong, so I will lie cheat and steal to get what is owed me. Hero: World did me wrong, so I will do right to prevent others suffering the same. I feel a lot of writers these days fall into the first thought pattern, which is why they don't see them as villains.
My fave example of this is MEgatron from the generation 1 Transformers. Basically he knows he is the leader of evil robots and loves his role as a conquerer trying to rule the galaxy,. There is no questioning for why just that from the evil guy's perspective strong people should conquer the weak and so Megatron is destined to be the leader of the cybertronians. Optimus Prime is the counterpoint to this where you can be a freedom fighter and compassionate whilst using strength (power guided by heroic principles) for the benefit of the people. One is selfish (decepticons want military dominance of galaxy and war) and one is sacrificial. (defend freedoms at the expense of your life) In generation 1 Transformers cartoon, the hero is always seen as the underdog protecting innocent people and the villain is cruel and power hungry. That is basically traditional evil and it lets us focus on the action not on philosophical concepts which kids will get bored of. The radical left are obsessed with trying to make villains victims of abuse to make us sympahtise with them. It doesn't work because they never show the suffering of the victim the villain caused. The emphasis in their stories is always on the suffering of the villain above the suffering that villain causes to the society. This is why all these types of stories are predictable. They will try to make an excuse for why evil is ok. The obvious trope is tell a story where the good guys were rude to the bad guy once or they made mistakes so that makes evil ok and therefore good isn't really good it's just a different shade of grey from the bad guy. Why do left wing think this way? They want to play the victim. Chaos is better than order. If evil people want order it is to control others for selifsh reasons not for the benefit of the entire population. (communists do not like freedom of thought and need a dictator to do all the thinking for them) Making the bad guy a victim makes kids weak morally so they don't police bad behavior in other or themselves. The left see the good guys as unrealistic since their own parents didn't raise them with any morals. If they make villains victims, they can give excuses for why its ok to break the laws or ignore morals. (villlains are reactionary: they are reacting to evil done to them making it ok for them to ignore moral codes) Writers that make sympathetic villains generally find the traditional hero as boring - look at all the attempt to make superman more 'relatable'. Since liberals don't live in the country they see a farm boy who is humble (Clark Kent/Superman) a conservative and they can't relate to conservative values. It sickens them. They are the enemy of the liberals so this is why they prefer an evil Superman or an antihero version of superman, not the heroic version who holds traditional values. When you live in cities you think you are smarter than people in the country. So there is also a sense that they know better and that heroes with traditional values are not 'sophisticated' people. (despite liberals having no ability to run business or understand how the economy works because they overspend due to being irresponsible with money)
Exactly, it's the same too with Anime and Manga! Just look at how companies like Type-Moon are over saturating their franchises and the mediums with all this crap! Seriously, this is why we need more independent creators!
Villains don't need to be unapologetically evil to be good. Look at Silco from Arcane. The viewers understand where he's coming from, but he's still a monster. Him having a tragic story doesn't make them less of a villain.
It all reminds me of Joker's most iconic line outside of the Christopher Nolan movies: "All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day." Except... the whole point of The Killing Joke was to prove that The Joker is wrong and people didn't get it. Commissioner Gordon went through the worst day possible and still stuck to his morals and ideals. But no, modern writers think one bad day is enough justification for cruelty and mass crime.
Fax! These vandals are getting what they deserve in my series as in my series The Pensuke Files, The main character Pensuke is the villain of the story. You can see the series in my channel!
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! - Isaiah 5:20
I feel like the current villains are written more like anti-heroes with tragic sob stories to make the audience feel sorry for them. In my opinion, the movie Maleficent was the one who make this type of written something "normal" in every type of media. I don't see an evi villains in a story in ages
It goes back much further than that. I think that "Wicked," the book that tried to cast the Wicked Witch of the West as a misunderstood poor little thing, came out either in the late 1990s or early 2000s.
There's also the pervasive idea of shunning characters who are _actually_ villainous, as in, ones who commit atrocities or have worldviews that the author does not like, they are straight up barred from being written even if presented in a negative light. Joker is obviously a lunatic with no regard to life except Batman's, and sometimes his own, yet in one comic he was written to be "well i might be a villain but im not a NAZI" ya ok thats an argument to make for a character with one of the highest kill counts in comics, most of which are innocent people. Wickedry is wokewashed to be hip, and actual villains need to be changed to just be ship friendly nuisances.
The same too with Anime and Manga! Just look at how companies like Type-Moon are over saturating their franchises and the mediums with all this crap! Seriously, this is why we need more independent creators!
He also says only a Sith believes in absolutes, which is an absolute. And because of all the retcons is the biggest liar in Star Wars. A certain point of view? Obi-Wan is untrustworthy and an unreliable narrator as well. Anakin never wanted Luke to have his lightsaber when he was old enough. I don't think he even knew about Luke's existence until Luke destroyed the Death Star.
@@matthewgaudet4064He said that in reply to Anakins you’re either with me or against me. The Sith see everyone as either a tool to further their goal or an obstacle to be removed. There was no other 3rd option. Kinda like the current writers, you either think what they wrote is the best thing ever and agree a hundred percent or you hate it because you’re a bad person and need to be cancelled
@@DanCoder-h2u You realize that George Lucas based the original Empire and rebels on the US and the Vietcong, right? I ain't never sidin' with no commies.
RJ, you made a good few mistakes on the Star Wars part. The duel takes place in the second movie, Empire Strikes Back, not the first. The "Search your feelings" line is in regard to Vader being Luke's father, and Luke's despair after it is testament that he's speaking the truth. The exchange is also very well-written because it gets recontextualized in the final film where we discover Vader is all but a prisoner to Palpatine, trapped in a cybernetic body and forced to obey a man he hates. "There is no other choice" becomes a declaration not of Vader's certainty that Luke will fall, but a nihilistic belief that there's no option BUT to fall, just like Vader did. And Luke very nearly does fall, drawing on his anger and hatred to defeat Vader. But he catches himself and is willing to die before he truly gives in. It's that moment, where Anakin Skywalker sees that his son resisted where he had fallen, that there is in fact another choice rather than to fall, that he redeems himself and dies for his son.
The Emperor represents the darkness that has ensnared Vader. The only way for Vader to overcome him is for Luke to fall and join forces with him. Luke falling also validates Vader's own decisions that to lead to his own downfall. That Vader is right and Luke will serve as proof. There is a great deal to unpack from the throne room scenes in RotJ. Like Luke isn't actually betting everything on Vader's redemption to save the day. He is not so naive. And Vader performs acts that could be interpreted as good or bad.
He doesn't jump off an antenna. He jumps into a hole and tries to break his fall the whole way down, then manages to grab on to an antenna. He does let go, because the ship is below him. (Not to die rather than to give in to Vader.)
Yes, "death" is the choice that Luke makes. To rather die than join the dark side. To add to what you say, I think archetypal villains in stories are often most afraid of their own death. Whether because of fear of judgement in the afterlife, or because it represents an ultimate release or loss of power and control. I think Darth Vader was brainwashed by the Sith into believing that "true power" could conquer death and provide everlasting life. Luke's decision to rather die than fall into that trap, like Vader did, showed his greater courage and strength of belief, and also a simple and direct proof that the dark side was not all-powerful. Especially after Luke survives, it becomes more and more evident to Darth Vader that perhaps "destiny" and "hope" etc. were not the weaknesses he thought them to be, but the hallmarks of a greater power, and also where he fell on his own path. All of which, finally leads to his realisation, like you say, that he is merely a trapped slave. And so, in his moment of redemption, he likewise chooses death.
Expressing emotions are the issue. Heroic figures like Luke do have those dark emotions that Vader leveraged, which is what made Vader's offer so tempting. The hero acknowledges the darkness within themselves (Yoda's cave allegory), but saying "no", is what makes them heroic.
At the end of the day, these people simply want to validate their own bitterness and justify how they lash out at others either metaphorically or literally depending on the type of fiction they're working on. A prime example of this would be Netflix She-Ra and the way Catra was portrayed in it. Catra is constantly shown to be physically and emotionally abused as a child and still emotionally abused as a teenager by her higher-ups. This is then used as a justification for her to emotionally abuse her subordinates and commit several atrocities across Eternia; she's suffered, so she should be allowed to lash out because of her suffering. By the end of the series, she's redeemed via her confessing her love to Adora and admitting that all she had done until then was her acting up because she thought Adora had abandoned her for the heroes. N.D. Stevenson (formerly Noelle Stevenson) had released a memoir prior about how he (formerly she) had gone through a lot of rough patches with his family for partaking in the queer lifestyle and how he had taken their money for art school but never made peace with them in spite of their financial aid. He then went through several polygamous relationships where he was second fiddle to whoever was the new person brought into the relationship. He didn't seek therapy until he eventually met his now wife, Molly Knoxenburg, before eventually working on She-Ra. He admits in an interview that Glimmer and Catra were both heavily based on his own upbringing and past experiences. So it's no surprise that Glimmer has a needless love-hate relationship with her mother, whom she belittles at every opportunity while still expecting her mother to make real decisions for her. It's also no surprise that Catra must always have her villainy justified at every point and fans of this particular show will bend over backwards to justify it. They themselves have extremely bottled up angst with no healthy outlets and also seek emotional validation. These people chose to be bitter and evil but they don't want to be called as such. They want to be allowed to go on a long destructive tantrum and not be held responsible for what happens because of it. That's why they identify with villains and the freedom they perceive as being unique to the villains.
As a young girl i looked up to Wonder Woman and Adora/She-Ra as the ideal feminine hero: beautiful, dignified, warm, caring, virtuous, and powerful in a uniquely feminine way. I'm glad I was able to share my love for those two iconic figures when my daughter was young back in the 2000s. It breaks my heart how SheRa's legacy especially, was contorted into a narcissistic anti-female mess.
@@minakat369 it's great that people like you are still here to preserve those legacies. If they're not preserved, the pop culture of the era will completely erase those memories.
It's the destruction of all old IPs. The new "hero" is self-centered, amoral and will always find a way to thinks of himself being morally superior to others, no matter the evil they do. I would say bad guys were a reflexion of the good guys but they made a choice that made them vilains, they were not tricked, they choosed to be evil and they accepted their choice, they didn't tried to be morally superior. They admitted their evil ways to achieve their goal. Today, the vilains of the 80's are the good guys but in a more wicked way. The hero of today will make bad choices and will do evil things but will always justify his actions by saying how he is morally superior to the vilain. Even when the "vilain" is the good guy (as in the last Disney movie Wish). He will hide bad behavior behind concepts such as racism, sexism and so on, trying to be morally right "for the greater good" and in the same time will destroy heroes of the past by showing how he is morally right because "times have changed". The hero of today will not be religious, a majority of time will not fail a single thing in his story and will always be stronger, better than anyone before him. It seems like a fanfic with hundred of millions dollar behind it. It's amasing to see companies bankrupting themselves for this kind of "heroes", which just show how society wants to become: self centered and amoral.
There must always be an emotional/ logical balance in storytelling. Without emotion the story has no heart. Without logic the story doesn’t make sense.
No kidding. We used to love characters like Spider-Man and care about who they are because of the emotion in the stories. Not because of the logical progression of events. Although some of Spider-Man's worst stories happen because of looking at the logical progression of events and saying "fuck it"
As opposed to ancient stories where the hero was as petty as modern villains? For example, in Investiture of the Gods, King Wen, the hero of the story, was salty that his prediction of another character's death, who he ordered an execution for, was wrong. That reminded me of Fallout New Vegas's Caesar being salty about failing to execute Joshua Graham.
Yes!!! You have no idea how thrilling it is to finally find someone who GETS IT! This world needs people who understand the CLEAR distinction between good and evil! In fact, it's the evil people in this world who want us to believe that there is no good or evil. If they can mentally destroy us before we have a chance to THINK for ourselves, then they've already won! That's why my son wants to be a writer and he's writing his first book. He once told me: "It's EMPOWERING to know what the truth is and to fight evil to defend that truth! That's what makes a hero." God bless you, RJ, and all people like you!
I think the difference between a lot of new and old villains is that people nowadays are taking the phrase "the villain believes they are the hero in their own story" TOO literally and on the nose. I think the most compelling villains are the ones who follow this template but not in this weird relativistic sense writers are doing nowadays. Not all villains come from horrible, distorted situations that molded them into a villain. Some have completely different drivers that are simply character flaws/character-driven and how they choose to interact with the world is unheroic or transgressive. You don't see as many written like this nowadays, just like you don't see purely evil or amoral ones. The odd part about how villains are portrayed nowadays is that they all seem to be the type that are too self-aware of the level of victimizations that happened to them that led them to be a villain (not as part of their character but as almost a meta awareness), and thus they NEGATE the actual idea of the villain "thinking they are the hero" because if you are aware of *how you were victimized to becoming a villain, you are admitting you ARE the villain and do not think you are the hero* while also ASKING overtly for sympathy. Can you imagine how strange Anakin's downfall would have been if he was like, "I chose to become a villain and go to the dark side because I wanted to save my wife and child and I was traumatically separated from my mother?!". We all know that's part o& the backstory but in the context of storytelling, could anyone look at Vader seriously if he said this or acted overtly that way as a signal to the audience? If we as the audience instead watch a character making choices in alignment with character traits and flaws specific to the character when confronted with obstacles, the results of those choices will set the character on an organic path towards an heroic or downfall arc. I feel like we as the audience shouldn't be told (sometimes BY the villain or the writer) WHAT is happening. There are some villains that are made via circumstance and not having agency. That is a subtype of villain that seems to evoke more horror and tragedy because the world does contain instances of this occurring. But I feel like these types are overrepresented now. If a villain asks for too much sympathy or understanding, it takes the menace and fear and antagonism out of the villain. A well-written sympathetic villain should not be ASKING the audience for sympathy. The sympathy should arise naturally from the audience's reaction.
There's also the fact that villains with sympathetic stories act like they're not responsible for all the terrible things they do. While there may be some events truly outside their control, most of the terrible things they do are in answer to their pasts. They made the decision to do those things. Sure, we think of Anakin as tragic because we know his backstory. But in universe, nobody is going to sympathise with him if they learnt it. Because he still wiped out the Jedi, helped the Empire take over, acted as an enforcer for the Empire's tyranny, and slaughtered countless innocents just because. And Palpatine didn't force him to do all that. He just did it anyway.
Its kind of like when people complain that the love interest isnt a fully developed character when the story isnt about them. There are different types of stories that need different things a basic moral story needs a villain that lacks the virtue it is about and a hero that is good while a more detailed examination of morality needs the hero and villain to be similar
I think they are trying, VERY unconvincingly, to write out stories that contain the Truth that there is goodness in all, which could come across as quite wholesome and decent, if they weren't all sold on big dumb sociological mantras.
The villain seeing no difference after they murder orphans shows they are a self centered sociopath because they dont care who they hurt. Thus they see helping themself as equal to the hero saving people
You’re mixing up two different heroes there. Diomedes fought Ares. Ajax was driven mad because he was intent on murdering murdering his comrades for some perceived slight and Athena couldn’t let that happen. Odysseus had to be around to Star in the sequel. (Not to be nitpicky, mind you. Greek mythology is just an interest of mine). 😅
My favorite reason was that Odysseus received the armor of Achilles because the prisoners of Troy got to choose who received it and Odysseus killed way fewer of them. Tbf, none of them were because of a "perceived" slight but a massive slight based on how the spoils of war were divided.
If you love the truth and knowledge then you love also being corrected when you say something wrong. But yes you are correct Diomedes has wounded Ares. And he is one of two ancient greek mythological heroes to fight and wound the gods, the other is Heracles. But this is due to the fact that he had the armor and shield of his father (there is also something about his sword) and he was the favorite and had the blessing of Athena.
@@magicmoonmonke look I don't need the backstory of Mr Austrian mustache man. But I do need to know what evil shit he did so we can go merc his ass. Same thing with my fiction. I don't need to have sympathy with Hans Gruber. I don't want to sit there and empathize with the murdering psycho. (Well maybe if momma Gruber hugged him one more time. No, I don't care.) At a certain point in the movie what I need to know is how is John Maclane gonna merc Gruber. What you call complex I consider dumb.
I've often thought that SW 1-6 should be considered the Tragedy and Redemption of Anikin rather than the rise of Luke. And this coming from a person that seen it all since the jump.
This is something I've noticed looking back at movies going back more than fifty years, the conversation between Indiana Jones and Belloq being just one example. Belloq gets to monologue about how relative their roles of good and evil are... but Indy never actually counterargues him. He never explains to the audience WHY Belloq is actually wrong. This is the common thread in all modern heroes, they can never actually explain WHY what they are doing is right and the villain is wrong. This is partly because the filmmakers, authors, storytellers have all taken it for granted that the audience doesn't have to have it explained. The Hero of the story is the hero of the story and what being a "hero" stands for, needs no further explanation. Partly this is because storytellers listened to the pretentious snobs who claimed their stories lacked "depth" & "nuance," which almost always translates to "not enough moral relativity," this particular complaint being: "You cannot have your hero spout moral platitudes to the audience." Why? Just like RJ is saying, because you are imposing morality on the audience and that might hurt their feelings. Now as proven by their actions, they don't care about how much the villains bloviate their "immoral" platitudes, only the traditional morals of the heroes. And it has come around full circle, because now their comics are nothing but their so-called "heroes" preaching sermons that go on and on for pages espousing their obeyance to the new morality, which they believe they can get away with because; "The hero of the story is the hero of the story" and so the audience will agree with whatever the hero says is just and good. Then they are shocked when the audience tells them, they are not writing heroes, they are writing villains. Now some will recoil in horror at the idea that any modern hero should actually stand up and say, without a hint of irony, that they stand for "Truth, Justice and the American Way," or any similar moral sentiment but once again, the market shows the opposite. Japanese media has no such qualms the way Western media does, they will have their Heroes actually argue with the villains for pages and pages telling them they are wrong. Now the problem is that their arguments are generally childishly simplistic "Power of Friendship" fluff... but at least it's something. It is a moral position being held with conviction. Which is more than can be said for many modern "heroes." So a piece of advice for creators out there: No, you shouldn't preach to your audience but don't be afraid to have your hero tell the villain why he's wrong, and really be able to explain it. You might find that to be more popular than you expect.
I just suddenly remembered Shepard lecturing Saren and the Illusive Man on those same things, ultimately resulting in both of them shooting themselves. Amazing writing from the tail end of the Before Times.
I think that the monologue from Belloq at the beginning is also supposed to be symbolic of Indy's growth in that story: at the beginning, while arguably benevolent, he's doing a lot of things that are questionable and has many skeevy friends. It's in the quest to secure an icon of true religious significance, and protect it from being used by forces of evil, that Indiana Jones becomes the genuine hero that could have argued with Belloq.
What exactly is preaching though? When it comes to quality storytelling and dialogue, I have no taste. I was ready to call the story of God of War: Ragnorok nearly perfect until The Gammelier explained his problems with it.
@@Deathclaw-lh5tl "What is preaching?" Well... I'm not sure myself. It requires a definite balance. A steady hand within the craft. Or maybe it's the simple difference of SHOWING your audience your point instead of TELLING them your point. Like I said, I'm not sure.
Your talking about the choice between good and evil being just that (a choice) and that villains often think that their evil nature is predetermined was very insightful. I was reminded of another example, that being The Killing Joke. The Joker implies that it was a traumatic experience that made him what he is and he intuits (correctly) that it was a traumatic experience that made Batman what he is. The whole idea of the story is that he is trying to create a circumstance to prove his point (All it takes is one bad day...) But what's most telling for me is that the Joker cannot understand why Batman is not like him (Why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?).
Hey! Thanks for using the word "vicious" in its proper definition! That is, now just "mean and cruel" but "towards vice/opposite of virtuous"! I've been trying to do that for a couple of years, now. 😊
"Death" is the choice that Luke makes. To rather die than join the dark side. There is an element of "sacrifice" (to save the universe from an evil version of himself) though I think it has more to do with the symbolic willingness to "let go", of hatred and also to the (selfish) possession of life. Archetypal villains are often most afraid of their own death. Whether by fear of spiritual judgement, or more likely because it represents the ultimate loss or release of power. The Sith brainwashed Darth Vader into believing that the dark side was all-powerful and could conquer even death. Seeing Luke's courage and willingness to embrace death, however, and, in the face of it, to defy the temptation that lured Vader to the dark side, was the first step in showing that he, and the Sith, were perhaps wrong. When Luke survives, and continues to fight and resist, Vader's doubts are compounded to the point where he finally realises that even he, after all he had done, still had a choice. And so, in his moment of redemption, he too chooses death and to let go, for his son and for the greater good.
Villians are 'heroes' of the modern stories, only because they are written by villians, filled with narcissism, unable to write about anything other than themselves
Hero vs Villian; selflessness vs selfishness; order vs chaos; discipline vs indiscipline; reality vs fantasy; truth vs lies; morality vs hedonism; stoicism vs emotionalism; logic vs madness. The definition of foolishness (or insanity) is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Villians of the past did the same thing over and over again and were thwarted by the heroes or the results of their actions. "Heroes" of these days are no different from the villians of yesteryear in that they do things out of emotion and not out of logic. They are basically the "heroes" of DC's Kingdom Come who were as much a menace as the villians.
For today's writers, they mostly sympathize with villains because their behavior is akin to it. So they have to justify their own behavior through the villain. However their feeling is they are the epitome of all that is 'good, just, and pure' which is why the hero is depicted as perfect and it's the world that is wrong.
You hit the nail right on the head. Instead of accepting responsibility and realizing they are evil, and good exists, they keep their false reality alive by inverting everything. Claiming good is bad and bad is good and weaving blindfolds of explanations as to why.
"Everyone is the hero of their own story" is true, but some people are just evil as heck and they try to justify and deny by calling their evil "heroic". They twist themselves into believing that there is no objective truth, therefore they can do literally anything as long as it advances their goals. Because they're the hero, and that means they are good.
Villains will do any thing to Get a Benefit for themseleves,at the Cost of Others,sacificing Others to get what they Want,Heroes Sacrifice Themselves.Do the Right thing that will cost them.
What I find ironic is that in the new Ashoka, they made Thrawn a one-sided villain type - when they had a great chance to actually make a villain look like a good guy. Thrawn, after all, was not evil, and his motivation to take the side of the Empire was essentially to save the galaxy from greater terrors. Interesting villains like Thrawn are nothing but a positive in all stories, in my opinion. What an opportunity wasted - as always from Disney these days.
Thrawn was still evil. When you are working for the Empire particularly after Alderaan, there is no other way to put it. Or should I mention he was inspired by Erwin Rommel who participated in the Holocaust. In other words, he was evil.
The concept is somewhat difficult to express. Some were worried that having property listed as a right would be interpreted as a positive right to property (as in others would be obligated to provide property).
Behold, the grand army of the Nietzschean glorifiers of suffering who consider themselves too edgy to acknowledge that well-being is good by definition. (Since pleasure and suffering are the only experiences that have inherent value to those who experience it.) I’d be interested in seeing how long they’d actually last in a society that forsakes all of the modern comforts they’re currently enjoying as they’re typing these comments on the internet. Of course, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. It’s usually the critics of well-being as a very concept that secretly fantasise about the collapse of society, so that harsh reality can “toughen us all up again”. Here’s a thought: If “hard times create strong men” etc., what’s the point of creating more strong men if the good times they create will inevitably create new weak man, and therefore new hard times? If the only justification you have for actively promoting hard times are the good times that follow them, how is this logic not rendered void by the simultaneous acknowledgement that things will always eventually come back around to sucking? There’s nothing noble about a perpetual cycle; it’s an inherently grim notion. It’s impossible to glorify, which is why the endorsers of suffering need to perform so many mental backflips. The noble notion is a view of human history as a continuous upwards slope.
You can say the same for characters like Miles Quaritch. Someone who the pompous writers imagined as a villain, but is viewed as a hero by everyone else. On the other side, someone like Palpatine, who is evil and enjoys it, is also great. Because it invokes something primal in all of us : defeating the enemy. Not any of this "oh, he's just misunderstood" nonsense. People like it simple. Overcomplicating stories doesn't make you look smart, it makes you look pretentious
Miles Quaritch is a hero antagonist written as a real life villain's idea of villainy. The Unobtanium was vital to humanity's survival and completely superfluous to Pandoran life in the original script. Any patchwork attempts to change that to "lmao corporate greed" were very patchwork and last minute and it SHOWS.
@@jonathonfrazier6622 Compelling can still be a thing with mustache twirling villains. To say that it doesn't is not true at all. Look at serial killers like Ted Bundy. He is what some people would describe as compelling despite not having any sympathetic aspects to him at all. Look at Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker. He could be seen by some as a "cartoonishly evil" villain. And yet, his story was still very fascinating. So no, not every villain has to be a "misunderstood anti-hero". Some people are just unapologetically criminally insane and unrepentantly demonically evil. Even in real life.
@@incubustimelord5947 I do not find Ted Bundy as compelling. Only twisted and disturbing. The other guy, I have never heard of so I have no opinion on the matter. I am not against some villains being uncomplicatedly evil. Palpatine does it well. But villainous characters having interesting reasons go much further back. Tolkien for example. Sauron and Morgoth both have very interesting reasons for doing what they do. It goes further back to the middle ages, just read Milton's Paradise Lost. This is no new trend. Unless there is more going on than I know about. I dont watch much modern media. I find it uncompelling and often morally bankrupt. As Jordan Peterson has said, a villain must be compelling or he isnt a good villain. Also I think part of whats happening here is that people want to view the villain as something else, other than ourself. Because we don't want to accept that side of our nature, our Shadow. But the unsavory truth is that villains and evil people are not something else. They are us. If you look closely at a lot of evil people you realize they are just normal people like you or me. Some people cant cope with that. A good book illustrating that point is called " Ordinary Men".
There is a greek word that perfectly illustrates the mentality of today's writers "moirolatria" - worship of fate. A prominent villain that shows this concept at its worst is Harvey Dent and his coin toss for every decision he makes. It's never "his choice" to do anything, its fate that decided that for him through the coin. Its the ultimate way to lie to yourself and avoid accountability, at least in your own mind, for what you do.
Its also been changed to this cause many of those now in control of the stories where painted as the villian or as wrong or as immoral. So instead of setting about to change their ways they have instead changed stories to get people to sympathize with the villian. So that when they inevitably do do somthing wrong or immoral well "Its cause of their circumstances they arnt really a bad person". Because Villians where always maligned and spoken bad about they saw themselves as allies to the villian, being maligned and spoken bad about. So they try and make others understand why the villian has done what they did in a effort to make people do the same with them. Problem is certain things are never right no matter the situation, and a LOT of people understand this.
I always felt the story of Luke Skywalker is the story of the successful journey of the hero and Darth Vader/Anakin was the story of the journey of the hero who fails the journey, that is why Vader can be redeemed.
Vader is both the main character and hero of Star Wars. By comparison, Luke is just a side character. Its a literary phenomena called " hidden protagonist". Sam in the LOTR is likewise the hidden main character and hero of the story. Not Frodo.
Its just the reality of the world we live in today. Politically, economically, and even socially, we have become so completely bankrupt. So corrupt. That its painfully obvious to anyone who bothers to pay attention. Our "heroes" aren't being "heroic" anymore. Now only the villains feel "genuine" anymore. Feel "authentic." So why not let them be what they are? "Heroes" fighting a reality we have let ourselves be trapped in.
So, this might be the wrong place to say this, but I want to point out that Manga writers have been doing this correctly for years. They have the ability to write villains where you can see why they might have made the decisions they did. However, it is never considered the correct choice and the MC will always point out their terrible decisions. In these stories you can understand the villain, but you never condone the villain.
There is a very obvious reason why former villains are being portrayed as heroes, and former heroes portrayed as villains. There are two mindsets in humanity and the body politic: hedonism and morality. Morality is the position of those who value truth, who value doing the right thing, and for people who will suffer and sacrifice in order to do the right thing. But this is completely flipped for the hedonist, who seeks pleasure and avoids pain and sacrifice. Normally, the hero is moral and the villain is a hedonist. But in socialism, the core philosophy is that morality is stupid, and hedonism is the only wise and logical way to live. So as society becomes more socialist, it flips from extolling morality to extolling hedonism.
You should give an example of one of these heroes you believe are being portrayed as villains for visa versa. I see very few examples in the comments. I have to disagree with your statement about hedonism and morality. Morality and hedonism are not really on the same spectrum. Asceticism is traditionally considered the opposing idea to hedonism and neither are synonymous with morality or immorality. A villain can be a hedonist, ascetic, or neither. The problem is that it is not always so clear what is moral or immoral. Take Thanos from the marvel cinematic universe as an example. He is clearly not a hedonist. He has a goal to wipe out half of all living things for the good of the universe. He is sacrificing and suffering as you put it to do what he considers virtuous. He completes the goal and then retires to live what is basically an ascetic life. This is a representation of the utilitarian morality. The ends justify the means. In fact all of the marvel characters represent different moral schools of thought. Captain America essentially represents deotology, Thor represents virtue ethics, and Iron Man also represents utilitarian ethics.
@@oswinhull4203 Interesting that you should mention Utilitarianism. If you are speaking of the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, that is based on hedonism. It's used as the excuse for everything socialism does to people. So it sounds like you don't understand my argument because you are a hedonist, and you don't understand morality, thinking it is something it is not. Asceticism is not morality. It is only an opposite of hedonism as far as desire and self denial of desire goes. An ascetic could be good or evil, there's no moral relation to asceticism. Bentham is exactly the kind of classical villain - one of the four horsemen of the modern left - that the left is elevating to hero status. As is Thanos, in the MCU version. It's Orwellian. It is not moral. Iron Man is the moral example. You can go argue with yourself, I'm not interested.
@@SG-js2qn I'm definitely not a hedonist. Utilitarianism isn't based on hedonism. They are completely different concepts. Hedonism states that the individual should pursue that which is pleasurable to them. Utilitarianism states that what is moral is what provides the most utility to the largest number of people. If you consider Iron Man to be a moral example then you are following the utilitarian school of thought.
@@oswinhull4203 By your own defintion. Utilitarianism is redefining what "moral" is. Moral used to be based on a standard. Utilitarianism says it's not. It's whatever provides the most utility to the largest number of people. But the Real, original definition of morality is not that or else they wouldn't have to redefine what it is. According to Utilitarianism if burning someone alive on TV gave enough watchers enough benefit it would be moral to do so. Maybe you believe that. But most morality systems consider murder for any reason immoral. Sometimes there are narrow limits, such as self-defense, but Utilitarianism is not morality. It's a philosophy as immoral as Marxism or Satanism. Is not the only rule in Satanism "do what thou will?" Wicca at least tries to amend it by adding "as long as you harm none." But Utilitarianism only wants there to be more good than harm.
Having no choice in how your life goes is literally what happens to people in Aionios during the events of the game Xenoblade Chronicles 3. The heroes want to restore choice and overthrow the being who seeks to keep things the way they are.
Some people really think that villains can't be villains anymore, just because a villain is not evil for the sake of being evil. Thanos and Silco from Arcane were heroes in their own eyes (the latter being sympathetic a little more and having a tragic backstory). But does that mean that the writers were trying to push some agenda to get the audience to agree that what they were doing was right? Not every villain needs to be a Jack Horner.
I think it's true that part of the issue of the current state of heroism is philosophical, having to do with moral relativism and obsession with identity to the exclusion of free will and personal responsibility... but I think that part of it is just a cyclical shift in tastes of storytelling, both for the storytellers and the audience. If we go back about fifty years to the mid-Seventies, we were in a position similar to today: society had become pessimistic and suspicious of traditional heroes, and the popular movie landscape was dominated by anti-heroes and outright villains... crooked cops, loner detectives, burnout boxers and cabbies, petty criminals and outright gangsters. But gradually the public tired of this gloom and optimism was reborn in movies like (not accidentally) Star Wars, along with traditional heroism, but in the culture at large and not just in storytelling. If we go back about 50 years even earlier, movies were still in their infancy... but amid the gloom of the Depression movies (when they weren't musical spectacle) were dominated by gangsters and hard-boiled detectives. Which were replaced by the heroic war movies and the Westerns of the post-war period. Optimism returned to both the culture at large and to storytelling. I don't know how long it will take for the pendulum to swing back the other way, but when things get bleak, people tire of pessimism and yearn for the traditional heroic tales.
Why are you considering the idea of complex villains pessimistic? Isn't the idea that even villains are redeemable or somehow a product of circumstance optimistic? If anything I would think that the idea of some people just being evil by nature or for no good reason pessimistic.
@@oswinhull4203 There's nothing wrong with complex, interesting villains; I personally prefer it. But there's an important difference between a villain who believes that he's morally the same the hero, and a _writer_ who believes that the villain is morally the same as the hero.
@@ariochiv I don't really like overt moralising by an author or obviously political messaging. Also known as allegory. But I don't really care about the views of the author per se. I have enjoyed stories written by writers with radically different political or religious views. I think they can either avoid making overt declarations about their views or better yet be knowledgeable and portray contentious ideas honestly.
So many good thoughts to think about. A good story needs to be coherent, meaning it can’t be arbitrary, contradictory, or out of character, but these put limits on writers and the individuals writing for major corporations these days don’t seem to appreciate these limitations. Second, villains can be understandable (part of keeping in character, what would this character do and why would they do it) but ultimately they are not justified, because even though why they chose evil over good they still chose and should have chosen better. Third, the hero can have flaws and villains can have endearing traits but the hero will either overcome their flaws or at least not let their flaws prevent them from making the heroic sacrifice while villains will overshadow their empathetic points with their evil actions. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell who is a hero or villain until the moment of crisis. Have a blessed day.
It's complicated. "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter." Often a villain is someone who thinks they're acting heroically, but hasn't considered or doesn't realize the negative implications of their actions. Which can often be said of heroes... so then the difference between heroes and villains sometimes amounts to a difference of worldview. But other times it's more dispositional: villains in stories are often those who pursue their interests in a manner that is excessive or disregards the interests of others. The same character, pursuing the same ends, but more restrained in the means they pursue, would be a hero. Here the distinction between hero and villain is the degree to which they acknowledge the needs of others as legitimate, or even as existing. Lucifer in Paradise Lost is the paradigmatic villain you want to root for, whose cause often seems more "righteous" than God's. This could be seen as being about the establishment (represented by God) versus insurgents who are losing in the status quo... but often don't appreciate why things are as they are, or what makes the powers that be so powerful.
It isn't. We can see the difference in Israel v. Hamas. Israel targets military leaders. Hamas targets women and children. A terrorist is never a freedom fighter because freedom fighters fight tyrants while terrorists kill civilians.
I think your handling of this topic is absolutely amazing. I watch all of your programs. It helps me understand what is going on in media right now from a different perspective and also helps me ground my own writing. Thank you very much for doing this!
In short, a villain is the person who looks into the abyss and blinks. The hero is the one who looks into the abyss and waits for it to blink. There is always a choice. You may not like the consequences of that choice but the choice always exists. It’s the failing of the Saw franchise. When Saw says “I want to play a game” the victim can simply end himself before the parameters of the game are even spoken.
Ideal Hero, Hero, Antihero, Pragmatic Hero - if you go any further towards villainy, they become unredeemable. Redeeming a pragmatic hero is hardest because they’ve done the worst things (for the greater good). I think the current trend is more about trying to defend/justify the “modern” sentiment that the end justifies the means if you believe you are in the right - which is of course what all tyrants think/say/do.
Most all modern philosophies tend to end up in this dialectical relativism & eventually lead to nihilism. Mostly b/c they are all building off the same set of flawed presuppositions.
All your favorited supergheyros look like villains to me, also they are so ugly and they are not modern at all, some of them have a history that goes back at least a hundred years ago, how do you explain that soyboy
Feminist: "It is sexist to assume that we women talk just to hear ourselves talking." Reasonable people: "All right, I'm listening, but can you explain the purpose of what you're talking about?" Feminist: "I am talking just to hear myself talk; that is how women are, and for you to expect otherwise is sexist." (To be perfectly fair, there are a LOT of men who also talk just to hear themselves, too; while they may be making a point, the point they're making is just a means to that end. Same self-absorption, different approach.)
You can have heroes within a sick and evil system, and they will play out their heroic archetype on behalf of the evil system, whether it is a political regime, religion, or other society. In that scenario, which occurs in real life, the villain and hero are indeed in opposite places.
If you conclude an omnipotent god would be a tyrant, then Lucifer becomes the rebellious hero of that story. If God is the Emperor, then Lucifer becomes Luke. Religious conservatives, especially of the Abrahamic variety, would however like to get to define good and evil a-priori. Where anything God does is considered “good”. Much like Nixon’s “if the president does it, that means it’s not illegal”. And conversely, where anything good somebody does of their own will is credited to God. Rebellion against that supposed divine order - as practised by Lucifer - is then framed as evil by definition. The divine order is framed as without alternative. Ironically, this is the same justification that The Fourth Age accuses the villains of in this video: “There’s no choice but to do this because of the circumstances”, rather than “There’s always a choice (even if that choice leads e.g. to your own death).” Undoubtedly, the Empire’s propaganda would try and frame someone like Luke as Lucifer.
@@cosmicprison9819 The most successful parasites are the ones that can influence the host in such a way that it will defend it at its own expense. All regimes of control that humanity is now familiar with are parasitic, whether they are political or religious.
When the villains a starting to be portrayed in media to be sympathetic and heroic just misunderstood I believe that the ones making the media are the villains
I think you can basically sum up these people’s intent as basically just being a desire to run away from the consequences of giving into shortsighted desires.
So basically our heroes suck and our villains are less interesting because a bunch of writers are basically social determinist who do not believe in personal responsibility or free will ..... Yeah I can see that
14:00 - "It's the circumstances of my life that have led me to this point." The term for that is *Locus of Control* (LOC), and it has two flavors: internal and external. The internal LOC says "I did X because I wanted to" while the external says "I did X because I was compelled to by outside forces." Many of the 1970s crime movies (Dirty Harry, Death Wish, etc.) addressed this with the villain escaping justice by the various courts declaring "society is to blame", then putting dangerous killers back on the streets. This, even though the villain would directly state that he enjoyed both the act and his immunity. The hero's internal LOC then directed him to put holes in the villain in various creative ways. And not to put too fine a point on it, this is a cultural norm in modern America--to blame others for one's actions. It's grown considerably in the last couple of decades thanks to the greater number of _female_ writers and producers injecting their politics and ideology into media. The recent rash of Disney movies about a famous villainess--Cruella, Maleficent, etc.--being recast as a victim of circumstance is in line with external LOC as a guiding principle. Read enough feminist writing (unavoidable in college these days) and one sees the patterns: men do X because of anger, greed, lust, etc., but women do X because they had no other choice. Even women in positions of authority will find reasons to blame a man--be he ten years ago or ten-thousand miles away--when called on their misconduct.
You always have a choice, you can't help the cards you are dealt no one can, but you can chose how you use those cards. You still make a choice, don't make an excuse. Belok had his cards, he played them how he chose and he became a villain despite what he says to the contrary.
You aren't the only one who's noticed this trend. There are a few UA-camrs who have pointed out that various different ethnic, political, and sexual orientation groups have been identifying more with villains than heroes. There has been a trend in modern media to put villains as "misunderstood heroes" or to simply make the traditional heroes a hypocritical contradiction of themselves to make the villain seem like some "necessary evil" to fix society or "make things right." In other words, it's pandering to people who feel like they don't need to be cooperative or apologetic for their bad life choices, character flaws, or disdain for society. Sadly, it makes modern stories SO BORING and predictable! Every time a new show comes out now it, more than half the time its a group of seemingly lovely heroes who turn out to be scum bags, and one of them goes off to discover that the villain they're fighting is actually the good guy and blah, blah, blah. That, or its a story told from a villains point of view, and from his view all the heroes are villains, and the writer uses this logic to justify the terrible things the villain does. This is literally why I stopped reading comics and watching super hero movies years ago. Every time I try now the villain is too damn relatable to be an practical villain.
I read that and immediately thought "Carmilla". The predator based on a real lesbian serial killer and who is literally repelled by Christ is a maltreated hero antagonist because sapphic or something.
Exactly, it's the same too with Anime and Manga! Just look at how companies like Type-Moon are over saturating their franchises and the mediums with all this crap! Seriously, this is why we need more independent creators!
Everyone has a point of view, no one is "evil", you show respect and understanding to the person about to kill your friends and family 😆 - Society to Gen Z beta male-she-her-they-its
RJ, I haven't finished the video yet, but I find it interesting the contrast between redemption for an old story like the original Star Wars, and redemption for a new story like Steven Universe or New She-Ra. Which is to say, I would love a video analyzing, from your perspective, how the very idea and context of redemption has changed. Not that I totally agree with your perspective on things; frankly, you lean too much on philosophy, which as a construct is often marred by assumption and individual interpretation. For example, you talk a lot about the Christian perspective but can make statements that disagree with such. But nonetheless, I often learn something from your talks, and would love to see what you'd say about such a topic.
@@NeinBreaker It was a supposed to be a joke. The fact is, we see yoda lift his entire vehicle out of the swamp just before the whole cloud city thing. There was a whole training montage where luke was lifting things.
I'd probably disagree here, mainly because of MHA which both follows the hero and villain binary and utterly breaks it at the same time by recognizing that the titles don't matter in comparison to the characters behind them. Someone like Endeavour for instance would never even be considered a character so much as a platform for the writer to project their hatred of the masculine, yet MHA gave him several full arcs that not only explored his humanity but even explained (or at least strongly inferred, this is all character motivations and whatnot so I don't want to say it was explicitly stated but, well, it's kinda the only way to interpret what's shown) why he did the actions that he did. Further, by the halfway(? don't recall exactly) point of season 6 we're seeing villains getting backstabbed by heros who were working undercover and betrayed them, literally breaking down in tears for failing their friends who helped them and kept trusting them because they were too trusting themselves. These aren't pulled out of the writers ass either, these are traits that are developed through the entire series and clearly expressed repeatedly. Hell, when push comes to shove a lot of the heros literally do just quit, they had enough and at the end of the day it's not worth it to them anymore. Yet, in spite of that, the entire point of the entire series *_is_* still that ideal of heroism and virtue, the conclusion is simply that it's not a completely black and white distinction with a static and objective right or wrong in any given situation for any given person. Killing someone is bad, buuuuut what if they attacked you and it's self defense? What if they weren't intentionally harming anyone but their actions were still leading to people's deaths? What of any number of countless other confounding factors that can make even something as clearly black and white evil as killing someone, not? The issue isn't that people are questioning moral binaries, it's that they're *_refusing_* to question them and are instead blindly asserting that they are correct. There is no self reflection, there is no desire to write meaningful characters, there is only "I am correct, let me write about just how right I am". Civil War for instance *_did_* raise meaningful and complicated question; Cap is recruiting people off his character alone out of an idealistic push against any and all control or compromise that ultimately ends with the Avengers shattered, him on the run, and his allies (again, many of whom were only there because 'Captain fucking America just asked for my help, of course I'm in') imprisoned whereas in contrast, while Tony *_is_* still recruiting people like Peter, he's explaining things, taking a more thoughtful approach, etc. Tony doesn't *_want_* to compromise, but he sees it as a necessity and realistically his position is valid. The Avengers literally could not just continue to operate with impunity, they'd become global terrorists if they kept trying. Yet, at the same time, "what if there is somewhere we need to go and they won't let us". I don't think many people actually believe Tony wouldn't help in that situation, but the point is that there is a fundamental difference in that Tony is willing to make some concessions/compromises to keep things going, whereas Cap just isn't willing to sacrifice that completely pure ideal and report to some government agency. Despite everything that happens, neither one is strictly speaking evil, and neither one is strictly speaking heroic. The great irony of course is that someone like John Walker is written to supposedly be evil, yet rivals and potentially even exceeds pre-endgame-finale Steve and Tony in terms of heroism. Why? Because the writers weren't writing a character, they were trying to give their morality and ideals form, and their ideals are shit. Sam hears about a man being tortured for decades and complains no-one knew that the firsst superhero was black. Sam lectures senators about how he doesn't understand a damn thing but is saying they're shit anyway. Sam breaks Walker's fucking arm and steals his property after he just watched his best friend be executed in front of him. *_Walker_* has everything taken from him, is condemned by the entire world, and stripped of all his resources, and *_still_* chooses to make his own shield and save the very people who despise him. That's a test of character that neither Cap nor Tony have had to face, and Walker has killed less than both of them, yet because it was recorded he's the damned one. Again, why? *_because it was never about Walker, it was about whiate man vs black man._* It doesn't matter how virtuous he is, Walker was *_never_* going to be allowed to be Captain America; he wasn't born with the right skin for it. A hero who isn't a moral binary isn't just great when done well, I'd argue it's a borderline necessity. When you're willing to write characters *_as_* characters and not just as moral paragons you can make them do actions that you otherwise wouldn't endorse, adding a degree of seperation between your personal morality and what you actually write. Anyone who tries to write in moral binaries is only going to be able to write their own morality and ideals; if those ideals are shit, the resulting media will be shit. Yes-man escapism isn't a capital offense or anything, but at best it's saying very little aside from "good thing is good" and at worst it's saying "horrible thing is good"; neither of which are actually that meaningful. For instance, there was an attempt to be clever in one of the Jodie seasons of Doctor Who where, instead of killing someone, she just trapped them for eternity in a prison cell, unable to ever die. The Doctor had done things like that before yes, but they were always explicitly morally dubious, she thought it was a clever way to not kill someone that made her virtuous. The writers literally had her condemn someone to torture ad infinitum, and tried to spin it as an act of virtue. Again, all because they just wrote their morality, instead of writing characters. When someone is appealing to very simplistic ideas then it's not all that bad since most people would probably agree, but the second you start to tackle anything even remotely more complicated the issues quickly reveal themselves.
Halfway through the video, I want to comment "heroes recognize objective morality, villains need subjectivity and relativism to justify themselves, and that's why leftists reject objectivity," but I'm pretty sure you're going to get there by the end of the video.
@@oswinhull4203 Taking others property is wrong. Murder is wrong. SA is wrong. Slavery is wrong. It's not hard once you unscrew your head from whatever your sociology professor downloaded into it. Most morals boil down to the fact that on an interpersonal level you don't have the right to impose your will on another for your own benefit.
@@irateastartes1206 If you say murder is an absolute moral wrong that basically means you have to be a radical pacifist. Clearly almost nobody believes that. Society can't even agree on what constitutes murder. Is it murder if someone breaks into your home with the intent to do you harm and you kill them self defense? Is it murder if you shoot someone who is actively killing people? Some people use the word murder to describe war. Considering nobody can say absolutely what murder even is, it is obviously not absolute. Same thing with theft. How do you square that?
there is anti heroes which do the right thing for wrong reasons. villain unlike anti heros can not be persuaded to do good for what ever reason. the anti villain is lawful evil. they have moral code but it flawed that causes to do harm to others. how ever need objective standards in the story for good and evil for heroes and villains to work. for radical feminist are narcissists. for traditional people see them more like villain. So they write how soictiy see them when they write villains. if writer believe that morality is relative then our fountain for our story is flawed. we can blur the lines between hero and villain but not what objective good and evil. If blur the line between good and evil then our story world is where up is down, north is south. simply put with object good or evil villains and heroes do not exist. at least what seem to hinted in this video about heroes and villains.
I would say without any structure, there is no story. Just things happening. You can write using nothing but feeling and instinct, but your instincts are bad if at some point you don't tie your ideas together into a conceivable story.
I wish you had given examples of the modern villains you describe. Also of what is meant by feminine in this sense. The anecdote about the Marvel writers was intriguing, but ultimately pointless because i have no idea what stories those specific writers wrote. As far as i know, they write great stories, and not the trash we all can't stand. The part about Nietzsche and pagan storytelling was fascinating!
If you’re looking for more information on the writers I was talking about, below is the series of videos I did on the Marvel podcast, and they have the link to the original podcast (if it is still active.) ua-cam.com/video/-HFhYwR5H1g/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/7F-455VLAMw/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/oz57S2ZbP0c/v-deo.html
@@RJStheFourthAgeI hope you will make a followup video with lots of examples of the kinds of modern Villain-As-Hero that you describe! 🙂 I think this video does not provide a single one. (Or did I miss it?) Thanks, that was thoughtful of you to assemble those links for me. However, I am hoping I wouldn't have to watch three podcasts to glean the only part that would be relevant to this specific video. The issue is, how do you think they illustrate what you are trying to establish in this video? For instance, they said it's fun to write villain characters. You implied this means they will write Hero Villain characters. But does it? What if we learned that the writer of Indiana Jones said, "My favorite character to write was Belloq, because he was the most fun to write." Would that be possible? Besides, what does the writer's enjoyment have to do with whether they write a proper villain? Do you have to not have fun while writing for your villain to come out properly evil? Anyway, that's just one counterargument to the idea that the Marvel writers interview is illustrative of the Villain As Hero problem that you propose. Thanks for reading.
While I appreciate the Greek origin of the idea of the hero as a paragon of virtue, I think the reason modern writers are villains and their "heroes" are villains is because they have rejected the Christian view of the world, i.e., they have embraced sin rather than vice, if that makes sense. What are the sins listed in the Bible? Sexual sin is the big one, and the one modern leftists cannot tolerate. Calling any kind of sex a sin or sinful is anathema to the left, and YOU are evil if you even suggest such a thing. But the left embraces most of the other sins listed in the Bible, like having other gods (the government, money, the self); taking the Lord's name in vain; covetousness; disrespect for parents and the elderly; etc. It is this rejection of Christianity that drives the left, not the rejection of virtue.
@@denizenbyday Well, it's all part and parcel of the same concept, reject the good and embrace the bad because that's the only way to be sure everyone and everything is equal. If something is _better_ than something else, you have committed the unpardonable sin of _judging,_ which you must never do. But as I have pointed out in the past, judgement is necessary or you couldn't do anything. What are you going to eat? That's judgement. What are you going to wear? That's judgement. Where are you going to go? That's judgement. You naturally and by necessity make a thousand judgements a day, so the idea that judgement is bad is pure folly.
At the bottom of the cliff, or mountain, is the woke entertainment. Halfway up the mountain is the heroic saga and Golden Age stuff, in other words, what these UA-camrs have deemed to be acceptable. REASON WHY FRANCHISES HAVE BEEN BROKEN: Because the franchises have refused to go any higher up the mountain to the top. At the top are tales wherein Wr-Alda (The Oldest One) is included in the cast of characters, just as is found in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, as well as the Mahabharata and many others.
Even heroes shouldn't see themselves as heroes of their own story. Unless that is a character flaw that they need to over come. Seeing your self as always right is a "God Complex". Which if the hero has would make them a paragon of sin. Also I want to point out that what is a sin and a virtue changes over time. Which is why we get anti-hero and start seeing some villians as heroes.
My Superhero graphic novels “The Valiant Heroes” is available @ www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-valiant-heroes#/
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Villain: World did me wrong, so I will lie cheat and steal to get what is owed me.
Hero: World did me wrong, so I will do right to prevent others suffering the same.
I feel a lot of writers these days fall into the first thought pattern, which is why they don't see them as villains.
I suspect you've landed a bull's-eye there.
Your definition of Villans is simply the defintion of Marxism by Marxists themselves.
Facts!
This is why heroes like Spider-Man and Batman resonate so deeply and why current Marvel/DC couldn't write their way out of a wet paper bag
@@hardromeo436THE JOKER:”You’re just one bad day away from becoming like me.” BATMAN:”That’s where you’re wrong.”
When villains are writing the stories, it is only natural that the characters are self inserts.
This is why villains that are just unapologetically evil like Jack Horner are such a breath of fresh air these days...
That was great, one of the better sequels I have seen in a long time.
My fave example of this is MEgatron from the generation 1 Transformers. Basically he knows he is the leader of evil robots and loves his role as a conquerer trying to rule the galaxy,. There is no questioning for why just that from the evil guy's perspective strong people should conquer the weak and so Megatron is destined to be the leader of the cybertronians. Optimus Prime is the counterpoint to this where you can be a freedom fighter and compassionate whilst using strength (power guided by heroic principles) for the benefit of the people. One is selfish (decepticons want military dominance of galaxy and war) and one is sacrificial. (defend freedoms at the expense of your life)
In generation 1 Transformers cartoon, the hero is always seen as the underdog protecting innocent people and the villain is cruel and power hungry. That is basically traditional evil and it lets us focus on the action not on philosophical concepts which kids will get bored of.
The radical left are obsessed with trying to make villains victims of abuse to make us sympahtise with them. It doesn't work because they never show the suffering of the victim the villain caused. The emphasis in their stories is always on the suffering of the villain above the suffering that villain causes to the society.
This is why all these types of stories are predictable. They will try to make an excuse for why evil is ok. The obvious trope is tell a story where the good guys were rude to the bad guy once or they made mistakes so that makes evil ok and therefore good isn't really good it's just a different shade of grey from the bad guy.
Why do left wing think this way? They want to play the victim. Chaos is better than order. If evil people want order it is to control others for selifsh reasons not for the benefit of the entire population. (communists do not like freedom of thought and need a dictator to do all the thinking for them)
Making the bad guy a victim makes kids weak morally so they don't police bad behavior in other or themselves. The left see the good guys as unrealistic since their own parents didn't raise them with any morals. If they make villains victims, they can give excuses for why its ok to break the laws or ignore morals. (villlains are reactionary: they are reacting to evil done to them making it ok for them to ignore moral codes)
Writers that make sympathetic villains generally find the traditional hero as boring - look at all the attempt to make superman more 'relatable'. Since liberals don't live in the country they see a farm boy who is humble (Clark Kent/Superman) a conservative and they can't relate to conservative values. It sickens them. They are the enemy of the liberals so this is why they prefer an evil Superman or an antihero version of superman, not the heroic version who holds traditional values. When you live in cities you think you are smarter than people in the country. So there is also a sense that they know better and that heroes with traditional values are not 'sophisticated' people. (despite liberals having no ability to run business or understand how the economy works because they overspend due to being irresponsible with money)
Exactly, it's the same too with Anime and Manga! Just look at how companies like Type-Moon are over saturating their franchises and the mediums with all this crap!
Seriously, this is why we need more independent creators!
Villains don't need to be unapologetically evil to be good. Look at Silco from Arcane. The viewers understand where he's coming from, but he's still a monster. Him having a tragic story doesn't make them less of a villain.
Yup. No sob story, no bullshitting, just "I want all the magic and to hell with anyone who stands in my way"
And in those days they called Good, Evil and Evil, Good.
*Woe to those who call the Evil, Good and the Good, Evil. Woe to those who call the Darkness, light and the Light, darkness.*
🔅
Absolutely 💯 right
@@JarenLemonAbsolutely 💯 right!
As a wise man once said… “Oh that was easy… and proceeded to prove that black was white, and was killed on the next zebra crossing.”
People don't want to take responsibility for their own actions. They want to play The Victim.
It all reminds me of Joker's most iconic line outside of the Christopher Nolan movies:
"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day."
Except... the whole point of The Killing Joke was to prove that The Joker is wrong and people didn't get it. Commissioner Gordon went through the worst day possible and still stuck to his morals and ideals. But no, modern writers think one bad day is enough justification for cruelty and mass crime.
cruelty and mass crime are a whole lot of work, objectively. Not something someone that just had a bad day would be able to pull off.
The villain is portrayed as good because you have cultural vandal villains writing the stories these days.
Fax! These vandals are getting what they deserve in my series as in my series The Pensuke Files, The main character Pensuke is the villain of the story. You can see the series in my channel!
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! - Isaiah 5:20
I feel like the current villains are written more like anti-heroes with tragic sob stories to make the audience feel sorry for them. In my opinion, the movie Maleficent was the one who make this type of written something "normal" in every type of media.
I don't see an evi villains in a story in ages
It goes back much further than that. I think that "Wicked," the book that tried to cast the Wicked Witch of the West as a misunderstood poor little thing, came out either in the late 1990s or early 2000s.
What about the last Joker? Seems to be rather typical.
@@morriganmhor5078tbf, he was a deranged maniac. He's understandable but undeniably evil.
There's also the pervasive idea of shunning characters who are _actually_ villainous, as in, ones who commit atrocities or have worldviews that the author does not like, they are straight up barred from being written even if presented in a negative light. Joker is obviously a lunatic with no regard to life except Batman's, and sometimes his own, yet in one comic he was written to be "well i might be a villain but im not a NAZI" ya ok thats an argument to make for a character with one of the highest kill counts in comics, most of which are innocent people. Wickedry is wokewashed to be hip, and actual villains need to be changed to just be ship friendly nuisances.
The same too with Anime and Manga! Just look at how companies like Type-Moon are over saturating their franchises and the mediums with all this crap!
Seriously, this is why we need more independent creators!
To sum it up:
"Anakin, chancellor palpatine is evil"
"From MY point of view the jedi are evil"
"Then you are lost!"
He also says only a Sith believes in absolutes, which is an absolute. And because of all the retcons is the biggest liar in Star Wars. A certain point of view? Obi-Wan is untrustworthy and an unreliable narrator as well. Anakin never wanted Luke to have his lightsaber when he was old enough. I don't think he even knew about Luke's existence until Luke destroyed the Death Star.
@@matthewgaudet4064He said that in reply to Anakins you’re either with me or against me. The Sith see everyone as either a tool to further their goal or an obstacle to be removed. There was no other 3rd option. Kinda like the current writers, you either think what they wrote is the best thing ever and agree a hundred percent or you hate it because you’re a bad person and need to be cancelled
@@DanCoder-h2u You realize that George Lucas based the original Empire and rebels on the US and the Vietcong, right? I ain't never sidin' with no commies.
RJ, you made a good few mistakes on the Star Wars part. The duel takes place in the second movie, Empire Strikes Back, not the first. The "Search your feelings" line is in regard to Vader being Luke's father, and Luke's despair after it is testament that he's speaking the truth. The exchange is also very well-written because it gets recontextualized in the final film where we discover Vader is all but a prisoner to Palpatine, trapped in a cybernetic body and forced to obey a man he hates. "There is no other choice" becomes a declaration not of Vader's certainty that Luke will fall, but a nihilistic belief that there's no option BUT to fall, just like Vader did. And Luke very nearly does fall, drawing on his anger and hatred to defeat Vader. But he catches himself and is willing to die before he truly gives in. It's that moment, where Anakin Skywalker sees that his son resisted where he had fallen, that there is in fact another choice rather than to fall, that he redeems himself and dies for his son.
He' still a genocidal monster. Irredeemable
Well said.
The Emperor represents the darkness that has ensnared Vader. The only way for Vader to overcome him is for Luke to fall and join forces with him. Luke falling also validates Vader's own decisions that to lead to his own downfall. That Vader is right and Luke will serve as proof.
There is a great deal to unpack from the throne room scenes in RotJ. Like Luke isn't actually betting everything on Vader's redemption to save the day. He is not so naive. And Vader performs acts that could be interpreted as good or bad.
He doesn't jump off an antenna. He jumps into a hole and tries to break his fall the whole way down, then manages to grab on to an antenna. He does let go, because the ship is below him. (Not to die rather than to give in to Vader.)
Yes, "death" is the choice that Luke makes. To rather die than join the dark side. To add to what you say, I think archetypal villains in stories are often most afraid of their own death. Whether because of fear of judgement in the afterlife, or because it represents an ultimate release or loss of power and control. I think Darth Vader was brainwashed by the Sith into believing that "true power" could conquer death and provide everlasting life. Luke's decision to rather die than fall into that trap, like Vader did, showed his greater courage and strength of belief, and also a simple and direct proof that the dark side was not all-powerful. Especially after Luke survives, it becomes more and more evident to Darth Vader that perhaps "destiny" and "hope" etc. were not the weaknesses he thought them to be, but the hallmarks of a greater power, and also where he fell on his own path. All of which, finally leads to his realisation, like you say, that he is merely a trapped slave. And so, in his moment of redemption, he likewise chooses death.
Expressing emotions are the issue. Heroic figures like Luke do have those dark emotions that Vader leveraged, which is what made Vader's offer so tempting. The hero acknowledges the darkness within themselves (Yoda's cave allegory), but saying "no", is what makes them heroic.
At the end of the day, these people simply want to validate their own bitterness and justify how they lash out at others either metaphorically or literally depending on the type of fiction they're working on.
A prime example of this would be Netflix She-Ra and the way Catra was portrayed in it. Catra is constantly shown to be physically and emotionally abused as a child and still emotionally abused as a teenager by her higher-ups. This is then used as a justification for her to emotionally abuse her subordinates and commit several atrocities across Eternia; she's suffered, so she should be allowed to lash out because of her suffering. By the end of the series, she's redeemed via her confessing her love to Adora and admitting that all she had done until then was her acting up because she thought Adora had abandoned her for the heroes.
N.D. Stevenson (formerly Noelle Stevenson) had released a memoir prior about how he (formerly she) had gone through a lot of rough patches with his family for partaking in the queer lifestyle and how he had taken their money for art school but never made peace with them in spite of their financial aid. He then went through several polygamous relationships where he was second fiddle to whoever was the new person brought into the relationship. He didn't seek therapy until he eventually met his now wife, Molly Knoxenburg, before eventually working on She-Ra. He admits in an interview that Glimmer and Catra were both heavily based on his own upbringing and past experiences. So it's no surprise that Glimmer has a needless love-hate relationship with her mother, whom she belittles at every opportunity while still expecting her mother to make real decisions for her. It's also no surprise that Catra must always have her villainy justified at every point and fans of this particular show will bend over backwards to justify it. They themselves have extremely bottled up angst with no healthy outlets and also seek emotional validation.
These people chose to be bitter and evil but they don't want to be called as such. They want to be allowed to go on a long destructive tantrum and not be held responsible for what happens because of it. That's why they identify with villains and the freedom they perceive as being unique to the villains.
As a young girl i looked up to Wonder Woman and Adora/She-Ra as the ideal feminine hero: beautiful, dignified, warm, caring, virtuous, and powerful in a uniquely feminine way. I'm glad I was able to share my love for those two iconic figures when my daughter was young back in the 2000s. It breaks my heart how SheRa's legacy especially, was contorted into a narcissistic anti-female mess.
@@minakat369 it's great that people like you are still here to preserve those legacies. If they're not preserved, the pop culture of the era will completely erase those memories.
@@minakat369 its even worse on he-man side of it
It's the destruction of all old IPs. The new "hero" is self-centered, amoral and will always find a way to thinks of himself being morally superior to others, no matter the evil they do.
I would say bad guys were a reflexion of the good guys but they made a choice that made them vilains, they were not tricked, they choosed to be evil and they accepted their choice, they didn't tried to be morally superior. They admitted their evil ways to achieve their goal. Today, the vilains of the 80's are the good guys but in a more wicked way.
The hero of today will make bad choices and will do evil things but will always justify his actions by saying how he is morally superior to the vilain. Even when the "vilain" is the good guy (as in the last Disney movie Wish). He will hide bad behavior behind concepts such as racism, sexism and so on, trying to be morally right "for the greater good" and in the same time will destroy heroes of the past by showing how he is morally right because "times have changed".
The hero of today will not be religious, a majority of time will not fail a single thing in his story and will always be stronger, better than anyone before him. It seems like a fanfic with hundred of millions dollar behind it. It's amasing to see companies bankrupting themselves for this kind of "heroes", which just show how society wants to become: self centered and amoral.
It´s usually a she. A "her-o" who acts like a villain.
@@Mouse_Metal Sad but true. Because we had good female heroes in the past.
There must always be an emotional/ logical balance in storytelling.
Without emotion the story has no heart.
Without logic the story doesn’t make sense.
No kidding. We used to love characters like Spider-Man and care about who they are because of the emotion in the stories. Not because of the logical progression of events. Although some of Spider-Man's worst stories happen because of looking at the logical progression of events and saying "fuck it"
The scene with the villain saying we're not so different to the hero is so important because they don't realize how compromised they are.
I think the real reason they make the villains heroes is because it justifies the writers own selfish and gross impulses.
As opposed to ancient stories where the hero was as petty as modern villains? For example, in Investiture of the Gods, King Wen, the hero of the story, was salty that his prediction of another character's death, who he ordered an execution for, was wrong. That reminded me of Fallout New Vegas's Caesar being salty about failing to execute Joshua Graham.
There is no “my truth” or “your truth” there is only the truth
Tell that to Jordan Peterson who keeps redefining the word “truth” like the good post-modernist that he is…
Yes!!! You have no idea how thrilling it is to finally find someone who GETS IT! This world needs people who understand the CLEAR distinction between good and evil! In fact, it's the evil people in this world who want us to believe that there is no good or evil. If they can mentally destroy us before we have a chance to THINK for ourselves, then they've already won!
That's why my son wants to be a writer and he's writing his first book. He once told me: "It's EMPOWERING to know what the truth is and to fight evil to defend that truth! That's what makes a hero."
God bless you, RJ, and all people like you!
that's a beautiful quote ❤
Because the people writing the stories are villians!!!$$$+++
I think the difference between a lot of new and old villains is that people nowadays are taking the phrase "the villain believes they are the hero in their own story" TOO literally and on the nose. I think the most compelling villains are the ones who follow this template but not in this weird relativistic sense writers are doing nowadays.
Not all villains come from horrible, distorted situations that molded them into a villain. Some have completely different drivers that are simply character flaws/character-driven and how they choose to interact with the world is unheroic or transgressive. You don't see as many written like this nowadays, just like you don't see purely evil or amoral ones.
The odd part about how villains are portrayed nowadays is that they all seem to be the type that are too self-aware of the level of victimizations that happened to them that led them to be a villain (not as part of their character but as almost a meta awareness), and thus they NEGATE the actual idea of the villain "thinking they are the hero" because if you are aware of *how you were victimized to becoming a villain, you are admitting you ARE the villain and do not think you are the hero* while also ASKING overtly for sympathy.
Can you imagine how strange Anakin's downfall would have been if he was like, "I chose to become a villain and go to the dark side because I wanted to save my wife and child and I was traumatically separated from my mother?!". We all know that's part o& the backstory but in the context of storytelling, could anyone look at Vader seriously if he said this or acted overtly that way as a signal to the audience?
If we as the audience instead watch a character making choices in alignment with character traits and flaws specific to the character when confronted with obstacles, the results of those choices will set the character on an organic path towards an heroic or downfall arc. I feel like we as the audience shouldn't be told (sometimes BY the villain or the writer) WHAT is happening.
There are some villains that are made via circumstance and not having agency. That is a subtype of villain that seems to evoke more horror and tragedy because the world does contain instances of this occurring. But I feel like these types are overrepresented now. If a villain asks for too much sympathy or understanding, it takes the menace and fear and antagonism out of the villain. A well-written sympathetic villain should not be ASKING the audience for sympathy. The sympathy should arise naturally from the audience's reaction.
There's also the fact that villains with sympathetic stories act like they're not responsible for all the terrible things they do. While there may be some events truly outside their control, most of the terrible things they do are in answer to their pasts. They made the decision to do those things. Sure, we think of Anakin as tragic because we know his backstory. But in universe, nobody is going to sympathise with him if they learnt it. Because he still wiped out the Jedi, helped the Empire take over, acted as an enforcer for the Empire's tyranny, and slaughtered countless innocents just because. And Palpatine didn't force him to do all that. He just did it anyway.
Its kind of like when people complain that the love interest isnt a fully developed character when the story isnt about them. There are different types of stories that need different things a basic moral story needs a villain that lacks the virtue it is about and a hero that is good while a more detailed examination of morality needs the hero and villain to be similar
I think they are trying, VERY unconvincingly, to write out stories that contain the Truth that there is goodness in all, which could come across as quite wholesome and decent, if they weren't all sold on big dumb sociological mantras.
The villain seeing no difference after they murder orphans shows they are a self centered sociopath because they dont care who they hurt. Thus they see helping themself as equal to the hero saving people
You’re mixing up two different heroes there. Diomedes fought Ares. Ajax was driven mad because he was intent on murdering murdering his comrades for some perceived slight and Athena couldn’t let that happen. Odysseus had to be around to Star in the sequel.
(Not to be nitpicky, mind you. Greek mythology is just an interest of mine).
😅
My favorite reason was that Odysseus received the armor of Achilles because the prisoners of Troy got to choose who received it and Odysseus killed way fewer of them. Tbf, none of them were because of a "perceived" slight but a massive slight based on how the spoils of war were divided.
If you love the truth and knowledge then you love also being corrected when you say something wrong.
But yes you are correct Diomedes has wounded Ares. And he is one of two ancient greek mythological heroes to fight and wound the gods, the other is Heracles. But this is due to the fact that he had the armor and shield of his father (there is also something about his sword) and he was the favorite and had the blessing of Athena.
Thank you. I don’t mind being ‘edited’ when I get things wrong. Much appreciated.
I hate when they make villains more human by giving them a backstory.
I don't need to know funny mustache man's backstory to know he's evil.
True. It doesn't matter how much of a victim he is, or how much he suffered, he's not allowed to stuff people into ovens
@@magicmoonmonke look I don't need the backstory of Mr Austrian mustache man. But I do need to know what evil shit he did so we can go merc his ass.
Same thing with my fiction. I don't need to have sympathy with Hans Gruber. I don't want to sit there and empathize with the murdering psycho. (Well maybe if momma Gruber hugged him one more time. No, I don't care.) At a certain point in the movie what I need to know is how is John Maclane gonna merc Gruber.
What you call complex I consider dumb.
I've often thought that SW 1-6 should be considered the Tragedy and Redemption of Anikin rather than the rise of Luke. And this coming from a person that seen it all since the jump.
This is something I've noticed looking back at movies going back more than fifty years, the conversation between Indiana Jones and Belloq being just one example.
Belloq gets to monologue about how relative their roles of good and evil are... but Indy never actually counterargues him. He never explains to the audience WHY Belloq is actually wrong. This is the common thread in all modern heroes, they can never actually explain WHY what they are doing is right and the villain is wrong. This is partly because the filmmakers, authors, storytellers have all taken it for granted that the audience doesn't have to have it explained. The Hero of the story is the hero of the story and what being a "hero" stands for, needs no further explanation. Partly this is because storytellers listened to the pretentious snobs who claimed their stories lacked "depth" & "nuance," which almost always translates to "not enough moral relativity," this particular complaint being: "You cannot have your hero spout moral platitudes to the audience."
Why? Just like RJ is saying, because you are imposing morality on the audience and that might hurt their feelings.
Now as proven by their actions, they don't care about how much the villains bloviate their "immoral" platitudes, only the traditional morals of the heroes.
And it has come around full circle, because now their comics are nothing but their so-called "heroes" preaching sermons that go on and on for pages espousing their obeyance to the new morality, which they believe they can get away with because; "The hero of the story is the hero of the story" and so the audience will agree with whatever the hero says is just and good. Then they are shocked when the audience tells them, they are not writing heroes, they are writing villains.
Now some will recoil in horror at the idea that any modern hero should actually stand up and say, without a hint of irony, that they stand for "Truth, Justice and the American Way," or any similar moral sentiment but once again, the market shows the opposite.
Japanese media has no such qualms the way Western media does, they will have their Heroes actually argue with the villains for pages and pages telling them they are wrong. Now the problem is that their arguments are generally childishly simplistic "Power of Friendship" fluff... but at least it's something. It is a moral position being held with conviction.
Which is more than can be said for many modern "heroes."
So a piece of advice for creators out there: No, you shouldn't preach to your audience but don't be afraid to have your hero tell the villain why he's wrong, and really be able to explain it. You might find that to be more popular than you expect.
I just suddenly remembered Shepard lecturing Saren and the Illusive Man on those same things, ultimately resulting in both of them shooting themselves.
Amazing writing from the tail end of the Before Times.
I think that the monologue from Belloq at the beginning is also supposed to be symbolic of Indy's growth in that story: at the beginning, while arguably benevolent, he's doing a lot of things that are questionable and has many skeevy friends. It's in the quest to secure an icon of true religious significance, and protect it from being used by forces of evil, that Indiana Jones becomes the genuine hero that could have argued with Belloq.
This comment deserves and needs to be pinned.
What exactly is preaching though?
When it comes to quality storytelling and dialogue, I have no taste. I was ready to call the story of God of War: Ragnorok nearly perfect until The Gammelier explained his problems with it.
@@Deathclaw-lh5tl "What is preaching?"
Well... I'm not sure myself.
It requires a definite balance. A steady hand within the craft.
Or maybe it's the simple difference of SHOWING your audience your point instead of TELLING them your point.
Like I said, I'm not sure.
Your talking about the choice between good and evil being just that (a choice) and that villains often think that their evil nature is predetermined was very insightful.
I was reminded of another example, that being The Killing Joke. The Joker implies that it was a traumatic experience that made him what he is and he intuits (correctly) that it was a traumatic experience that made Batman what he is. The whole idea of the story is that he is trying to create a circumstance to prove his point (All it takes is one bad day...)
But what's most telling for me is that the Joker cannot understand why Batman is not like him (Why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?).
(Because it's not. Your jokes are bad and you should *feel* bad.)
Because I heard it all before and it wasn’t funny the first time.
Hey! Thanks for using the word "vicious" in its proper definition! That is, now just "mean and cruel" but "towards vice/opposite of virtuous"! I've been trying to do that for a couple of years, now. 😊
"Death" is the choice that Luke makes. To rather die than join the dark side. There is an element of "sacrifice" (to save the universe from an evil version of himself) though I think it has more to do with the symbolic willingness to "let go", of hatred and also to the (selfish) possession of life. Archetypal villains are often most afraid of their own death. Whether by fear of spiritual judgement, or more likely because it represents the ultimate loss or release of power. The Sith brainwashed Darth Vader into believing that the dark side was all-powerful and could conquer even death. Seeing Luke's courage and willingness to embrace death, however, and, in the face of it, to defy the temptation that lured Vader to the dark side, was the first step in showing that he, and the Sith, were perhaps wrong. When Luke survives, and continues to fight and resist, Vader's doubts are compounded to the point where he finally realises that even he, after all he had done, still had a choice. And so, in his moment of redemption, he too chooses death and to let go, for his son and for the greater good.
Villians are 'heroes' of the modern stories, only because they are written by villians, filled with narcissism, unable to write about anything other than themselves
Hero vs Villian; selflessness vs selfishness; order vs chaos; discipline vs indiscipline; reality vs fantasy; truth vs lies; morality vs hedonism; stoicism vs emotionalism; logic vs madness.
The definition of foolishness (or insanity) is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Villians of the past did the same thing over and over again and were thwarted by the heroes or the results of their actions. "Heroes" of these days are no different from the villians of yesteryear in that they do things out of emotion and not out of logic. They are basically the "heroes" of DC's Kingdom Come who were as much a menace as the villians.
For today's writers, they mostly sympathize with villains because their behavior is akin to it. So they have to justify their own behavior through the villain. However their feeling is they are the epitome of all that is 'good, just, and pure' which is why the hero is depicted as perfect and it's the world that is wrong.
You hit the nail right on the head. Instead of accepting responsibility and realizing they are evil, and good exists, they keep their false reality alive by inverting everything. Claiming good is bad and bad is good and weaving blindfolds of explanations as to why.
"Everyone is the hero of their own story" is true, but some people are just evil as heck and they try to justify and deny by calling their evil "heroic". They twist themselves into believing that there is no objective truth, therefore they can do literally anything as long as it advances their goals.
Because they're the hero, and that means they are good.
Villains will do any thing to Get a Benefit for themseleves,at the Cost of Others,sacificing Others to get what they Want,Heroes Sacrifice Themselves.Do the Right thing that will cost them.
A lot of psychology today is of the postmodernist type, so i disagree with them often too
Agreed, that's why I have become totally prepostmodernist.
What I find ironic is that in the new Ashoka, they made Thrawn a one-sided villain type - when they had a great chance to actually make a villain look like a good guy. Thrawn, after all, was not evil, and his motivation to take the side of the Empire was essentially to save the galaxy from greater terrors. Interesting villains like Thrawn are nothing but a positive in all stories, in my opinion. What an opportunity wasted - as always from Disney these days.
Thrawn was still evil. When you are working for the Empire particularly after Alderaan, there is no other way to put it. Or should I mention he was inspired by Erwin Rommel who participated in the Holocaust. In other words, he was evil.
I bet that's because Thrawn was ACTUALLY not a villain, merely an antagonist - so the subversives must villainise him.
@@KopperNeoman He was a villain. Taking over the galaxy and enslaving an entire race is still evil.
25:01 It's "Life, Liberty, and Property" if you want to be less socialist.
The concept is somewhat difficult to express. Some were worried that having property listed as a right would be interpreted as a positive right to property (as in others would be obligated to provide property).
@@zaktan7197And nobody had that worry for Life and Liberty?
Strikes me as a touch Motte and Bailey, to be honest.
Behold, the grand army of the Nietzschean glorifiers of suffering who consider themselves too edgy to acknowledge that well-being is good by definition. (Since pleasure and suffering are the only experiences that have inherent value to those who experience it.) I’d be interested in seeing how long they’d actually last in a society that forsakes all of the modern comforts they’re currently enjoying as they’re typing these comments on the internet. Of course, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. It’s usually the critics of well-being as a very concept that secretly fantasise about the collapse of society, so that harsh reality can “toughen us all up again”.
Here’s a thought: If “hard times create strong men” etc., what’s the point of creating more strong men if the good times they create will inevitably create new weak man, and therefore new hard times? If the only justification you have for actively promoting hard times are the good times that follow them, how is this logic not rendered void by the simultaneous acknowledgement that things will always eventually come back around to sucking?
There’s nothing noble about a perpetual cycle; it’s an inherently grim notion. It’s impossible to glorify, which is why the endorsers of suffering need to perform so many mental backflips. The noble notion is a view of human history as a continuous upwards slope.
You can say the same for characters like Miles Quaritch. Someone who the pompous writers imagined as a villain, but is viewed as a hero by everyone else.
On the other side, someone like Palpatine, who is evil and enjoys it, is also great. Because it invokes something primal in all of us : defeating the enemy. Not any of this "oh, he's just misunderstood" nonsense.
People like it simple. Overcomplicating stories doesn't make you look smart, it makes you look pretentious
Miles Quaritch is a hero antagonist written as a real life villain's idea of villainy.
The Unobtanium was vital to humanity's survival and completely superfluous to Pandoran life in the original script. Any patchwork attempts to change that to "lmao corporate greed" were very patchwork and last minute and it SHOWS.
I love Quaritch. Overall I sided with humans over the Navi
No, it makes them compelling. I dont even understand what the point is this videois trying to get across.
@@jonathonfrazier6622 Compelling can still be a thing with mustache twirling villains. To say that it doesn't is not true at all. Look at serial killers like Ted Bundy. He is what some people would describe as compelling despite not having any sympathetic aspects to him at all. Look at Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker. He could be seen by some as a "cartoonishly evil" villain. And yet, his story was still very fascinating. So no, not every villain has to be a "misunderstood anti-hero". Some people are just unapologetically criminally insane and unrepentantly demonically evil. Even in real life.
@@incubustimelord5947 I do not find Ted Bundy as compelling. Only twisted and disturbing. The other guy, I have never heard of so I have no opinion on the matter. I am not against some villains being uncomplicatedly evil. Palpatine does it well. But villainous characters having interesting reasons go much further back. Tolkien for example. Sauron and Morgoth both have very interesting reasons for doing what they do. It goes further back to the middle ages, just read Milton's Paradise Lost. This is no new trend. Unless there is more going on than I know about. I dont watch much modern media. I find it uncompelling and often morally bankrupt. As Jordan Peterson has said, a villain must be compelling or he isnt a good villain. Also I think part of whats happening here is that people want to view the villain as something else, other than ourself. Because we don't want to accept that side of our nature, our Shadow. But the unsavory truth is that villains and evil people are not something else. They are us. If you look closely at a lot of evil people you realize they are just normal people like you or me. Some people cant cope with that. A good book illustrating that point is called " Ordinary Men".
The Story and Yarn about a Paladin just taking Down a Dick Dastardly style villain is such a rare Treat nowadays.
There is a greek word that perfectly illustrates the mentality of today's writers "moirolatria" - worship of fate. A prominent villain that shows this concept at its worst is Harvey Dent and his coin toss for every decision he makes. It's never "his choice" to do anything, its fate that decided that for him through the coin. Its the ultimate way to lie to yourself and avoid accountability, at least in your own mind, for what you do.
So you mean like writers who roll a d20 to determine the gender of each character? 😁
What's most annoying is when they take established villains like the Joker , Venom and Boba Fett and turn them into heros ..
Its also been changed to this cause many of those now in control of the stories where painted as the villian or as wrong or as immoral. So instead of setting about to change their ways they have instead changed stories to get people to sympathize with the villian. So that when they inevitably do do somthing wrong or immoral well "Its cause of their circumstances they arnt really a bad person".
Because Villians where always maligned and spoken bad about they saw themselves as allies to the villian, being maligned and spoken bad about. So they try and make others understand why the villian has done what they did in a effort to make people do the same with them. Problem is certain things are never right no matter the situation, and a LOT of people understand this.
I always felt the story of Luke Skywalker is the story of the successful journey of the hero and Darth Vader/Anakin was the story of the journey of the hero who fails the journey, that is why Vader can be redeemed.
Vader is both the main character and hero of Star Wars. By comparison, Luke is just a side character. Its a literary phenomena called " hidden protagonist". Sam in the LOTR is likewise the hidden main character and hero of the story. Not Frodo.
@@jonathonfrazier6622I would debate the Frodo thing. I would say he's more akin to Yorda in Ico but as the protagonist.
Its just the reality of the world we live in today. Politically, economically, and even socially, we have become so completely bankrupt. So corrupt. That its painfully obvious to anyone who bothers to pay attention. Our "heroes" aren't being "heroic" anymore. Now only the villains feel "genuine" anymore. Feel "authentic." So why not let them be what they are? "Heroes" fighting a reality we have let ourselves be trapped in.
So, this might be the wrong place to say this, but I want to point out that Manga writers have been doing this correctly for years. They have the ability to write villains where you can see why they might have made the decisions they did. However, it is never considered the correct choice and the MC will always point out their terrible decisions. In these stories you can understand the villain, but you never condone the villain.
There is a very obvious reason why former villains are being portrayed as heroes, and former heroes portrayed as villains. There are two mindsets in humanity and the body politic: hedonism and morality. Morality is the position of those who value truth, who value doing the right thing, and for people who will suffer and sacrifice in order to do the right thing. But this is completely flipped for the hedonist, who seeks pleasure and avoids pain and sacrifice. Normally, the hero is moral and the villain is a hedonist. But in socialism, the core philosophy is that morality is stupid, and hedonism is the only wise and logical way to live. So as society becomes more socialist, it flips from extolling morality to extolling hedonism.
You should give an example of one of these heroes you believe are being portrayed as villains for visa versa. I see very few examples in the comments. I have to disagree with your statement about hedonism and morality. Morality and hedonism are not really on the same spectrum. Asceticism is traditionally considered the opposing idea to hedonism and neither are synonymous with morality or immorality. A villain can be a hedonist, ascetic, or neither. The problem is that it is not always so clear what is moral or immoral. Take Thanos from the marvel cinematic universe as an example. He is clearly not a hedonist. He has a goal to wipe out half of all living things for the good of the universe. He is sacrificing and suffering as you put it to do what he considers virtuous. He completes the goal and then retires to live what is basically an ascetic life. This is a representation of the utilitarian morality. The ends justify the means. In fact all of the marvel characters represent different moral schools of thought. Captain America essentially represents deotology, Thor represents virtue ethics, and Iron Man also represents utilitarian ethics.
@@oswinhull4203 Interesting that you should mention Utilitarianism. If you are speaking of the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham, that is based on hedonism. It's used as the excuse for everything socialism does to people. So it sounds like you don't understand my argument because you are a hedonist, and you don't understand morality, thinking it is something it is not. Asceticism is not morality. It is only an opposite of hedonism as far as desire and self denial of desire goes. An ascetic could be good or evil, there's no moral relation to asceticism.
Bentham is exactly the kind of classical villain - one of the four horsemen of the modern left - that the left is elevating to hero status. As is Thanos, in the MCU version. It's Orwellian. It is not moral. Iron Man is the moral example.
You can go argue with yourself, I'm not interested.
@@SG-js2qn I'm definitely not a hedonist. Utilitarianism isn't based on hedonism. They are completely different concepts. Hedonism states that the individual should pursue that which is pleasurable to them. Utilitarianism states that what is moral is what provides the most utility to the largest number of people. If you consider Iron Man to be a moral example then you are following the utilitarian school of thought.
@@oswinhull4203 No, you have been indoctrinated. You truly do not understand. I'm putting you on mute.
@@oswinhull4203 By your own defintion. Utilitarianism is redefining what "moral" is. Moral used to be based on a standard. Utilitarianism says it's not. It's whatever provides the most utility to the largest number of people. But the Real, original definition of morality is not that or else they wouldn't have to redefine what it is. According to Utilitarianism if burning someone alive on TV gave enough watchers enough benefit it would be moral to do so. Maybe you believe that. But most morality systems consider murder for any reason immoral. Sometimes there are narrow limits, such as self-defense, but Utilitarianism is not morality. It's a philosophy as immoral as Marxism or Satanism. Is not the only rule in Satanism "do what thou will?" Wicca at least tries to amend it by adding "as long as you harm none." But Utilitarianism only wants there to be more good than harm.
There is no plan, only a sandbox!
Having no choice in how your life goes is literally what happens to people in Aionios during the events of the game Xenoblade Chronicles 3. The heroes want to restore choice and overthrow the being who seeks to keep things the way they are.
Some people really think that villains can't be villains anymore, just because a villain is not evil for the sake of being evil. Thanos and Silco from Arcane were heroes in their own eyes (the latter being sympathetic a little more and having a tragic backstory). But does that mean that the writers were trying to push some agenda to get the audience to agree that what they were doing was right? Not every villain needs to be a Jack Horner.
pativularly when theyre motiv makes no sense thanos is god he has better solucions and hes own fixes it self in like few dacades
Great video... love the deep ideas, this is why I love this channel.
I think it's true that part of the issue of the current state of heroism is philosophical, having to do with moral relativism and obsession with identity to the exclusion of free will and personal responsibility... but I think that part of it is just a cyclical shift in tastes of storytelling, both for the storytellers and the audience. If we go back about fifty years to the mid-Seventies, we were in a position similar to today: society had become pessimistic and suspicious of traditional heroes, and the popular movie landscape was dominated by anti-heroes and outright villains... crooked cops, loner detectives, burnout boxers and cabbies, petty criminals and outright gangsters. But gradually the public tired of this gloom and optimism was reborn in movies like (not accidentally) Star Wars, along with traditional heroism, but in the culture at large and not just in storytelling.
If we go back about 50 years even earlier, movies were still in their infancy... but amid the gloom of the Depression movies (when they weren't musical spectacle) were dominated by gangsters and hard-boiled detectives. Which were replaced by the heroic war movies and the Westerns of the post-war period. Optimism returned to both the culture at large and to storytelling.
I don't know how long it will take for the pendulum to swing back the other way, but when things get bleak, people tire of pessimism and yearn for the traditional heroic tales.
Why are you considering the idea of complex villains pessimistic? Isn't the idea that even villains are redeemable or somehow a product of circumstance optimistic? If anything I would think that the idea of some people just being evil by nature or for no good reason pessimistic.
@@oswinhull4203 There's nothing wrong with complex, interesting villains; I personally prefer it. But there's an important difference between a villain who believes that he's morally the same the hero, and a _writer_ who believes that the villain is morally the same as the hero.
Or rather the wish for identity not to matter had consequences in the real world.
@@ariochiv I don't really like overt moralising by an author or obviously political messaging. Also known as allegory. But I don't really care about the views of the author per se. I have enjoyed stories written by writers with radically different political or religious views. I think they can either avoid making overt declarations about their views or better yet be knowledgeable and portray contentious ideas honestly.
Finished it, only to immediately restart. Great job.
Brilliant. Just bloody brilliant.
Being unique - breaking the mold - it's all about ME!
So many good thoughts to think about. A good story needs to be coherent, meaning it can’t be arbitrary, contradictory, or out of character, but these put limits on writers and the individuals writing for major corporations these days don’t seem to appreciate these limitations. Second, villains can be understandable (part of keeping in character, what would this character do and why would they do it) but ultimately they are not justified, because even though why they chose evil over good they still chose and should have chosen better. Third, the hero can have flaws and villains can have endearing traits but the hero will either overcome their flaws or at least not let their flaws prevent them from making the heroic sacrifice while villains will overshadow their empathetic points with their evil actions. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell who is a hero or villain until the moment of crisis. Have a blessed day.
It's complicated. "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter." Often a villain is someone who thinks they're acting heroically, but hasn't considered or doesn't realize the negative implications of their actions. Which can often be said of heroes... so then the difference between heroes and villains sometimes amounts to a difference of worldview.
But other times it's more dispositional: villains in stories are often those who pursue their interests in a manner that is excessive or disregards the interests of others. The same character, pursuing the same ends, but more restrained in the means they pursue, would be a hero. Here the distinction between hero and villain is the degree to which they acknowledge the needs of others as legitimate, or even as existing.
Lucifer in Paradise Lost is the paradigmatic villain you want to root for, whose cause often seems more "righteous" than God's. This could be seen as being about the establishment (represented by God) versus insurgents who are losing in the status quo... but often don't appreciate why things are as they are, or what makes the powers that be so powerful.
It isn't. We can see the difference in Israel v. Hamas. Israel targets military leaders. Hamas targets women and children. A terrorist is never a freedom fighter because freedom fighters fight tyrants while terrorists kill civilians.
I think your handling of this topic is absolutely amazing. I watch all of your programs. It helps me understand what is going on in media right now from a different perspective and also helps me ground my own writing. Thank you very much for doing this!
In short, a villain is the person who looks into the abyss and blinks. The hero is the one who looks into the abyss and waits for it to blink.
There is always a choice. You may not like the consequences of that choice but the choice always exists. It’s the failing of the Saw franchise. When Saw says “I want to play a game” the victim can simply end himself before the parameters of the game are even spoken.
Ideal Hero, Hero, Antihero, Pragmatic Hero - if you go any further towards villainy, they become unredeemable. Redeeming a pragmatic hero is hardest because they’ve done the worst things (for the greater good). I think the current trend is more about trying to defend/justify the “modern” sentiment that the end justifies the means if you believe you are in the right - which is of course what all tyrants think/say/do.
no you can go anti villan turf before that
Most all modern philosophies tend to end up in this dialectical relativism & eventually lead to nihilism. Mostly b/c they are all building off the same set of flawed presuppositions.
All your favorited supergheyros look like villains to me, also they are so ugly and they are not modern at all, some of them have a history that goes back at least a hundred years ago, how do you explain that soyboy
Feminist: "It is sexist to assume that we women talk just to hear ourselves talking."
Reasonable people: "All right, I'm listening, but can you explain the purpose of what you're talking about?"
Feminist: "I am talking just to hear myself talk; that is how women are, and for you to expect otherwise is sexist."
(To be perfectly fair, there are a LOT of men who also talk just to hear themselves, too; while they may be making a point, the point they're making is just a means to that end. Same self-absorption, different approach.)
You can have heroes within a sick and evil system, and they will play out their heroic archetype on behalf of the evil system, whether it is a political regime, religion, or other society. In that scenario, which occurs in real life, the villain and hero are indeed in opposite places.
If you conclude an omnipotent god would be a tyrant, then Lucifer becomes the rebellious hero of that story. If God is the Emperor, then Lucifer becomes Luke.
Religious conservatives, especially of the Abrahamic variety, would however like to get to define good and evil a-priori. Where anything God does is considered “good”. Much like Nixon’s “if the president does it, that means it’s not illegal”. And conversely, where anything good somebody does of their own will is credited to God.
Rebellion against that supposed divine order - as practised by Lucifer - is then framed as evil by definition. The divine order is framed as without alternative. Ironically, this is the same justification that The Fourth Age accuses the villains of in this video: “There’s no choice but to do this because of the circumstances”, rather than “There’s always a choice (even if that choice leads e.g. to your own death).”
Undoubtedly, the Empire’s propaganda would try and frame someone like Luke as Lucifer.
@@cosmicprison9819 The most successful parasites are the ones that can influence the host in such a way that it will defend it at its own expense. All regimes of control that humanity is now familiar with are parasitic, whether they are political or religious.
Yay! I can listen to this while running!
This discussion brings me back to the Chapter Black arc from Yu Yu Hakusho. Where Sensui tries to corrupt Yusuke by making the wrong choice.
Thank God other people are seeing this. I thought I was going crazy there for abit.
It’s a real problem. At this point I’m waiting for a Jaws prequel that shows a fisherman aping then killing Jaws mother….
This is really good
Maleficent is an example, then there is Cruella.
When the villains a starting to be portrayed in media to be sympathetic and heroic just misunderstood I believe that the ones making the media are the villains
I think you can basically sum up these people’s intent as basically just being a desire to run away from the consequences of giving into shortsighted desires.
Frieza is a great villian.
So basically our heroes suck and our villains are less interesting because a bunch of writers are basically social determinist who do not believe in personal responsibility or free will ..... Yeah I can see that
You nailed it
To be good is a challenge, not a choice.
30 mins in - the "queering" of continuity. Thank you! That makes sense as to why all the writing since 2015 has been uniform.
14:00 - "It's the circumstances of my life that have led me to this point."
The term for that is *Locus of Control* (LOC), and it has two flavors: internal and external. The internal LOC says "I did X because I wanted to" while the external says "I did X because I was compelled to by outside forces." Many of the 1970s crime movies (Dirty Harry, Death Wish, etc.) addressed this with the villain escaping justice by the various courts declaring "society is to blame", then putting dangerous killers back on the streets. This, even though the villain would directly state that he enjoyed both the act and his immunity. The hero's internal LOC then directed him to put holes in the villain in various creative ways.
And not to put too fine a point on it, this is a cultural norm in modern America--to blame others for one's actions. It's grown considerably in the last couple of decades thanks to the greater number of _female_ writers and producers injecting their politics and ideology into media. The recent rash of Disney movies about a famous villainess--Cruella, Maleficent, etc.--being recast as a victim of circumstance is in line with external LOC as a guiding principle. Read enough feminist writing (unavoidable in college these days) and one sees the patterns: men do X because of anger, greed, lust, etc., but women do X because they had no other choice. Even women in positions of authority will find reasons to blame a man--be he ten years ago or ten-thousand miles away--when called on their misconduct.
You always have a choice, you can't help the cards you are dealt no one can, but you can chose how you use those cards. You still make a choice, don't make an excuse. Belok had his cards, he played them how he chose and he became a villain despite what he says to the contrary.
Ive liked your content so for but this video is on another level. 😊
It can be done right, if the writer is capable. Jaime Lannister, Arsene Lupin, Flasman, Richard Sharpe, to name a few.
You aren't the only one who's noticed this trend. There are a few UA-camrs who have pointed out that various different ethnic, political, and sexual orientation groups have been identifying more with villains than heroes. There has been a trend in modern media to put villains as "misunderstood heroes" or to simply make the traditional heroes a hypocritical contradiction of themselves to make the villain seem like some "necessary evil" to fix society or "make things right." In other words, it's pandering to people who feel like they don't need to be cooperative or apologetic for their bad life choices, character flaws, or disdain for society. Sadly, it makes modern stories SO BORING and predictable! Every time a new show comes out now it, more than half the time its a group of seemingly lovely heroes who turn out to be scum bags, and one of them goes off to discover that the villain they're fighting is actually the good guy and blah, blah, blah. That, or its a story told from a villains point of view, and from his view all the heroes are villains, and the writer uses this logic to justify the terrible things the villain does. This is literally why I stopped reading comics and watching super hero movies years ago. Every time I try now the villain is too damn relatable to be an practical villain.
and worse they supposed heros are often aful too
I read that and immediately thought "Carmilla".
The predator based on a real lesbian serial killer and who is literally repelled by Christ is a maltreated hero antagonist because sapphic or something.
Exactly, it's the same too with Anime and Manga! Just look at how companies like Type-Moon are over saturating their franchises and the mediums with all this crap!
Seriously, this is why we need more independent creators!
Everyone has a point of view, no one is "evil", you show respect and understanding to the person about to kill your friends and family 😆
- Society to Gen Z beta male-she-her-they-its
Vader: You saved me son.
Also Vader: murdered a room full of children
Very insightful thank you
RJ,
I haven't finished the video yet, but I find it interesting the contrast between redemption for an old story like the original Star Wars, and redemption for a new story like Steven Universe or New She-Ra. Which is to say, I would love a video analyzing, from your perspective, how the very idea and context of redemption has changed.
Not that I totally agree with your perspective on things; frankly, you lean too much on philosophy, which as a construct is often marred by assumption and individual interpretation. For example, you talk a lot about the Christian perspective but can make statements that disagree with such. But nonetheless, I often learn something from your talks, and would love to see what you'd say about such a topic.
In Empire, why didn’t Darth Vader just force lift Luke back on to the walking area and just take him?
Because Vader needs Luke to willingly choose to join him.
Because that power hadn't been invented yet.
@@khatdubellThen how did Luke retrieve his lightsaber from the opposite side of the Wampa's cave?
@@NeinBreaker It was a supposed to be a joke.
The fact is, we see yoda lift his entire vehicle out of the swamp just before the whole cloud city thing.
There was a whole training montage where luke was lifting things.
@@khatdubell Didn't seem like a joke. Text doesn't convey sarcasm well unless it's made explicit.
I'd probably disagree here, mainly because of MHA which both follows the hero and villain binary and utterly breaks it at the same time by recognizing that the titles don't matter in comparison to the characters behind them. Someone like Endeavour for instance would never even be considered a character so much as a platform for the writer to project their hatred of the masculine, yet MHA gave him several full arcs that not only explored his humanity but even explained (or at least strongly inferred, this is all character motivations and whatnot so I don't want to say it was explicitly stated but, well, it's kinda the only way to interpret what's shown) why he did the actions that he did. Further, by the halfway(? don't recall exactly) point of season 6 we're seeing villains getting backstabbed by heros who were working undercover and betrayed them, literally breaking down in tears for failing their friends who helped them and kept trusting them because they were too trusting themselves. These aren't pulled out of the writers ass either, these are traits that are developed through the entire series and clearly expressed repeatedly. Hell, when push comes to shove a lot of the heros literally do just quit, they had enough and at the end of the day it's not worth it to them anymore.
Yet, in spite of that, the entire point of the entire series *_is_* still that ideal of heroism and virtue, the conclusion is simply that it's not a completely black and white distinction with a static and objective right or wrong in any given situation for any given person. Killing someone is bad, buuuuut what if they attacked you and it's self defense? What if they weren't intentionally harming anyone but their actions were still leading to people's deaths? What of any number of countless other confounding factors that can make even something as clearly black and white evil as killing someone, not?
The issue isn't that people are questioning moral binaries, it's that they're *_refusing_* to question them and are instead blindly asserting that they are correct. There is no self reflection, there is no desire to write meaningful characters, there is only "I am correct, let me write about just how right I am". Civil War for instance *_did_* raise meaningful and complicated question; Cap is recruiting people off his character alone out of an idealistic push against any and all control or compromise that ultimately ends with the Avengers shattered, him on the run, and his allies (again, many of whom were only there because 'Captain fucking America just asked for my help, of course I'm in') imprisoned whereas in contrast, while Tony *_is_* still recruiting people like Peter, he's explaining things, taking a more thoughtful approach, etc. Tony doesn't *_want_* to compromise, but he sees it as a necessity and realistically his position is valid. The Avengers literally could not just continue to operate with impunity, they'd become global terrorists if they kept trying. Yet, at the same time, "what if there is somewhere we need to go and they won't let us". I don't think many people actually believe Tony wouldn't help in that situation, but the point is that there is a fundamental difference in that Tony is willing to make some concessions/compromises to keep things going, whereas Cap just isn't willing to sacrifice that completely pure ideal and report to some government agency. Despite everything that happens, neither one is strictly speaking evil, and neither one is strictly speaking heroic.
The great irony of course is that someone like John Walker is written to supposedly be evil, yet rivals and potentially even exceeds pre-endgame-finale Steve and Tony in terms of heroism. Why? Because the writers weren't writing a character, they were trying to give their morality and ideals form, and their ideals are shit. Sam hears about a man being tortured for decades and complains no-one knew that the firsst superhero was black. Sam lectures senators about how he doesn't understand a damn thing but is saying they're shit anyway. Sam breaks Walker's fucking arm and steals his property after he just watched his best friend be executed in front of him. *_Walker_* has everything taken from him, is condemned by the entire world, and stripped of all his resources, and *_still_* chooses to make his own shield and save the very people who despise him. That's a test of character that neither Cap nor Tony have had to face, and Walker has killed less than both of them, yet because it was recorded he's the damned one. Again, why? *_because it was never about Walker, it was about whiate man vs black man._* It doesn't matter how virtuous he is, Walker was *_never_* going to be allowed to be Captain America; he wasn't born with the right skin for it.
A hero who isn't a moral binary isn't just great when done well, I'd argue it's a borderline necessity. When you're willing to write characters *_as_* characters and not just as moral paragons you can make them do actions that you otherwise wouldn't endorse, adding a degree of seperation between your personal morality and what you actually write. Anyone who tries to write in moral binaries is only going to be able to write their own morality and ideals; if those ideals are shit, the resulting media will be shit. Yes-man escapism isn't a capital offense or anything, but at best it's saying very little aside from "good thing is good" and at worst it's saying "horrible thing is good"; neither of which are actually that meaningful. For instance, there was an attempt to be clever in one of the Jodie seasons of Doctor Who where, instead of killing someone, she just trapped them for eternity in a prison cell, unable to ever die. The Doctor had done things like that before yes, but they were always explicitly morally dubious, she thought it was a clever way to not kill someone that made her virtuous. The writers literally had her condemn someone to torture ad infinitum, and tried to spin it as an act of virtue. Again, all because they just wrote their morality, instead of writing characters. When someone is appealing to very simplistic ideas then it's not all that bad since most people would probably agree, but the second you start to tackle anything even remotely more complicated the issues quickly reveal themselves.
Halfway through the video, I want to comment "heroes recognize objective morality, villains need subjectivity and relativism to justify themselves, and that's why leftists reject objectivity," but I'm pretty sure you're going to get there by the end of the video.
I challenge you to name an objective moral. I will then tell you why it isn't.
@@oswinhull4203 Taking others property is wrong. Murder is wrong. SA is wrong. Slavery is wrong. It's not hard once you unscrew your head from whatever your sociology professor downloaded into it. Most morals boil down to the fact that on an interpersonal level you don't have the right to impose your will on another for your own benefit.
Would be better to have villains that offers no relativism themselves.
@@irateastartes1206 If you say murder is an absolute moral wrong that basically means you have to be a radical pacifist. Clearly almost nobody believes that. Society can't even agree on what constitutes murder. Is it murder if someone breaks into your home with the intent to do you harm and you kill them self defense? Is it murder if you shoot someone who is actively killing people? Some people use the word murder to describe war. Considering nobody can say absolutely what murder even is, it is obviously not absolute. Same thing with theft. How do you square that?
Nah, Marx and Christ are the same breed of animals to me.
I wonder if the psychologist could realize that the unrestrained and erratic expression of intense emotion can itself be an imposition upon others?
That would require a level of self introspection that would cause these people's brains to implode.
That would be hilarious to watch.
Great explanation
there is anti heroes which do the right thing for wrong reasons. villain unlike anti heros can not be persuaded to do good for what ever reason. the anti villain is lawful evil. they have moral code but it flawed that causes to do harm to others. how ever need objective standards in the story for good and evil for heroes and villains to work. for radical feminist are narcissists. for traditional people see them more like villain. So they write how soictiy see them when they write villains. if writer believe that morality is relative then our fountain for our story is flawed. we can blur the lines between hero and villain but not what objective good and evil. If blur the line between good and evil then our story world is where up is down, north is south. simply put with object good or evil villains and heroes do not exist. at least what seem to hinted in this video about heroes and villains.
Thank you so much for putting "the divine spark" into its original context - that makes so much sense.
"M uh divine spark" is something leftists always falls back on. Why some groups can never be called out no matter what.
I would say without any structure, there is no story. Just things happening. You can write using nothing but feeling and instinct, but your instincts are bad if at some point you don't tie your ideas together into a conceivable story.
I wish you had given examples of the modern villains you describe. Also of what is meant by feminine in this sense. The anecdote about the Marvel writers was intriguing, but ultimately pointless because i have no idea what stories those specific writers wrote. As far as i know, they write great stories, and not the trash we all can't stand.
The part about Nietzsche and pagan storytelling was fascinating!
If you’re looking for more information on the writers I was talking about, below is the series of videos I did on the Marvel podcast, and they have the link to the original podcast (if it is still active.)
ua-cam.com/video/-HFhYwR5H1g/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/7F-455VLAMw/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/oz57S2ZbP0c/v-deo.html
@@RJStheFourthAgeI hope you will make a followup video with lots of examples of the kinds of modern Villain-As-Hero that you describe! 🙂 I think this video does not provide a single one. (Or did I miss it?)
Thanks, that was thoughtful of you to assemble those links for me. However, I am hoping I wouldn't have to watch three podcasts to glean the only part that would be relevant to this specific video. The issue is, how do you think they illustrate what you are trying to establish in this video? For instance, they said it's fun to write villain characters. You implied this means they will write Hero Villain characters. But does it? What if we learned that the writer of Indiana Jones said, "My favorite character to write was Belloq, because he was the most fun to write." Would that be possible? Besides, what does the writer's enjoyment have to do with whether they write a proper villain? Do you have to not have fun while writing for your villain to come out properly evil? Anyway, that's just one counterargument to the idea that the Marvel writers interview is illustrative of the Villain As Hero problem that you propose. Thanks for reading.
While I appreciate the Greek origin of the idea of the hero as a paragon of virtue, I think the reason modern writers are villains and their "heroes" are villains is because they have rejected the Christian view of the world, i.e., they have embraced sin rather than vice, if that makes sense. What are the sins listed in the Bible? Sexual sin is the big one, and the one modern leftists cannot tolerate. Calling any kind of sex a sin or sinful is anathema to the left, and YOU are evil if you even suggest such a thing. But the left embraces most of the other sins listed in the Bible, like having other gods (the government, money, the self); taking the Lord's name in vain; covetousness; disrespect for parents and the elderly; etc. It is this rejection of Christianity that drives the left, not the rejection of virtue.
They do believe in sin, tho. The Holocaust. Racism. Bigotry. Anti-criminal bigotry. And every "human", including rapists, has a "spark of the divine".
They also hate beauty. Or at least replaced what beauty is.
@@denizenbyday Well, it's all part and parcel of the same concept, reject the good and embrace the bad because that's the only way to be sure everyone and everything is equal. If something is _better_ than something else, you have committed the unpardonable sin of _judging,_ which you must never do. But as I have pointed out in the past, judgement is necessary or you couldn't do anything. What are you going to eat? That's judgement. What are you going to wear? That's judgement. Where are you going to go? That's judgement. You naturally and by necessity make a thousand judgements a day, so the idea that judgement is bad is pure folly.
@@anonygentThis gives me something to think about, thank you for your reply.
see if one, of my graphic novels, is for you
Good job! Well researched and thought out. A few small mistakes in details, but good overall.
My stream-of-conscious recording style does lend itself to error at times. But that helps keep me humble!
At the bottom of the cliff, or mountain, is the woke entertainment.
Halfway up the mountain is the heroic saga and Golden Age stuff, in other words, what these UA-camrs have deemed to be acceptable.
REASON WHY FRANCHISES HAVE BEEN BROKEN: Because the franchises have refused to go any higher up the mountain to the top. At the top are tales wherein Wr-Alda (The Oldest One) is included in the cast of characters, just as is found in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, as well as the Mahabharata and many others.
Even heroes shouldn't see themselves as heroes of their own story. Unless that is a character flaw that they need to over come. Seeing your self as always right is a "God Complex". Which if the hero has would make them a paragon of sin. Also I want to point out that what is a sin and a virtue changes over time. Which is why we get anti-hero and start seeing some villians as heroes.