The Best Villain

This isn't a post about who I think the best specific villain is, nor is it a list of of them, top ten or otherwise. This is more about what makes a particular villain interesting, and what qualities I think the bad guy needs to have in order to be truly engaging. As always, this is simply my opinion.

First off, a great villain is sympathetic, and makes you question if they are even the bad guy in the first place. One of my favorite quotes in the entirety of ever is "Every villain is the hero of their own story", and I think that is so incredibly important for people to consider when creating these characters. A good villain isn't just embarking on a crusade of evil for it's own sake, and is instead acting out of their own genuine belief that what they are doing is right. That there simply isn't any other way, and if they have to be the person to cross the line towards the goal they believe in, then they'll have to be the one shoulder that burden. These are characters like Magneto (above) who is almost constantly motivated by a love for his people, and the overwhelming desire to protect them from a world that fears and oppresses them. Or even Lex Luthor (in later versions), who truly believes that Superman, and people like him, represent a threat to the common man, often able to produce real evidence to back up his viewpoint. Both of these examples can make you question whether or not they are really that bad, which leads the reader/audience to have to really look at their actions to decide for themselves if the ends ultimately justify the means.

Next, and I already touched on this, is that a good bad guy has a goal that they are working towards, rather than just engaging in wanton evil. Now I generally find all the villains who are simply muscle-for-hire a little bit boring, at least you can look at them and sort of get it. If you had the ability to use your abilities, which set you apart from everyone else, to make some serious cash, wouldn't you as well? It makes sense, even if you might not take that path, you can at least understand how a rational person might pursue that. People like Deathstroke, or his parody Deadpool, chase after money and that goal becomes an understandable motivation for them. Even the most blatantly, unfiltered evil characters can have goals explaining why they do what they do. Thanos, as a prime example, is in love with the personification of death, and wants nothing more to please her. He's just trying to build one giant murder bouquet for the girl he likes, which again, we can kind of get. It's once you get into characters like the Joker or Doomsday, who basically just engage in different forms of destruction just for kicks, that I begin to have a problem. To an extent, those types of characters, devoid of any real understandable motivation, become more of an environmental hazard than a real individual. You start to treat them like a hurricane or a flood, because they simply happen, at random, just cause. You deal with them and move on. Someone acting towards their objective makes them somehow more real, and worthy of greater emotional investment.

Last, and most superficially, a good villain has got to be cool. In most instances this amounts to the look, but the attitude can be just as important, if not more so. You look at the early days of comic books, and you can see a whole range of truly ridiculous villains who were were supposed to consider real threats.  With names that almost always seem to end in "-man", these are the truly absurd types that make laugh and roll our eyes before ever considering them a real threat.

                                                      (Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!!)

But when we see someone who looks the part, or has that confident swagger, suddenly we know that this is a real thing, and that this person means business. And it doesn't matter the medium, whether you're looking at Darth Vader and his scary armor and James Earl Jones voice, or Walking Dead's Negan, with his leathers and wire-wrapped baseball bat (lovingly referred to as "Lucille"). In the end, both of those character look intimidating, and have the force of personality to back it up. Even characters who might not, at first glance, seem particularly threatening (looking at you, Joker), can be elevated to a serious perceived threat just by adding a of confidence. And confidence is the foundation of cool.

As with everything else, exceptions to the above can be found, and real knowledgeable fans could quickly point out a whole bunch of decent villains who probably are lacking in one, or several, of the areas I have mentioned above, and that's fine. I don't claim that a decent villain has to possess all of the above. I just believe that if the character touches on all three areas I'v mentioned, they're probably going to be substantially more interesting than those who do not. At least to me.