I didn't realise that, the fact that people try to redeem him anyway mainly the cricket, he's essetinal in trying help those who are at rock bottom overcome that and I'm sure for villains like Tai Lung from Kung Fu panda who is a human being who fell at his worst, he'd be a great teacher for him. But jack is the worst of humanity in removing his humanity, so ofcourse cricket couldn't budge, jack refused the previlge of haivng someone like his own crew care about him more than just someone to benefit from. He isn't an idiot for being brave enough to give him a chance, he's is an idiot for having being to forgiving. Everyone does deserve to choose to be better that is true no matter how many execptions come because they're exceptions.@@Casual-Yohoho-Enjoyer
"You're not gonna shoot a puppy, are you?" "Yeah, in the face, why?" This is probably my favorite exchange in any movie ever. He is just so purely evil he doesn't even question shooting a puppy IN THE FACE.
@@Casual-Yohoho-Enjoyer It's not even just "He had chances at redemption he didn't take", he took a path of villainy and greed that literally was for no reason. His motivation was entirely petty jealousy. He didn't grow up in a harsh environment that created him as a monster, he was just mad that people liked a puppet and never got over it. It's such a cartoonish reason for being awful that it makes it easy for people to root against him, and its calculated so perfectly.
I love how this movie is like “you want villains? Here’s all 3 main villain archetypes” that being the sympathetic villain, the irredeemable villain, and the force of nature villain.
Agreed, and it shows that you can make a successful movie with all 3. You don't need to focus on just one. Too many times we see either the villain who is just the villain, or the villain who is "misunderstood" and it becomes cliche. I love how the movie balances all of them in a fun and creative manner.
And what makes it amazing is that it all works even if they’re all in one movie, one doesn’t over shadow the others and have their own set of goals. Love this movie so much!
@@ev14lyn yep they all have their arcs or conclusions. Goldie wants the wish but realizes the bears are her family so she doesn’t need it anymore, Jack is basically hoisted on his own petard and bites it due to his own greed, and death wants nothing to do with the wish as a more personal foe to Puss and is the wall to measure his growth by. Each antagonist perfectly crafted to be different yet satisfying.
I think on that scene he totally aware what he saying, and only doing it to humoring the cricket And while not really hating his parents, I have no doubt Jack wont hesitate sacrificing them for his own gain
Man: Hey, I don't have dental insurance. Is that fine? Tooth Fairy: Oh, it's all good. *Bring out the crowbar*😊 Man: What's that for. Tooth fairy: People without insurance 😊
@@TrinketsAndTreatsCrafts Judge Holden is the main villain in the 1980s novel "Blood Meridian". He's considered one of the most evil villains in all of media. In the book he symbolizes pure evil.
@@TrinketsAndTreatsCrafts oh it gets even worse, if you believe Samuel Chamberlain's autobiograhpy, Judge Holden was a real person, one of the stories about him, mentions a ten year old girl found basically raped and brutally murdered while their unit was in fronteras, mexico with Judge Holden supposedly being the murderer due to the marks on her neck belong to someone with massive hands though no one ever accused him
It also helps that he's self-aware. That line SENT me when I first heard it, but I hadn't heard anyone else really notice it. They get caught up on the first half.
I love the pause after he asks the first question, because any vocal viewer might respond with "everything", only for the second question to follow. It's the perfect setup!
@@CalmBlueSea I don't agree. Death is the Lawful one IMO. The whole motivation for him isn't personal gain, it's that Puss doesn't respect the natural order of death. And when Puss eventually replaces his recklessness with determination, Death's code is satisfied and he relents. Goldie and the bears have no such personal code to follow, though the bonds of family and decency do give them some lines they won't cross. Neutral Evil to me. But yes, Jack is definitely the chaotic one lol
The best thing about Jack Horner is that he DOES have solid motivation: _attention._ Jack isn't evil for "no reason," he's a showman who realized nothing grabs attention like bombastic villainy. Notice how he only ever shows "mercy" for the sake of attention: he lets one of the Snake Sisters go so she'll talk about him, he keeps the cricket around because it judges him, he saves the last of his Baker's Dozen so he has someone to perform for, and later lets her die once he has a batter audience (his enemies). He hoards magic items and wants all the magic for himself because in his mind: Magic = Attention.
Palpatine, he has no empathy, and I'd even go as far as to call him a psychopath. He killed his mentor and only father figure, Darth Plageus the wise. He's quick to cut alliances for greater opportunities, like how he had Anakin kill Count Duku, and how he abandoned darth Maul. He's also a sadist, taking joy in causing suffering indirectly through the galaxy through slavery, imperial terrifs, and more. As well as causing suffering directly, like when he fights yoga and
In all fairness, most Sith are expected to kill their masters eventually. Such is the purpose of the Rule of Two. The issue is that Palpatine killed Plageus in his sleep. Sith were suppose to kill their masters in combat, as a way for sith continually pass down their strength.
Having a sympathetic backstory won't ruin an irredeemable villain. When the live action Cinderella by Disney came out, Lady Tremaine had sympathetic aspects, including grief at the sudden loss of her new husband, but she turned that grief into hatred toward Cinderella. No one starts as pure evil. It is small choices over time that pile up into a terrible person. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a great example of this. Snow started out a sweet kid who was protective of his family, but slowly, through choices and the influence of horrible people, he became the person he was in The Hunger Games. (I haven't seen the movie version of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, just the book.)
There was also that scene where Lady Tremaine overheard Cinderella and her father talking about her and the stepsisters before he leaves on business, wherein he speaks of them in terms of having to be _tolerated,_ which also plays into her resentment or outright sparks it.
idk I tend to disagree. Having a sympathetic backstory makes you go "I can understand why they're like this" which in turn gives them some kind of excuse in a sense. If you can understand that they may have reasons like hurt or trauma that turn them into a villain that isn't irredeemable to me. Someone who is a villain because they enjoy hurting others or because they're just so selfish that they don't care and there's nothing in their past that caused them to be like that, that's irredeemable. They're just rotten to the core from the start.
@@NatalieSanguis I think you may be confusing "irredeemable" with "having no redeeming qualities"; there is a slight difference, and a villain can embody both. Irredeemable doesn't mean there can't be a reason why they are the way they are, at its core it just means that they've reached a point of no return. Take the Joker, he wasn't originally a bad person, but a string of bad circumstances and one especially bad day drove him into the insanity that makes him what he is now.
So... A fun fact to note here is that yes, a baker's dozen is 13, this is true. And there are exactly 13 bakers with Jack on this journey. He gains no new ones, all 13 are individually separate from each other even, with their own names, all play on bakery stuff. Like, Terror-misu, Ben Jay, Crustina, Jerry Cobbler, Nutmegan etc. Very cleverly done honestly. But that isn't even the best part. When Jack and the Baker's dozen arrive at the pockets full of posies, one of the bakers, Jerry Cobbler, ends up getting skinned to the bone by one of the flowers. He's dead for the rest of the movie. That is one down, 12 left. When Jack starts shooting with his crossbow, and ends up hitting 3 of his bakers, Pete Cobbler, Betsy Crocker and Tommy Lee Scones are then also all gone from the rest of the movie, we are down to 9. When Jack walks over a bridge made by the Baker's Dozen's bodies, we see 4 in a line, there is 4 additional ones forming a second line right next to it. When the war-wagon travels across, steered by the 9th Baker, Nutmegan, the entire bridge of bakers collapse because of course it would, and 8 of the bakers goes down with the wagon, leaving only 1 baker, Nutmegan, left. And here comes the best part: Jack enthusiastically at that moment states: "You know what they say, can't bake a pie without losing a dozen men." And not ONLY is that said as a joke, he is actually correct. Up til that moment, Jack had lost exactly 12 people, which is one dozen! Jack is left with the 13th member of the Baker's dozen, as the baker's dozen lost a dozen men up to that point in time. And now, THAT is bloody genius from the writers!
Jack Horner genuinely believes that empathy , compassion and morals are weaknesses that he was fortunate to have been born without. He is a high functioning psychopath. That they were able to make his character funny is a credit to the writers.
The issue isn't that sympathetic villains are bad. It's the oversaturation of one type of villain that is the problem. If the irredeemable villain becomes popular, then we'll see an influx of it and it too will become boring and oversaturated. This applies to heroes as well. Variety keeps people guessing on what type of villain they're up against.
its also due to, I say, how often the sympathetic villain is mishandled, such as with lazy and poorly done redemptions, or trying to treat all villains as sympathetic and complex regardless of what they do.
Phoenixes Joker is an example of a good 'redeemable' villain in an oversaturated environment. The issue is also how redeemable villains have had their quality reduced, and been made psuedo-redeemable for the sake of it. Many of these characters clearly aren't redeemable, or simple rational discussion should already redeemed them long before the story took place. Stories often aren't made to faciliate these characters growth, and people on average can gauge a characters genuinity, which when aspects are made purely for a checkbox, often can be jarring and chalked up to bad writing.
Add to that people seem to conflate villain that has understandable backstory with redeemable. Like people keep trying to make magneto into somekind of good guy. But in every rendition of the character he’s done some absolutely horrendous shit and pissed away multiple chances at reform. Despite his sympathetic back story and seemingly noble end goals magneto quite clearly an example of the cycle of violence turning victims into the very oppressor that made them.
I'm writing an irredeemable villain for my own story. They're not entirely static however, they go through something i call descend, their goals and actions are selfish and flat from the beginning but they become bigger and even more destructive as story progresses. From ruling the society to ruling the world, from ruling the world to ruling the universe, from ruling the universe to recreating it to their image. Their path of descend is polar opposite to hero's journey of growth
@@the_tactician9858I honestly think Jack kept him around purely so he could destroy his belief that he could help anyone be better! Which is a serious commitment to evil!
@@jadencasto Pretty much that, he saw this cricket trying to find any good in him and thought 'this will be so much fun when he realizes who I actually am'
@@the_tactician9858 especially funny since the name "Jiminy Cricket" stands for Jesus Christ in the original. So Jack could not even be redeemed by the son of god.
I feel like the "misunderstood" villains of the last couple decades have led a lot of people to believe no one is truly evil, and therefore to give some people a lot more chances than they should. But some people are evil because they choose to be. They exist, and representing them more and more in fiction I think will lead to a lot more balance in the future.
Define "truly evil". If someone chooses to be evil, it's because they've been made into the kind of person who would choose evil, no one is inherently evil, we're all products of our environment even if our morality doesn't directly stem from it
That's very true. The whole reason the sympathetic villain came to be was because when you think evil only parades about in the open, it leaves you vulnerable to evil hiding in the shadows and it pretends villainy is a fictional concept - after all, nobody would be THAT sadistic, right?
The best misunderstood villains is the ones you misunderstand either their methods or goals. Heath's Joker is an easy one with his quote "It's not about the money, it's about spreading a message". By misunderstanding their goals. We fail to understand the character. And so they manipulate us more easily.
Very unrelated but hi I recognize you from your Penacony videos. On a more serious note, I actually agree. I like to believe people have good in their heart if I see it, but if the many chances they're given and they still do not change, it's not my job to make them change if they do not want to.
Ive always kinda seen the balance ig? Or you get their backstory but theyre still wilfully evil. Or the backstory makes thwm worse. Then again ig thats the media I consume
Turbo is good because he's straight up just a dangerous Narcissist, which is probably one of the most real world types of villains. He doesn't hurt people for no reason, everything he does is carefully planned to improve his standing.
I think another moment that shows that Jack knows how evil he is his response to Jimny Cricket calling him and irredeemable monster, "What took you so long?".
@@Bluerockpie I love how the writers really hammered it home that Jack is just a villain and should not be seen in any sort of nuanced light that is too often plagued by critics. Think about all those garbage articles you see written by critics to try and justify villains, even heinous ones? Yeah, the writers struck them down before they could even get started.
The thing with jack is also that he isnt the sole villain to carry the movie. I feel like if he was the only villain he would be bland but because they made him unapologetically evil, funny and they added other villains with more background jack felt fresh and well written within the story.
This is a big one. In FFXIV, Zenos, a similarly irredeemable villain that may or may not have worked as well as Jack Horner, depending on who you ask, is only a good villain in my eyes because he's contrasted against the Ascians, more sympathetic villains whose backstories lend context to their evil deeds. If the only villain is an irredeemable villain, it's harder (but never impossible) to keep the story interesting. They risk becoming cartoon villains.
One of my favorite irredeemable villain in fiction ever is Doflamingo from One Piece. And exept of info 'bout a sad backstory in this video, Doflamingo actually does have one. And, tbh, he doesnt even need it that much, he still would work perfectly without it. And still Doflamingo is irredeemable villain, who did a crazy awful stuff. The backstory of character just saying about the author and how much dedicated he is for this story. Great villain, just as the Jack Horner. Cool video, I'm subed!
I think the biggest thing about Jack Horner is that he is the antithesis of every disney movie from the last decade and a half where they try to redeem their old villains, maleficent showed the evil fairy Maleficent as misunderstood and caring, 2nd Alice in Wonderland showed that the queen was actually a victim of ableism and so on. Big Jack is non of that, he is not redeemable, he isn't misguided, betrayed or depressed, he is just a bad person, psychopath with too much power and even greater ambitions, and there is no way to redeem him in the future since there isn't actually a path for him to be redeemed, or made sympathetic
i think his character being based on a traditional nursery rhyme helps with that, as it emphasises him being the opposite of modern Disney villains even moreso. He's a character that most would perceive as a good or innocent little boy, but turned into an irredeemable piece of shit, rather than turning an irredeemable piece of shit into someone who's just A Little Misunderstood!!
@@ioele1000 yeah, back then they still made pretty good villains, the mother in tangled was pretty good too, but then they kinda started doing uninspired twist villains and generational drama, and things just kinda broke
Yup! Continuing the grand tradition of the Shrek franchise making fun of Disney. Has there been literally any Disney villain since Mother Gothel where there isn't some sort of twist or redemption, or a generational feud with sympathetic characters on multiple sides? It's going to bother me, so I'm going to list out the movies that are in the list I'm considering: (Not counting Pixar for simplicity, but they have a lot of twists recently too) Wreck it Ralph (twist) Frozen (twist) Big Hero 6 (twist) Zootopia (racism) Moana (twist/trauma) Ralph Breaks the Internet (don't remember - working through personal/relationship issues?) Frozen 2 (trauma, generational feud) Raya (generational feud) Encanto (generational trauma) Strange World (didn't watch) Wish - kind of legit actually. Rather than being a twist or sympathetic villain, he had a corruption arc, which is substantially different. But Wish came out after, so not part of what DreamWorks was referencing.
@@seejoshrun1761 Plus from what I've heard, Wish is pretty bland and follows a bunch of tropes/cliches (mostly because it was ruined by profit-seeking producers that had the movie muddled up until it was basically nothing) so even if the villain was alright, apparently the rest of the movie is just blah
I find reedemable villains that have a tragic ending (don't get that redemption that the viewer/reader knows they can get) so compelling and wonderfully sad
One of my favourite subtle jokes is when he meets the cricket. Jiminy announces that "hes his conscience". To which he replies "I really DID overpack". Hes so unapologetically evil a conscience is literally a waste of space to him
Jack Horner's character design is reminiscent of Judge Holden from Blood Meridian. his personality is also very close. the lust for power and control, his collection and cataloging of magical artifacts, sacrificing his employees.
Two more reasons to have irredeemable characters -The character is used as a cautionary tale, showing the audience the consequences if they partake in certain unethical actions -A representation of the real world, how to deal with individuals who simply won’t change because they don’t want to or are mentally unable to change
Honestly, i think we've seen so many sleazy, weasel-y people with damn near unlimited power in our society that a guy who has it all going "Yeah, I'm evil, so what?" is a punchline. By admitting it, he's puncturing the tension we're all feeling inside. I wonder if this movie is going to look really stupid in 20 years, or 50 years. I kind of hope it does. I hope people watch it and just... don't get it, don't understand what's so funny about this stupid ass baby face dipshit, because that might suggest our society has improved somewhat. (Or it might suggest someone who is ACTUALLY like Jack Horner has taken over...)
Puss in Boots the Last Wish managed to juggle 3 great villains. What's also great is that each one is a different type of villain. Goldilocks is the tragic anti-villain, Death is a force of nature villain, and of course Jack is the irredeemable monster we know and love to hate.
I disagree with the whole "irredeemable villain shouldn't have a sympathetic backstory" thing. The important thing you need to do is demonstrate that what happened to them in the past is NOT a justification for their actions in the present. This should be the case for all villains with a "tragic" or "sympathetic" backstory, but especially irredeemable ones. Edit: A lot of great examples from people in the replies! Keep them coming!
Shen from Kung Fu Panda 2 is a perfect example. Loving parents, power and status, the Soothsayer cared about him, and what did he do? Try to genocide the pandas and take over China, even shifting his perspective about his parents hating him after the Soothsayer told him he was wrong to justify the fact that he was continuing on his villainous path anyway. Shen was absolutely irredeemable. And despite all that, he was still the greatest villain in the entire Kung Fu Panda universe. Of course, getting Gary Oldman to voice him was a massive reason why. Oldman infused so much life into that narcissistic, psychotic peacock that he stole the entire movie.
Makes me think of the Nowhere King, that guy was sympathetic but he did also killed millions and rightfully died for his actions… despite me wanting to see him get better at the end, some things you can’t just forgive and forget.
Tai Lung is also a great example! Shifu adopted and raised Tai Lung, and when he saw that the Cub had potential, Shifu trained him. And Shifu constantly trained and coddled him for so long, he and his Master believed that Tai Lung was going to be the Dragon Warrior. But when Oogway said he's not worthy, Tai Lung snapped and lashed out at everyone. After his rampage, Tai Lung had grown bitter for 20 years, while in prison. So bitter in fact, he was barely fazed at all by Shifu's heartfelt apology. But none of it mattered to Tai Lung, because the only thing he ever cared about was the Dragon Scroll. In the cases of Tai Lung and Lord Shen, irredeemable villains can have tragic and sympathetic backstories, as long as they're done *properly.* But backstories like these can also be optional, not necessarily a requirement.
the thing you said about being offered a conscience applies to frollo- during hellfire, he actively prays for a way out of his lust for esmeralda but his suggestions were either sending her to hell or forcing her to marry him, and he was given the voice of conscience via the soldier (possibly a messenger of god considering he's featureless, has an non-cartoonish voice like the others, and bathed in a heavenly glow) informing him that she's escaped the church and will be out of his hair for a long time, but he completely throws it back in the face of the messenger and descends further into his villainy
As I recall, "Jiminy Cricket" and the Phoenix escaped after lighting up the last part of the wishing star map and immediately moved onto the Three Bears. No therapy for him, I suppose.
Literally the first step of Therapy... "Recognizing you have a problem"... Now granted of course... Occasionally the person DOES in fact REQUIRE getting the realization BEATEN into them... But most of the time therapy ONLY works on the receptive...
The Bug only seemed to give up on Jack because he recognized that the villain was a complete lost cause. My theory is that Jack kept the Bug around and continued to do extremely evil acts in front of him to cause him to break completely and lose his mind to the point the Bug gave up on his life’s mission to see good in everyone and offer people helpful advice so they can become a better person. It only half worked because the Bug only had his outburst towards Jack and no one else. The Bug essentially freed the Phoenix from its imprisonment of being used as a flamethrower and it recognized the Bug as a friend which is why it willingly burned the torn piece of the Map after the Bug threw it into the air.
Cruella was a perfect irredeemable villain, and Disney really went and tried to make us feel bad for the woman that wanted to un-life puppies and wear their skin. And they realised too late that it wasn't possible and went off into some bizarro alternate universe version 😂
I feel irredeemable characters are irredeemable because they don't want to be saved and/or relish in their status quo of bad. Tragic evil characters are characters who in different circumstances would be good people and thats what most people think are irredeemable villians but their different. Azula would have been different if she was in a different family and was raised with love and not an iron fist. That's true that's a tragic evil character, Jack Horner had everything and yet was greedy and didn't want to change. That's the difference. And an irredeemable character can come from a broken backstory or environment that made them that way but their refusal to chance their status quo or behavior is what makes them irredeemable.
nice dungeon soup clip lol. jack really is terrifying and hilarious at the same time. i really like him as a villain in last wish. thanks for the great vid!
One 'subtle' detail about Jack i *LOVE* is that he KNOWS what kind of monster he is!! ... 3 *BEARS* burst into his room! ... he doesn't care. Why would he? Its "just 3 big bears!" No he just talks to Kitty and takes his sweet time - those are a *non threat* to him. THATS how confident he is!! - and you quickly learn why! Once he goes through the forest he doesn't so much as flinch when everyone else around him dies! He is (in his own words) - dead inside! ... and his wish, his only desire, is to somehow BE EVEN WORSE! You see that he would happily destroy the world without as much as a second thought to get what HE wants! And that's just what we saw! Everyone meeting him instantly is like "oh no - don't mess with Jack!" and you understand that he has a long and deeply rootest history of being (somehow) even worse than that. He casually kills one sister to 'pay her with the (golden) corpse' before waving her off to leave... (< that was the nicest thing he did in this movie! Think about that for a moment!) ... -love this guy. oh and he looks hilarious. Tiny face- giant arms, small legs- and every face he makes is pure gold! HRMF... and his collection ouuuff~ the saddest nostalgia... ♥
Skeletor: "We aren't just going to ask them to 'Pretty Please, stop destroying the Universe, are we?!" He-Man: *starts Mewing* Skeletor: "Oh my god... we are..."
My father and I went to the theater to watch Avatar 2. However, there was only one seat left in the room. Since he's the one who wanted to watch this movie in the first place, I let him have it and decided to watch a different movie. I ended up picking Puss In Boots 2, as it was the only one that remotely interested me. I just expected your typical boring kids movie and wasn't super enthusiastic though. However, I quickly forgot about that and started enjoying the movie. But when I truly realized that this wasn't a boring kids movie is when people started *actually dying on screen.* The fact that the movie did this to show how much of a monster Horner really is took me by surprise. I rarely see people dying like that in family-friendly franchises. It was quite a shock for me. And it only emphasized more how horrible Jack Horner is, since in most other animated movies like this one, you don't really see villains actively causing people's deaths like this. Even less their own people's.
I really love that list with things to avoid for a irredeemable villain. It's a great help to actually write one of those. I have one that I can be now be more attentive to, regarding that 😊❤
I think the special sauce that makes Jack Horner so great, is the other characters. Everyone glosses over Goldilocks, but her own redemption arc strengthens the fact that Jack COULD have easily been redeemed, but chose not to. (I could go on a whole tangent about Her, but I won’t for the sake of this comment not being 5 paragraphs.)
Rumpelstiltskin? He literally removed Shrek out of existence so i guess thats pretty bad Also Fairy Godmother, shes an actual demon with the disguise of an angel so thats even worse than just being plain evil@@bigueuofheueucounty1785
@@bigueuofheueucounty1785 He is probably talking about Rumplestilkin in Shrek the Final Chapter (a horribly underrated movie). He literally erases Shrek (and by extension his kids), the King and Queen, enslaves the Ogres, and creates an ecological disaster on par Chernobyl and the desertification of the Amazon rainforest, for a start.
An understated aspect of Jack Horner is that he doesn’t just make us root for the hero-he makes us root for the redeemable villains by juxtaposing himself against them through the personification of positivity Perrito! When Perrito is captured by The Three Bears and Goldilocks, he’s able to connect with them through both his painful past(which allowed him to curse like a sailor) and his positive outlook allowing him to see the good in the tightness of their familial bonds with no envy or spite despite his “family” literally trying to drown him. This interaction makes the *second* group of people that Perrito’s infectious positivity has had a tangible effect on, setting the audience expectations in his favor with his 2-for-2 success rate despite Jiminy Cricket’s failures. Further, Jack’s victims have all been themselves villains who, through their relatively unphased reactions, imply that Jack’s actions might just be the way things are done where he’s from-it gives him a minor but notable out for SOME of his sins. On top of all THAT, since Perrito finally unlocked the cute face, this is the most positive character *at his most positive and persuasive.* It’s Jack’s willingness to harm Perrito that, I think, solidifies his status as truly irredeemable. The fact that that moment occurs during the exact timespan in which Goldilocks and Puss finish their character arcs and redeem themselves by giving up the wish is just icing on the cake! Jack’s greatest strength as a character is that he teaches us that simple but effective use of moral juxtaposition(by forcing them into similar situations) can go a long way in balancing multiple antagonists, even(or perhaps especially) in the absence of direct character interactions!
Having a villain be unapologetically evil isn’t necessarily boring, it just takes some creative writing to give them a unique form of depth. Don’t get me wrong, I love redeemable villains, but having a well-written character be evil for the sake of it is just fun to watch. I also enjoy how the three enemy factions in PIBTLW display different but common antagonist tropes; the redeemable, the neutral force of nature, and the pure evil. It plays around with these, in my opinion, very effectively and is fun to see them be compared.
The best hero / villain relationship in later times is Paddington 2. You love both, you understand both, the villain is not redeemed at the end, but you are happy for everyone (specially if you watch the credits scene, and why you wouldn't. It's one of the best credits scenes in the world)
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 Yeah... EVERYONE CAN be a villain... The point being made is that the sympathetic backstory ISN'T supposed to JUSTIFY their actions... Explanation and Justification... Are two different words...
@Videogeek95 Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't seem to understand that. Maybe it's because making people understand the villain makes them identify with the villain - I could see myself doing doing something similar in their shoes, and I'm not evil, so they can't be all that bad either.
it's not redeemable/relatable villains that are old hat, it's well written/entertaining villains we're lacking nowadays. Jack is proof that whether the villain is dynamic or static, as long as they can entertain and be written by someone competent, they'll be well loved and hated.
Reminds me of Dio Brando, sure he had a tragic backstory, but then he was adopted by the Joestars and given more opportunities and support than most people of that era could ever dream of, but that wasnt enough. He even has a bit of self-reflection and realizes he's just like the father he hated so much he couldnt even lie about him having honor for the sake of saving his own skin. Instead of mending his ways, however, he decides to quadruple down on being an evil POS and renounces his humanity.
Aizen is another good example imo. Aizen has no backstory but has somewhat justifiable goals and intentionally still does bad. I also loved when he helped the soul society and his reasons for it. The fact he’s aware of how bad of a person he is and he doesn’t bother helping yhwach knowing it contradicts his goals really shows how aizen literally can’t and refuses to be redeemed.
I think the reason that he is so big is because he “drank from the bottle labeled drink me, and grew ever so tall.” But he only ate a little bit of the cookie and it made only his head normal size. I haven’t watched this movie myself, but you showed the box with the two foods in it at the end, so he must have, because he would have to be otherwise magical to get that large, which he isn’t.
He was proportioned like that before the "magic snacks" did anything. Whether or not that was magically influenced or he's just built like a babyfaced Kingpin we'll probably never know.
The main thing about writing irredeemable villains that can be a bit tricky is knowing enough about them so we can understand where they are coming from, but not trying to use it as justification for their actions. Like with Big Jack Horner, I understand where he is coming from. Even if he had everything, he still felt overshadowed by other the other more popular fairy tail characters. So he started always wanting more. But the movie still makes it clear that his backstory and motivation is NOT a justified excuse for what he is doing. Jack Horner is a monster, through and through. And the movie doesn't try to make you feel for him. You know enough about him so that he isn't boring and/or confusing, but without taking away his irredeemable stature.
It's rare to see this type of Villain as the one I can think of is AM from I have No Mouth and I Must Scream as AM just doesn't care at all and only does what AM wants to do.
Weirdly in a cancelled series of shrek , Jack Horner was supposed to still be alive and meets up with some creatures that are far worse than him and he tends to really like them for how twisted they are .
This movie manage to have a redeemable antagonist, an irredeemable vilain and a terryfying antagonist at the same time and each of them are good, it is miraculous.
07:50 A cool theory. This actually connects with Shrek 3. Why, you ask? Well, in Shrek 3, we see that Arthur never got to pull excalibur out of the rock and become the king he was supposed to. Instead, he ended up being the heir to king Harold. While watching Shrek 3 you just don't think too much about it because you assume that they're just making up their own version of Arthur without excalibur involved. But if you think that maybe there's an actual explanation to the lack of magical sword in his story, this one is a good one. He couldn't get excalibur because Jack Horner actually took excalibur and the stone before.
Thing is, even if he was he doesn’t want to be redeemed. Rather he doesn’t care to, he doesn’t want to learn and shows a twisted enjoyment in tormenting the bug who tried to guide him.
I actually agree with you normally 'evil for the sake of being evil' is not interesting, but Jack Horner was! I think it's mostly because we had two other villain archetypes to compare him to. With Goldy and three bears we had the 'sympathetic' type. Where she just wanted a normal family and ended up accepting what she had, and the 'I'm not evil, this is literally just my job' with death. Jack was interesting, not because he was just evil for the sake of being evil, but because he was a good mix to add to the story where we already had other archetypes to watch.
you missed a big part of the movie if you're not sure if the ethical bug survived. He commes back with the pheonix and burn a piece of the map, directly causing the fall of Jack. He then join Goldy and the bears who want to take over Jack pie business. His first word to them were "now let's talk ethical business practice."
What I think truly makes Jack irredeemable is how PROUD he is of the evil things he does. Man shows no hesitation or remorse over the crazy stuff he does. Side note: the people on the shrunken boat are still alive, you can hear them scream when the bottle shatters during the fight 😂 Also Jiminy Cricket does survive till the end of the movie and seemingly starts to follow Goldi and the Bears
Wait, is Thanos an irredeemable villain? I think so, but it contradicts almost every item in 16:21. And part of him being an incredible villain is precisely this complexity
Thanos is different because, like you say, he does display human emotions like empathy and is legitimately disturbed when he has to kill gamora to meet his ends. However, he is not an irredeemable villain because he doesn’t pursue his ends for selfish reasons. He truely believes that the genocide of half the universe is nessisary for its continued survival, and thus is willing to do anything to achieve it.
He is redeemable, he eventually admits that there might have been "other ways" after the facts. The reason he is redeemable is because in having regret and using hindsight he doubts his own actions earnestly. Though I don't remember him coming back on the idea that he did that for the greater good, he allowed the notion of greater good to change for him
There's only one criteria really to an irredeemable villain (which is very much in their name) and that's their lack of desire for redemption. They can have any other trait you want (even those on your list), but as long as every "off ramp" that is offered to them is casually dismissed because they DO NOT WANT to have an off ramp, that makes an irredeemable villain.
I think the video breaks down at the list of "things your irredeemable villain should never have." A villain could easily have one or two of these traits and still be irredeemable (in fact, it could add an interesting twist if they initially demonstrate one of the traits only for it to become clear that they're STILL an unapologetic monster). To me, what makes a villain truly irredeemable is that they easily choose to continue doing evil for purely selfish reasons despite facing compelling evidence that this is a bad idea. The choice isn't difficult for them, either; it's the only choice they could have ever thought to make. Letting them cross a moral event horizon (like Jack Horner's casual willingness to shoot a puppy in the face) is also a good way to ensure that they stay truly irredeemable.
the design of jack horner honestly had me thinking there was going to be a big reveal that his body was a magic item to make him look huge, because it feels like his proportions are all wrong
Truth be told, this movie has several awesome characters, arcs, motivations ect. Who would have thought that Puss in Boots is a movie where so many things work great compared to so many other projects in the last years. Did not expect this, enjoyed the hell out of it though
I’m a big fan of Castlevania, so I was hyped when I saw that Netflix announced ‘Castlevania: Nocturne’. I was disappointed when I saw the first season that came out because it was pretty rushed, added unneeded characters and ruined some. Olrox for example, design was pretty sick, but the fact that he was a redeemable villain was disappointing. Fair, he didn’t have much personality in SOTN, but in a 2008 novel, sequel to the game ‘Dawn Of Sorrow’ that was published by Konami showed him as an irredeemable villain who wanted destroy and cause chaos just to toy with humanity only for curiosity thrills (kinda like Judge Holden from ‘Blood Meridian’). And I think that would work perfectly because it’s a great contrast to Dracula’s character, who was more complex and with more relatable motives (revenge), a villain like novel Olrox would be a breath of fresh air. The series take place during the French Revolution, he could have manipulated the people, showed the masses how aristocracy was putting them down, while living amongst royalty. He could have disguised himself as Robespierre, maybe Olrox was the tyranical revolutionist who created the Jacobin party only to murder more and more people so that his vampire allies could feast upon the peasants and aristocrats. Maybe the aristocrats promised the vampires blood and shelter in exchange for their protection, and they probably got bored and said ‘fuck it’ let’s make this interesting and started the revolution. They could have also put their ‘eat the rich’ agenda in the series if they wanted to, but they didn’t even try to write smth of essence, just like the ‘Caped Crusader’ series. P.S Sorry for the video essay type of yapping session, but I’ve been thinking about this huge waste of potential for months. (EDIT: Sry for the multiple edits whoever has seen this comment, too much mistakes.)
My personal head-canon to Jack's end is that the wishing star did in fact grant everyone their wishes (in one way or another), and so did Jack. Jack wanted to be the most powerful being and got exactly what he asked for in the end: he became the wishing star. (As shown of him getting absorbed in the star and then launched in the sky.) It's a wishing star version of Aladdin's Jafar and the Genie in a sense. edit: spelling
I would argue that even an irredeemable villain can have weakness and doubt. especially during the third act breakdown, where their power dynamic collapses around them. but insecurity being a driving force can also work.
I didn't really remember Jack much by the end of the Last Wish and I think part of that was being overshadowed by the LITERAL EMBODIMENT of DEATH. It's too bad since you make a lot of excellent points about his character design. Thanks for giving me some newfound appreciation for Jack!
A hero can only really be seen as one by comparison to an absolute evil. The more evil and unredeemable a villain is, the more a hero does stick out as one.
not necessarily, there can also be heroes like naruto. who are faced with sad backstorys themselves, meet redeemable villains with their own sad backstory and guide them to a better path, since they he was strong enough to endure the pain and not become evil like them. also pretty heroic.
@@dankrigby5621 Fine enough, tho I would argue that it's a different genre (anime) and not the usual hero's journey story, which this movie is following very well.
@@andre_601 well shonen anime are kinda the typical heros journey story^^ maybe even the original, dating back to journey to the west even, but i see your point.
It also apples here with the redeemable villains (goldi and the bears). It's even easier to sympathise with them when you compare them to an irredeemable monster (and i guess death, but he's more of a morally neutral force of nature, rather than being evil or truly villainous
This is a well done video! I see that you have 7.42K subscribers, there are so many awesome small TH-camrs coming out of the woodwork! I love hearing videos discussing character archetypes, so I just subscribed!
Honestly not everything needs to be a deconstruction on tropes or character types or everything be morally grey Sometimes it's nice to have the good guys be good and the bad guys be bad
yeah,i felt so shaken when a 'viIIain' in a movie, trying to steal something from bunch of kids, was a young guy desperately wanting to please his 'eviI' mother who treated him like dirt. he didnt even want to harm the main characters, he just wanted her to be happy and Iove him. i was so sad and conflicted. how am i supposed to be rooting against that guy? and they still played it as if him getting a bad ending is somehow the right thing
I remember when this came out and just thinking, “wow, a villain who’s just written as a complete a*shole we can hate, haven’t seen one of those in forever!” It feels so weird as it almost feels as if medias come full circle, where we’re so used to characters backstories and origins being so overwritten, and classic “bad guy” characters being forced or overanalyzed in to morally gray origin stories, that a classic evil villain that just loves being evil seems almost refreshing and new. Don’t get me wrong, I think well written characters with growth and analysis are very important, else Puss in Boots wouldn’t also be such a great character in this movie. But it is nice seeing a film experiment with the classic “I’m evil just because I love being evil” type character again
I'm actually going to disagree with that list. A villain can be irredeemable with almost all of those things. The villain must be offered a chance to redeem themselves. To better themselves then refuse it. To dive further into their path.
I was about to say Baldur but he was pretty much driven to insanity by his mother, I can’t exactly blame him for wanting to kill her but I don’t think he was ever going to recover from his madness.
@@alikhurram4700 Yeah he works just fine even with the "sad backstory," dude literally got this entire MANSION and given his experience with Jonathan KNOWS he's a kind soul who would let the guy basically mooch off him for life, yet STILL goes in for the puppy-kicking, girlfriend-stealing, father-murdering bit.
Agreed, in fact the most fun irredeemable villians are one who display the semblance of traits like empathy and regret, but they get it so wrong that it's chilling. Like "Yes, it's quite tragic that I wasn't treated right by you and had to beat you to teach you respect. Such a pity if only you'd done the right thing. You're back must be so sore, let me dress your wounds for you." Showing regret, empathy and care, but the wrong way is always chilling.
I believe you can make qualities like occasional empathy/relationships work for a villain who nigh-irredeemably crosses the “Moral Event Horizon”, if it is used in a manner that highlights the villain’s hypocrisy and/or other vices. One example of this is the Viking Chieftain in Season 2 of Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Primal”. The chieftain in “Primal” Season 2’s overarching villain, who raids villages and cruelly makes slaves out of all the survivors in his wake. Yet the villain is shown to love his wife and sons. When the protagonists, Spear and Fang, fight back to free Mira and the other slaves, the chieftain’s wife and warriors refuse to back down, leaving the protagonists with no choice but to slay them all in self-defense. When the chieftain and his only living son return to find their village wrecked, they are heartbroken by the loss of their family. Yet they refuse to extend that same empathy to all the innocent families they pillaged and enslaved. In this case, the fact the chieftain shows he is capable of genuine love makes his lack of it towards his victims stand out even more. As a result, the chieftain feels entitled to take revenge on Spear, Fang, and Mira with no regard to the fact that he started it in the first place. This leads him on a downward spiral where he then loses his last remaining son, gets mortally wounded himself, and loses sight on the possibility of Valhalla, opting instead to sell his soul to this Devil figure, just so he can have another shot at killing Spear. By that point, he pretty much becomes too far gone for anyone to confidently expect redemption.
People forget Kirei Kotomine exists. Evil if it were a person and was pretty funny. Whole Type-Moon community loves him. He can literally be a good guy in a story and you're still waiting for him to do something evil and maniacal because that's just who he is. He won't betray the team, but he will fuck up everything because that's how he is. I love Kirei
I mean, we've also got Joker, who is also one of the greatest villains of all time and is unapologetically and usually irredeemably evil. He's the poster character for Chaotic Evil with an irrelevant and subject to change backstory. Everything, even the very psyches of those around him are just setups for his cruel jokes.
@@cosmicspacething3474 Yeah. The best way to make the hero likable is for them to be proactive instead of reactive. Have the villain just be a stepping stone that they both deal with, saving people, and grow from.
Puss in Boots 2 had such unique approach of villain usage (I'm not sure if there are other movies that's done this, but still) 3 different kinds of villains in one movie?? Goldi and the bears: just a criminal family Death: the death itself wanting to punish Puss Jack Horner: literally the text book definition of Evil i freaking love this movie
Some tropes that apply to Jack Horner from Puss in Boots: the Last Wish: - Laughably evil: he does bad stuff for his own enjoyment. - For the evulz: he is evil for the sake of it. - Card-carrying villain: he proudly self-identifies as a villain. - It's all about me: he is a narcissist. - Spoiled brat: he grew up very spoiled, yet wants even more. - Aristocrats are evil: he is a rich and greedy villain. - Sympathetic villain, despicable villain: he plays the role of the latter, in contrast to the other villains. - Irredeemable exception: he is the only villain who is irredeemable. - Beyond redemption: multiple characters try to find the good in him just to realize there is none.
Depends on which version of the *fictional story* you are talking about. In some Excalibur is literally the sword in the stone. Life is going to be tough if you never learn that there are different versions of stories, especially old ones.
@@Michael-bn1oi I'm pretty sure any version of the story where the SIS is Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake never gives Arthur Excalibur are modern rewrites, not the original lore.
@RedwoodTheElf en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Vulgate_Cycle This is where the separation begins. In the oldest version of this story, rhe sword is unammed. In the Prose version of that story, it is refered to as Excalibur. Literally the second oldest version of the story, and the first to provide any name. Depending on the later version the SitS is sometimes a fake Excalibur, a different sword, the real Excalibur, or simply a sword *also* named excalibur. There are version where the broken sword is tossed in the lake and the Lady returns the (now magical) repaired sword. There is a reason you can get a degree in "Medievil Quests" because there is a staggering amount to learn and hundreds of years of content.
Jack Horner, Freeza, Dio Brando, Joker, Palpatine, Dr. Eggman, Bill Cipher, Voldemort, Scar... these are all pure evil villains and they are amazing villains.
You gotta love how various characters try to redeem him as hard as he can and he simply tells them no
And that's precisely how you should write this type of a villain. Everyone can be redeemed, some people just don't want to
I didn't realise that, the fact that people try to redeem him anyway mainly the cricket, he's essetinal in trying help those who are at rock bottom overcome that and I'm sure for villains like Tai Lung from Kung Fu panda who is a human being who fell at his worst, he'd be a great teacher for him.
But jack is the worst of humanity in removing his humanity, so ofcourse cricket couldn't budge, jack refused the previlge of haivng someone like his own crew care about him more than just someone to benefit from.
He isn't an idiot for being brave enough to give him a chance, he's is an idiot for having being to forgiving.
Everyone does deserve to choose to be better that is true no matter how many execptions come because they're exceptions.@@Casual-Yohoho-Enjoyer
"You're not gonna shoot a puppy, are you?"
"Yeah, in the face, why?"
This is probably my favorite exchange in any movie ever. He is just so purely evil he doesn't even question shooting a puppy IN THE FACE.
@@Casual-Yohoho-Enjoyer It's not even just "He had chances at redemption he didn't take", he took a path of villainy and greed that literally was for no reason. His motivation was entirely petty jealousy. He didn't grow up in a harsh environment that created him as a monster, he was just mad that people liked a puppet and never got over it. It's such a cartoonish reason for being awful that it makes it easy for people to root against him, and its calculated so perfectly.
@@Casual-Yohoho-Enjoyereveryone? Joker(a genocidal massive murdering clown), red skull(a fucking nazi)
"That was horrible! Your wish is horrible!
*YOU'RE HORRIBLE!* YOU'RE AN IRREDEEMABLE MONSTER!"
" Ohh ohh What's Taking so long? *IDIOT!* "
"Oh! Oh! What took ya so long *IDIOT* ?"
*flick*
🦗💨👌
The movie thought of this ahead of time
"What did I do to deserve this? I mean what SPECIFICALLY?!" 👎
I love how this movie is like “you want villains? Here’s all 3 main villain archetypes” that being the sympathetic villain, the irredeemable villain, and the force of nature villain.
Agreed, and it shows that you can make a successful movie with all 3. You don't need to focus on just one. Too many times we see either the villain who is just the villain, or the villain who is "misunderstood" and it becomes cliche. I love how the movie balances all of them in a fun and creative manner.
it's only possible because of all the known modern animation studios that exist today, Dreamworks is the least tainted one by a wide margin.
Honestly I didn't even see them as a villain watching the movie I just saw them as a rival
And what makes it amazing is that it all works even if they’re all in one movie, one doesn’t over shadow the others and have their own set of goals. Love this movie so much!
@@ev14lyn yep they all have their arcs or conclusions. Goldie wants the wish but realizes the bears are her family so she doesn’t need it anymore, Jack is basically hoisted on his own petard and bites it due to his own greed, and death wants nothing to do with the wish as a more personal foe to Puss and is the wall to measure his growth by.
Each antagonist perfectly crafted to be different yet satisfying.
2:42 “All my parents ever did was support me, give me a place to stay, and tell me they love me… they were really bad parents”
it's giving the main bad guy from meet the robinsons
I think on that scene he totally aware what he saying, and only doing it to humoring the cricket
And while not really hating his parents, I have no doubt Jack wont hesitate sacrificing them for his own gain
"I'm not sure if Fairy Tale insurance covers that"
Didn't you see Shrek 2? They don't even get Dental
"They don't even get dental"
at least the fairy godmother doesn't give dental, maybe non villainous leaders give employee benefits
Man: Hey, I don't have dental insurance. Is that fine?
Tooth Fairy: Oh, it's all good. *Bring out the crowbar*😊
Man: What's that for.
Tooth fairy: People without insurance 😊
THey dont even have dental pshh
To be fair it was a different country.
I saw a comment on a video that perfectly summed up Jack Horner
"Jack Horner is just the kid-friendly version of Judge Holden"
who's that
@@TrinketsAndTreatsCrafts Judge Holden is the main villain in the 1980s novel "Blood Meridian". He's considered one of the most evil villains in all of media. In the book he symbolizes pure evil.
@@pizzatimeking4379 oh. cool
@@TrinketsAndTreatsCrafts i can highly recommend the audio book "blood meridian" free on TH-cam, 13 hours
@@TrinketsAndTreatsCrafts oh it gets even worse, if you believe Samuel Chamberlain's autobiograhpy, Judge Holden was a real person, one of the stories about him, mentions a ten year old girl found basically raped and brutally murdered while their unit was in fronteras, mexico with Judge Holden supposedly being the murderer due to the marks on her neck belong to someone with massive hands though no one ever accused him
"What did I do to deserve this!?
... I mean what specifically!"
It also helps that he's self-aware. That line SENT me when I first heard it, but I hadn't heard anyone else really notice it. They get caught up on the first half.
I love the pause after he asks the first question, because any vocal viewer might respond with "everything", only for the second question to follow. It's the perfect setup!
can't help but detect a very faint smell of millenial writing.
"Do you want them alphabetically or chronologically?"
@@angel_of_rustIs any whiff of comedy in writing millennial writing to you?
All three of the classic evils (lawful, neutral, chaotic) in one movie.
Goldilocks and The 3 Bears: Lawful
Death: Neutral
Jack Horner: Chaotic
@@CalmBlueSea I don't agree. Death is the Lawful one IMO. The whole motivation for him isn't personal gain, it's that Puss doesn't respect the natural order of death. And when Puss eventually replaces his recklessness with determination, Death's code is satisfied and he relents.
Goldie and the bears have no such personal code to follow, though the bonds of family and decency do give them some lines they won't cross. Neutral Evil to me.
But yes, Jack is definitely the chaotic one lol
@@andrewm1899
Nuh Uh! /j
@@CalmBlueSeayah uh
@@zebrotnation5282
NUH UH
The best thing about Jack Horner is that he DOES have solid motivation: _attention._
Jack isn't evil for "no reason," he's a showman who realized nothing grabs attention like bombastic villainy.
Notice how he only ever shows "mercy" for the sake of attention: he lets one of the Snake Sisters go so she'll talk about him, he keeps the cricket around because it judges him, he saves the last of his Baker's Dozen so he has someone to perform for, and later lets her die once he has a batter audience (his enemies).
He hoards magic items and wants all the magic for himself because in his mind: Magic = Attention.
That, and wanting to fill the void where his soul should be
Attention is definitely a part of greed
Makes sense with that flashback with Pinnochio "stealing" the attention of the crowd.
Did you really slip a pun in there, you cheeky bastard
WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS
I MEAN WHAT SPECIFICLLY
Palpatine, he has no empathy, and I'd even go as far as to call him a psychopath. He killed his mentor and only father figure, Darth Plageus the wise. He's quick to cut alliances for greater opportunities, like how he had Anakin kill Count Duku, and how he abandoned darth Maul. He's also a sadist, taking joy in causing suffering indirectly through the galaxy through slavery, imperial terrifs, and more. As well as causing suffering directly, like when he fights yoga and
Who can ever forget that scene when The Emperor did yoga?
To be fair, Yoga is a foe we should all be fighting against.
@Lemonidas_of_Sourta 😭😭😭
@@TheRealGSmith I can't change it now😭
In all fairness, most Sith are expected to kill their masters eventually. Such is the purpose of the Rule of Two. The issue is that Palpatine killed Plageus in his sleep. Sith were suppose to kill their masters in combat, as a way for sith continually pass down their strength.
"yeah, in the face, why?
~ Jack Horner 1725 - 2022
I think he says “watch”
@@fishfossils8858you didn’t even watch a nanosecond of the video
@@SebastianTheMemer Of course not, he watched the movie.
@@fishfossils8858
He clearly said why. Even the translation got it right.
Jack Horner was hillarious hahaha, he Made laugh everytome he was on screen 😂😂😂
Having a sympathetic backstory won't ruin an irredeemable villain. When the live action Cinderella by Disney came out, Lady Tremaine had sympathetic aspects, including grief at the sudden loss of her new husband, but she turned that grief into hatred toward Cinderella. No one starts as pure evil. It is small choices over time that pile up into a terrible person. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a great example of this. Snow started out a sweet kid who was protective of his family, but slowly, through choices and the influence of horrible people, he became the person he was in The Hunger Games. (I haven't seen the movie version of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, just the book.)
There was also that scene where Lady Tremaine overheard Cinderella and her father talking about her and the stepsisters before he leaves on business, wherein he speaks of them in terms of having to be _tolerated,_ which also plays into her resentment or outright sparks it.
Do not watch the movie. Its brainrot.
idk I tend to disagree. Having a sympathetic backstory makes you go "I can understand why they're like this" which in turn gives them some kind of excuse in a sense. If you can understand that they may have reasons like hurt or trauma that turn them into a villain that isn't irredeemable to me. Someone who is a villain because they enjoy hurting others or because they're just so selfish that they don't care and there's nothing in their past that caused them to be like that, that's irredeemable. They're just rotten to the core from the start.
@@NatalieSanguis I think you may be confusing "irredeemable" with "having no redeeming qualities"; there is a slight difference, and a villain can embody both. Irredeemable doesn't mean there can't be a reason why they are the way they are, at its core it just means that they've reached a point of no return. Take the Joker, he wasn't originally a bad person, but a string of bad circumstances and one especially bad day drove him into the insanity that makes him what he is now.
So... A fun fact to note here is that yes, a baker's dozen is 13, this is true. And there are exactly 13 bakers with Jack on this journey. He gains no new ones, all 13 are individually separate from each other even, with their own names, all play on bakery stuff. Like, Terror-misu, Ben Jay, Crustina, Jerry Cobbler, Nutmegan etc. Very cleverly done honestly. But that isn't even the best part.
When Jack and the Baker's dozen arrive at the pockets full of posies, one of the bakers, Jerry Cobbler, ends up getting skinned to the bone by one of the flowers. He's dead for the rest of the movie. That is one down, 12 left.
When Jack starts shooting with his crossbow, and ends up hitting 3 of his bakers, Pete Cobbler, Betsy Crocker and Tommy Lee Scones are then also all gone from the rest of the movie, we are down to 9.
When Jack walks over a bridge made by the Baker's Dozen's bodies, we see 4 in a line, there is 4 additional ones forming a second line right next to it. When the war-wagon travels across, steered by the 9th Baker, Nutmegan, the entire bridge of bakers collapse because of course it would, and 8 of the bakers goes down with the wagon, leaving only 1 baker, Nutmegan, left. And here comes the best part: Jack enthusiastically at that moment states: "You know what they say, can't bake a pie without losing a dozen men." And not ONLY is that said as a joke, he is actually correct. Up til that moment, Jack had lost exactly 12 people, which is one dozen! Jack is left with the 13th member of the Baker's dozen, as the baker's dozen lost a dozen men up to that point in time.
And now, THAT is bloody genius from the writers!
It is clear that everything they did in that movie was intentional. Little details like that prove that point.
the names of the bakers lololol
I was going to say- nothing confusing about it, they counted out the poor henchmen quite accurately.
Tommy Lee Scones oh my god no
I wouldn't say "genius." It's basic math.
Jack Horner genuinely believes that empathy , compassion and morals are weaknesses that he was fortunate to have been born without.
He is a high functioning psychopath.
That they were able to make his character funny is a credit to the writers.
Have you met Jax from The Amazing Digital Circus?
@@ZaxorVonSkylergo awaayyyy
@@mrpersoonman Make meeee!!!
I have way too much empathy and compassion.
I feel like Jack is right...
The issue isn't that sympathetic villains are bad. It's the oversaturation of one type of villain that is the problem. If the irredeemable villain becomes popular, then we'll see an influx of it and it too will become boring and oversaturated. This applies to heroes as well. Variety keeps people guessing on what type of villain they're up against.
its also due to, I say, how often the sympathetic villain is mishandled, such as with lazy and poorly done redemptions, or trying to treat all villains as sympathetic and complex regardless of what they do.
@@sarafontanini7051"you don't understand... I burned that orphanage because of.... Well... my dad was kind of a meanie to me sometimes"
Phoenixes Joker is an example of a good 'redeemable' villain in an oversaturated environment.
The issue is also how redeemable villains have had their quality reduced, and been made psuedo-redeemable for the sake of it. Many of these characters clearly aren't redeemable, or simple rational discussion should already redeemed them long before the story took place. Stories often aren't made to faciliate these characters growth, and people on average can gauge a characters genuinity, which when aspects are made purely for a checkbox, often can be jarring and chalked up to bad writing.
@stevenstokes6306 to me if done well, that's a really good way to do an irremediable villian
Add to that people seem to conflate villain that has understandable backstory with redeemable.
Like people keep trying to make magneto into somekind of good guy. But in every rendition of the character he’s done some absolutely horrendous shit and pissed away multiple chances at reform. Despite his sympathetic back story and seemingly noble end goals magneto quite clearly an example of the cycle of violence turning victims into the very oppressor that made them.
I'm writing an irredeemable villain for my own story. They're not entirely static however, they go through something i call descend, their goals and actions are selfish and flat from the beginning but they become bigger and even more destructive as story progresses. From ruling the society to ruling the world, from ruling the world to ruling the universe, from ruling the universe to recreating it to their image. Their path of descend is polar opposite to hero's journey of growth
nobody cares
@@M1sterBruh you did enough to read it and comment sooo
Sounds nifty and cool :)
@@M1sterBruhy u gotta be mean asf
It is so hilarious when Jiminy cricket just completely loses it😂
“You’re an irredeemable monster!!”
@@swordsmancs 'Oh, whoa, what took you so long, idiot?'
*blasts the cricket to kingdom come with his thumb*
@@the_tactician9858I honestly think Jack kept him around purely so he could destroy his belief that he could help anyone be better! Which is a serious commitment to evil!
@@jadencasto Pretty much that, he saw this cricket trying to find any good in him and thought 'this will be so much fun when he realizes who I actually am'
@@the_tactician9858 especially funny since the name "Jiminy Cricket" stands for Jesus Christ in the original. So Jack could not even be redeemed by the son of god.
8:11 he actually paid the remaining sister way more than he promised, since gold is a little less than 20 times denser than humans
midas doesnt change water, so blood and other human luqids dont transform
@@ЦеценЦекиров it's magic, not science. The human would be fully transformed into gold.
@@ЦеценЦекировif god of war though me something if he can certainly turn lava into gold he can definitely turn blood into gold too
I feel like the "misunderstood" villains of the last couple decades have led a lot of people to believe no one is truly evil, and therefore to give some people a lot more chances than they should. But some people are evil because they choose to be. They exist, and representing them more and more in fiction I think will lead to a lot more balance in the future.
Define "truly evil". If someone chooses to be evil, it's because they've been made into the kind of person who would choose evil, no one is inherently evil, we're all products of our environment even if our morality doesn't directly stem from it
That's very true. The whole reason the sympathetic villain came to be was because when you think evil only parades about in the open, it leaves you vulnerable to evil hiding in the shadows and it pretends villainy is a fictional concept - after all, nobody would be THAT sadistic, right?
The best misunderstood villains is the ones you misunderstand either their methods or goals.
Heath's Joker is an easy one with his quote "It's not about the money, it's about spreading a message".
By misunderstanding their goals. We fail to understand the character. And so they manipulate us more easily.
Very unrelated but hi I recognize you from your Penacony videos.
On a more serious note, I actually agree. I like to believe people have good in their heart if I see it, but if the many chances they're given and they still do not change, it's not my job to make them change if they do not want to.
Ive always kinda seen the balance ig?
Or you get their backstory but theyre still wilfully evil. Or the backstory makes thwm worse. Then again ig thats the media I consume
Turbo is good because he's straight up just a dangerous Narcissist, which is probably one of the most real world types of villains. He doesn't hurt people for no reason, everything he does is carefully planned to improve his standing.
Jack knew he was absolutely evil, this fact was was made evident by his last words: "What did I do to deserve this, I mean what specifically!!!"
I think another moment that shows that Jack knows how evil he is his response to Jimny Cricket calling him and irredeemable monster, "What took you so long?".
@@Bluerockpie I love how the writers really hammered it home that Jack is just a villain and should not be seen in any sort of nuanced light that is too often plagued by critics. Think about all those garbage articles you see written by critics to try and justify villains, even heinous ones? Yeah, the writers struck them down before they could even get started.
1:03 Jack Horner Jumpscare
i wouldn't have been scared by this if it hadn't been for the ad that appeared when i clicked the timestamp
im laughkng😊😊😊😅😅
The thing with jack is also that he isnt the sole villain to carry the movie. I feel like if he was the only villain he would be bland but because they made him
unapologetically evil, funny and they added other villains with more background jack felt fresh and well written within the story.
It also felt complex. There were a lot of moving parts without it feeling convoluted and overwhelming.
I am sure he can carry the story. The misunderstood or sympathetic villains is be bland and can easily hurt the story.
This is a big one. In FFXIV, Zenos, a similarly irredeemable villain that may or may not have worked as well as Jack Horner, depending on who you ask, is only a good villain in my eyes because he's contrasted against the Ascians, more sympathetic villains whose backstories lend context to their evil deeds. If the only villain is an irredeemable villain, it's harder (but never impossible) to keep the story interesting. They risk becoming cartoon villains.
One of my favorite irredeemable villain in fiction ever is Doflamingo from One Piece. And exept of info 'bout a sad backstory in this video, Doflamingo actually does have one. And, tbh, he doesnt even need it that much, he still would work perfectly without it. And still Doflamingo is irredeemable villain, who did a crazy awful stuff. The backstory of character just saying about the author and how much dedicated he is for this story. Great villain, just as the Jack Horner.
Cool video, I'm subed!
Yup
Especially for his crew like monet
I think the biggest thing about Jack Horner is that he is the antithesis of every disney movie from the last decade and a half where they try to redeem their old villains, maleficent showed the evil fairy Maleficent as misunderstood and caring, 2nd Alice in Wonderland showed that the queen was actually a victim of ableism and so on. Big Jack is non of that, he is not redeemable, he isn't misguided, betrayed or depressed, he is just a bad person, psychopath with too much power and even greater ambitions, and there is no way to redeem him in the future since there isn't actually a path for him to be redeemed, or made sympathetic
i think his character being based on a traditional nursery rhyme helps with that, as it emphasises him being the opposite of modern Disney villains even moreso.
He's a character that most would perceive as a good or innocent little boy, but turned into an irredeemable piece of shit, rather than turning an irredeemable piece of shit into someone who's just A Little Misunderstood!!
Dr. Facilier was really good too, from what I can remember.
@@ioele1000 yeah, back then they still made pretty good villains, the mother in tangled was pretty good too, but then they kinda started doing uninspired twist villains and generational drama, and things just kinda broke
Yup! Continuing the grand tradition of the Shrek franchise making fun of Disney. Has there been literally any Disney villain since Mother Gothel where there isn't some sort of twist or redemption, or a generational feud with sympathetic characters on multiple sides? It's going to bother me, so I'm going to list out the movies that are in the list I'm considering:
(Not counting Pixar for simplicity, but they have a lot of twists recently too)
Wreck it Ralph (twist)
Frozen (twist)
Big Hero 6 (twist)
Zootopia (racism)
Moana (twist/trauma)
Ralph Breaks the Internet (don't remember - working through personal/relationship issues?)
Frozen 2 (trauma, generational feud)
Raya (generational feud)
Encanto (generational trauma)
Strange World (didn't watch)
Wish - kind of legit actually. Rather than being a twist or sympathetic villain, he had a corruption arc, which is substantially different. But Wish came out after, so not part of what DreamWorks was referencing.
@@seejoshrun1761 Plus from what I've heard, Wish is pretty bland and follows a bunch of tropes/cliches (mostly because it was ruined by profit-seeking producers that had the movie muddled up until it was basically nothing) so even if the villain was alright, apparently the rest of the movie is just blah
I find reedemable villains that have a tragic ending (don't get that redemption that the viewer/reader knows they can get) so compelling and wonderfully sad
One of my favourite subtle jokes is when he meets the cricket. Jiminy announces that "hes his conscience".
To which he replies "I really DID overpack". Hes so unapologetically evil a conscience is literally a waste of space to him
Jack Horner's character design is reminiscent of Judge Holden from Blood Meridian.
his personality is also very close. the lust for power and control, his collection and cataloging of magical artifacts, sacrificing his employees.
Two more reasons to have irredeemable characters
-The character is used as a cautionary tale, showing the audience the consequences if they partake in certain unethical actions
-A representation of the real world, how to deal with individuals who simply won’t change because they don’t want to or are mentally unable to change
Well said.
There is one more reason: Your villain is a politician.
Another reason is seen in Jack himself- to contrast the irredeemable villain to either (or both) of the other two types of villain
Honestly, i think we've seen so many sleazy, weasel-y people with damn near unlimited power in our society that a guy who has it all going "Yeah, I'm evil, so what?" is a punchline. By admitting it, he's puncturing the tension we're all feeling inside.
I wonder if this movie is going to look really stupid in 20 years, or 50 years. I kind of hope it does. I hope people watch it and just... don't get it, don't understand what's so funny about this stupid ass baby face dipshit, because that might suggest our society has improved somewhat.
(Or it might suggest someone who is ACTUALLY like Jack Horner has taken over...)
@@WinterAyars people like Jack Horner are already in charge, see "All Politicians are irredeemable villains"
Puss in Boots the Last Wish managed to juggle 3 great villains. What's also great is that each one is a different type of villain. Goldilocks is the tragic anti-villain, Death is a force of nature villain, and of course Jack is the irredeemable monster we know and love to hate.
I disagree with the whole "irredeemable villain shouldn't have a sympathetic backstory" thing. The important thing you need to do is demonstrate that what happened to them in the past is NOT a justification for their actions in the present. This should be the case for all villains with a "tragic" or "sympathetic" backstory, but especially irredeemable ones.
Edit: A lot of great examples from people in the replies! Keep them coming!
Shen from Kung Fu Panda 2 is a perfect example. Loving parents, power and status, the Soothsayer cared about him, and what did he do? Try to genocide the pandas and take over China, even shifting his perspective about his parents hating him after the Soothsayer told him he was wrong to justify the fact that he was continuing on his villainous path anyway. Shen was absolutely irredeemable.
And despite all that, he was still the greatest villain in the entire Kung Fu Panda universe. Of course, getting Gary Oldman to voice him was a massive reason why. Oldman infused so much life into that narcissistic, psychotic peacock that he stole the entire movie.
Makes me think of the Nowhere King, that guy was sympathetic but he did also killed millions and rightfully died for his actions… despite me wanting to see him get better at the end, some things you can’t just forgive and forget.
Tai Lung is also a great example! Shifu adopted and raised Tai Lung, and when he saw that the Cub had potential, Shifu trained him. And Shifu constantly trained and coddled him for so long, he and his Master believed that Tai Lung was going to be the Dragon Warrior. But when Oogway said he's not worthy, Tai Lung snapped and lashed out at everyone. After his rampage, Tai Lung had grown bitter for 20 years, while in prison. So bitter in fact, he was barely fazed at all by Shifu's heartfelt apology. But none of it mattered to Tai Lung, because the only thing he ever cared about was the Dragon Scroll.
In the cases of Tai Lung and Lord Shen, irredeemable villains can have tragic and sympathetic backstories, as long as they're done *properly.* But backstories like these can also be optional, not necessarily a requirement.
Georgine from Ascendance of a Bookworm.
Hush now @@vanndymaywho1910
the thing you said about being offered a conscience applies to frollo- during hellfire, he actively prays for a way out of his lust for esmeralda but his suggestions were either sending her to hell or forcing her to marry him, and he was given the voice of conscience via the soldier (possibly a messenger of god considering he's featureless, has an non-cartoonish voice like the others, and bathed in a heavenly glow) informing him that she's escaped the church and will be out of his hair for a long time, but he completely throws it back in the face of the messenger and descends further into his villainy
As I recall, "Jiminy Cricket" and the Phoenix escaped after lighting up the last part of the wishing star map and immediately moved onto the Three Bears. No therapy for him, I suppose.
Literally the first step of Therapy... "Recognizing you have a problem"... Now granted of course... Occasionally the person DOES in fact REQUIRE getting the realization BEATEN into them... But most of the time therapy ONLY works on the receptive...
“Let’s talk about ethical business practices!”
His name is "Ethical Bug
Will probably need some medical treatment considering Goldilocks whacks him with her stick
The Bug only seemed to give up on Jack because he recognized that the villain was a complete lost cause. My theory is that Jack kept the Bug around and continued to do extremely evil acts in front of him to cause him to break completely and lose his mind to the point the Bug gave up on his life’s mission to see good in everyone and offer people helpful advice so they can become a better person. It only half worked because the Bug only had his outburst towards Jack and no one else. The Bug essentially freed the Phoenix from its imprisonment of being used as a flamethrower and it recognized the Bug as a friend which is why it willingly burned the torn piece of the Map after the Bug threw it into the air.
6:08 Jesus that sound scared me. Went on the red with that one
lmao
I only just now realized Jack Horner's pie thumb down as he died at the end of the film was a terminator reference 🤦♂
I didn't realize it was anything other than that
i didn't even realize how Jack was jealous of Pinocchio, got what Pinocchio had and didn't even want it. that's peak irony
Cruella was a perfect irredeemable villain, and Disney really went and tried to make us feel bad for the woman that wanted to un-life puppies and wear their skin. And they realised too late that it wasn't possible and went off into some bizarro alternate universe version 😂
Y'know the word kill exists?
I'd say that people who want to skin puppies are even worse then pedos. So trying to redeem or make such a character look sympathetic is just bad.
@@thebanman2293 Yeah but YT bots don't like it. So there's a callout fail for you.
@@KyleRDentI don’t think TH-cam comments care if you say kill, but I could be wrong
I mean I agree the movie doesn't really match the original but I still think it's a good movie
I feel irredeemable characters are irredeemable because they don't want to be saved and/or relish in their status quo of bad. Tragic evil characters are characters who in different circumstances would be good people and thats what most people think are irredeemable villians but their different. Azula would have been different if she was in a different family and was raised with love and not an iron fist. That's true that's a tragic evil character, Jack Horner had everything and yet was greedy and didn't want to change. That's the difference. And an irredeemable character can come from a broken backstory or environment that made them that way but their refusal to chance their status quo or behavior is what makes them irredeemable.
nice dungeon soup clip lol. jack really is terrifying and hilarious at the same time. i really like him as a villain in last wish. thanks for the great vid!
One 'subtle' detail about Jack i *LOVE* is that he KNOWS what kind of monster he is!! ... 3 *BEARS* burst into his room! ... he doesn't care. Why would he? Its "just 3 big bears!"
No he just talks to Kitty and takes his sweet time - those are a *non threat* to him. THATS how confident he is!! - and you quickly learn why! Once he goes through the forest he doesn't so much as flinch when everyone else around him dies! He is (in his own words) - dead inside! ... and his wish, his only desire, is to somehow BE EVEN WORSE!
You see that he would happily destroy the world without as much as a second thought to get what HE wants! And that's just what we saw! Everyone meeting him instantly is like "oh no - don't mess with Jack!" and you understand that he has a long and deeply rootest history of being (somehow) even worse than that. He casually kills one sister to 'pay her with the (golden) corpse' before waving her off to leave... (< that was the nicest thing he did in this movie! Think about that for a moment!) ... -love this guy.
oh and he looks hilarious. Tiny face- giant arms, small legs- and every face he makes is pure gold! HRMF... and his collection ouuuff~ the saddest nostalgia... ♥
"Pleasure doing ahhh."
Skeletor: "We aren't just going to ask them to 'Pretty Please, stop destroying the Universe, are we?!"
He-Man: *starts Mewing*
Skeletor: "Oh my god... we are..."
My father and I went to the theater to watch Avatar 2. However, there was only one seat left in the room. Since he's the one who wanted to watch this movie in the first place, I let him have it and decided to watch a different movie.
I ended up picking Puss In Boots 2, as it was the only one that remotely interested me. I just expected your typical boring kids movie and wasn't super enthusiastic though.
However, I quickly forgot about that and started enjoying the movie. But when I truly realized that this wasn't a boring kids movie is when people started *actually dying on screen.*
The fact that the movie did this to show how much of a monster Horner really is took me by surprise. I rarely see people dying like that in family-friendly franchises.
It was quite a shock for me. And it only emphasized more how horrible Jack Horner is, since in most other animated movies like this one, you don't really see villains actively causing people's deaths like this. Even less their own people's.
I really love that list with things to avoid for a irredeemable villain. It's a great help to actually write one of those. I have one that I can be now be more attentive to, regarding that 😊❤
I think the special sauce that makes Jack Horner so great, is the other characters. Everyone glosses over Goldilocks, but her own redemption arc strengthens the fact that Jack COULD have easily been redeemed, but chose not to. (I could go on a whole tangent about Her, but I won’t for the sake of this comment not being 5 paragraphs.)
Jack Horner is pretty much the Shrek universe's answer to Eric Cartman. . . and I love it.
I love how this isnt even the worst Villain we could see in the Shrek-verse
...who's worse?
Rumpelstiltskin? He literally removed Shrek out of existence so i guess thats pretty bad
Also Fairy Godmother, shes an actual demon with the disguise of an angel so thats even worse than just being plain evil@@bigueuofheueucounty1785
@@bigueuofheueucounty1785 He is probably talking about Rumplestilkin in Shrek the Final Chapter (a horribly underrated movie). He literally erases Shrek (and by extension his kids), the King and Queen, enslaves the Ogres, and creates an ecological disaster on par Chernobyl and the desertification of the Amazon rainforest, for a start.
An understated aspect of Jack Horner is that he doesn’t just make us root for the hero-he makes us root for the redeemable villains by juxtaposing himself against them through the personification of positivity Perrito! When Perrito is captured by The Three Bears and Goldilocks, he’s able to connect with them through both his painful past(which allowed him to curse like a sailor) and his positive outlook allowing him to see the good in the tightness of their familial bonds with no envy or spite despite his “family” literally trying to drown him.
This interaction makes the *second* group of people that Perrito’s infectious positivity has had a tangible effect on, setting the audience expectations in his favor with his 2-for-2 success rate despite Jiminy Cricket’s failures. Further, Jack’s victims have all been themselves villains who, through their relatively unphased reactions, imply that Jack’s actions might just be the way things are done where he’s from-it gives him a minor but notable out for SOME of his sins. On top of all THAT, since Perrito finally unlocked the cute face, this is the most positive character *at his most positive and persuasive.*
It’s Jack’s willingness to harm Perrito that, I think, solidifies his status as truly irredeemable. The fact that that moment occurs during the exact timespan in which Goldilocks and Puss finish their character arcs and redeem themselves by giving up the wish is just icing on the cake!
Jack’s greatest strength as a character is that he teaches us that simple but effective use of moral juxtaposition(by forcing them into similar situations) can go a long way in balancing multiple antagonists, even(or perhaps especially) in the absence of direct character interactions!
Having a villain be unapologetically evil isn’t necessarily boring, it just takes some creative writing to give them a unique form of depth. Don’t get me wrong, I love redeemable villains, but having a well-written character be evil for the sake of it is just fun to watch.
I also enjoy how the three enemy factions in PIBTLW display different but common antagonist tropes; the redeemable, the neutral force of nature, and the pure evil. It plays around with these, in my opinion, very effectively and is fun to see them be compared.
Cough cough Cyn...
The best hero / villain relationship in later times is Paddington 2. You love both, you understand both, the villain is not redeemed at the end, but you are happy for everyone (specially if you watch the credits scene, and why you wouldn't. It's one of the best credits scenes in the world)
the idea that villains have sad back stories, or heartwarming explanation is to show you that anyone could be a villain.
Anyone can be a villain tho.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 Yeah... EVERYONE CAN be a villain... The point being made is that the sympathetic backstory ISN'T supposed to JUSTIFY their actions... Explanation and Justification... Are two different words...
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714they literally said that
@Videogeek95 Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't seem to understand that. Maybe it's because making people understand the villain makes them identify with the villain - I could see myself doing doing something similar in their shoes, and I'm not evil, so they can't be all that bad either.
But it unfortunately has twisted into "anyone who is doing evil has some redeemable reason behind it"
it's not redeemable/relatable villains that are old hat, it's well written/entertaining villains we're lacking nowadays. Jack is proof that whether the villain is dynamic or static, as long as they can entertain and be written by someone competent, they'll be well loved and hated.
Reminds me of Dio Brando, sure he had a tragic backstory, but then he was adopted by the Joestars and given more opportunities and support than most people of that era could ever dream of, but that wasnt enough. He even has a bit of self-reflection and realizes he's just like the father he hated so much he couldnt even lie about him having honor for the sake of saving his own skin. Instead of mending his ways, however, he decides to quadruple down on being an evil POS and renounces his humanity.
Aizen is another good example imo. Aizen has no backstory but has somewhat justifiable goals and intentionally still does bad. I also loved when he helped the soul society and his reasons for it. The fact he’s aware of how bad of a person he is and he doesn’t bother helping yhwach knowing it contradicts his goals really shows how aizen literally can’t and refuses to be redeemed.
I think the reason that he is so big is because he “drank from the bottle labeled drink me, and grew ever so tall.” But he only ate a little bit of the cookie and it made only his head normal size. I haven’t watched this movie myself, but you showed the box with the two foods in it at the end, so he must have, because he would have to be otherwise magical to get that large, which he isn’t.
He was proportioned like that before the "magic snacks" did anything. Whether or not that was magically influenced or he's just built like a babyfaced Kingpin we'll probably never know.
I wanna see Jack Horner, Judge Holden, DIO, and Griffith all do an escape room together.
The main thing about writing irredeemable villains that can be a bit tricky is knowing enough about them so we can understand where they are coming from, but not trying to use it as justification for their actions.
Like with Big Jack Horner, I understand where he is coming from. Even if he had everything, he still felt overshadowed by other the other more popular fairy tail characters. So he started always wanting more.
But the movie still makes it clear that his backstory and motivation is NOT a justified excuse for what he is doing. Jack Horner is a monster, through and through. And the movie doesn't try to make you feel for him. You know enough about him so that he isn't boring and/or confusing, but without taking away his irredeemable stature.
It's rare to see this type of Villain as the one I can think of is AM from I have No Mouth and I Must Scream as AM just doesn't care at all and only does what AM wants to do.
Weirdly in a cancelled series of shrek , Jack Horner was supposed to still be alive and meets up with some creatures that are far worse than him and he tends to really like them for how twisted they are .
Where did you get this information?
Source mate?
@@zasproductions9258 source: on my mama!
@@sbcs2809 damn you got me there lol
Jack meets the Qu, AM and Judge Holden
This movie manage to have a redeemable antagonist, an irredeemable vilain and a terryfying antagonist at the same time and each of them are good, it is miraculous.
Literally swears throughout the video; 2:50 bleeps out the horrible word “crap” 😂😂
Like what the h*ck
It’s easy to forget that in the realm of storytelling, you can make pretty much everything work.
07:50
A cool theory.
This actually connects with Shrek 3.
Why, you ask?
Well, in Shrek 3, we see that Arthur never got to pull excalibur out of the rock and become the king he was supposed to. Instead, he ended up being the heir to king Harold. While watching Shrek 3 you just don't think too much about it because you assume that they're just making up their own version of Arthur without excalibur involved. But if you think that maybe there's an actual explanation to the lack of magical sword in his story, this one is a good one. He couldn't get excalibur because Jack Horner actually took excalibur and the stone before.
Thing is, even if he was he doesn’t want to be redeemed. Rather he doesn’t care to, he doesn’t want to learn and shows a twisted enjoyment in tormenting the bug who tried to guide him.
11:58 There was that one Christmas episode where Skeletor had a brief existential crisis when he realized being nice actually felt good.
I actually agree with you normally 'evil for the sake of being evil' is not interesting, but Jack Horner was! I think it's mostly because we had two other villain archetypes to compare him to. With Goldy and three bears we had the 'sympathetic' type. Where she just wanted a normal family and ended up accepting what she had, and the 'I'm not evil, this is literally just my job' with death. Jack was interesting, not because he was just evil for the sake of being evil, but because he was a good mix to add to the story where we already had other archetypes to watch.
I love how they were able to make the best unredeemable villain, force of nature and redeemable villain in recent memory all in one movie
you missed a big part of the movie if you're not sure if the ethical bug survived. He commes back with the pheonix and burn a piece of the map, directly causing the fall of Jack. He then join Goldy and the bears who want to take over Jack pie business. His first word to them were "now let's talk ethical business practice."
What I think truly makes Jack irredeemable is how PROUD he is of the evil things he does. Man shows no hesitation or remorse over the crazy stuff he does.
Side note: the people on the shrunken boat are still alive, you can hear them scream when the bottle shatters during the fight 😂
Also Jiminy Cricket does survive till the end of the movie and seemingly starts to follow Goldi and the Bears
Wait, is Thanos an irredeemable villain? I think so, but it contradicts almost every item in 16:21. And part of him being an incredible villain is precisely this complexity
Thanos is different because, like you say, he does display human emotions like empathy and is legitimately disturbed when he has to kill gamora to meet his ends. However, he is not an irredeemable villain because he doesn’t pursue his ends for selfish reasons. He truely believes that the genocide of half the universe is nessisary for its continued survival, and thus is willing to do anything to achieve it.
@@upintheclouds9511seems kind of culty
He is redeemable, he eventually admits that there might have been "other ways" after the facts. The reason he is redeemable is because in having regret and using hindsight he doubts his own actions earnestly. Though I don't remember him coming back on the idea that he did that for the greater good, he allowed the notion of greater good to change for him
There's only one criteria really to an irredeemable villain (which is very much in their name) and that's their lack of desire for redemption.
They can have any other trait you want (even those on your list), but as long as every "off ramp" that is offered to them is casually dismissed because they DO NOT WANT to have an off ramp, that makes an irredeemable villain.
I think the video breaks down at the list of "things your irredeemable villain should never have." A villain could easily have one or two of these traits and still be irredeemable (in fact, it could add an interesting twist if they initially demonstrate one of the traits only for it to become clear that they're STILL an unapologetic monster). To me, what makes a villain truly irredeemable is that they easily choose to continue doing evil for purely selfish reasons despite facing compelling evidence that this is a bad idea. The choice isn't difficult for them, either; it's the only choice they could have ever thought to make. Letting them cross a moral event horizon (like Jack Horner's casual willingness to shoot a puppy in the face) is also a good way to ensure that they stay truly irredeemable.
the design of jack horner honestly had me thinking there was going to be a big reveal that his body was a magic item to make him look huge, because it feels like his proportions are all wrong
Truth be told, this movie has several awesome characters, arcs, motivations ect.
Who would have thought that Puss in Boots is a movie where so many things work great compared to so many other projects in the last years. Did not expect this, enjoyed the hell out of it though
All I hope for is a wholesome reunion moment of Pinnoccio and the Cricket in Shrek 5.
I’m a big fan of Castlevania, so I was hyped when I saw that Netflix announced ‘Castlevania: Nocturne’.
I was disappointed when I saw the first season that came out because it was pretty rushed, added unneeded characters and ruined some.
Olrox for example, design was pretty sick, but the fact that he was a redeemable villain was disappointing.
Fair, he didn’t have much personality in SOTN, but in a 2008 novel, sequel to the game ‘Dawn Of Sorrow’ that was published by Konami showed him as an irredeemable villain who wanted destroy and cause chaos just to toy with humanity only for curiosity thrills (kinda like Judge Holden from ‘Blood Meridian’).
And I think that would work perfectly because it’s a great contrast to Dracula’s character, who was more complex and with more relatable motives (revenge), a villain like novel Olrox would be a breath of fresh air.
The series take place during the French Revolution, he could have manipulated the people, showed the masses how aristocracy was putting them down, while living amongst royalty.
He could have disguised himself as Robespierre, maybe Olrox was the tyranical revolutionist who created the Jacobin party only to murder more and more people so that his vampire allies could feast upon the peasants and aristocrats.
Maybe the aristocrats promised the vampires blood and shelter in exchange for their protection, and they probably got bored and said ‘fuck it’ let’s make this interesting and started the revolution.
They could have also put their ‘eat the rich’ agenda in the series if they wanted to, but they didn’t even try to write smth of essence, just like the ‘Caped Crusader’ series.
P.S Sorry for the video essay type of yapping session, but I’ve been thinking about this huge waste of potential for months.
(EDIT: Sry for the multiple edits whoever has seen this comment, too much mistakes.)
Lord Shenler is the best unredeemable villain imo, even when you try to understand his character the story still hits you with “Panda Genocide”
damn, here i thought we were talking about the chinese government
My personal head-canon to Jack's end is that the wishing star did in fact grant everyone their wishes (in one way or another), and so did Jack. Jack wanted to be the most powerful being and got exactly what he asked for in the end: he became the wishing star. (As shown of him getting absorbed in the star and then launched in the sky.) It's a wishing star version of Aladdin's Jafar and the Genie in a sense.
edit: spelling
I would argue that even an irredeemable villain can have weakness and doubt. especially during the third act breakdown, where their power dynamic collapses around them. but insecurity being a driving force can also work.
I didn't really remember Jack much by the end of the Last Wish and I think part of that was being overshadowed by the LITERAL EMBODIMENT of DEATH. It's too bad since you make a lot of excellent points about his character design. Thanks for giving me some newfound appreciation for Jack!
A hero can only really be seen as one by comparison to an absolute evil. The more evil and unredeemable a villain is, the more a hero does stick out as one.
This exactly!
not necessarily, there can also be heroes like naruto. who are faced with sad backstorys themselves, meet redeemable villains with their own sad backstory and guide them to a better path, since they he was strong enough to endure the pain and not become evil like them. also pretty heroic.
@@dankrigby5621 Fine enough, tho I would argue that it's a different genre (anime) and not the usual hero's journey story, which this movie is following very well.
@@andre_601 well shonen anime are kinda the typical heros journey story^^ maybe even the original, dating back to journey to the west even, but i see your point.
It also apples here with the redeemable villains (goldi and the bears). It's even easier to sympathise with them when you compare them to an irredeemable monster (and i guess death, but he's more of a morally neutral force of nature, rather than being evil or truly villainous
This is a well done video! I see that you have 7.42K subscribers, there are so many awesome small TH-camrs coming out of the woodwork! I love hearing videos discussing character archetypes, so I just subscribed!
Shang Tsung is also a good one, an aura of "I know I'm evil and relish every moment of it"
Quan Chi and Shao Kahn as well. Both have only “helped” the good guys if there was an even bigger threat and there were no other options left.
Honestly not everything needs to be a deconstruction on tropes or character types or everything be morally grey
Sometimes it's nice to have the good guys be good and the bad guys be bad
12:55 I never noticed the cricket connection between Jack and Pinocchio, that's some good writing there.
If you count through the movie Jack goes through exactly 13 henchmen throughout the movie
yeah,i felt so shaken when a 'viIIain' in a movie, trying to steal something from bunch of kids, was a young guy desperately wanting to please his 'eviI' mother who treated him like dirt. he didnt even want to harm the main characters, he just wanted her to be happy and Iove him. i was so sad and conflicted. how am i supposed to be rooting against that guy? and they still played it as if him getting a bad ending is somehow the right thing
I remember when this came out and just thinking, “wow, a villain who’s just written as a complete a*shole we can hate, haven’t seen one of those in forever!” It feels so weird as it almost feels as if medias come full circle, where we’re so used to characters backstories and origins being so overwritten, and classic “bad guy” characters being forced or overanalyzed in to morally gray origin stories, that a classic evil villain that just loves being evil seems almost refreshing and new. Don’t get me wrong, I think well written characters with growth and analysis are very important, else Puss in Boots wouldn’t also be such a great character in this movie. But it is nice seeing a film experiment with the classic “I’m evil just because I love being evil” type character again
I sometimes find villains in media that get explained why they ended up like this but don’t justify them for their actions and I love that.
I'm actually going to disagree with that list. A villain can be irredeemable with almost all of those things. The villain must be offered a chance to redeem themselves. To better themselves then refuse it. To dive further into their path.
I was about to say Baldur but he was pretty much driven to insanity by his mother, I can’t exactly blame him for wanting to kill her but I don’t think he was ever going to recover from his madness.
Dio from jjba comes to mind
The Governor from TWD is a fine example.
@@alikhurram4700 Yeah he works just fine even with the "sad backstory," dude literally got this entire MANSION and given his experience with Jonathan KNOWS he's a kind soul who would let the guy basically mooch off him for life, yet STILL goes in for the puppy-kicking, girlfriend-stealing, father-murdering bit.
Agreed, in fact the most fun irredeemable villians are one who display the semblance of traits like empathy and regret, but they get it so wrong that it's chilling.
Like "Yes, it's quite tragic that I wasn't treated right by you and had to beat you to teach you respect. Such a pity if only you'd done the right thing. You're back must be so sore, let me dress your wounds for you." Showing regret, empathy and care, but the wrong way is always chilling.
I believe you can make qualities like occasional empathy/relationships work for a villain who nigh-irredeemably crosses the “Moral Event Horizon”, if it is used in a manner that highlights the villain’s hypocrisy and/or other vices. One example of this is the Viking Chieftain in Season 2 of Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Primal”.
The chieftain in “Primal” Season 2’s overarching villain, who raids villages and cruelly makes slaves out of all the survivors in his wake. Yet the villain is shown to love his wife and sons. When the protagonists, Spear and Fang, fight back to free Mira and the other slaves, the chieftain’s wife and warriors refuse to back down, leaving the protagonists with no choice but to slay them all in self-defense. When the chieftain and his only living son return to find their village wrecked, they are heartbroken by the loss of their family. Yet they refuse to extend that same empathy to all the innocent families they pillaged and enslaved. In this case, the fact the chieftain shows he is capable of genuine love makes his lack of it towards his victims stand out even more.
As a result, the chieftain feels entitled to take revenge on Spear, Fang, and Mira with no regard to the fact that he started it in the first place. This leads him on a downward spiral where he then loses his last remaining son, gets mortally wounded himself, and loses sight on the possibility of Valhalla, opting instead to sell his soul to this Devil figure, just so he can have another shot at killing Spear. By that point, he pretty much becomes too far gone for anyone to confidently expect redemption.
Jack: What did I ever do to deserve this?!
(Bewildered stare)
Jack: I meant what specifically?!
People forget Kirei Kotomine exists. Evil if it were a person and was pretty funny. Whole Type-Moon community loves him.
He can literally be a good guy in a story and you're still waiting for him to do something evil and maniacal because that's just who he is. He won't betray the team, but he will fuck up everything because that's how he is. I love Kirei
A good analysis on his character th-cam.com/video/67yfrHsy8q8/w-d-xo.htmlsi=waH5eq0qr1HAsCIr
I mean, we've also got Joker, who is also one of the greatest villains of all time and is unapologetically and usually irredeemably evil.
He's the poster character for Chaotic Evil with an irrelevant and subject to change backstory. Everything, even the very psyches of those around him are just setups for his cruel jokes.
this entire movie was a masterclass in character writing.
showcasing the 3 major villain types: sympathetic, force of nature, and pure evil.
The more sympathetic you make the villain the more the watchers will come to love the villain instead of the hero
Idk I feel like that’s a lazy way to make the hero more likable
@@cosmicspacething3474
Yeah. The best way to make the hero likable is for them to be proactive instead of reactive. Have the villain just be a stepping stone that they both deal with, saving people, and grow from.
Puss in Boots 2 had such unique approach of villain usage (I'm not sure if there are other movies that's done this, but still)
3 different kinds of villains in one movie??
Goldi and the bears: just a criminal family
Death: the death itself wanting to punish Puss
Jack Horner: literally the text book definition of Evil
i freaking love this movie
The intro: *talks about villains who are evil for evil's sake while playing a video of a villain with a very understandable motive.*
Some tropes that apply to Jack Horner from Puss in Boots: the Last Wish:
- Laughably evil: he does bad stuff for his own enjoyment.
- For the evulz: he is evil for the sake of it.
- Card-carrying villain: he proudly self-identifies as a villain.
- It's all about me: he is a narcissist.
- Spoiled brat: he grew up very spoiled, yet wants even more.
- Aristocrats are evil: he is a rich and greedy villain.
- Sympathetic villain, despicable villain: he plays the role of the latter, in contrast to the other villains.
- Irredeemable exception: he is the only villain who is irredeemable.
- Beyond redemption: multiple characters try to find the good in him just to realize there is none.
dude, Excalibur is NOT the Sword in the Stone. Arthur broke the sword from the stone and got Excalibur as a replacement from the Lady of the Lake.
To be fair several famous adaptations conflate the two. Including the film literally titled Excalibur.
Depends on which version of the *fictional story* you are talking about. In some Excalibur is literally the sword in the stone.
Life is going to be tough if you never learn that there are different versions of stories, especially old ones.
@@Michael-bn1oi I'm pretty sure any version of the story where the SIS is Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake never gives Arthur Excalibur are modern rewrites, not the original lore.
@@RedwoodTheElf You are incorrect.
@RedwoodTheElf en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Vulgate_Cycle
This is where the separation begins.
In the oldest version of this story, rhe sword is unammed. In the Prose version of that story, it is refered to as Excalibur. Literally the second oldest version of the story, and the first to provide any name.
Depending on the later version the SitS is sometimes a fake Excalibur, a different sword, the real Excalibur, or simply a sword *also* named excalibur.
There are version where the broken sword is tossed in the lake and the Lady returns the (now magical) repaired sword.
There is a reason you can get a degree in "Medievil Quests" because there is a staggering amount to learn and hundreds of years of content.
Jack Horner, Freeza, Dio Brando, Joker, Palpatine, Dr. Eggman, Bill Cipher, Voldemort, Scar... these are all pure evil villains and they are amazing villains.