The Supervillain Sympathy Spectrum
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
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Today, we’ll examine how some villains are more like us than we might want to admit, while others are almost completely alien - and we’ll look at the two villains who represent this dynamic better than any others!
CW: References to World War II, Nazis, and the Holocaust. References to cannibalism. Some brief sci-fi violence against Nazis.
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:40 - A Word From Our Sponsor
01:54 - Defining Our Terms
06:31 - Magneto
10:33 - The Joker
14:01 - The Spectrum in Between
16:30 - Outro
Thinking Music Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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Who is your favorite villain, and where do you think they fall on the Supervillain Sympathy Spectrum?
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My favorite villain is Kefka. He is the Joker with ultimate magical powers. He would be terrifying, and he is. You can't rationalize his motivations, he just does what he wants.
I've always liked Lex Luthor. I think he's interesting because he's not wrong that Superman and the others heroes need people who could take them on if they turned on humanity. The problem is that he doesn't even believe that rhetoric. He's just jealous of the adulation heroes get for being "do gooders".
Kilgrave!
He's my favorite because his superpower is so precisely defined, and he is very smart about maximizing his results within the confines of the rules that define his superpower. He's actually smart, and that's what makes his limited power terrifying.
Despite having an origin, I'd say he's a monster. Stealing autonomy (enchantment magic) is about as evil and monstrous as you can get.
He has that shitty origin story of "monsters experimented on me as a child, and now I'm a monster." Which feels like the laziest supervillain backstory.
"Yes, that's right, I lied in a TH-cam thumbnail to get you to click on it"
Truly driving home the message of the video by portaying a completely monstrous villain...
Between Magneto and Joker, I can tell you which one I'd rather have on an adventuring party.
Lol yeah I feel like we could work with the one who canonically keeps joining the X-Men and seems like he could be a team player :)
And I can tell you which one you're more likely to have in your adventuring party
Haha oh god too true
@@w4iphi came here to say this
I've found it quite amusing that some people seem to have discovered the sympathetic villain trope for the first time watching black panther. I've seen a few posts along the lines of 'how is killmonger a villain he's right!' And its like yes....but no.... the whole point is that we understand his motivation because he's driven by real world issues of social justice and inequality. But his goal to fix these things is genocide via race war, making him a villain.
This video reminded me of your latest Critical Role Demistified when Laura said "Oh no" to Delilah's reaction to Sylas's death
“I broke the world for you”
Poison Ivy is my favourite sympathetic villain. Her message has become significantly less villainous over the years. Her methods while "bad", are effective.
Maybe the simplest way to think about it is that it's very easy to imagine a story in which Magneto is the hero (in fact, there have been plenty, even if he remains a morally complex one), whereas you can't make the Joker a hero, or possibly even a protagonist, without him effectively ceasing to be the Joker.
Great video as always!
Here's a quick setup where the Joker could be a protagonist.
Batman has gone full-on Red Son and decided to make a Gotham where it's physically impossible to commit crimes. The specific mechanic for this isn't important but let's say he teams up with Poison Ivy and creates a plant parasite that lives in the brain and makes it impossible to do crime lol.
Joker somehow finds a way around this mechanism. Maybe the plants work by subjecting you to increasing mental distress as a deterrent and Joker discovers that if you undergo enough CrAzY suffering a la Killing Joke then you become immune to it.
So now he's going around torturing people in order to create criminals, because he believes, like Batman does, that the natural state of mankind is to do crimes and be evil. And he thinks that's based and cool. Let's create another character, one who also became immune but didn't become evil. For most of the story they're strictly an antagonistic force against the Joker, but near the end they come to realize a way to stop Batman. Probably by talking to the Joker and realizing how Batman is thinking and what to say to him to make him stop or whatever. We'll grab an existing character like Robin or Mr Freeze and make them fit here. It'll be great.
So you're following the Joker as he tries to create his criminal empire. You want him to fail because of how horrible he is, but you kinda want him to succeed also, because you want people to be free and this seems to be the only way to do it. Things come to a tense finale as Robin or whoever has to leave Joker to his own devices in order to take on Batman, and it's a race to see if the Joker can succeed in his worst crime of all time before the citizens of Gotham become free in a safe way and cause his plan to fail.
Frankly, my favorite villain is Mr. Freeze specifically because of the rework he got in BTAS. Just... you have SO MUCH that you can do with that, and having sympathetic villains is something that you can use to spice up your DnD campaign. But not at early levels, early levels you want your villains to be more "monstrous" to get the party together, because at that point the point of the party RP is to get to know and find out the party dynamic. Once that dynamic is established, you can use it to bounce off them with the sympathetic villain, with the monstrous villain becoming more of a side quest thing.
Megamind (to Titan): "Oh, you're a villain, alright, just not a super one!"
Titan (puzzled): "What's the difference!?"
Megamind: "Presentation!"
I agree that leaving out a reason/motivation for a villain towards the "monstrous" end of the spectrum can be very intimidating and scary. Most people operate better when there's a pattern of logic, and/or have something to work with regarding their foe's motivation.
As I understand it, a big part of the fear in eldritch horror stories/game systems is just how alien and unfathomable the foes are.
My favorite villains/antagonists are those we can place ourselves in their circumstances and understand exactly how they got to where they are now.
There's one problem I want to point out with this video. You are correct Magneto used to be a sympathetic villain... but in the 80s at least in the comics that started to turn and Magneto became more of an Anti-Hero... and eventually just a hero. This turning point, in my opinion, began in God Loves Man Kills.
I saw an article several years ago making the argument that Ledger's Joker was so good because we never got an origin story, and it looks like you and I agree on that. Peter David in his book on writing comics made a great argument for Captain Barbosa in the first PotC as being a great sympathetic villain (even though he's fairly monstrous); the man really just wanted to eat an apple!
Personally I wish I was better at making monsters; I make too many of my villains sympathetic! Sometimes you just need a straight-up bad guy with no redeeming characteristics.
Great video on an important topic, Mike!
I think one nuance not mentioned here is plain and simple Greed as the motivator. The villian has a clear reason, it is easy to get into their head, but they are not sympathetic. They would kill anyone that gets in the way of a payday. It can work within your spectrum, I just didn't hear that directly mentioned unless I missed it.
One of my favorite villains of all time snuck up on me somewhat randomly: Handsome Jack, from Borderlands 2. He fits the role of Monster pretty well for basically the entire game, and is endearingly over-the-top in a series that's all about being over the top. The more you play, though, the more he really hits the sympathetic nerve, while never quite leaving the monster category. I don't want to say anything too in detail, for fear of spoiling an eleven year-old game, but I think Gearbox did an amazing job of crafting an incredibly tragic story for him, and then putting it mostly under the skin of a brightly-colored, zany, over-the-top game. And while I don't think his future appearances in other BL games were necessary, I don't think they ever really did the character a disservice.
I like this scale of villainy. The idea of asking myself what is needed to make a villain really pop depending on his role and attitude is also an interesting one. We don't need a disney villain movie about everyone, but that doesn't mean some characters won't benefit from a more sympathetic portrayal.
Okay, so... this is a tricky topic and one that I'd have more to say on in a "sympathetic villains" video, but I feel like there's an extra dimension to this in a rolyplaying game. In another video, you mentioned you ran a pre-constructed adventure, and the players ended up HATING an NPC who was supposed to be a recurring ally. As a DM, you can't predict how the players will react to your world, plot beats or characters. While I have no experience as a DM yet (but I want to someday), a concern I have is: what if you try to make a sympathetic villain, and your players end up hating them?
The advantage tabletop RPGs have over other narrative media is that the DM can CHANGE the plot and characters on the fly to be more in line with what the players want. Again, I have no experience doing this, but I feel that if the players ended up hating a villain you wanted to be sympathetic, you could tweak them into a "monster" type they can feel satisfied defeating. Either they started with good intentions but got drunk with power, or you could pull a Chairman Drek from the first Ratchet and Clank game and reveal their good intentions were a lie. Maybe their tragic origin story is retroactively a lie to gain sympathy? (Which is a classic trait of the Joker too)
Of course, you could also stick with your original idea but try to... do it better so the players sympathize. But if the players don't WANT a sympathetic villain you shouldn't force one on them, it's like your "the Barbarian never wanted to be a long-lost heir" story.
Matt has also done this in reverse on Critical Role a few times, like if the players end up slaughtering a bunch of guards in horrible ways and they're starting to feel bad about it, he'll mention they see torture implements in the room, to retcon them into not being innocent bystanders.
Great concept and examples! There is another famous pair you shared half of: Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars.
Vader/Anakin Skywalker is sympathetic in the original trilogy, to the point where, as a kid who grew up with those movies, I am still moved by his redemption at the end of Jedi. Obi Wan is clearly still hurt and haunted by the turn of his pupil and best friend, Vader is the (main) protagonist's father, and even when he does evil he clearly seems to think it's for justified reasons. By contrast, Emperor Palpatine is a mysterious monster. The prequels (despite their flaws) added to Anakin's backstory, adding more justification, but start with Palpatine's villainy already fully developed, just hidden.
[Not much added to either by the sequels (big sigh), and I am not familiar enough with the old extended universe to speak on it.]
I think one of my favorite villains is probably Pokey Minch from the Earthbound/Mother series. He does some absolutely despicable things, but at the same time you can see how a young boy shaped by an abusive home life and corrupted by alien forces could wind up how he does... but also, you have his younger brother who (in his brief appearances) shares none of those tendencies, showing that there could just be something nasty in Pokey's core that got exploited in the worst ways.
"All it takes is one bad day. And it drove you as crazy as me. Madness is like gravity..all it takes is a little push"
"Memories can be vile. Repulsive little brutes like children I supose, But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we deny them, we deny reason itself! Although why not? We aren't contractionally tied down to rationality. There is no sanity clause. So if you find yourself locked on to an unpleasant train of thought heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable...there's always madness. you can just step outside and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened, you can walk away. Madness is the emergency exit!"
"Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another. If I have to have a past..i prefer it to be multiple choice"
I find monsters interesting if done right. Sometimes people do stuff so screwed up that no amount of backstory can justify them.
My favorite D&D villain I've ever made was a monstrous goblin lich who slaughters innocent people and destroys cities simply because "he wants to show the world that he can". His introduction was him sitting on a Grung corpse while smoking one of their fingers
Not to sound like a cheesy anime nerd but I think that´s one of the aspects that make Naruto so special. Most if not all of the villians are sympathetic villians and most of them became villains because good people acted ignorant of what the real evil was: War.
Thinking about Ma from Ma. If you haven't seen the film, I won't spoil it, and it isn't required viewing, but they cast Octavia Spencer as a villain and then struggle to blend a sympathetic backstory with monstrous actions. If it was simple, direct revenge, she would be sympathetic, but she harms a lot of other people as a part of, or even unrelated to, her revenge.
Honestly I think an effective way to drive home a monster with backstory, at least in the joker's way of "hurting others because he was hurt" would be to show cruelty that was once shown to the villian themselves.
Like, say the Villian has massive acid burns on his body, and a lot of emphasis is put on how those scars effected him, through pain and discrimination and trauma. And then show them attempting of suceeding in putting someone else through that same experience, burning them the same way, fully aware of the pain it brings they do it anyway. Very much the antithesis of "I wouldn't wish this suffering on my worst enemy"
Superhero comics informed my ideas that there are no "good" or "bad" characters, theirs just good or bad writing, or presentation I suppose would be how it would need to be expressed in tabletop games. Good writing, good presentation, can make a minor background character or NPC into a beloved figure among the audience, while bad writing, bad presentation, can turn would could be a BRILLIANT CONCEPT for a character into someone nobody wants to keep seeing. "Ugh, THIS guy again." But a curious element of superhero comics, because of their continious, serialized nature, good writing can turn someone who was considered "ugh, THAT guy!" where the audience is exhausted by the character and have NO patience for them... into someone they CAN'T WAIT to see again, to root for OR against, because the writing, the presentation, gets the audience to turn around on them. Maybe it's a retcon, maybe it's an element that was always there, but downplayed or barely acknowledged (because of bad presentation) that turns everything around and makes them magic. Maybe it's only for one story, or one writer (or one scene!) and that magic can never quite be captured again, but for that story, or writer, or scene, one piece of good presentation, and a character can become great.
If I had to choose which villain to go up against, I personally like going after the Monster more in DnD. Its far easier to cut them down brutally especially if they are someone like the joker. I've had other Players decide to side with the Sympathetic villain and then PvP ensued.
My favorite D&D villains seem like they're going to be sympathetic, but then it turns out they're not.
When I ran Curse of Strahd, I had a lot of fun drip feeding lore about the vampire's backstory. How he was tricked into making this dark deal, and how he was subsequently cursed to suffer forever. How he only ever had one desire, and how he never got what he wanted, even after his fall. How he was haunted by regret. Only in the end to reveal that, well, no, he was never sympathetic. Nothing that happened to him served as any sort of justification for how he treated Ireena, or what he did to Sergei, and what's more, he never learned a goddamn thing. He's only as evil in undeath as he was in life, and the pity party is just a huge pile of lies that everyone in the valley has to go along with because he's an unkillable tyrant.
Got to give a shout out to my man Benedict from Last Action Hero. Charles Dance was amazing in that role.
This Video helped me give a character in my D&D world proper motivation. Thanks
I really like the Joker in the Arkham games. His unpredictable behaviour and scewed relationship to Batman is just faszinating to me. :D
Thank you for making videos like these!
I find it more useful to think of the "Antagonist Sympathy spectrum" rather than the "Villain" one -- seeing it instead as one one end is the Absolute Monster -- the Joker -- and at the other end is the Protagonist of Another Story -- someone who is completely justified but pitted against the protagonists due to either a lack of information or differing values -- with the Sympathetic Villain somewhere in the middle.
Personally, in a D&D setting [if you're setting up your BBEG that far in advance instead of just elevating the villain who gets away the most] , I think the first and last antagonists faced should usually be Complete Monsters, while antagonists with more nuance tend to work better in the middle of the campaign. Because antagonists with nuance are also antagonists who can be reasoned with, and may even be potential allies against your actual complete monster BBEG.
I think giving an antagonist too much sympathetic story can backfire specifically in D&D setting, since it's generally a game where the expectation is that conflict resolution often occurs through combat. If an antagonist is sympathetic and can potentially be reasoned with, what to do about them may end up not feeling good in a gamist sense in the D&D game rules for some players. [Hence why I think I prefer to start with a complete monster -- let the characters gel as a party against someone who's obviously just a bad person before I introduce antagonists where the PCs may disagree about if the antagonist *is* sympathetic, *could* be reasoned with, and *would* be worth doing so.]
Not nonsense, Mike... I understood the feeling between Rage and Serenity to be, not a midpoint on a spectrum between those two extremes, but as the feeling of tension between those opposing emotions. It was poetic and one of the most moving points in the movie.
I genuinely am glad that the scene worked for you! I like the way those scenes are filmed/acted a lot, I just find the verbiage to be a bit lacking/confusing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Mike begins his Villain Arc.
Love it Mike! Great stuff to consider! The BBEG of my campaign is a former devil, now demon lord, who is sick of the Blood War and wants to get out. So he’s trying to carve out his own empire on the material plane.
1. On the Thumbnail you had Magneto and Joker so I was expecting a Law vs Chaos Alignment debate.
2. I see you have an Avatar book in the back ground. Hoping you can do a deep role play explainer.
I did not expect to see Henry among the list of examples, it's an interesting pull for sure and I honestly don't know where I would put him on sympathetic vs monster since it has been so long since I've seen Lost.
My favorite villain is Ursula, she is just so fun. No I haven't seen the new movie, I don't watch the remakes. She's not the best written villain out there but I still love her.
As avid comic reader I find most of my inspiration on these (and videogames) for making antagonist. Also, I like to check mangas for that instance, there are so many good choices that we can use to help us improve our villains from both sides of the spectrum.
My favorite movie villain is Hans Landa from "Inglorious Basterds." Charming, sadistic, charismatic AF.
Totally self-interested and ideologically bankrupt. He's neither sympathetic (as in, I'm not nodding and going "Yeah, I could see myself doing that given his situation.") nor a completely inexplicable monster almost inhuman in motivation. He's just amoral and self-interested. He kinda sits in the middle of the spectrum I guess?
Really Early for this one! Really interesting topic
Love this analysis on why not every villain should be sympathetic, can't wait to hear your further thoughts!
I just took a moment to zoom & enhance! I appreciate ur CR shelf behind the glass. 💯
I find it interesting how often sympathetic villain collapses into redemption. With characters such as Harley Quinn and Darth Vader we get those moments of "See. There was some good in them" despite the fact they straight up killed kids. A line even some monsters won't cross. Meanwhile lesser monsters, such as the bully who just enjoys being a jerk or the privileged business developer bulldozing a grandma's house, we will happily see their lives ruined in the story. Just see who gets more vindictive reprisal from your party: the central villain who doesn't want to commit genocide but has to save his little sister or the potion seller who overcharges because the party has a "filthy halfling" in it.
both the joker (ill use tdk) and hannibal (tv) get a glimpse of backstory, but i would argue that that actually makes them better. in jokers case, he himself tells us stories we can choose to believe true or lies. in hannibals case, we have will traveling to hannibals childhood home, an abandoned lithuanian castle engulfed by foggy woods, to learn like three things about him that bring will to kill, and a run to italy where its revealed that hannibal was known as "the monster of venice" even that young. holy shit etc. in both cases, getting just a glimpse at the possibility that they are human, somehow makes it all... worse ? they are more mysterious, more scary, and at the same time, one does feel... not empathy exactly, but a gnawing horror/curiosity mashup at what could have been bad enough to make them into what they are. what HAPPENED to them? is it better to never figure it out? it reminds me a bit of hisoka from hxh (always those clowns lmaoooo). when it was revealed that actually hisoka has a last name, something shifted, and my first reaction was literally "wait, hisoka has a MOTHER???" bc he is a character that seems to just have plopped down onto earth one day, ready to be a freak and be good at it. to imagine a "hisoka backstory" feels detrimental to the character as it does for few other hxh villains and few villains generally. which is to say, hes honestly almost a better representation of that end of the spectrum (to me).
i can tell that you definitely prefer the sympathetic villain over the monstrous one (maybe bc they are allowed backstory and motivation) but i actually do love a monstrous villain a lot, as long as they come with a narrative foil (usually in the form of a protagonist). it is actually fascinating to me that characters who we know so little about can be some of the most vivid in personality and so fucking iconic in every way, often outshining their protagonist counterpart in intrigue, though both are needed to make the other happen. that relationship, which exists in some, more sympathetic, form between charles and magneto, is soooooo interesting to me, which i think is the real knack to making a good villain. there doesnt have to be any "backstory" to the two characters and how their lives are intertwined, but making sure they have narrative chemistry in the now definitely is. for both hannibal and the joker, there exists a possibility of corruption of the protagonist, it is actually part of the intrigue as well. we dont know what makes them what they are but their arguments ARE compelling and both batman and will graham find themselves 1) drawn to the villain knowing they are the villain and did monstrous things but also 2) in danger of becoming the villain if they take one step too far, the step the villain tries (and maybe succeeds?) them to take. a good villain doesnt have to have a tragic backstory that is all fleshed out. just the implication of it and evidence of the way it shaped them into being monsters in the now is enough if they are tied, in the now, to a protag that mirrors their story and has the capacity for the same evil. if you let the protag loose on a dark path, could they become what the villain is now? if the answer is yes, thats enough. but it should be yes, or else the story suffers by making the protag seem inadequate and the story themes flat and boring.
also, making it kinda gay never hurt anyone. coughs what
Magneto is a great example… the sympathetic villain is my favorite… it can bring up questions about morality and circumstance that I think more people in society should think about… they are also typically more complex… the start of a good conversation… none of this “Thanos did nothing wrong bullshit”, but actual, well thought out reasonings… like “I can’t really even argue against it” kinda motivations…
But at what point does that turn into an Anti-Hero
Essentially, anti-heroes do good things for bad reasons, sympathetic villains do bad things for good reasons.
@@SupergeekMike I feel like anti-heroes are also often depicted as people who do good things for good reasons, but have pretty heinous methods that they employ to acheive those good things.
You didn't have to lie, I would have clicked on the thumbnail anyway. Now *you* are on the Supervillain Sympathy Scale 😔
Complete aside, but if you ever want to get back into comics, the library can be a great resource for trade paperbacks
the darkling in the shadow and bone books (and netflix show) is a great example of someone who plays freaking jumprope with the monstrous/sympathetic spectrum (SPOILERS).
like magneto he is (according to him) fighting for a minority group to be safe from prosecution. he also turned them into his personal conscript army. he is barely holding a country together in the wake of centuries of corrupt kings and a wall of shadow cutting off half the country from the rest of the world. he was the one who created that shadow wall in the first place (it wasn't on purpose, to be fair), and he uses it as a weapon of mass destruction.
he is the protagonists' natural counterbalance, the one who helped her come into her power, and he wants her to rule with him....if he must chain her to him, so be it, because he """knows""" it to be the right thing to do.
thus, the heroes and the audience have to grapple with their feelings towards him, and with their views on his methods: do war and prosecution justify any conceivable measure? which actions can be forgiven, which cant?
in the show it helps that he is played by ben barnes, who is not only very attractive, but also rarely gives away if the darkling is being actively manipulative, or if he is acting on genuine feelings, or if he himself *cant tell the difference by this point*. and the darkling is also very much conscious of the role in the story others need him to play, and chooses at various points to act as the mentor, the conquering hero, the knight in shining armour, the villain, the inhuman monster.
there was a point about ttrpg villains in here at some point, i think....but anyway, i recommend people check out the show, or the books, for a great example of why you don't have to pick a point on the spectrum, or even several. cover the whole thing! take note of how your players are reading the villain and let the villain react accordingly.
One of my favorite ever is from final fantasy 14 Emet-Selch one of the few times in video games that really got me
This is a very interesting argument and I'd very much like to hear the rest of it. Im not at all practiced at writing villains so ai wann see tne other video too before I have an opinion
I loved this discussion!! I'm especially intrigued by your description of Joker and Magneto as pinnacles of these two facets of villainy, and thinking about it I'd actually like your thoughts on a couple questions:
1) Do you think these two being at opposing ends reflects in any way on the general storytelling sensibilities of Marvel and DC?
And 2) Where on this spectrum would you put someone like Raimi's Doc Ock? Although I imagine if I wait till your next video, that one might be made clearer.
Thanks for the good stuff!
Raimi’s Doc Ock is definitely on the sympathetic end, although he’s complicated by the fact that the arms are goading him into doing evil, and it doesn’t seem like he really understands what he’s doing will hurt people.
I don't necessarily like the entire execution of this aspect of the story, but I currently have a soft spot for the "villain" of a particular novel series, because that character would be a protagonist, or a secondary hero in most other stories.
They are the villain because an action they took to protect the status quo, and later came to regret, caused the death of someone import to the story's main character, leading the main character seeing them as a target for revenge, and an ongoing threat in the form of a defender of that objectionable status quo, despite the villain earnestly trying to fix that status quo from the inside, though still being opposed to the protagonist's more radical stance, and methods.
I can think of at least one other story where the same, or very similar dynamics were used, but who was the villain, and who was the hero were reversed, which is part of why I like it.
In D&D terms, the "villain" is kind of like a paladin, somewhere in between "lawful good", "lawful neutral", and "neutral good" (serving the status quo of a "lawful stupid" god), while the protagonist is a necromancer in the "chaotic good" to "chaotic neutral" range.
The series is called "The Death Mage" by Densuke, if this blurb has anyone interested enough to check it out.
this is funny i just found this video and last night my girlfriend and i were watching spiderman 3 and was talking about these 2 differences about villains.
Nooooo 😢 How Dare you have an ad for standing desks when my back has been the most recent issue this year.
Magneto was Right - why he often transforms into an antihero
It might be too cliché or mainstream, but I really love Thanos in the Infinity War movie. He's a sympathetic villain who's a serious threat.
Other than how he got the Power Stone offscreen before the movie starts, his methods are explained and his reasoning is justified. His solution is limited, and that's part of why we root for the heroes, but Infinity War is *his* movie.
But Endgame plucks a worse version of Thanos out of the past to give viewers a climactic battle and a relevant tangible guy-to-be-triumphed-over in the final act. He's explained with a hand wave, and contrived for flashy movie fighty time.
TLDR; Thanos Infinitywar sympathetic! but Thanos Endgame monsterlike.
FF14's Emet-Selch is a fantastic example of a "sympathetic monster".
He is one of the last three surviving Ancients, the first sapient race and founders of a literal eutopia where death, suffering, disease, and all of that was practically nonexistent. But something went horribly wrong and their world shattered into 14 parallel pieces, called reflections. He and the other two Ancients have been working ever since to restore their lost paradise by forcibly merging all the reflections back together, destroying those worlds and allowing their "aether", or "life essence", to be re-absorbed by the largest, primary shard.
However, in the 13,000+ years since the "Sundering", as they call it, new life and civilizations have arisen on each world, and merging the shards kills literally everything inhabiting it. Untold millions or even billions of lives ended with the promise of eventual paradise. Now committing mass, mass, _mass_ genocide is inexcusable by any metric; the problem is, when the world was shattered, its aether was also split 14 ways, giving rise to disease, suffering, stunted growth (the Ancients were something like 20 feet tall), truncated lifespans (the Ancients were functionally immortal), comparative lack of magical ability (people _can_ still throw fireballs and stuff, but casually creating life is way beyond anything even remotely considered possible), etc etc.
As an example, average human IQ is 100. 75 qualifies for mental retardation. A 14-way split in the IQ of the average person is 7. Imagine what someone with 7 IQ would be like. That's what current civilization is to the Ancients. Which means, in their eyes, the new inhabitants of the various shards are literally worse than insects; not even truly alive and therefore not to be taken into consideration when destroying their worlds.
Obviously, we take umbrage with this and have to stop them. However, whenever he drops his facade of haughty disdain, Emet-Selch is presented as a tired, lonely, sad old man. One who is crushed by 13,000 years' worth of survivor's guilt, and the knowledge that he, as one of the leaders of their society, failed his people and couldn't stop the death of their world. One who would stop at nothing to fix that mistake. One who just wants to go home to his loved ones.
Scorpious from farscape is an amazing genius villain
Ironically the two ends are two of the three villians I like most. Darth Vader being the third. I actually think he's kinda right in the middle of the spectrum so there is the range in its entirety. Loved the video, look forward to the follow ups.
Really hoping Dr.Doom gets some love in part 2
My favorite villain is David Xanatos.
I think the more sympathetic a villain is, the worst their actions are. The Joker is a violent monster who just likes killing people for no good reason, but then you have Magnito. A man who lived through the Holocaust. A man whose family was murdered because they were viewed as lesser beings. And what does he do? The same goddamn thing. He has absolutely no excuse for not understanding why what he's doing is wrong on every level because he was on the receiving end of it.
Man, I love Magneto and his relationship with Charles...
I’d argue that while Joker is definitely the figurehead of the monstrous villain category, Magneto is not who I would first think of for a sympathetic villain. That honor, at least in the modern day, would probably have to go to Thanos, just because EVERYONE knows about him.
If you ever watch interviews with some convicted hardcore criminals, they straight up say they embraced that they're a "bad guy." Some people full on start seeing themselves as predators simply because that makes them feel powerful.
Joker might actually be a difficult example to use as the unsympathetic example because there are too many versions of the character, ranging from "cut my own face off" horror Joker to the one Dr. Quinzel saw in him (deluded as she was). A better example might be Darkseid, a sort of anthropomorphic personification of fascism who understands that his quest for the Anti-Life Equation will doom the universe to slavery and misery forever -- and he sees nothing wrong with that because it's _what he wants._ "I want the power, so I'll doom everyone else" is understandable as a motivation, but it's also completely unsympathetic.
Where does Doctor Doom fall on this spectrum? He has a very detailed backstory, which came about very early in the Fantastic Four's initial run: Romani heritage, mother damned to eternal torment, his ignoring Reed Richards' comments about the mistake in his equations for the device meant to draw his mother's soul from the Bad Place, said device blowing up in his face, and his expulsion from university. On the other hand, Doctor Doom lives for only two things: to rule Latveria, and to get revenge on his enemies, primarily Reed Richards and the rest of the Fantastic Four, but honestly include every superhero in the 616 who's ever humiliated him. Furthermore, Doctor Doom every so often fights on the side of the good guys. Its just that his ego won't let him be upstaged by one of those heroes. So where does he fall?
Doom does not fall. Doom goes where he pleases. Nor will Doom be graded on the rubric of any other man, for to be graded by another, one must be inferior to another. And Doom is inferior to no one! Especially not that blasted Reed Richards!
"Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes." Robert A. Heinlein. (I'm p[etty sure Lazarus Long said it)
You lied to me , Mike. This, this is my villain origin story!
"Sympathy" in this context is ironic. The proper term is Empathy. When a person can put themselves into the villain's place, whether or not they agree with the villain's reasons or actions, that's Empathy. If the person feels bad for the villain after using empathy, you get Sympathy.
Interesting point! You could also probably make the case that empathy applies to most of the spectrum and sympathy only applies to those closest to Magneto’s side… but either way, that alliteration was too good to pass up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Really interesting topic, and I agree with many things but maybe disagree with a couple others. Like, I disagree with the sentiment that 'the monster' is unlike people in real life because people think they are right. Your main example is Joker, and he thinks he's right. You showed a clip of him saying "I'm not crazy I'm just ahead of the curve'. Joker thinks he's doing these things because deep down everyone is evil anyway. You also used John Doe in Seven and Hanablelector; two characters written based on real-life serial killer archetypes. To me, the fact that EVEN the most monstrous characters have their reasons, either thinking they are the good guys or else feeling that while they are not they are justified in their villainy is what makes them compelling. That's more of a minor nitpick in your explanation than a disagreement though.
I think I don't put Joker as the peak end of his monster side of the spectrum, though for illustrative purposes I see how he worked. He is certainly not a sympathetic villain but I feel there is still at least some character motivation there. I'd think that characters like Mike Myers, or even more so Jason, are even further there; there is basically no motivation. He is more like an actual monster from a monster movie but just happens to be human. Later stories tried to add motivation but its really all just set dressing to the point; which is killing a lot of people for no real particular reason. Characters like the Joker, "the psychopath trying to prove a point' are not sympathetic, but they have the motivation and general rage at society or humanity that can occasionally have tiny nuggets of truth. Plus there is the fact that you look at them and you know there is something in them that just can't help but see the world so differently, that through their eyes this worldview makes sense. I don't think amount Jason's worldview, I just laugh at the increasingly wacky ways he kills people.
but maybe then they are;t even really villains? maybe Joker IS the far end of the spectrum and past that is just actually monsters, even if human-shaped.
I've ranted a lot and I want to be clear I love the video. Just trying to take it and think through how I see villains.
p.s contracts on the new desk and sponsor, looks sweet!
Perhaps a good way to look at it is thinking from the POV of the writer, the actor, or the Dungeon Master portraying the villain. If the thought process is, "This character has a point, even if they're going about things the wrong way," then they're sympathetic. If the thought process is, "Of course this is an evil way of thinking, but this character isn't able to see that" then they're unsympathetic. It's not whether the villain sees themself as hero or villain, it's the outside perspective that matters here -- which is important in this context because Mike's making videos about how to create these kind of characters in a story/game.
@@SingularityOrbit Thats a really good way to think about it and break it done! Thank you thats very helpful!
Humans find patterns. When there aren't patterns to find, we imagine them. A villain with no explanation for their actions causes an audience to start imagining their motives and rationale. What hidden pattern is there that explains everything?
And because the villain is, well, villainous, this leads us to questions like... Do their victims somehow deserve it? Is there some secret or conspiracy that justifies it, at least in the villain's own mind? *Is my understanding of morality just wrong?*
You missed an important movie for the joker: Killing Joke
I referenced the comic book a few times, I don’t think there’s any Joker content in the film that is meaningfully different from what’s in the book.
If you mean that it would have been a good source of footage, there’s a lot more Joker footage I wanted to include (Under the Red Hood especially), it just wasn’t in the budget to buy more blu-rays than I already had for the video lol
@@SupergeekMike ah! Sry, must have missed it. I usually watch your vids as work bg noise, so I sometimes miss details
I think there is a first question of villains your missing. It's causing you to completely distort a real sliding scale by half. Merging it with another one. That other spectrum is often misdescribed as from the beginning opened villain to surprise villain. The ideal example is a season. 4 Babylon 5 spoiler. So stop reading here if you don't want to be spoiled.
Note a lot of the race identities in season one cannot be Relied upon so I am using post season one. When the shadows are introduced, the question is How big of a role are they going to play in the villains, and are they true villains or antivillons. The vor lines by comparison are clearly the mysterious metor for the forces of light. They are compulsively cryptic, making it hard to tell whether they're hero, anti-hero, or wild card. But you think in any case that they're the gandff role past the false beginning of the climax. Then the true climax begins by the protagonist catching they're framing out. Then it becomes clear, it has always been a 3 way fight between the protagonists and co big bad the shadows and the voorlons.
I think my favorite are the ones that are unsympathetic but understandable. The ones where you know the kind of person they are but can't even get close to agreeing with them on anything. Like tighten from megamind. He's an incel plain and simple. I understand the kind of people they are but can't sympathize with them.
Logain from Dragon Age is one of my favorite villains. His hatred for the french is relatable. Also he can get pretty coll redemption ark over multiple games.
People say that, that nobody thinks they're evil, and I just don't understand it. The majority of people don't think they're evil, but out of eight billion people, and all the humans who ever existed, given the sheer range of human perspectives and emotion, *NO ONE* is just amoral or outright evil? Like, they know it's wrong on a moral or societal level, but they just do it anyways because they want to. I mean, the Joker does it to amuse himself, wtf was Ted Bundy doing when he was eating people, and doing things with corpses no one should ever have to imagine? He was amusing himself. When he was caught, there were tons of wild manipulations and shows of not being responsible, claims of why he was they way he was, but they all had the tenor of a sort of unwillingness to face the consequences, and a bunch of them were proven as false. It seemed he was just using these excuses as manipulations and gambits to avoid being executed. There was also 0 guilt. He said that he was "in the enviable position of not having to deal with guilt." I dunno man, seems like a person who knows they are the villain, but just never wanted to admit it to the world because he was arrogant enough to think he'd get out of it. Then at the last minute, when there was no escaping the consequences, he just said "Screw it." and confessed to like 30 of them, and said there were tons more.
And given the long history of our species, I doubt Bundy was a one-off. Thankfully though, that kind of person seems to be in short supply.
Also, call me crazy, but I have my doubts that all villains exist in the shadow of two characters that aren't even a hundred years old, we've been making villains a long time, but they are a good example of the archetypes on the scale.
I've been lied to... Idk if I could ever trust you again... wow.. of all people... you think you know someone symbiotically through a computer monitor...
Have you seen TellTale Game's take on the Joker?
Syndrome is one of my favorite sympathetic villians.
On the flipside, I'd argue that not enough people argue about parasympathetic villians! Lol
I love the kind of sympathetic villain that we can understand, but not agree with, and Syndrome is the perfect example. His villain origin story is him being rejected by his hero after overstepping his boundaries.
Like, I understand it sucks, but you were in the wrong back then and you're even more in the wrong now.
Ah but what about the super villains that people simpathize with?
@supergeekmike
If you are good/fluent in french I would really recommend this video (french subtitles only for now) of Bolchegeek (french YTber) called "The magneto syndrom" that focus on the treatement of what you call sympathetic villains in fictions and there purposes. Based on what you give us to see of your though process I really think you would find it interesting.
th-cam.com/video/VXNcemkm2zY/w-d-xo.html
Afterward he develloped the subject and wrote a whole book on it.
I would point to the Incredibles movie villain Syndrome, I think the movie was really good but the weakest part of it was attempting to make the serial murderer bad guy at all relatable. Just let him be a monster
What about anime villains?
As a long time Batman fan I gotta ask, IS Joker one of the greatest supervillains in comic book history or is he just one of the most well known 😂 (I do think he's perfect for what you're going for here, I just think he's maybe a tad bit overrated, especially with how he's been written in more recent stuff. He's iconic for sure, but I'd argue there are much better written Batman villains who deserve a place in our cultural zeitgeist.)
Edit to state: Magneto is one of the best supervillains is the correct opinion.
It depends a lot lol. Joker used to be the most versatile, but after Death in the Family and Killing Joke, he pretty much had to become Batman’s arch-foe by default - but that also meant he could never go back to being a low-stakes enemy (except in lighter retellings, like Brave and the Bold and Lego Batman). He’s now always gotta be the serial killer who has killed more people than cancer.
And yeah, I definitely agree that sometimes he can be oversaturated, or misused, or just fundamentally misunderstood by writers who don’t understand what actually makes the Joker work. It’s a bummer. My ideal Joker isn’t the ONLY enemy Batman fights, but I do like when he shows up after a long hiatus and just completely wrecks Batman’s whole world 😁
@@SupergeekMike There's a lot about Batman and his supporting cast that is misunderstood by so many modern writers. And yeah, definitely some older Batman stories where the Joker is interesting and he's definitely the most recognizeable Batman baddie, but sadly he's become kinda one note. I think that there a lot of things you talked about in the video, actually, that point out why it's so easy to fall into that w/ The Joker. He's an easy villain to throw in, but it's hard to do anything interesting w/ him as things stand rn. (Granted, I am a few years behind.) Unless it's BTAS Joker, in which case, he is perfect every time 😅 thanks Mark Hamill.
(That said: I actually am genuinely interested to see where the take Joker in The Batman sequel bc some of the most interesting takes on that character come from movie and TV.)
I think that a big problem in the D&D community nowadays is that everybody wants every creature they encounter to be a Magneto, that they can redeem. If you want a Joker, or an Alien Mind that they just have to kill to remove the threat, you are doing a wrong. As you seem to say in at least parts of this video; there is room for both types of villain. And the types dont have to be reserved for just the BBEG, either.
Sorry I'm definitely too queer to think of Magneto as a villain anymore
For real tho, with our modern perspective, Charles’ approach of “stay closeted and if you do have to be out in public, work hard to prove you’re the model minority” is not nearly as defensible as it probably seemed to me when I was younger
First!
L take on the Kraven trailer
Look, I don’t think “different” always means “bad” when it comes to adaptations, but taking a character who is famously an evil big game hunter and turning him into a blend of the Punisher and Halle Berry’s Catwoman does not feel like it’s the path forward to a compelling film.
Also, man oh man, that Rhino reveal at the end of the trailer is just the pits.
@@SupergeekMike different takes on characters can be rad tho, like in The Joker like you mentioned in your video. I thought it looked really fun! Of course it could be another Morbius, but it could also NOT be another Morbius so that’s a happy thought. Idk, lol, I was being a little abrasive with my original comment but I’m still excited for it.
I forget who said it but someone said the Joker would love it if his origin was left multiple choice. The somewhat recent thing where there were 3 jokers was interesting but I like not knowing in that ‘don’t show your monster/killer shark’ too much kind of way or it becomes less scary/unsettling. However!!! The exception I make for this is the short story where it is revealed that being Batman was the only thing to give Bruce life meaning after the death of his parents so Alfred stepped up and became the Joker so he’d have someone to chase and helped craft the entire rouges gallery with actor friends. Like I shall help my mentally ill son by dressing up as a killer clown and putting on a bit of a farce and he can live on… 🥲