Creating a Great Villain
Q: What makes a great villain?
A: Ah, yes, everyone loves to hate a really bad guy, don’t they? Max Cady (Cape Fear), Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs), Annie Wilkes (Misery), Darth Vader (Star Wars): they all stir something inside us, something that makes us uneasy and uncomfortable with our own feelings.
Good versus evil has been around, well, since the beginning, and we’ve been rooting against the villain ever since Cain murdered Abel and God said, “You’re brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground” right before declaring Cain a fugitive and a vagabond.
So what makes a well-crafted villain? First, he (or she) has to do bad things (duh). Notice I said “do” bad things and not “be” bad. Genuinely good people can be cast as villains when they give in to the darker side of the soul and do evil things (more on this later).
Second, he must do bad things with evil motives. The question here is, what drives the villain? Selfishness? Greed? Power? Revenge? His motives have to be impure, his intentions wicked. Though he may be misguided, he’s doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
Now, that being said, I believe to create a great villain there has to be one other element—redeemability.
No, the villain doesn’t have to awaken to the error of his ways and repent of all his sins at the end of the story, but the possibility has to be there. My reasoning? The human soul. No matter how vile or wicked or conscienceless someone may seem, he or she is redeemable. No matter how depraved, there is that ember of good, that spark of hope, that remnant of conscience in every soul. Unless there is mental illness involved, everyone knows good from evil.
The crafting of a great villain will bring this out. There will be that tension within, the struggle of good and evil.
Let’s face it, no one is born a terrorist or serial killer . . . but the potential is there in everyone. In fact, if we’re being honest about our own humanity, we have to recognize the potential is there in each of us and should prompt us to say with the martyr John Bradford, “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
