Thinking about this question made me realize there's an unwritten rule in most storytelling: even ignoble villains can't enjoy hurting people directly. They can kill people on their way to a goal (Hans in Die Hard, the Joker in Dark Knight); they can manipulate their victims to hurt themselves and others (Iago, Oldboy), but they cannot be shown to enjoy physically hurting people.
I was thinking about Hans in particular. He's a great villain. But his position is very carefully crafted in the film so that the audience will want to watch him for long periods of time.
1) He's clever and witty and a figure of power. His people obey him unquestioningly. This is "supervillain" appeal, but honestly, it's not enough. If he killed a puppy in scene 1 the audience would want him dead by scene 2, no matter how witty he was.
2) He's a figure of mystery - his plan and his motivations are hidden until very, very late in the film. So his screentime is justified because the audience wants to figure out what he's doing.
3) While he plans to kill innocent people, he only actually kills 2, and both of his victims are complicit in their own deaths. They had choices. The boss could have told him the code to the vault; the slimey guy could have not tried to betray McClane. So the audience is implicitly reassured: Hans will threaten innocents, but he won't wantonly kill them. And he is only shown killing people who "deserve it."
4) He does not kill people because he enjoys it. He kills them en route to his goal. He does not torture them or prolong their deaths.
5) While he's the villain, he's shares antagonists with McClane. He's out to defeat the same figures of dumb authority (FBI, cops) that McClane has to contend with. So in a way, every villainous victory he scores further justifies the hero's position.
Particlarly after watching Snowtown, I'm thinking that readers/viewers have very low tolerance for full-on evil. If a character kills a "real" innocent deliberately - not by accident as they're trying to kill the hero, for example, - the audience will want that character punished, like, now.
Ditto with sadism. It's one thing to have the hero (whose moral worth we're assured of) torture for information or revenge (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). But the villain?
The instant a villain tortures an innocent the audience will be rooting for his/her destruction. They'll hate that character whenever she's onscreen. So either the person tortured has to be the protagonist-who-escapes (in which case, the audience is reassured that the protagonist will punish the villain later) or it has to happen near the end of the story so that the villain will be punished quickly.
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yati
Oh yeah.
Date: 2012-05-08 04:41 pm (UTC)Thinking about this question made me realize there's an unwritten rule in most storytelling: even ignoble villains can't enjoy hurting people directly. They can kill people on their way to a goal (Hans in Die Hard, the Joker in Dark Knight); they can manipulate their victims to hurt themselves and others (Iago, Oldboy), but they cannot be shown to enjoy physically hurting people.
I was thinking about Hans in particular. He's a great villain. But his position is very carefully crafted in the film so that the audience will want to watch him for long periods of time.
1) He's clever and witty and a figure of power. His people obey him unquestioningly. This is "supervillain" appeal, but honestly, it's not enough. If he killed a puppy in scene 1 the audience would want him dead by scene 2, no matter how witty he was.
2) He's a figure of mystery - his plan and his motivations are hidden until very, very late in the film. So his screentime is justified because the audience wants to figure out what he's doing.
3) While he plans to kill innocent people, he only actually kills 2, and both of his victims are complicit in their own deaths. They had choices. The boss could have told him the code to the vault; the slimey guy could have not tried to betray McClane. So the audience is implicitly reassured: Hans will threaten innocents, but he won't wantonly kill them. And he is only shown killing people who "deserve it."
4) He does not kill people because he enjoys it. He kills them en route to his goal. He does not torture them or prolong their deaths.
5) While he's the villain, he's shares antagonists with McClane. He's out to defeat the same figures of dumb authority (FBI, cops) that McClane has to contend with. So in a way, every villainous victory he scores further justifies the hero's position.
Particlarly after watching Snowtown, I'm thinking that readers/viewers have very low tolerance for full-on evil. If a character kills a "real" innocent deliberately - not by accident as they're trying to kill the hero, for example, - the audience will want that character punished, like, now.
Ditto with sadism. It's one thing to have the hero (whose moral worth we're assured of) torture for information or revenge (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). But the villain?
The instant a villain tortures an innocent the audience will be rooting for his/her destruction. They'll hate that character whenever she's onscreen. So either the person tortured has to be the protagonist-who-escapes (in which case, the audience is reassured that the protagonist will punish the villain later) or it has to happen near the end of the story so that the villain will be punished quickly.
(I think.)