Hollywood’s Villain Problem

         A few weeks ago, I walked into a movie theatre to watch Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I went in expecting another above-average Marvel movie, but instead, I received a movie that was boring and mediocre even by industry standards. There were plenty of issues, but one stood out to me: the villains were never properly developed.

         In this movie, there were four major antagonists, but the two returning antagonists are the core of the issue: Nebula and Yondu. Rather than being left as antagonists, they were transformed into sort of tragic anti-heroes. Yondu was by all means a lying, thieving scoundrel in the first movie. He enslaved Peter Quill for over a decade and threatened to eat him, then spent the remainder of the movie after chasing Peter and the other Guardians. In this movie, we found out that he kept Quill because his father would kill him and Yondu was only joking. Ugh.

         Nebula was treated even worse. She used to be a heartless robotic assassin, hell-bent on killing her sister. In this movie, however, she says she only wants to beat her sister Gamora because Gamora would always beat her when she was a child. Their father, the main villain Thanos, would add robotic improvements to her to make her “better”. Rather than continuing on with a potentially amazing character, they reduced her to daddy issues.

        Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was not the first time this has happened. This happens to a lesser extent in other Marvel films, some of the Coen brother’s recent movies, such as Inside Llewyn Davis, and Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. Like a cancer, improper and unneeded humanization has been lurking under the surface of Hollywood for years. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was just the first major indication of this.

         I am not saying that humanizing villains is unimportant. Quite the opposite, humanized villains, when done properly, are some of the greatest ever created. Hans Beckert from Fritz Lang’s M, Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, Magneto from X-Men, and Roy Batty from Bladerunner are just a few examples of villains who are properly characterized.

         In the end, it comes down to a difference between empathy and sympathy. We empathize with great villains, but we rarely sympathize with them. We have empathy for Magneto, understanding that he has been discriminated against by normal humans. But we do not sympathize with his desires for world domination. We empathize with Emperor Palpatine, understanding that he wanted to protect the empire. But we do not sympathize with his iron-fisted rule. Marvel’s writers are forcing you to have empathy for Nebula’s childhood and sympathy for her when she wants to kill Thanos.

         Antagonists like Nebula don’t even function in reality. No one has sympathy for Kim Jong-Un, even though we empathize that he was born into his situation. Imagine if the King George III were portrayed as the flawed man doing what was best for his country rather than an evil monarch. Would you still sympathize with George Washington?

by Ben Jaeger