Trouble with bad guys

[hairbrain]

Hmmm way I see it you've got to get inside the mindof your bad guy... why is he bad? is he psychotic, is he misguided, is he trapped into acting this way, is he driven by desires, or is he so disenchanted with life that he's spiralling into a personal oblivion and taking everyone else with him. If it's horror and he's possessed you should ask... does he like being possessed and what brought him to become possessed? All these questions will provide the basis for your character and allow you to build more depth into him.

No one is evil without a reason... and some are not actually evil it's just society that see's them as such. If your characters are just being bad and destroying things or causing pain and there isn't any motivation behind them or any reason for their actions it will seem superficial... find out what is driving them... and then find out what is holding them back from it... in short any character is only interesting if they have falabilities.. and that includes evil dark emperors.

[Alex]

In my opinion, the worst kind of bad guy is the type that you befriend first, becomes a true friend of yours, and then you discover that their evil ways have nothing to do with how they treat you, but how they treat others.

[Yammeryammeryammer]

Exactly, history.

[Rar]

A villian is just someone who wants something (money, power, sexual gratification, justice) and doesn't care about how their actions will affect others.

One of the best screen villians must be The Godfather, but because we see things from his POV and are allowed to identify with him, we don't consider him a villian, even after he kills his own brother. If he had a moustache..........

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ September 04, 2002 08:08 PM: Message edited by: Rar ]</font>

[hairbrain]

Errr a more interesting villain is someone who needs something... and does care how his actions are effecting others.. think 'Heat'

[Alex]

By that defintion, one could say that villians have "addictions".

[zTolerance]

Just don't give your bad guy a german or english accent.

[Alex]

Or Middle Eastern, or Italian...

and definitely none of that Southern Drawl good ole boy accent.

[Mods]

Bad guys I liked include Antonio Banderes in Assassins last night, he was an *** , but at the end you thought he was gonna be off the hook. Had he have just walked away, I would have probably have clapped. For some reason it would have worked. He had a polite conversation with Sly, and told him he was "nervous" about meeting him. He then got ****** over and had the chance to walk away. Sly wasn't injured, neither was his girl at the end, so there was no need to fully kill Banderes. Shame he died.

Also Runaway Train (I think it's called) had a good bad guy, he was an *** all the way through, but he died voluntarily at the end, but killed the guy he hated at the same time.

Finally, a tvm had a strange bad guy in. It was about a train with a nuke on it heading for Denver, the bad guy didn't intend for it to blow up, but when it did, he was one of the millions of people who were affected, so you saw him walking around the city thinking "what the **** have I done!?". He didn't die etc, but seeing him with guilt worked really well.

Bad guys don't always need to die.

[img]smile.gif[/img]
m0ds

[Alex]

Independence day wreaked of something. I refused to see a movie where the city of New York is annihiliated but somehow we are supposed to cheer Wil Smith's survival after millions have died.

Hey, A bad guy (Will Smith) pulling off the role of good guy. That's slick.