Joston Ramon Theney, Filmmaker: That's where the drama comes from, that's where it gets interesting
and if your bad guy was only driven by revenge, I've seen that a million times.
Film Courage:
We had this comment come in on our channel in a horror movie only the villain character matters
all the other characters are expendable most are going to die anyway what's your reaction to that?
Joston: I don't think that's true. If no one matters, they shouldn't be in the film. If it's
only about that villain then he should be yo-yoing or doing something else that only requires him
I think that you're trying to tell a story and every character is integral to that
story or they shouldn't be there maybe that comes from me working with limited budgets
always and you're constantly saying why is this person here does this person need
to be here because they're going to impact me and as far as scheduling as far as the budget
and it helps you hone your screenwriting skills better too because there's nothing
extraneous about the script so to say at any stage that none of these people matter
I think if you're watching the later Friday the 13th movies if you're watching the later
Freddy movies or the later halloweens but if you're watching the ones that they started with
you would not say anybody was extraneous in those stories they that's when they were still
very creative and they had spent a lot of time working on the script and they gave a lot of
thought towards it and it was written with love and when you do that when the screenwriter loves
those characters there's no way they will be creating people that don't matter it's no way
how does a villain in a story reflect the hero oof if you had asked me this a long time ago
now I say sometimes my villain and my my hero are almost one in the same
they have to pursue whatever their goal is with the same amount of passion I think that one person
learns lessons and the other person doesn't and that's ultimately what does in the villain and
the villain has to reflect whatever it is or I shouldn't say that villain has reflected but
their goal has to reflect something that the hero is trying to work through so that they can work
through there's a catharsis as they go through this journey and get to the end and stop this
thing from happening I think that's the way that it should go but I think that they should both
pursue their goals with the same passion and intensity because that's what makes for a great
villain I still consider the best villain to be Alan Rickman's character in Die Hard I think he
is the best villain ever because his goal is is the opposite but they're working towards the same
thing which is him and John Mclean it's just that they're going about it differently but they're
both after this their goals with the same amount of passion and intensity and being clever they're
both very clever that's the other thing about it like both both of them are trying to one-up the
other one and get one over on the other and that's what's so compelling about watching that story
I think it should be the same with with any movie that you're working on whoever is your antagonist
should be going after with the same amount of intensity and passion
they should be almost a mirror reflection of the of the good guy if maybe they made all the wrong
decisions in the past maybe they didn't make that 51 percent that warren buffett talks about
maybe they only made the 49 percent and they they weren't successful at certain things
should the antagonist be twice as strong as the hero no I think that the villain should always
have an advantage and most of the time if you if you think about it if you using alan rickman's
character in in Die Hard his advantage was that he already knew what he was trying to accomplish
that was his advantage he knew what he was trying to accomplish
and because people would say oh well he had the numbers too he had all these guys with guns
yeah but they didn't know who they were looking for and they didn't know where he was so that
put them put them at a disadvantage the advantage of the good guy I mean the bad guy actually had
the villain was that he knew what he was trying to accomplish and John Mcclane had to figure it out
so I think I don't think he has to be twice as strong he just needs to be ahead of the
game and the good guys playing catch up but you say in the in the end that the
antagonist doesn't learn any lessons but the the hero does so the the antagonist is just
it's just all anger it's all trying to get revenge but the hero somehow learns something
the hero has to learn something he really does the villain I don't think it has to be about anger
I there have been many villains that have done things give you an example moon and the stars
my villain isn't a guy who's really trying to kill everybody as a matter of fact he's trying to save
everyone he's just going about it in a really bad way what he started to notice he's been to
the edge of the universe and back he's been to the beginning of time in the end and what he's
seen is that every civilization every leap every technological leap they make gets them closer and
closer to oblivion what drives those technological leaps is hope hope hope that things can be better
hope that this makes the world a better place hope that this gets us to here and hope that this gets
us to there and what we don't account for is what happens when we make those very when we
make those mistakes or when somebody takes what we were using for hope and they weaponize it
those are the things that don't get accounted for so what his idea is is to create a machine that
it shrinks this olympic area in the brain so that hope dies the problem is when hope dies
so does ambition so there's love so this fear so many other emotions die and what what happens
after that is that his project showed that success right it and people had no hope but
then what happened is whether it was a day later or a month later people would off themselves
and if they didn't off themselves they became something different and it became very much
like the order of fanu that he that works with him to do these things
so his goal is not one that's out of anger it's one that's out of love and you find out that it's
to save the people that he still cares about because he's seen what happens in the future
so he needs this to work now the good guys know if you do this it's the same as a death sentence
because it's a ticking time bomb for people just offing themselves just killing themselves
so he's working just as hard to keep this guy from succeeding so I don't I don't think it has to be
anger or hatred or or any of those things it just has to be a goal that they really believe in that
they are just they've given everything there is no plan b there is only plan a both people have
a plan a and what do you do when they're just ah they're about to collide that's where the
drama comes from that's where it gets interesting and if your bad guy was only driven by revenge
I've seen that a million times driven by anger you can beat the anger out of somebody I've seen it
happen a million times get into a boxing ring and this guy is angry he won't have all that in three
rounds because he's going to swing for the fences he'll be exhausted and you can beat the anger out
of him and he'll give up because that's all he had was anger so the most compelling stories come from
the people who really believe in their goal and they're willing to die for their goal what makes
the villain fail is their inability to grow and adapt because adaptation is survival
right and the good guy figures it out they when they're beaten and that into the second act
when they're beaten they have to pick up the pieces and learn their lesson and they're like
I still have the same goal I just got to go about it differently
and the bad guy thinking that he's won already when he sees the bad guy show up
again what does he do the same exact thing he did to win last time and that's why he
loses why is evil important in storytelling I think it depends on the definition of evil
I think that sometimes people will say evil is like oh they do these horrible things
like if somebody takes it just as an example and i'm not defending at all but let's say they take
someone like hitler right and they say you see all the horrible things he did just evil I go
I think he's despicable I think the atrocities are evil but true evil is doing it just because
that's true evil he didn't do it just because
he did it because he believed this and he believed that and he believed this crazy
stuff and he was like the only way to do it is to do this to me true evil is something that is is
birthed rotten and it has no reason to exist other than to cause you harm true evil is terrifying
true evil doesn't need a reason it just doesn't Michael Myers did not need a reason that's what
made him so terrifying nothing happened to make him stab his sister and her boyfriend to death
nothing happened that's scary I think you very rarely though see true evil in movies because it's
something hard to capture it's something really hard to capture people that just do things because
why not those are the things that I think in in reality scare the crap out of me
when you hear about this serial killer who should you ask why did you do this
why not that's evil that's terrifying but it's really rarely portrayed very well in films.