Film Courage: Do villains have defining moments?
Christopher Riley, Screenwriter, Author, and Instructor: I think that they certainly can.
Sometimes we get villains who are very cardboard cut out,
just gleefully wreaking havoc for the heck of it. I think of a classic film Spider-Man 2 and
there Doc Ock has a defining moment. He isn’t evil for the sake of evil, he is a man who is
wounded through the death of his wife, that's the moment that defines him. In Spider-Man 2
written by the same writer who wrote Ordinary People [Alvin Sargent]
we get a villain who actually has an arc and who transforms and in the end
is able to take a step back from the evil and to actually sacrifice himself
to join with Spider-Man and to save the city. So yes, and I think that Spider-Man 2
plays a really important role in the history of superhero action films.
We look back and we may not recognize that because we're used to superhero action films that have
rich character development but Spider-Man 2 really took that up a huge step by in part
looking deeply in to the character of their villain and by providing the
the depth and complexity and dimension that defining moments
afforded that character and when we do see these defining moments for these villains is it to to
have the audience turn to to have some empathy toward that antagonist or is it just to further
understand the arc of the story I think the effect is that we actually do have some empathy for that
villain and and it's not to say that we like the villain or we agree with the evil the villain does
but it's to say that we recognize the villain's humanity and we say oh you are at least a
little bit like me we are the same species and there are a lot of different ways to approach
villains we can approach villains as other just completely different from me and outside of me but
you think about Pinocchio so if we go way back to a very disturbing children's animated film
a scene where Pinocchio is at the pool hall and he and the other boys
are drinking and smoking cigars and playing pool and being transformed into donkeys
that's a vision of evil that says oh there is no difference
between us and them we are them and that is a cautionary tale but it also does lead to a kind
of empathy where we can recognize oh that villain is really broken and what they're doing may be
horrible and actually we may call it evil but they are also one of us and for my storytelling money
that's that's closer to what I resonate with as like yeah I think that's how it is
how are the decisions of the villain different from the hero in many ways the hero and villains
decisions are the same they're driven by the way they see the world and what they want when I
am writing an antagonist and I will often think in terms of antagonist as opposed to villain
because villain is more condemning than I think i'm i'm ready to be with most of my characters
Joseph Mengele certainly was a villain and
did pure evil and he was a human which is what made him so interesting to me as a character
what allowed us to write Joseph Mengele in a way that
I think was so disturbing and ended up getting the actor
best actor nomination for the European film award
was that we approached him as a character who thought he was the hero and I think that everyone
sees themselves as the hero of their story they do what they do for the reasons they do them
and even when they do something that they would recognize is like okay that was bad
but you have to understand I had a really good justification why I had to do that
it's part of the genius of Michael Corleone's character we understand with every choice he
makes why he makes it and we cringe because sometimes he's killing family members
but we always recognize the reasons that he does it and it creates this
cognitive dissonance for us because we're saying oh no that's
like don't you shouldn't do that and at the same time I totally understand why you just did that
I think that gives us really fascinating antagonists and villains if we do we do the
same character development for them that we do for any other character I don't think that means
we have to have really fuzzy moral judgment I think we can still recognize evil as evil
and recognize the humanity of the people who are doing the evil at the same time it's
a more nuanced approach I think it's more interesting and I think again I think it
it rings true to me for how people actually are I haven't like I don't think I've ever met a villain
at Von’s I’ve met people doing dumb things and being irresponsible and uncaring
but they think they're right and
so I try to approach all my characters with love even the ones that are wicked
how do writers get audiences to care about the villains I think that on the one hand
you could get away with the audience not caring about the villains even gleefully rooting
for the destruction of the villain
but the example of 2 shows us that there is emotional gold to be mined in providing a
glimpse into the humanity of a villain so the in the same way that we would reveal a character say
a heroic character to the audience so that they can understand where that character's coming from
we can use those same tools to reveal who this villain is and why this
villain is how what journey this character has been on to arrive at their villainy
the I think the emotional experience then becomes really complex because now I am
I recognize that character has to be stopped
i'm thinking of the camp commandant in Schindler's List where we really do get
some insights into this character into his vulnerability into there's there's a moment where
he toys with showing mercy to people and then he pulls back from that it's like that's not me
i'm not i'm not going to be that guy who is merciful
but the fact that he had that moment where he could have been merciful
colors the way we feel about him when he's executed at the end of the film
it makes it more complicated in a way that I think enriches the experience never confuses us about
the evil that he's perpetrated the film never has any confusion about that the evil is evil
but it does show us the complexity of the person perpetrating the evil which
does I think make for a more interesting storytelling experience.