The Pros and Cons of Making a Villain Human

[Darth Phoenix]

We've seen it more and more in recent years - villains who have a human side. As an audience we feel an emotional attachment - even a small one - so that we understand why they did what they did and that the world isn't just pure good and pure evil. We say it with Wilson Fisk in Daredevil, basically any Spider-Man enemy i.e. Doc Ock, Sandman, Lizard. Even with Loki we see his back story in Thor and Thor: The Dark World, how he was neglected by his family, and it shines a new light on the character. Does it work? Yes, it's a very powerful and effective technique, as a writer if you can make your audience feel sympathy for a villain you have done a good job (or an absolutely terrible one, depending).

But my question is, do we like to just have a bit of evil? A character who is pure evil i.e. the Joker, i.e. Lord Voldemort, i.e. Darth Vader (even though we did see his transformation from Anakin). What do YOU prefer?

[Jev Moldara]

First of all, I reject the notion of Joker being pure evil. On the D&D character alignment, I would place him squarely in the "Chaotic Neutral" area. Joker is pure chaos incarnate and is just as likely to send you home with creme pie on your face and a thousand dollars in your pocket as he is to dip you in a vat of acid. That is the scariest part about the Joker: dealing with the unpredictable.

Now, onto your question:

Gone are the simpler days of entertainment. It used to be that the good guys wore white and were pure and just and the bad guys wore black and were unrepentantly evil. And that was fine for the day. However, it doesn't reflect the harsh truth of the world, in that nothing is ever black and white. As entertainment went from being a novel distraction to a more and more central part of our lives, people started realizing that the classical masters from Plato to Shakespeare were correct in their storytelling method of everything in shades of gray, a method correctly interpreted as the reason why those stories still persist today.

On a personal level, I prefer bad guys who are richly developed and have actual reasons for doing what they do, rather than just "for the evulz" or because they are bat guano insane. When done right, the crazy aspect works, but it's often done wrong.

No, the best villains are the ones that truly believe they are doing the right thing because the ends justify the means.

A prime example of this is Magneto. Undoubtedly one of the most iconic comic book antagonists, he lived through the Holocaust, a time where people persecuted, locked away, branded, and murdered simply because of their heritage. He has seen, first hand, the absolute worst of humanity, and his actions, no matter how horrific, are to prevent that from happening again.

Another example is The Operative from Serenity. He is a stone cold killer, having no problems killing and ordering the deaths of anyone, including women and children. He knows that he is a monster and that what he does is distasteful, even evil, and he takes no joy in it, but he believes that his actions will lead to a better world, even though he knows that he will have no place in that world.

To me, that is great storytelling and is infinitely better than a Moustache-Twirling Villain who does it for the sake of doing it. Granted, those types of villains can be fun... in small doses.