thinking about villains...

[psybelle]

to pull into something cohesive later

Types:

cardboard cutout eeevil - the "Satan" of Dana Carvey's churchlady comes to mind

add some personality and you get Saturday morning cartoon villains (usually obscenely greedy/selfish, megalomaniacs)

add a bit of nuance, and you get people who think they're serving a/the greater good, but they're not (or might be, but the means to get to that greater good are horrifying) - this is Dr. Strangelove territory.

add more nuance, more humanity, and you drift into the arena of tragedy - Shakespearian or Greek - people who try to do the right thing, play by the rules, and it all ends in tears... and I think you start losing the qualities that make a villain truly villainous.


If you had the opportunity to play a villain, what sort of role would you pick?

Comments

[digitalsidhe]

Honestly, I tend to go for the more nuanced ones at the bottom of the list. It can be fun to be a scenery-chewing, over-the-top type like the first two (consider Raul Julia's fabulous swan song as M. Bison in Street Fighter), but it's also... really easy. You can be lazy with a role like that. The nuanced ones demand more depth and thought.