See no evil: why have baddies vanished from our cinema screens?
See no evil: why have baddies vanished from our cinema screens?
An uncomplicatedly bad villain used to feature in every action film worth its salt, but a more globalised industry has made the universally hated figure a tricky character to pull off
Archived version: https://archive.li/25ZWC
Doesn't seem like a mystery to me. We've had plenty of uncomplicated villains, and nuanced antagonists are more interesting and compelling.
I think there's a place for both. But sometimes I tire of anti-heroes, sympathetic villains, bad guys who were right, bad guys who turn good in the end, that kind of thing.
Sometimes it's refreshing when the villain is just evil for no reason. Just bad, that's it, just a bad guy who is defeated in the end because he was bad. No redemption story, you don't feel sorry for them, none of that. I'm thinking like Ernst Blofeld, the T-1000, Palpatine, Sauron, Wicked Witch of the West, Skeletor. Uncomplicated villains, their motivation is just evil for the sake of evil.
Time and a place for both, and sometimes it seems like we only get the one. Like I can't think of a recently popular movie villain who was simply evil.
Indy 5 has literal Nazis. What more do you want?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And after that, Ridley’s Scott’s Napoleon promises to be a bloody battlefield epic in the vain of Braveheart and Gladiator, except this one examines its warlord not through his sworn enemies but via his explosive romance with Vanessa Kirby’s Empress Josephine.
Whereas four decades ago Rocky Balboa was sent out to fight Ivan Drago – a straightforward stand-in for dead-eyed Soviet power – these days his protege Adonis Creed finds himself in the ring with his old school friend, both men forced to confront their own repressed emotions in the process.
Part of it too is down to simple economics: with mid-budget films having been all but squeezed out of existence, and the threshold for box-office success now absurdly high, global takings have become pivotal to whether a movie sinks or swims.
So it’s yippee ki-yay not just for Gruber’s brand of erudite European mastermind, but also the unhinged Arab terrorist (True Lies, London Has Fallen), the icy Russian psychopath (Air Force One, GoldenEye) and the crazed Latino gangbanger (Falling Down, End of Watch).
Back in the day, it was standard practice for the bad guy to set out his stall with the theatrical murder of a civilian, before getting to the real sadism a bit later on: for Heath Ledger’s Joker this meant impaling a rival henchman with a pencil; Die Hard 2’s racketeer preferred to plough a jumbo jet full of passengers into the ground.
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There are always shifts in what is villainized in films based on current real-world concerns. I think overall people are just more aware of the nuance that things aren't as black and white as 'good guys vs bad guys'. Which I think leads to more interesting characters and stories. That being said, there's still plenty of violence and baddies (some the article mentions like Rogue AI.) They mention specific 'bad guys' of the past where they're demonizing a specific nationality... which they answer themselves why those are less:
Presumably part of it is down to a diminishing appetite for the flatly racist caricatures that occupied the attentions of Stallone, Seagal and co for so long. Part of it too is down to simple economics: with mid-budget films having been all but squeezed out of existence, and the threshold for box-office success now absurdly high, global takings have become pivotal to whether a movie sinks or swims. In other words, Hollywood isn’t just courting America any more.
Selling stuff worldwide means not pissing on those audiences.
Who is this article even for?
Unfortunately, a lot of what The Guardian publishes these days is sensationalist headlines and no substance.
I do think there's an issue of political correctness at play. Top Gun had evil Ruskies, but somehow Maverick just can't name its bad guys for fear of offending someone somewhere. Part of it is greater awareness of other people in the world, part is global markets, but there's also the general sense that depicting a nation as a bad guy is gonna create an uproar no matter who is used.
Then there's the fact that a lot of people latch on to bad guys these days. Whether it's the Joker in The Dark Knight or in the eponymous Joker, social media freaks out at bad characters that can be interpreted as role models. Heck, Thanos was a genocidal maniac yet r/thanosdidnothingwrong was a thing.
Because it would be too hard not to make it look like a real baddie.
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
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I want to agree with you, but you using that term woke like a rightwinger would, and that to me is BS. Stop using DeSantis talking points.
Yes, we have to much must please everyone that we can't have any real bad guys anymore, and that is a shame. But it's not a woke thing.
ask them to explain what woke mean and watch their argument go to trash lmao
This may be true, but I think the main reason for less "obvious" baddies in modern movies is simply that they kind of went out of fashion from a culture standpoint. The ways how stories are told and how world is portrayed/perceived in art and media is heavily dependent on the people who live in it. Post-modernism is en vogue because we've shifted our world view from simple good vs. bad towards recognizing that the world we live in is much more nuanced/complex. "Sometimes the villain is in your head" or "nothing really matters, everything sucks one way or another" are world views that reflect our modern western culture a lot more since we are so much more connected to the world through the internet.
That said, post/meta-modernism is just one side of this. I'm sure there are plenty of commercial reasons to make toothless, non-offending movies as well. Also, movies like Top Gun: Maverick prove that the classic approach to storytelling (good guys vs bad guys) can still work and make a shitton of cash (although they didn't go all in on who the enemy actually is).
Or they went out of fashion from an economics viewpoint.
Hollywood depends on the international box office for movies to do well. A movie might do poorly in a country or not play at all if there villain is from that country.