Prompted by a discussion on the NPR Podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, I have been thinking about the motivations of heroes and villains and the troubles that arise when these are not well considered.
One of the podcast’s panelists, and I am not sure if it was Glen Weldon or Stephen Thompson, commented along the lines that if a villain’s motivation became too relatable then the filmmakers, though I am sure the tracks with other narrative arts, run the risk of making the villain into the protagonist. I think a strong argument can be made that is precisely what happened to some degree with Walter White in Breaking Bad. He never transitioned to an antagonist but remained a protagonist who was evil. This idea of keeping the villain’s motivation at arms length was used as a reason for why so often the villain’s goal is one of massive destruction.
The problem with a massive destruction goal for your villain is that it reduces your hero to a negative goal and one that is inherently impersonal. If the monstrous big bad wants to end the world so it can start a new then anyone with the ability will oppose that villain if for no other reason than self-preservation. The hero’s goal is simply to prevent something from happening and that goal has no direct connection to the hero’s character. Another effect is that it is only the villain that really wants something. This has the effect of stripping your protagonist of individuality and reducing your story to plot and spectacle. If this is part of a franchise it will always start the dreaded ‘raising stakes’ inflation spiral; save a person, save a group of people, save a city, save a nation, save the world, save the galaxy, save the universe, following that chain leads into absurdity.
The path of avoid this trap is to give your hero and the villain positive goals that are mutually exclusive. Now, particularly in the super-hero genre, too often writers will take an easy shortcut to a positive goal, save the girlfriend. A weakness in the Sam Rami Spidermanmovies is that all of the third acts revolve around rescuing Mary Jane Watson. This is a lazy shortcut; usually the villain grabs the girlfriend as a method of putting pressure on the hero and it rarely raising the stakes in a meaningful method. (Yes, I am looking at you Iron Man 3.)
When crafting a plot and story make sure that your protagonists has something that they want to achieve and make that goal incompatible with the antagonist’s and not simply preventing something and you’ll have a stronger story.
