One more week of the Hero Project (I
’m on a deadline, so no time for watching movies)

I got very systematic in my discussion of types of heroes, but what about villains? There are lots of very different types of villains, but I wasn’t able to come up with a chart of different factors that would generate each of these types, so I
’ve
just brainstormed until I seemed to identify most of them. I’m sure there are more, so feel free to toss more out there…- The Flip Side of the Hero: They
’
re much like the hero, but they spent their life fighting for all the opposite values (Voldemort, General Zod in Superman II, Magneto in X-Men, the original Lex Luthor) - The Corruptor: (Liam Neeson in Batman Begins, Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, Brad Pitt in Fight Club)
- The Ambitious Businessman: (Jeff Bridges in Iron Man, Douglas in Wall Street, Sam Rockwell in Charlie’s Angels-- a character he reprised in Iron Man 2, the later version of Lex Luthor, Auric Goldfinger and most Bond villains)
- Good Person Corrupted by Money: (Krabbe in The Fugitive, Voigt in Mission: Impossible, the bad men and/or heroes in most noirs)
- One Bad Choice Leads to Another: (Darth Vader, the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, the Sandman… Obviously Stan Lee and Steve Ditko loved this type of villain)
- The Miserable Psychopath: (Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, The Sniper, Norman Bates)
- The Happy Psychopath: (Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, The Joker, Enthusiastic Nazis)
- The Sycophant (the head psychiatrist in Silence of the Lambs, all the bad guys in Ghostbusters, and most eighties comedies, Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
- The Nihilist: (Robert Shaw in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, the killers in Scream, Spacey in Seven)
- The Righteous Revenge Seeker: (Robert Ryan in Act of Violence, Rourke in Iron Man 2, Max Cady in Cape Fear… but more in the remake than the original)
- The Faithless Pleasure Seeker: (most femme fatales, most “Lifetime Network” husbands)
- Just Doing His Job: They feel like they had no other options, if they didn’t want to buck the system that they were born into (most mobsters, a lot of movies with German army guys who are explicitly not Nazis, like 36 Hours)
2 comments:
Story writing is an art. Creating suspense and giving it a captivating touch is even more difficult. Maing attractive characters is also very important.
Where would a religious zealot place in this list?
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