as talking to a friend the other night about storytelling and literature and anime and everything, and a thought hit me.

What sort of villain do you prefer?

Essentially, there are two types.

The Mad Dog: This is the villain you love to hate. His first trait is that he usually offs an underling (often for being the bearer of bad news, but sometimes simply as a character establishment (and what the hell do the other underlings think about this?). Usually he’s charismatic and fun to watch, but he’s made to hate. He boasts and brags, he kicks the dog, he mouths off and gloats. And when the hero finally does plant a well-deserved haymaker to his face, oh, how you cheer. Boy, does he have that coming.

Examples: The Death Star, The Red Skull, Doctor Octopus, Biff, The Alien, Bond villains

The Wolf: This is the clever calculator, the guy who runs the organization, who plans and plots. While he might throw traps and impediments in the hero’s path, his doing so establishes the worth of the hero. As the audience, we enjoy the whole cat-n-mouse aspect of the pursuit. While the final fight between the two is just another climax, the entire pleasure of this thing comes down to the fact that the hero outsmarted a villain specifically structured to make him work to get to the climactic showdown.

Examples: Cardinal Richelieu, Moriarty,  General Zaroff, Jack the Ripper, the Martian Tripods, Loki, The Predator, Bond villains also.

Even as I was writing this, it hit me that any attempt to have a Wolf turn into a Mad Dog, either during the pursuit or the climax, generally fails to work. Simply put, you can’t be clever and crazed. Mutually exclusive. It comes off as cheap; the villain has so many aspects that all we are left with is bad storytelling.

Also, it comes to mind that casting the hero as either a Wolf or a Mad Dog doesn’t work so well, either. It’s okay for the hero to be clever, but not too clever (otherwise he’s just beating up an incompetent). And if he’s nothing but a crazed killing machine, that only works in the most simplistic of action movies. It leaves the realm of broader media and becomes nothing more than a first-person shooter. This is just a shallow appeal to blood lust, unfortunate and forgettable.

That’s just my take on it. Your villains may vary.

>>>AND MY VILLAINS, IN MY OWN STORIES, CAN BE FOUND HERE<<<