How To Write A Terrifying Villain — The Boys

Homelander is the scariest

villain

I've ever seen. Every time he appears on screen in Boys, the tension is unbearable and the audience can't help but fear what he will do next. There's something really special going on under the hood of Homelanders. character which gives him a huge advantage over characters like Joker and Darth Vader and today we'll explore what that is and address the question of how to actually

write

a

terrifying

villain

. Well, first of all, I like to think that there are two types of Hero/Villain Conflict, one where the power levels are quite close and the other with very different power levels.

Take for example when Captain America fights Bucky in the Winter Soldier, in this fight they have very similar abilities and yes there is a compelling fight as to who will win, but that is when there is a real power imbalance when Darth Vader he lights up his lightsaber and stares down the terrified rebels when Homelander takes on almost every other guy character or when Omniman fights invincible or in a less combat-oriented way. type of conflict when hans lander the german colonel stares at the helpless french farmer generally these types of confrontations are much more suspenseful the former hanslander is a considerably scarier villain than the winter soldier in their respective scenes because the relative power difference is much older, but when we have Iron Man and Captain America fighting, we are on the edge of our seats asking who will win this fight, but when Homelander is furious, a character we care about, we don't ask who will win the fight, the power.

The spread is so crazy that we know there won't even be a fight, instead we ask what the villain will choose to do knowing that whatever they choose to do is exactly what will happen when you have a villain as powerful as your hero. that can work really well for your story and don't get me wrong, it can be pretty scary what's going to happen, but when you have a villain that's a little bit more powerful, now things are getting scary, we're really afraid that the villain I win. like iron man fighting thanos, but it's when the villain is ridiculously more powerful than the hero that they become truly

terrifying

, as the idea that the villain will get everything he wants and that the main characters can die feels more than believable. but probable and Again, don't perceive the power to be too literal here, yes it can be in terms of having laser eyes or being a super soldier, but it can also take any other form of power, perhaps a boss who can fire his employee and ruin his life.

You could even achieve this in a toxic relationship where the manipulative character has complete control over the others' finances, giving them complete power over them. One thing is for sure, though if your villain has less power than your hero, you will have a very bad time. making them scary, there's a reason you almost never see stories that do this because how can we fear what the villain will do when the hero can stop them with complete ease, but then again, a punching man exists so even if you go? Against this rule you can still tell a great story, but while a power differential really greases the wheels in terms of making them scary, it's not everything, it's just one part of a bigger picture, i.e. when you see Homelander in a scene with literally anyone else.

We are afraid of what he will do, but then you compare him to Thanos, someone who is also ridiculously powerful and there are quite a few scenes where he is not so scary, for example, when he chats with Gamora about his plans in Infinity War . Some of these heroes are arguably the most powerful people in their respective universes, but why isn't that scene very suspenseful when the natives are usually on the guys? Clearly, power isn't everything here and I think what's missing is that Thanos isn't like Joker or Vader. or native, his personality is what matters here, not only because he loves Gamora, but because he is not one to kill someone without a solid reason; someone who seeks to kill billions of people will only do evil in the name of what he perceives. to be of greater good only if he deems it absolutely necessary, you could walk up to Thanos and punch him in the face if you wanted, if your death does nothing to help him achieve his ultimate goals, he can actually be trusted for the most part. weather.

Sparing Thanos despite his incredible power level isn't as inherently terrifying as other villains we know and love because he needs his motivations set up appropriately in every scene; otherwise it won't terrify us, but compare that Gamora seen with the others where she faces Star-lord or Doctor Strange and now suddenly those scenes are full of suspense, Thanos is now incredibly scary because he meets all the criteria , the power differential is huge, and crucially, these guys are in the way of his ultimate goal, so he has his motivation to do harm established, which introduces the possibility that something terrible is probably going to happen to our characters. , villains like these can go down incredibly well, but even if your villain is powerful and has the motivation to deal damage, that's barely scratching the surface of what makes a villain scary and I want to recommend something to you because this week I've been reading bird by anne lambert's bird and i have learned a lot from it, it is very similar to stephen king writing less. he creates more to find the best ways for you to behave and be the best

write

r you can be.

It's one of the best-selling craft books of all time for a reason and I personally listen to the incredibly well performed audiobook and if you want, do that too, you can do it for free thanks to audible, the sponsor of today's video. What I like most about audible is that without it I couldn't read. I have less and less free time these days. between a closer look and writing all my novels behind the scenes, so having audio is incredibly useful because now I can read when I otherwise couldn't, while listening while going to the gym, playing games, cooking dinner and generally doing everything.

Boring stuff I was going to do anyway and if you click my link in the description or text closer to 500 500 you'll get a free credit good for any audiobook you like on their site and bird by bird it's fantastic for you. Get it if you're a writer, so if you want to join me in using audible, click my link in the description or text closer to 500 500, but come back to that if you want to create a villain that's reliably scary like a native, well, everything. all they have to do is be on the screen and that is enough to make the audience wracked with anxiety.

Another great thing is to tell them a story of evil. Very often you will have a villain who can check off all of the above, like having power. and have good motivation, but they're still not too scary because they've never done anything terribly bad before. Many children's cartoons have this problem where a villain can be incredibly powerful and will have a great motivation to do so. something evil, but it's incredibly difficult to be terrified of them because they've never actually done anything that terribly evil, but then you compare it to the silence of the lambs where we see Hannibal Lecter and yes, the acting is terrifying and it's a very scripted. well written, but what makes Hannibal that much more terrifying is the knowledge of the disgusting and despicable things he has done, by putting him in this high security prison.

When a villain has a history, a context of doing horribly evil things, it gives them some credibility, which makes the audience more inclined to believe that they can do something truly horrible to our characters. uh, the native again takes all this with great success. He has been made even more terrifying by the context surrounding him by the despicable things he has done, such as killing a gunman who already gave himself up to him by allowing an entire plane full of people to die by burning the brains of the woman he supposedly loved. and God, I'm going to have to be very careful when I edit this, right to make sure?

I'm not demonetized by all the blood, but here we go, that's point three of the list, give them a story of evil and yes, apparently we're making a list now and again point one is to give them power and point two is to give them a credible motivation to commit evil, but this is what I think is by far the most effective way to make any villain scary. In fact, I think it's very important to get it right. The rest of this video will be nothing more than breaking down this fourth point. down and that is surrounding your villain with uncertainty about whether there is much around the villain that is unknown is when we don't understand a villain or at least can't predict what he will do next is when you as The writer make sure that the uncertainty surround it in any way it may come up, that is, when any villain is most terrifying to its audience, as if one thing is for sure.

Homelander has this quality in abundance, he surprises us endlessly and this is the fact that his character is so good at simply shocking and surprising the audience over and over again is an important part, perhaps even the most important part of why he gives so much. scary, uh, from one case to the next, when he meets that blind superhero when everyone's smiling, everything's going great, this guy is when he meets his local hero, he smiles back like, oh, this is actually a pretty moment nice, until suddenly, what if I don't know if I do this and it got a reaction from everyone like it works great because if we had it?

I don't know, like a Tarantino-esque buildup of tension where he's making his hatred for the disabled known and he's acting sinister and saying sinister things that we would have seen coming and not done, going for the approach of shock upon suspense. reinforces the idea that Homelander is truly unpredictable, as if he is capable of murdering anyone at any time for no apparent reason. It will make a lot of sense after you know why he did it. In this case, we realize that he hates regular heroes enough anyway. We are all weaker than him, but this guy is just an insult in the eyes of the natives.

After all, he is disabled and how can someone as pathetic as him dare to say that he is a hero and aspire to join the seven? No less, he should have known his place, that's what he was. passing through the minds of the patrias because its mere existence triggered the narcissism of the patrias in all the wrong ways, but curiously we learned this motivation after the act, not before, and for that, as well as for many other moments like this, in the who murders so many people at the same moment. Suddenly they reinforce the idea that he could kill anyone he's on screen with, which again goes back to point three because we're well aware of the degree of evil he's capable of, but we've seen countless scenes where Homelander basically you just sit someone down and there's the threat that, oh, you could hurt them, you could just kill them and the terror comes from that, but what I feel is a scene that's much more interesting to watch here and that reveals something fascinating about writing terrifying. characters is the one at the end of the second season where he faces off against a SWAT team inside his house and even though this scene marks every previous point, you know the power differential is crazy.

It has this history and context of doing evil. He has a great motivation to inflict harm there is very little suspense in this scene it had very little horror but of course although this is a funny scene it is perfectly entertaining but compared to his other scenes it just isn't very scary and yes, Part of the reason we obviously just don't care about these characters, they're basically red shirts who don't care if they die, but I think the main reason is because this scene failed to check off point four on the terrifying list. of villains. because the outcome of the scene is completely predictable as if he is already angry because he was lured out of his house with a sonic noise and when he returns he finds his son missing and a SWAT team in his place and when Homelander just calmly closes the door as if We knew that everyone in the room was already dead as if there was no doubt about it and the fact that we know that robs the scene of the terror and suspense that it otherwise could have had and I know it's a really strange comparison, but When you have an illness, you have some persistent symptom that never goes away, knowing exactly what the cause is is infinitely easier to deal with mentally than having absolutely no idea, even if the diagnosis is pretty bleak because it's not knowing when it is you have no idea. what is happening or what is about to happen that is the scariest thing in the universe the fear of the unknown in this scene was not terribly scary because every last detail was known it was totally predictable that everyone It is a fact that the writers seemed to know it too well, as they skipped the fight entirely and just cut to himcoming out later stained with blood, but to delve deeper here into why uncertainty is such a scary thing and why you should always ask how. you can inject more into any scene of yours.

This is how suspense and horror go hand in hand so often that you might as well think of them as the same thing if we had to define it in a practical term. Suspense is fundamentally a question. the question of whether something terrible will happen or not, and avoid including this under the risk of your story because, when you boil it down, this question is at the heart of all great stories, will private ryan be saved?, will woody and buzz get together? Will they open the way? Back at Andy's house, will the characters survive Jurassic Park, etc.?

The probability that we'll get a bad answer to those questions changes over the course of any given scene or story, i.e. the increasing or decreasing level of suspense and therefore horror for all intents and purposes, the changing probability of getting a bad answer to the central question is the rising action of any story or at least that is how I perceive it, but here is the question: if suspense It's all about uncertainty, and if your villain can always be trusted to act maliciously, suddenly your villain isn't as scary as they are. There is no suspense anymore because now the audience can predict everything they do and because suspense is so closely linked to horror in a way that a predictable villain is rarely scary for exactly this reason, but how can you make your villains unpredictable?

What are some practical ways you can inject uncertainty into your composition? Well, there are so many different ways that I couldn't even dream of listing them all here. A proven and excellent approach is to derive it from whether or not the villain knows key information that will prove disastrous if they do, the main question is whether or not they know this particular thing can be fuel for a great cliffhanger, an example of that, almost all Hanslander's scenes in Inglourious Basterds do exactly this or it could be derived from whether or not they will kill someone after they have triggered the patrias narcissism.

You can even create uncertainty about whether or not a coin toss will result in heads or tails, as long as you have established what is at stake before tossing the coin using another method. what you can do is give them a trigger where they do depraved things even when only given the slightest motivation, while this is a potentially great approach, a god knows the native is like that, don't take it too far, for For example, if you have a villain. that he kills his subordinates every time they make even a minor mistake which gets pretty quick and, honestly, is pretty cliché.

Did you know that in exchange for the Jedi there was a scene where Darth Vader strangles another Imperial officer, but Lucas removed it because he recognized that Vader strangled his subordinates as routinely as one brushes one's teeth, it was getting quite boring to watch, like even Homelander routinely forgives Ashley because yeah, she had upset him plenty of times so he would definitely kill her if it was anyone else, but she is. too useful for him to kill. I'm just saying that your villain killing his subordinates doesn't make them scary, it just makes them look like a woefully incompetent employer, so you probably won't do it too often, but this is a possibility.

The approach you should take states very clearly that if they are given a reason for malevolence and no matter how slight, no matter how small, someone disrespects them, someone simply says the word no to them, they have the ability to act accordingly with the greatest prejudice. Doing so will mean that they are less like Thanos and more like a native where all they have to do is simply exist in the scene and suddenly everyone is walking on eggshells trying desperately not to piss them off and the moment someone says something even slightly poorly written. he just gives them a dead stare and the tension rises a lot so that being said, i can't help but think that hans lander is also a scary villain, but he doesn't really have a fine trigger pull, is he a relatively composed guy who has complete self control, but He's widely recognized as one of cinema's scariest antagonists, so giving them a volatile personality seems like an optional but perfectly sustainable way to make your villain terrifying.

Oh wait, now I'm remembering Eddie Redmayne's character. On Jupiter Ascending, they did exactly this and he just screamed the whole time and it didn't scare him, rather it made it seem like a pathetic display of man-child double security to destroy any ship approaching the planet. I think a big part of why that villain is so weak is because he was so volatile that he made him look completely incompetent. Congratulations, you've made him unpredictable and you've done it at the expense of making him so incapable of self-control and being so childishly immature it's hard not to laugh every time he appears on screen.

I create life and destroy it, so be careful with this one. While it is true that volatility is a trait that works very well on some villains, it is not necessary for them. It's scary and even has the potential to backfire terribly if you go too far. Another way writers totally fail at injecting uncertainty into their villains is by driving them crazy. Obviously, it's perfectly fine to write crazy characters, but the problem here arises because the writer can treat their madness as a free license to do literally anything, act randomly, and effectively commit the cardinal sin of characterization, which is having a character who he doesn't have a motivation for what he does because being crazy in itself is not just a bad motivation, it doesn't even qualify as a motivation.

Fortunately, most writers don't make this mistake when writing the same villains, but I think it's a pretty common mistake worth mentioning here. Look, hate. to say it to those writers and i also hate to say it to eddie redmayne, but that is not the way the human brain works, even if someone is clinically insane, they will have their own unique pathology and within that pathology they will be consistent and have a motivation to everything they like, while it is a perfectly good approach to have a truly volatile villain who only needs minimal motivation to deal damage, he will never, under any circumstances, have it, so he doesn't really need a motivation and, especially, never.

He justifies meaningless choices by saying, "Well, they're crazy, so I can be as lazy as I want writing like this." There is incredibly lazy writing because you are not doing your due diligence. character and you don't even know what condition they suffer from or at least the terrible philosophy that drives them, you are doing something wrong, instead make the effort to establish a framework in which they think within their pathology and have everything What do they do. It makes sense within that pathology, look at the wild card of the dark knight Christ. I can't go two videos without mentioning this damn movie.

Can? But he has a very well established nihilism about him with Alfred talking about how some men want to see the world. burns and this motivates everything he does and then look at no country for old men like that movie has an absolutely chilling villain and he is a textbook psychopath, a purely selfish man who only cares about his personal gain and by the way, absolutely like the coen brothers. He nailed psychopathy in this movie, while other writers take the lazier route and have their villain act randomly because and only because they are angry, the Coen brothers did their research and couldn't have done a more perfect job of portraying someone with this condition. like everything javier bardem's character says and does in this movie is something a real life psychopath could do in the real world, he's an unpredictable villain with a major mental condition, but everything he does makes sense, nothing It is unmotivated, like honestly, no country.

For Old Men is a great example of another way to introduce uncertainty into a villain because when a mental condition like this is detected, these types of characters become terrifying in their own unique way because yes, they have their pathology well defined, but the audience does not. I don't understand exactly how that pathology works, which means we never know what they'll do next if you don't understand the character, that means you can't predict them and that makes them even scarier. This advice applies to writing. horror too, as well as writing great villains because look at the aliens in the scene where the marines crawl through that alien nest, it's a scary scene because this approach is used, this scene is suspenseful, not just because you know that are going to be attacked, it is Also because we are getting a glimpse of an entire aspect of this monster's life cycle that we have never seen before, we know exactly what the xenomorph looks like.

We saw one in the previous movie, but they are scary here anyway because the audience and characters ever thought. They understood these monsters, but now they realize they have no idea what they're up against. What is it that I don't know. The fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all and great writers will not only exploit this fear when writing in horror. but also in general when you're writing terrifying villains no matter what genre they're in and if you're writing a monster for a horror story, all of these points apply equally to ensure that in some way there's incredible uncertainty surrounding the monster, whether be it or not. that we don't know where the monster is while our heroes navigate the endless jungle like a predator or that we don't know the gruesome details of its life cycle like in the alien series or the sheer paranoia of determining who is posing as the monster in what I have seen some film critics say that you should never show the monster on screen otherwise it will ruin the audience's fear of them as a strict rule only show partial glimpses of the monster and save the full body shot of them to the climax, this I think is frankly nonsense, this is terrible advice because it doesn't show a full understanding of the problem as an example, look at what many people claim to be the scariest movie. that they have ever seen, but we see the monster in full action on the screen again and again throughout that movie worked very well because john carpenter understood their uncertainty around the monster that scares them, not the ability to simply see them with your eyes and that goes against what some people want you to believe, but to summarize the entirety of 0.4 in a single sentence, uncertainty in the villain is invariably a terrifying inconsistency, however, it should always be avoided, but in all this The issue of unpredictability is a really important factor. lesson we can learn from Homelander in this case because why is Homelander so much scarier than other villains?

What specifically makes it so unique? Well, first of all, it ticks off each of the points we've mentioned so far in the video, but there's something much more to it. There's more going on under the hood of his character, it's not that he's okay with mass murder in GBH because there are so many characters in fiction that are okay with all of that, what makes him that much scarier is because he has an incredible motivation to not to indulge. In those things, he is a total narcissist who cares incredibly about how people perceive him. He loves to murder people because it reinforces the idea that he is truly superior.

He loves to exert power by harming others because it reinforces his perception that yes, he really is the one. The most fabulously perfect living being on planet Earth, however, also loves to be loved; in fact, you could say that he loves that more than killing and if he indulges too much in that first love of his, he will ruin his public image, the thing that matters most to him. the world is all narcissism, but these two sides of his narcissism compete with each other in all the right ways, as if it were some kind of yin yang, as if these two motivations of his were endlessly fighting each other, maximizing his dramatic potential as a character as we really do it.

I don't know which side he will win, which gives him an unpredictable quality that villains like Darth Vader, for example, simply don't have, it feels inevitable that at some point the native will break down and completely abandon his efforts to be loved. and becoming a tyrant that everyone fears will happen at some point, but I think the creators should do everything in their power to avoid that until the

boys

' final season to keep Homelander in his current status quo for as long as possible. possible time. because if the show goes down that path where he tries to, you know, try to take over the world, all of a sudden the native now has a lot less suspense as a villain because now he's lost these two competing motivations, that doesn't mean he ' He will suddenly become a boring character, but that is to say, this delicate balance of incompatible desires will completely disappear when this happens and instead he will now have these two motivationshighly compatible to kill those he doesn't like and be feared by those two. they would naturally feed off each other making it much more predictable, which means the scenes he's in are much less scary, but that's another important takeaway we can get from the Homelanders character and it's so important that he's actually bleeding out of the main topic. terrifying villains and how to make good characters in general, any character who has multiple competing motivations is inherently a more dramatic character than someone who simply has one, even if this person is your protagonist if one of their motivations is good and the another evil and both cannot be fulfilled at the same time, the unpredictability it creates means that there will be much more suspense about what they will do compared to someone who simply has a motivation, no matter how evil that motivation is, but if I want to continue the conversation, don't bother commenting because I have a Discord server designed for writers and we talk about you know our characters and we work on ideas and everything, as well as all the movies that we like anyway.

I'm on this server every day, so if you want to talk about this video, ask me questions and, frankly, just discuss whatever writing-related topic you're dealing with with me and my growing community of writers would love to have you on our server and there's a link below in description. Also, if you haven't visited audible yet, I really recommend you try their site. I actually use audible on a daily basis because it's very useful for me and you can also find a link for that in the description, but anyway, thanks for watching, keep writing and I'll see you next time for a closer look.