How To Make A Great Villain

Hey guys Henry here from a closer look and today I will ask the question what

make

s a

great

villain

for this case study. I will mainly focus on the Joker from The Dark Knight, all materials used in this video for non-profit educational purposes. and for its richness in fair use guidelines, the Dark Knight this film received virtually universal praise and according to IMDB it is the fourth best film of all time there are many reasons why this film is held in such high regard but today I will be focusing In a single The Joker, the vast majority of film

make

rs, screenwriters, and storytellers will tell you the same thing: the

villain

should have more power than the protagonist personally.

I think it's an interesting statement, but I respectfully disagree with the Dark Knight. Joker has no money or resources to mention that he has absolutely no powers in the traditional sense, but he is still one of the best villains of all time. A bad filmmaker will give his villains a huge army and almost unlimited power, such as Red Skull and Captain America Sauron in The Lord of the Rings Malekith and Thor 2 wrote in Guardians of the Galaxy that the list is endless. All of these characters have enormous amounts of traditional power and none of the non-traditional ones, this is where these villains differ from the Joker, they have power, but not in the way we are used to.

All of his power comes from his ability to attack with

great

intelligence and cunning directly at the Dark Knight's greatest weaknesses. The Joker even confesses that he has no real recourse for what this leads to. I want to add point one to the villain creation guide. Your villain needs to have more power than the hero, but don't make the mistake of giving them only the traditional power we just discussed. It's okay for your villains to have large amounts of money. You're a bunch of intimidating henchmen, but unless you can back that up with an interesting villain, your conflict will be bland and uninteresting.

This brings me to my second point, which is another area of ​​characterization in which the Joker excels. Okay, I know this is completely unrelated, but did you know that the character of Rachel was played by two different actresses in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight? Someone told me this last week and it still blew me away. I just thought you might want to know another element anyway. The type of characterization that the Joker excels at is motivation. This is the bread and butter of a good villain. If your villain has very weak or no real motivation, then your audience won't believe that character at all and the conflict will become bland again. and uninteresting advice, but if you want your audience to empathize with the villain, having a solid motivation is the best way to do it, take for example Loki in the movie The Fool, his motivation is not more power or revenge, but more well his father's love and approval if you want to see how I came to that conclusion click here to watch my video on why Thor is the best Marvel movie of all time sorry, sometimes I can't help it anyway.

The Joker has an incredible motivation that is intelligent. Alfred explains it right here because the logical reason the Joker's motivation is not more power or personal gain and like 99% of all other villains, he is simply a nihilist, meaning he has no morals or beliefs. that you really don't care. any human life, including his henchmen and also his own, which is illustrated by how he starts laughing maniacally when Batman throws him off the roof towards the end. The Joker's philosophy that nothing really matters is illustrated at least 50 different times in the film, but one of my favorite moments is when he tells his story about how he got the scars the first time he says his father did it while he was drunk. and the next time he says that he did it to make his wife happy, the difference between these two stories is it is no coincidence that this shows that the Joker really doesn't care about anything, including his past, because for him it doesn't matter because for him everything is a joke and believe it or not, his ultimate goal was never to destroy Gotham, it was to show that deep down everyone is like him, this battle between the Joker and Batman stands out in their last shared scene, the Joker does not want to destroy the world, he just wants to convince him that, when the time comes, he and the rest of humanity are In his opinion, it's not that different for a normal person to become the Joker.

The philosophy of Batman and you is the exact opposite. He believes that all criminals can be redeemed and that deep down they all have the potential to do good. The dynamic between the Joker and Batman is not the same. Like most hero-villain dynamics that exist in most other stories, the villain wants to achieve an ultimate goal and the hero is the only obstacle in the way that can stop them or vice versa, the hero wants to achieve the goal and the villain is the only one. one who can stop them well in the Dark Knight that is not the case, they both compete for exactly the same goal, the soul of Gotham and what I consider the icing on the cake for the Joker is that in the end he wins the Joker. it's interesting because at all times he's one step ahead of batman, one cool move by the joker was on harvey and rachel, he turned on batman and swapped their addresses, meaning no matter what batman chooses, he will lose if he chooses to save rachel. , she will die. and the Joker would win and if he decided to save Harvey, he would die and the Joker would win again in the end, he achieves his true goals and shows the world the true face of Gotham, the face of a big lie.

See when the Joker turned Harvey Dent into two-face he did it for a very specific reason to create another scenario where it is impossible for Batman to win if Batman Gordon decided to reveal to the world that Harvey faced murdering innocent people then The reputation of the Gotham government would be affected. would be tarnished forever and the Joker would win and if they decided to cover up Harvey's atrocities and maintain his reputation as Gotham's white knight, which is what they did in the end, the Joker would win because an entire justice system that millions of people now believe . and putting his faith in a big lie now, that's one hell of a last laugh that even the Joker can appreciate.

This brings me to another point of having a big bad villain let them win. This doesn't mean that they have to have a complete victory in the ending, but when the villain is victorious even in small details, like the Joker did throughout the entire movie, as a realistic value of the story and makes the audience feel even more invested in the hero's quest, as they want him to succeed even more if the Joker didn't succeed in any of his plans, the audience would have been less invested in the story. I have a technique I like to use whenever I want to test if the villain will have an interesting dynamic with the protagonist.

Try swapping your villain with others. villains in fiction and ask yourself if it has any impact on the narrative and if it's still pretty much the same if your answer is no difference then your villain still needs a little more work if Nolan put another version of the Joker in this movie. it just wouldn't work well Jared Leto's Joker Jack Nicholson's Joker or even the animated series Joker none of them would have worked due to the nature of the film, but this is the only incarnation of Batman that has opted for absolute realism and if If the Joker were to make outlandish jokes or use exploding cushions for cheap pranks, it simply wouldn't be believable, the Joker is presented in a tone that is consistent with the rest of the Dark Knight trilogy, a tone of absolute realism and that is why the Joker in this movie. is the best villain of all time when Jack Nicholson's Joker killed a man by throwing an aquila down his throat, it was interesting but also quite ridiculous and reminded the audience that they weren't watching real life, they were watching a movie and in the animated universe. where the Joker poisons a group of people with his panting smile, it's shocking yes, but it's also cartoonish in nature and reminds the viewer that they're not watching real life, they're watching an animation, but that's where the Dark Knight It is completely different from everyone. another incarnation of the Joker in the story, when the Joker hits that man's head with a pencil, it was shocking but completely believable when the Joker blows up his hospital, sets that pile of money on fire, and finally when he is thrown into the death, all of these moments are delivered in a completely believable way, at no point in The Dark Knight is the immersion broken for the audience because the Joker is presented in such a terrifyingly realistic way that the audience believes every second he is on screen he's not just a character in a book, but a real-life human being Red Skull Sauron Loki aren't inherently evil villains, but audiences don't believe they actually exist in our world, but with the Joker it's so believable, so eerily accurate for real life, that while the audience is watching The Dark Knight, the Joker could be right behind them thanks for watching this week's video, this is the second video I upload to my channel and I have no idea if I should continue uploading this type of content, if you have any.

If you have any ideas on how I can improve my content, please tell me in the comments below. All comments, both good and bad, are greatly appreciated. Also, if you could like and subscribe, that would be great. Zoo anyway, thanks for watching and I'll see you around. next time on a closer look