Why Villains Lose - Joston Ramon Theney

Joston Ramon Theney, filmmaker: That's where the drama comes from, that's where it gets interesting and if your bad boy was only motivated by revenge, I've seen it a million times. Film Courage: We got this comment on our channel on a horror movie, only the villain character matters, all the other characters are expendable, most of them are going to die anyway, what's your reaction to that? Joston: I don't think that's true. If no one cares, they shouldn't be in the movie. If it's just that villain, then he should yo-yo or do something else that just requires it.

I think you're trying to tell a story and each character is either integral to that story or they shouldn't be there, maybe that will happen. For me, I always work with limited budgets and you're constantly saying why is this person here, this person needs to be here because it's going to impact me and as far as scheduling, as far as budgeting, it helps you hone your screenwriting. Your skills also improve because there is nothing strange in the script, so to speak at any time none of these people matter. I think if you're watching the latest Friday the 13th movies, if you're watching the latest Freddy movies or the latest Halloween movies, but if you're watching the ones they started with, you wouldn't say that anyone was strange in those stories, at that time they were still very creative and they had spent a lot of time working on the script and they thought a lot about it and it was written with love and when you do that, when the screenwriter loves those characters, there is no way they are going to create people who don't matter, no way, what?

How does a villain in a story reflect the hero? If you had asked me this once. I've been saying for a long time now that sometimes my villain and my hero are almost the same, they have to pursue any goal with the same passion. I think one person learns lessons and the other doesn't and that's ultimately what the villain does and the villain has to reflect whatever it is or I shouldn't say the villain has reflected but his goal has to reflect something. that the hero is trying to solve so that they can solve it, there is a catharsis as they go through this journey and get to the end and prevent this from happening.

I think that's the way it should be, but I think they should both pursue their goals with the same passion and intensity because that's what makes a great villain. I think the best villain is Alan Rickman's character in Die Hard. I think he's the best villain of all time because his goal is the opposite, but they're working toward the same thing, which is him and John Mclean, it's just that they're doing the same thing. It's different, but they both pursue their goals with the same amount of passion and intensity and being smart, they're both very smart, that's the other thing, like they're both trying to outdo each other and get it. one over the other and that's what's so compelling about watching that story.

I think it should be the same with whatever film you're working on, whoever your antagonist is should pursue with the same amount of intensity and passion. almost a reflection of the good guy if maybe they made all the wrong decisions in the past maybe they didn't make that 51 percent that Warren Buffett talks about maybe they only made 49 percent and weren't successful at certain things should the antagonist be two times stronger than the hero no, I think the villain should always have an advantage and most of the time, if you think about it, if you use Alan Rickman's character in Die Hard, his advantage was that he already knew what he was dealing with. to achieve, that was his advantage, he knew what he was trying to achieve and, as people would say, well, he had the numbers too, he had all these guys with guns, yes, but they didn't know who they were looking for. because and they didn't know where he was, that put them at a disadvantage, the advantage the good guy, I mean the bad guy actually had, the villain was that he knew what he was trying to accomplish and John McClane had to find out. so I don't think he needs to be twice as strong, he just needs to be ahead of the game and the good guys catch up, but in the end you say the antagonist doesn't learn any lessons. but the hero does it the antagonist is just all anger, everything is trying to get revenge but the hero somehow learns something the hero has to learn something that the villain actually does I don't think it has to be about anger I have been many

villains

who They've done things, I'll give you an example, the moon and the stars, my villain is not a guy who's actually trying to kill everyone, in fact he's trying to save everyone, he's just doing it in a really bad way.

What he began to notice was that he was at the edge of the universe and returned to the beginning of time at the end and what he has seen is that each civilization, each leap, each technological leap that they make, brings them c

lose

r and c

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r to oblivion, which What drives those technological leaps are hope hope hope that things can be better hope that this will make the world a better place hope that this will get us here and hope that this will get us there and what we don't have What we take into account is what happens when we make those mistakes or when someone takes what we were using as hope and turns it into a weapon, those are the things that are not taken into account, so their idea is to create a machine that reduce this olympic area in the brain. so hope dies, the problem is when hope dies, so does ambition, then there is love, then this fear, so many other emotions die and what happens after that is that your project proved that success was right and The people had no hope, but then what happened is whether it was a day later or a month later the people removed themselves and if they did not remove themselves they became something different and it became very similar to the order of fanu that the one who works with him to do these things so his goal is not one that is out of anger it is one that is out of love and you find out that it is to save the people that he still cares about because he has seen what happens in the future so he needs For this to work now, the good guys know that if you do this it's the same as a death sentence because it's a ticking time bomb for people to just kill themselves, so they're working just as hard to stop this guy from succeeding, so I don't think it has to be anger or hatred or or any of those things it just has to be a goal that they really believe that they've just given it their all there's no plan b there's just one plan both people have a plan a and what? do you when they?

Just ah, they're about to collide, that's where the drama comes from, that's where it gets interesting and if your bad boy was just driven by revenge. I have seen that a million times driven by anger you can beat the anger out of someone. I've seen it happen a million times: walk into a boxing ring and this guy is angry because he won't have all that in three rounds because he's going to throw punches for the fences, he'll be exhausted and you can beat the anger out of him. and he will give up because all he had was anger, so the most compelling stories come from people who truly believe in his goal and are willing to die for his goal.

What causes the villain to fail is his inability to grow and adapt. because adaptation is survival, right, and the good guy realizes when they get defeated and in the second act, when they get defeated, they have to pick up the pieces and learn their lesson and they say, "I still have the same thing." goal I just have to do it differently and the bad guy thinks he already won when he sees the bad guy show up again what does he do exactly the same thing he did to win last time and that's why he loses ? Why is evil important?

In storytelling, I think it depends on the definition of evil. I think sometimes people will say that evil is like, oh, they do these horrible things, like someone just takes it as an example and I'm not defending it at all, but let's say they take someone. like Hitler, right, and they say you see all the horrible things he did, just evil. I think it's despicable. I think atrocities are evil, but true evil is doing it just because that is true evil. He didn't do it just because he did it. because he believed this and he believed that and he believed in these crazy things and he thought the only way to do it is to do this to me.

True evil is something that is born rotten and has no reason to exist other than to cause harm true evil is terrifying true evil doesn't need a reason it just doesn't need one Michael Myers didn't need a reason that's what made it so scary Nothing happened to make him stab his sister and her boyfriend to death, nothing scary happened. I think you very rarely see true evil in movies because it's a hard thing to capture, it's a really hard thing to capture people who just do things because why not, those are the things I think about, they actually scare the hell out of me.

When you hear about This Serial Killer, who should you ask why did you do this? Why not? He's evil, scary, but rarely portrayed very well in movies.