I’m working on two scripts right now.
One, I’m trying to finish. I’m a few pages past the mid point, and while I know where I need to go I have fuckall to get me there. It’s pissing me the hell off. It’s all because of the invention of the goddamned automobile. It makes the whole premise so damned hard to execute. Screw you, Henry Ford!!!
The other, I’m starting my first rewrite of. Like that’s any relief from the stress of the other script… lol.
I came to a realization while reading through the screenplay I am rewriting, and it’s something I knew when I was writing my vomit-on-a-page first draft. My villains are barely there.
This is a pretty sad revelation, because the villains in this story are fucking awesome. They are some bad dudes. They might even be bad enough dudes to rescue the President, if they weren’t villains. As it is, they’re probably the ones who hired the ninjas. If you don’t get that reference, you’re dead to me.
Now, that’s not to say the script doesn’t have conflict. It has a shitload of conflict. My main problem in my first draft was that I had so much conflict I couldn’t fit it all. I felt like I had to scrunch and squeeze because there was so much conflict. See, the villains aren’t the only antagonistic forces in the screenplay. They are just cogs in a massive antagonistic-force-machine.
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Still, as huge as the antagonistic force coming against my protag is, those villains are getting the bitch end of the stick. A killer villain can make or break your screenplay.
I’m not kidding. Just look at The Dark Knight.
Hell, look at No Country for Old Men. Javier Bardem owned that film from the second he stepped on screen. Don’t believe me?
Nuff’ said.
Does the performance of the actor have an impact on how a villain resonates with the audience? Yes. Absolutely. Heath Ledger and Javier Bardem were born for those roles, and they are easily two of the greatest villains to grace the screen in this decade.
However, as screenwriters we don’t have actors at our disposal. We only have words. Ink and paper. So how do we make our villains resonate on the page the way they are going to resonate on the screen?
That’s a great question. I think some of you might know part of the answer.
For one thing, you flesh them out. You can’t treat the villain like some disposable character who doesn’t need a background because he doesn’t have to arc. That’s lazy and it will produce flat, boring villains on the page. Whether you have one villain or 10 (and I hope you don’t have 10), you need to flesh out each one as thoroughly as you flesh out your protag.
You are fleshing out your protag, right? Like, deeply fleshing out your protag. I really hope so. You should KNOW your protag by the time you are ready to write FADE IN. And I mean know in the Biblical sense.
You should know your villains like that too. Every great hero is defined by his villains. John McClane had Hans Gruber. Harry Potter had Lord Voldemort. Batman had The Joker. Wolverine had Sabertooth. Luke Skywalker had Darth Vader. The list goes on forever. If you want your protag to be great, you need a villain that is even greater.
Think I’m lying? Why is Superman such a lame hero? His arch-enemy is Lex Luthor. Yawn.
Does every screenplay have a villain? No. Many have an “antagonistic force”. But if your screenplay doesn’t have a flesh-and-bones villain for your audience to point their finger at, you’d better have one damn good antagonistic force. And, you should know it just as thoroughly as you would if it were a character.
I’m telling you, your antagonist(s) make or break your screenplay. There’s really no way around it. The greater the antagonist(s), the greater the conflict. The greater the conflict, the better your story. It’s just that simple.
There’s more to it than just fleshing the villain out, though. Their presence on the page has to be memorable. It has to be frightening. It has to be enigmatic.
Yes. Enigmatic.
The Joker, as portrayed in The Dark Knight, is a great example of this. The Nolans stated that they chose not to dive into The Joker’s past (or who he was, or why he was) within the context of the movie because they wanted him to simply “be”. They felt he would be the most frightening, the most powerful, the most chilling if there was no explanation. No reasoning. No justification. He. Just. Was.
I think they were right.
Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men is another example of this. Many of the most chilling villains follow this archetype. For me, the moment Jigsaw stopped being intimidating was the moment we knew his motive. The end of the first Saw film, while a cool twist, robbed the villain of what made him so frightening in the first place - his mystery.
Treat your villains like you treat your protags. Hell, treat them better.
It’s easy to jump to a quick origin with your villains. Give them a few deep, dark secrets that haunt them and have twisted them into what they have become. I think that’s cheap.
Give those secrets to your protagonist. Have your protagonist wrestle with them, and let your villain manipulate them because of it. Let the villain use those secrets to their advantage. Give your villain as much cannon fodder against your protagonist as possible. Why?
Because if your villain does not seem insurmountable - unbeatable - your hero won’t have enough to overcome. They won’t have enough conflict. The odds won’t be stacked high enough against them. Remember - we love the underdog. That’s another reason why Superman sucks. We like John McClane in the first Die Hard. We like Luke Skywalker (when he’s not acting like a whiny bitch).
We. Love. Underdogs.
Give us an underdog to root for, and we will be hooked from page one. In other words, give us a villain that can’t be beat. Then watch your protagonist figure out a way to beat it. You will be surprised at what comes out as a result.
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