Film heroes are the onscreen manifestations of our hopes, dreams and desires — which is why we love to see a young, handsome face overcome all odds stacked against him and emerge from his struggle victorious in the face of evil.
It’s too bad, then, that all these do-good endeavors have been overdone to the point of boredom. Stories of knights in shining armor — or their equivalents, be they cowboys, superheroes, Jedi or what have you — have been so thoroughly hammered into our brains since the bedtime stories of our youth that they no longer feel relevant. The hero gets the girl and defeats the villain — who is, invariably, some character actor resigned to a supporting role. So far, so tepid.
We usually write off the villain — he’s (as with the hero, in Hollywood the villain is usually a “he”) an agent of chaos and suffering that we’re naturally supposed to hate. However, in recent years, I have found this to be less and less true. In fact, I have begun to root for the villains.
The villain’s role is to act as a foil to the hero. Nowadays, in defiance of traditional filmmaking conventions, screenwriters are starting to change the archetype, rendering their villains more charismatic than the heroes themselves. The villain is often brilliant, witty and devious; the hero is merely square-jawed. It’s easy to be torn: We’re supposed to love hating the villain, yet we can’t help hating that we love him.
Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained) is one filmmaker pushing the boundaries between heroes and villains. He has been blurring moral lines since his debut film, Reservoir Dogs, and his mainstream breakthrough, Pulp Fiction, but he outdid himself with the character Colonel Hans Landa in 2009’s Inglourious Basterds.
In this World War II film, Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained) plays a so-called “Jew Hunter,” a Nazi mastermind whose polite charisma and mental dexterity render him fascinating even as his actions show him to be despicable to the point of inhumanity. We are transfixed by his mannerisms, thought process and malevolent charm even as he commits unspeakable atrocities. Waltz went on to win Best Supporting Actor at the 82nd Academy Awards.
If Waltz’s win proves anything, it’s that we should honor our villains just as much as our noble heroes — perhaps even more, for portraying them carries the additional acting challenge of adopting the mindset of immoral, ruthless, psychologically damaged persons. A classic example of the potential toll of the work is Heath Ledger, who isolated himself for a month to perfect the persona of the sociopathic Joker from The Dark Knight. Ledger received universal acclaim for his performance, overshadowing the film itself, but died of a drug overdose before the film’s release, meaning his Supporting Actor win at the 81st Academy Awards was a posthumous one.
When push comes to shove, watching a movie with a happy ending and a victorious hero is innately satisfying. However, watching a movie in which the villain comes close to winning throws us for a loop. The film feels all the more real because it imitates life, in which the hero doesn’t always win by a large margin, or at all.
So here’s to the supporting villains who give the heroes a run for their money. May their diabolical ways continue diverting attention from boring protagonists and making our movie experiences far more exciting.