Don’t get me wrong, there are a myriad of examples of fantastic villains that have been conjured up throughout the years, but let’s face it, for every Lady Macbeth or Captain Ahab, there is a King Galbatorix or a President Snow to match them. For every complex, multi-faceted antagonist, there is a bland, one-dimensional baddie who does wrong simple for its own sake.
We see it time and time again, and it’s not just exclusive to literature. Why did Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars want to take over the galaxy? Why did the xenomorph in Alien want to kill everyone on the Nostromo? Why does Pazuzu possess Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist? It’s because they’re the bad guys! Who cares what motivates them? As long as they’re faceless threats that the good guys can stop!
A few days ago, an article titled “Let Villains Be Villains” was published here on Bookstr, where the argument is made that an antagonist being “pure evil” does not necessarily mean they lack nuance or complexity, and I whole-heartedly agree. A good villain doesn’t need a redemption arc. A good villain doesn’t need to be conflicted. A good villain doesn’t even need to believe that they’re in the right. In my opinion, all a villain needs is one word: motivation.
You can have the most diabolical, mustache-twirling evildoer with no redeemable human qualities, and he will still work as a villain for your story as long as his motivation is inherently human. Pennywise in It only ate children to survive. Hans Gruber in Die Hard only held the Nakatomi Plaza hostage to make a profit. Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest only forced her control over the patients of the psychiatric hospital because of the sick pleasure she derived from dominating over men.
While all three of these characters are inhuman, what motivated them was, at its core, human, and therefore relatable. We all want to survive, we all want to make money, we all want to feel pleasure. Every good villain is motivated by the same thing we are, the only difference is that they are unchecked by moral conscience.