Villains you prefer: understandable motives or just evil?

K

Kunmui

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What type of villain characters do you prefer?

Do you prefer a villain that has understandable motives, and / or a sympathic backstory, or a villain that was born evil and it just plain evil for the hell of it.

I prefer the villains that proper motives and are more deep characters, oppose to the one dimentional villain that is just evil for the hell of it. But I like some one dimentional villains as well.

Some villains should just be evil just for the sake of being villain like Megatron.

Some villains have understandable motives, but are still not sympathic characters, so don't mistake the two.
 
I personally prefer anti-heroes,like Bender for instance.He can be down right evil but you still feel for him. :D

One-dimensional evil guys can be funny...but,eh,you don't really care if anything happens to them.
 
On the subject, I was disappointing in the way they changed Blackfire's characters on Teen Titans. In the comics, she was just a deep, complex character. In the cartoon, she was just an evil brat for no good reason. Comic book Blackfire is a much better character.
 
No preference. I believe there's room for both, even in reality. As long as I'm not expected to take a "cartoon" villain in a realistic setting too seriously, the more variety in characterizations, the better. (For the sake of this argument, I'm defining "cartoon villain" as the "I'm so evil, and I love it" type.)

--Romey
 
I grew up with villains who were evil for the sake of being evil so naturally those are going to be the ones I side with. But of course I prefer cartoony cartoons in the first place so that stance is only natural for me.
 
Depends on the writing and setting.

In a show like Batman, The Joker's only excuse is he's criminally insane, but the way he acts and the elaborate traps and schemes he makes is fairly interesting. It's not really a deep or meaningful series, but entertaining enough and he's good at a typical psycho serial killer with a lot of charisma. For the show he's in, it works.

However, if it's a more plot-oriented show, then I feel the villain should be more than a walking evil bad man who's evil for the sake of having a villain on the show. For example, Magneto is (supposed to be, some of the series/movies write him off as generically evil when he's not suppose to be) a man who fights for the civil rights of mutants, but unlike Charles Xavier, he doesn't feel Mutants and Humans can co-exist (where as Xavier does) he has feelings, morals, guidelines, and other characteristics that make him more than just generic bad guys like Cobra Commander, Shredder, or Ozai who's evil just because they're "evil". While there's certainly bad people in the world who's only fuel is greed or growing up "evil", I think it's best to use a main antagonist who's motives are at least somewhat understandable or sympathetic. Magneto's struggle for mutant protection, Nerissa's struggle to end suffering, and so forth. Just something more than "I'm the villain of this cartoon, fear me"
 
I usually prefer someone that's just unredeemably evil, as long as they're entertaining

The sympathetic guys get a little annoying to me sometimes
 
I think a good story could use both types effectively. Two of my favorite Digimon antagonists are Vamdemon / Myotismon and BlackWargreymon.

Myotismon is awsome because he is so evil and powerful, he is the Digimon version of satin, he is evil for the sake of being evil, and I love him for it. While BlackWargreymon is a very deep character that has a sympathic backstory.

In a story driven action show, I think a evil for a sake of being evil villain should follow these rules. It has to be ultra powerful and prefertable big. And it has to be at least a middle age adults. I really don't buy a teenager or very young adult as a one dimention villain. They are to young to just be evil without a good reason. The older you are, the more you can forget why you are evil in the first place.
 
Like I said earlier, a villain with a understandable motive is not automathic sympathic character. I have seen villains on shows like Bleach or Naunto for example that make valid reasons for their thinking, but are still unredeemably evil.

For example a villain could want to genocide a race of people because his or her parents by one member of that race. Or want to kill everyone in the world, because the world is full of hate, crime and war. On one side, the motivation is understandably, but what he or she is trying to do is unredemably evil.
 
I think a lot of recent animation, including anime, have made their villains automatically ambiguous, like it's the trendy thing now to have a bad guy that's awful and full of hate, yet because something happened to him or he's got an agenda he feels would benefit the world, you're supposed to somewhat understand his plight.
 
I prefer villains that have actual reasoning for their behavior (IMO,the villain should rarely consider themselves or their actions "evil"),rather that ones that are just evil for the sake of being evil....it just makes things more interesting (it doesn't have to make them more sympathetic,just seeing why they are the way they are is enough)....
 
I completely agree with you about Myotismon. He was my favorite villain in Adventure 01. Though I wouldn't call BlackWarGreymon a villain. At least not for the whole Adventure 02 series. He felt more like an anti-hero since he wanted to find purpose and meaning in his life by destroying the destiny stones, instead of causing destruction for other people and Digimon.

As for the topic, I like both kind of villains and how well they work depends on the series. Some one-dimensional villains are just plain fun and seeing some background on other villains gives the audience some nice sympathy for them and perhaps even cheer them on in a way.
 
Well I agree, I label BlackWarGreymon an antagonist, as far as those that had conflict with the heros, villain or not, BlackWarGreymon is one of my favorites.

Digimon had a lot of villains that thought were great, that were either one dimentional evil like Mytoismon, Devimon, and Kurata. Or had more of an understanding of their reasons for causing trouble like Oikawa, Digimon Kaiser, every other villain on Savers except for Kurata (and I guess Kouki as well. An example of breaking my one dimentional villain rule of having to be an adult), and the D-Reapers for example.

The D-Reapers of having understandable modevation without sympathic backstory. Techinically Kurata did have motivation for his evil, it is just a very lame excuse in my opinon ("A Digimon spoffed me, I have to kill them all"), even if he had a good excuse, still unredemable and no sympathy for him.

My point being, both type of villains are okay, it just depends on the writing and how the villains are presented.
 
It sort of depends.

I like having goofy villains that are bad for the sake of being bad, but the more serious villains should have some motive behind their actions. Otherwise the whole thing falls flat.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, for example. I always preferred it over other Disney movies mainly because of Frollo's characterization. Other Disney villains of that era, like Gaston or Jafar, just came off as pricks. Frollo on the other hand tries to make the right choices, but he's misguided in his pursuit of justice.
 
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