What type of villains do you prefer?

Largely I think it depends on how well they're written. The problem with a villain who's all evil all the time is that they risk coming across as one dimensional and shallowly written. A good example of this would be Carnage from Marvel Comics, there's only so much drama one can ring out of "I kill people for no reason".
 
Well you say about any character, I lot of people felt the sympathetic angle for sandman in Spider-Man was cliched and poorly handled.

Carnage is a bad character because he is repetitive, he never comes up with a plan or anything, every story with him is the same, kill he does is goes to Times Square and kill a bunch of extras, there is no style or cleverness in his actions. Plus I think they were trying to make Superboy Prime sympathetic, but he came off as a whiny emo wuss instead.

Compare that to the Red Skull, there you can't him write as sympathetic, to do so would be offensive, so he is less sympathetic almost every time he appears. he actual has some style and cleverness, he can come up with different schemes to promote his evil goals. Plus unlike carnage you always learn something new about him each time he appears, when he hits a even deeper low. He is not sympathetic and he is almost always interesting, in the fact he provides a good contrast to Captain America and even other more sympathetic villains like Doom and Magneto.

Another example is Bullseye he is no real motive beyond being a psychopath, but he has way more style then Carnage and he does have some willingness to follow orders, which means you can use him more stories then you can Carnage, where he plays a part in some other villain's scheme.
 
(Warning: big villain fan here!) I don't "perfer" any of these types per se, because I'm a fan of almost every type of villain. But they have to be done exceptionally well.

Harmless Villains have to be treated as such and actually be funny for them to work. Good examples would be Dr Drakken, Dr Doofenshmirtz, Excel and Hyatt, The Monarch, The Ameoba Boys, Prince Eccentro, and Dr Light. The worst kind would be like Team Rocket, who show up in every single episode yet never provide any real conflict. And thus they stop being funny. :yawn:

Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains are a step-up in terms of doing harm and evil but they're usually always failures, which is what earns them something resembling sympathy from us. This is what the likes of Team Rocket, Jack Spicer, and Emperor Pilaf used to be before they became harmless. Examples would be Plankton, Invader Zim, or Duke Igthorn.

Anti Villains are the bad guys with heroic or virtuous traits and sympathetic motives. These are particularly in need of good writing in order to make us feel for them. The classic examples are Mr Freeze and Magneto, but there's also Long John Silver, Prince Zuko, Terra, Pinky and the Brain, and Gargoyle's Macbeth.

Magnificent Bastards are the very intelligent, ruthless, self-serving and above all stylish villains who know exactly how to get what they want. And they usually do. Examples would be Lelouch Lamperogue, Light Yagami, Vegeta, Sir Crocodile, Sosuke Aizen, Xellos Metallium, Lex Luthor, The Joker, Doctor Doom, Megabyte, Megatron, Princess Azula, Nerissa, Green Goblin, Vlad Masters, and of coure David Xanatos. Basically, Magnificent Bastards are some of the most dangerous villains. :evil:

A Smug Snake (Magnificent Bastard wannabe) can also be manipulative and just as enjoyable, like Orochimaru, Katsuhiko Jinnai, Slade, Admiral Zhao, Prince Phobos, and Lord Cedric. If a Smug Snake is written to be way more of a threat than he/she should be, however, you're likely to just get annoyed with them. :shrug:

And Complete Monsters are the pure evil villains that we just flat out hate. Through mercilessly evil actions and zero redeeming qualities, they're the kinds of villains we're rarely able to enjoy but can at least appreciate. These villains are the likes of Johan Leibert, Freeza, Elder Toguro, Arlong, Gendo Ikari, Firelord Ozai, and Judge Frollo. :mad:

All others are usually Card Carrying Villains and Big Bads. And they have their evil merits too.



I agree fully on this viewpoint, but I think you may have mistyped that one part about Hannibal Lecter. Didn't you mean "wasn't?"



Couldn't have said it better myself. Who was the bonehead who decided that Carnage should become such a recurring villain, anyway?
 
I didn't care for any of those, myself.

I'm not talking about being sympathetic.

Well, Xanatos and Nerissa like I said. I don't feel sympathetic for either of them, but they're still dynamic charicters. They have families and friends they care for and love, they show kindness, trust, enjoying life outside villainy, and so forth, but they still do questionable/bad things. They're dynamic, as in, there's more to them than being the villain. That's not the same as being sympathetic.

Then again, I don't sympathize with any character really since I know it's all fiction.

But they never went anywhere with it. Everytime they were supposedly cured, you can bet their next appearance would be a relapse back into their villain character because the writers wanted a superhero/supervillain battle. You'll never really find dynamic villains in superhero shows for this reason, they need to make the villains open to coming back every time they're defeated.

I'm not talking about sympathy.

I thought it was obvious Zuko would turn good from the first episode. And which Catwoman? There's like 10 of them. If the comic one, she's changed sides a few times so it's whatever she feels like being at the time.

Perhaps if it wasn't completely rushed into one episode and out-of-character/conradictory from everything we've seen about her prior to said episode. But again, I'm not talking about sympathy, just dynamic characterization, which are completely different.
 
Well seeing as i generally only side with the good guys when they're fighting something alien or weird (like in Ben 10 or so forth), i usually side with the villain in a human show like Kim Possible or Phineas and Ferb or The Simpsons. By far my favorite villain is Mr Burns, who is the largest constituent of my own character. Followed by Doctor Drakken and Doctor Doofenshmirtz. Mr Burns could be considered effective in his villainy, after all he is rich and therefore can get away with lots of things. Both Drakken and Doofenshmirtz however are somewhat less effective, but being in a Disney cartoon you could hardly expect them to be more effective. Team Rocket i like but i never classed them as villains, more competitors to Ash and the gang. So i guess my favorite type is the type which Mr Burns belongs to. Civilized, refined, powerful, rich, evil and with lots of character and likeability.
 
Well you can't please everyone, but the fact is movies like Silence of the Lambs and No Country For Old men have gotten Oscars, shows that those types of villains can be very popular.

Really just because you don't like complete monster villains doesn't mean they can't be great villains. Sometimes having the unknown scary Boogieman who is pure evil, can truly stir the primal fear that dwells within people. Sometimes its better not to explain things.

Not mention sometimes dynamic or sympathetic villains needs a complete monster to contrast them. That's why Red Skull works in the Marvel Universe his evil is contrasts more dynamic villains like Magneto and Dr. doom. Making the Red Skull dynamic or sympathetic would be offensive, he has to remain a complete monster.



Then what exactly are who talking about? Dynamic really does seem to be in the eye of the beholder.



Again Magneto has shown this in X-Men TAS and Sandman in last appearance in the new Spidey cartoon did a lot of things that made him dynamic. Karai from the new TMNT was fairly dynamic, considering she had split loyalties to the Shredder and her oath to the TMNT.

Heck Galatea, who really is not particularly sympathetic, had a dynamic moment when she hugged professor Hamilton. Vandal savage's last appearance also showed he can be a dynamic villain and Dr. Doom's appearance in the secret Wars arc of the 90s spidey cartoon shows he cared about those under his rule. Most cartoons have shown Mystique caring about Rogue, so that seems dynamic to me.

So I find this argument that cartoons lack dynamic villains rings false.

Plus lets face it many serious villains in modern cartoons are psychopaths (just like most of the real world dictators and serial killers) and psychopaths by their nature don't really care about anyone but themselves. Ted Bundy only cared about Ted Bundy. Those who are not criminals or poor upbringing due to poverty are often psychopathic.



A good story can draw people in and make them experience emotions, that's what true art does.



Sanity is not a light switch, often there is no real cure, sometimes people have methods that can mitigate it (like meds) but the condition sometimes never goes away. Sometimes people stop taking their meds because they think they are cured or they don't want to deal with the side effects and they relapse. So Two-Face never being completely cured is not unrealistic.

Plus Ventriloquist was cured in his final episode.




Zukow as still a villain for most of the series, he still counts. It seems you are setting up rather narrow definitions here.

What about Catwoman from BTAS, can truly say she was just a villain?



Its called character development, the mental breakdown was a natural progression for the character and again its not unrealistic because it happens in real life: Stalin suffered from paranoid delusions after he gained power, always fearing that everyone around him was trying to take his power. Sometimes in a dictatorship the tyrant is the biggest slave of all. So it fits for her. Plus considering Azula is just 14, I'm willing cut her some slack.
 
A lot of things are popular, but that says nothing of their quality. Nor do the Oscars. You shouldn't hapazardly conform your own opinions to match someone else's.

I never said I don't like them, just that I don't prefer them. If other people prefer them then more power to them.

Neither of which went anywhere. Karai's storyline was dropped and never resolved onscreen (she cameos in the final episode randomly after multiple seasons of inactivity) and Sandman's stunt was just a one episode thing. Maybe if he shows up again and develops further, but right now he hasn't really had anyone else to interact with. Since I never seen much of it, did Magneto get plenty of focus with a true resolution?

Random instances which usually end up going nowhere or gain any real focus on in the show aren't the same, though. If all we see is one instance of a minor character like Galatea hugging her creator, it's not the same as a villain who's in almost every episode and is the focus of the entire show. A truly dynamic character is dynamic from the very beginning and is a major focus of their character, not just one to two little instances thrown in randomly just for when the writing calls for it. Skeletor saved Christmas one time, but you can bet the next time he shows up he'll be back to his old one-dimensional ways and what not. You can think of a lot of similar examples of a villain 'doing good' once or twice, but they're not really a dynamic character unless they're entire character is built around it.

Nothing about these shows is really realistic, but that's why it's fiction. Two-Face never being cured might be realistic, but it sure makes for repetitive and formulamatic storytelling; especially if the writers just use that as an excuse to milk a villain dry, which is usually the case. Though since people can be cured in real life, the realism factor doesn't really apply in this case.

He stopped being a villain at the end of the first season. Aside from one of two random skimishes, he stayed mostly out of the heroes way in season 2.

She wasn't a psychopath like the others, but she was a villain, yes.

Character development usually changes gradually over the series, not all at once in one episode. It would have been better if they built up to it gradually, rather than just flipping a switch in the final episode for plot reasons. Realistic or not realistic, it doesn't change the fact it was rushed and poorly handled.
 
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