Continuing the villain cliché theme of the last post, here are some villain clichés I won't get tired of in a hurry. This is not a complete list by any means. To be honest, I'm a sucker for villain clichés, starting with the typical villain look (pale, thin, icy eyes, sharp features). These clichés are just a few of my favourites I can name from the top of my head. If I were to write down every well-worn villain trope I enjoy the moment I think about it, I could easily get material for a follow-up post or two. But that might just be too much like hard work.
"You and I are not so different" I think Arthur Conan Doyle might be the one to take credit for the widespread popularity of the "mirror image" villain, who resembles the hero in all sorts of ways – except he's bad. Certainly, when I think of famous villains before Professor Moriarty, they tend to be contrasts to the hero. The hero is brave, the villain is cowardly. The hero is kind and generous, the villain is mean-spirited and bitter. The hero is good-looking in a reassuringly homespun way (too much conventional handsomeness can sometimes be a red flag), the villain sports the pale, thin etc. looks outlined above (which I consider fairest of them all, but which aren't generally appreciated) or is downright deformed. And so on. The same often applies to heroines and villainesses. The heroines are pure and unbelievably big-hearted, the villainesses are grasping sluts. Look no further than Dickens, or Shakespeare for that matter, for numerous examples.
But then we get Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, similar in so many ways that it's easy to think of "what-if" scenarios where they might have been friends, either both fighting for good or both becoming experts in villainy. No-one else is at the same level as them. They have a unique understanding for each other. We get a grasp of all this during the span of one single short story. The "mirror image" villain has been a staple of popular culture ever since.
What's more, the "they could have been friends" scenario has often developed to a scenario where the hero and villain actually were friends until things went pear-shaped. Doctor Who's Doctor and Master friendship/rivalry is only one of many highly enjoyable Holmes-Moriarty rip-offs. As I've found out while doing my X-Men homework, there's Xavier and Magneto (though Magneto's case is more complicated than simply "going bad"). Not to mention the countless times we have heard the villain in a Bond movie or similar say "you and I are not so different/more alike than you realise" and the hero respond hotly "we are nothing alike". I know it's a cliché by this time. But as it forces the hero to question his own smugness – after all, aren't the villain's weaknesses the same as his own? – to me, it never gets old.
The hero-villain team-up This is squarely a popular culture thing, seldom attempted in a more literary context, more's the pity. At least once or twice or three times in a long-running TV series, there's a plot line that goes like this. The hero and villain – or heroes and villains, it can be a question of teams joining forces – face a bigger threat; realise that they have to team up to defeat it, sometimes after a little too much pointless squabbling; are successful in their fight because of their different skill sets and then go their different ways again, generally because of some betrayal on the villain's part, but sometimes because both parties tacitly understand that the harmony can't last.
I'm not too fond of the ultimate villain betrayal cliché, but otherwise I love a good hero-villain team-up. The villain can ensure success by making the hard decisions and, say, kill off an antagonist without the hero getting his or her hands dirty, while the hero can shine when a more understanding approach is needed. You could argue that too frequent team-ups with the good guys can weaken the threat level of the regular bad guy, but I'm not too bothered by that. I'm only sad it always has to end.
Let's twist again (within reason) I'm aware that I'm being a bit contradictory here. Like everyone else, I got sick of twist villains in (fairly) recent animated Disney films and demanded a front-and-centre villain in the good old Scar or Jafar mould. Consequently, it seems that I can get enough of twist-based clichés.
Let me try to explain. Twist villains, and sometimes twist heroes, have a part to play in stories that are otherwise very black and white. Complex characters are always to be preferred to flat ones, but failing complexity, a character with all the attributes of a good guy turning out to be bad or vice versa throws heroes off balance and gives them a reason to reassess their world view, always a desirable goal for a villain-lover. If not everything is at it seems, then there's at least potential for complexity. Plus, I admit, I enjoy a good rug pull now and again – it's a shame so few twists really deliver that.
The reasons I objected to the Disney twist villains are that there are too many of them in a row, and that the "villain-coded" characters of old (you could see they were bad just by the animation) were so delicious. But there is a case to be made for the much-maligned Disney twist villains too. I may get back to that in a future post.
