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Turn A Classic Bad Guy Into A Good One

Gomendosi

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
So, evil exists in so many forms right, but your classic villain has two archetypes, the one who is truly evil but people only see a harmless, lovable larrikin.. and then there's the second one, the one who doesn't even realise he is the bad guy.

This second dubiously nefarious character is becoming an obsession with me, how can he be so blind as to not see that he is the bad guy, everybody knows it, he is the bad guy, the moustache twirling, railroad track tying, cape wrapping, thin legged, creepy cartoon villain.
If you are a bad guy, surly you would know it... right, at some point you would be all like; "Hey, people think I'm evil", but this guy never gets it, he actually thinks he is doing the right things, he goes about making decisions he thinks will help, he may even ask for help with things but when he doesn't get it, rather than stop, he makes a judgement call and it always, always turns out bad, surely he knew it would, why did he pick that path, shouldn't he have gone against his every instinct at that point. He must have some redeeming quality that can set him straight, he obviously wants to be one of the heroes of the story.

So the question is this, you... hopefully having watched a lot of film and/ or television, can you describe how this unknowing bad guy can be made to see that the way he is, is all wrong, and what can he do to become one of the good guys, you know, the guys everybody likes, the ones with the white horse, the ones children dress up as, the ones who have friends and are waved to in the street.
 
I tend to be horrible with "bad guys" in movies over the fact that I sympathize with most of them. Thus I might not be the right person to ask "what does he have to do to be liked?"... I tend to be be to total opposite and wonder "what does a "good guy" have to do so I like him?"... the closest thing to a good guy in comic/film would be Rorschach, Ozymandias or The comedian (all from Watchmen) and apparently their moral compasses or agenda's is slightly off when looking at what an actual hero is like (something like Superman or even Batman).

I believe that the main thing villains would have to do, and perhaps heroes as well, is they need to have strong convictions that justify their actions. Something people can get behind. They need an ideology That seems to justify the most horrific deeds to people nowadays. I feel that to be a hero often you just want to "save the world". That's utopian. Maybe too much of it even. It's something people can get behind though, but it's such a superficial ideology IMO. Is there a reason why you want to save the world? Just to make it a better place? Well, Magneto wants to make the world a better place by ridding the world of all non-mutants... and I can clearly sympathize more with him.

A fine line between a hero and villain, and not even in the traditional sense, but very much a characters to think about and why people like him. Bender, from Futurama. He's antisocial and an alcoholic (amongst other things). People think he's hilarious (and rightfully so IMO)... I can just look at myself to why I like him, but by now I know that my judgment does not equal the average world view, lol.
 
I really like your post, but could you add a few specific examples of these two types?

Well, in recent memory I watched "under the dome" and the bad guy everybody loves type is clearly Big Jim, we [the viewer] know he is evil but 99% of the townsfolk almost worship him to the point they were going to hang another character called Barbie at Jims say so, it would seem that their love of Jim was stronger than their moral compass and they simply cant see him for what he is.

Whereas the prime example I can give of type two would be from a comic actually, in terms of a person being evil and not realising it, there, a character called Parralax takes the cake, I never actually read the ending as my real life got in the way, but in the beginning a superheroes town got destroyed and he did everything in his power to change that, but even while he was himself destroying worlds and taking lives he still couldn't see it as anything but justified.

---

Truth be told Ste11aeres, the problem with me is that when I start a thread I do so with the intent of getting people to talk about things they may not have thought about too much before, so I haven't prepared any examples and with all the TV and Film I have seen I cant really pinpoint too many from either camp at the present time. Also, I probably do have some examples from real life but that isn't what the threads about and I wouldn't be comfortable mentioning them anyway. The other reasons my threads tend to be a little vague these days is because I would rather people use their own brain rather than follow along paths I point out, and lastly the thought probably wasn't a complete one when I wrote the thread ; ]
 
I have an example of a very easily overlooked Bad guy from movies: The Private Dick.

When we view the average Private Investigator movie. What do we see? The stereotype we are provided is the washed up ex-cop. The cops he used to work with absolutely hate him (sometimes he has one reluctant police contact). Some of the cops that hate him are often quite corrupt (but somehow still part of the force). He was forced out of policing for something that happened (only sometimes will you, the audience, find out what happened). He understands well that his word means nothing now and his name is mud. He is not going to ***** and moan about it (because nobody cares!), there is nothing he can do about the situation, so he is just going to move on.
 
First ask yourself how bad the deeds the character has committed are.
Give your character (villain)a good reason to do the bad deeds in the first place.
Give the villain a reason to want to repent.
Show the redemption process gradually and subtly.

from: How to Redeem a Fictional Character Believably: 4 Steps

Does anybody want to try applying this rehab to a villain?

To narrow down the concept of the villain---
A. Bad guy that everybody thinks is ok
B. Bad guy who doesn't know he is bad

Hmmm..."bad guy" = guy who makes evil choices, knowingly or unknowingly

Here is a list of some villains:
Category:Literary villains - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
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I was forced to watch The Lion King with some kids at a preschool. And all through the movie I kept thinking that the big bad villain, Scar, was more admirable in some ways than the "noble" king, Mufasa.
Scar did do some wrong things to achieve his goals (such as murdering Mufasa). But one of the things promoted as being evil about Scar was the fact that he wanted to permit equality for hyenas, instead of keeping them confined to a ghetto. (the word "ghetto," is of course not used, but it's the same principle).
Could it be that Scar's goals were good, although his means were evil? Could it be that Mufasa (and by implication, Simba later on) was somewhat evil for maintaining such justice towards a whole class of people? (hyenas, I know, but all the animals are turned into people in such anthropomorphised films).
 
So the question is this, you... hopefully having watched a lot of film and/ or television, can you describe how this unknowing bad guy can be made to see that the way he is, is all wrong, and what can he do to become one of the good guys, you know, the guys everybody likes, the ones with the white horse, the ones children dress up as, the ones who have friends and are waved to in the street.

So often when there seems to be such a small "make or break" in whether someone is good or bad, particularly in how you describe- it can be clarified by how long a view one is able to take.

The bigger picture one has, the clearer a specific individual's place in that picture is.
So individual thinks they are doing good, today those close to them are bringing to their attention they are 'the bad guy' but this 'bad guy' some how feels deeply he must follow through despite his convictions and desires to be good.
["his" simply to stick with one gender consistently, by the way]

ETA:
Taking a longer view: time may show he made the right decision/choices/sacrifices/took the right paths, etc.
That long view may need to include a year or ten though. It may requires multiple perspectives not possible at the time.
He may never actually know.

That's hard.
It's also just something I play around with and I don't expect anyone else to actually agree or go along with it. :]
I'll try to rustle up an example or two though from fiction.
 
When I first saw this thread I had hopes that it would be
sort of a game. It wasn't. I like the idea of changing a
bad guy into one of virtue. I don't like having to choose
my own villain.

Villainous Traits and their Virtues

I enjoyed the idea of finding the good aspects of 'bad' traits,
as described in the list above.

The link above doesn't look the way I have become accustomed
to seeing a link, but it is a link.
 
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The bad guy might have a "what have I done?" moment that makes him/her/non-binary realize that he is wrong.
 

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