![\"\"](\"http:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/north-by-northwest-sm1.jpg\" "\\"north-by-northwest-sm\\"")
<\/a>'You gentlemen aren't really trying to kill my son, are you?'<\/p><\/div>\n
Suave, slick villains have been the norm at least since the man with the missing top-joint of his finger in \u2018The Thirty-Nine Steps\u2019 in 1935.<\/p>\n
Other examples of that style include my favorite, James Mason in \u2018North by Northwest\u2019 (Cary Grant: \u2018Apparently the only performance that will satisfy you is when I play dead.\u2019 Mason: \u2018Your very next role\u2014you\u2019ll be quite convincing, I assure you.\u2019) and almost every James Bond film.<\/p>\n
\u2018Casablanca\u2019 would seem to be an example of a conventional villain but in truth works in a completely different fashion.<\/p>\n
Major Strasser\u2014the supposed villain of the film\u2014is thinly drawn and his shoot-out with Rick at the end is probably the most tensionless in the history of movies. Nobody watching that film ever had any doubt the Nazis would be foiled in the end.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Who's the bad man? Nobody here<\/p><\/div>\n
The real tension is in the rivalry between Rick and Victor Lazlo over Ingrid Bergman\u2019s Ilsa Lund. Which would make Lazlo the bad guy, right? Not a chance. Lazlo is such a saint that Paul Henreid knew (correctly) that the role would ruin his career. Bogart actually takes the bad guy role, comfortable with corruption, playing both ends against the middle and threatening to betray the Cause right up to the last moment. That tension gives the film its bite.<\/p>\n
Tommy Lee Jones is another very satisfying version of the anti-villain in \u2018The Fugitive\u2019, pursuing Harrison Ford with an unhealthy (and very expensive–all those helicopters!) zeal. A true believer, a fanatic, a man of passion for his job and\u2014it turns out only at the end\u2014also for truth and justice (and maybe the American Way\u2014the film doesn\u2019t make this explicit). But it\u2019s his conviction and determination that drives the story and makes us really fear for Ford. We know he\u2019s up against a formidable and much more experienced foe\u2014when he begins to hold his own, about halfway through, we develop a real respect for his character.<\/p>\n
I read something recently about sociopaths \u2013 people with no conscience at all, no guilt or shame or constraint of any kind. They do whatever gets them what they want, without feeling.\u00a0It says something about me\u2014probably not something good\u2014that my first thought was, wouldn\u2019t do me much good as a villain.<\/p>\n
To me, a thriller needs to pit one character\u2019s passion against another\u2019s\u2014and interesting characters are almost always battling something inside themselves, in addition to whatever conflict they face from the outside world.<\/p>\n
Without conscience, a character can present no passion at all, a true void. Strangely enough, often the audience fills that void with their own deepest fears and the sociopath ends up totally dominating the story. Hannibal Lecter is an obvious example\u2014famous and successful villain but one who, I must admit, doesn\u2019t do much for me as a character.<\/p>\n
The highlight of the last Harry Potter film took me completely by surprise: with all the final bows,\u00a0 the summing-up of relationships I\u2019ve spent ten years on and the death of several characters I care about, what\u2019s really lingered after was Ralph Fienne\u2019s Voldemort.<\/p>\n To realize just what a good trick this is, remember George Lucas spending three films trying to make Anakin Skywalker\u2019s transition to Darth Vader into something powerful\u2014or touching\u2014or at least interesting\u2014and failing completely.<\/p>\n Harry Lime - the charming bastard<\/p><\/div>\n In \u2018The Third Man\u2019, you spend the entire film waiting for Harry Lime to appear, while everyone mourns, describes and wonders about him. And, when he does, he\u2019s spellbinding\u2014and totally fallen, a gifted brilliant creature, the most riveting character in a film full of them, but totally committed to the dark path. He simply sees himself as surviving in a miserable, fallen world. In truth, Harry is the hero of the film while selling poisoned penicillin. The point of the story seems to be that he might as well be the hero, since there are no heroes in that world.<\/p>\n My own villains in \u2018Mindbenders\u2019 see themselves as simply businessmen, taking advantage of a supply-and-demand opportunity\u2014the ability to affect the minds of consumers, stockholders, government. And maybe to cause a few nervous breakdowns and assassinations along the way. I see their like on the front pages every day.<\/p>\n It was bone-chilling, maybe because it felt more true to life\u2014our life today\u2014than anything else I\u2019ve seen in years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Villains are every bit as important to the power of a thriller as the hero\u2014maybe moreso. If the reader is going to care about the outcome, she will not only have to be interested in the characters, she\u2019ll have to …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[34,30,15,51,93,31,56,94,8],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything-else","category-writing","tag-art","tag-characters","tag-fantasy","tag-mindbenders","tag-movies","tag-story","tag-thriller","tag-thrillers","tag-writing-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1091,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions\/1091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>On the other hand, Heath Ledger\u2019s Joker in the last Batman had passion to burn\u2014passion for chaos, for anarchy. Ledger\u2019s performance was totally engrossing and thoroughly unbalanced the film. There was no way that constipated Batman should ever have laid a glove on him, much less beaten him. A masterful performance but one I have no interest in watching ever again. It was too disturbing.<\/p>\n<\/a>Every time the kids (they\u2019re not kids anymore but since I\u2019m no longer aging, neither are they, dammit!) would kill a horcrux\u2014a piece of his soul\u2014we got a shot of Voldemort flinching, cringing and eventually crying out in pain. You could sense not only was he in physical distress but actually frightened, feeling his mortality as we all do. By the time he and Harry finally had it out, there was a desperation underneath\u2014and even a compassion for this twisted soul\u2014that made the whole thing far more intense than usual. The movie humanized Voldemort without making him any less villainous.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>One of the most affecting villains I\u2019ve seen in recent films was in \u2018Children of Men\u2019, Alfonso Cuaron\u2019s nightmare of life in a literally sterile (no children anymore) society riddled by class and civil warfare. The film is full of televised images of icons of the State but has no real identifiable villain, just a pervasive System with universal reach and implacable motives. No emotion or justice, passion or even visible intent. A sociopathic society.<\/p>\n