What makes a great antagonist?

Before continuing, an obligatory SPOILER ALERT to Avengers:Infinity War and Get Out. Watch the movies or if you don’t care about some of the largest surprises…go right ahead.

Let’s talk about the motivation. Also, the reason I like Thanos (Avengers) and why I’d wish to see AI as the villain of a action movie trilogy (perhaps Mission Impossible) …is that the most powerful villain is the unstoppable force but the one lurking in the shadows. Protagonist just doesn’t know how he constantly fails to complete his mission as there is this force going against him. Thanos did that by killing half the population, initially on every planet he visited. The coolest part for me was that Dr. Strange didn’t know who he was. The guy who knows about every possible universe and every bad guy that might be a threat. He completed his missions with the snap of his fingers, but basically all the beings in the universe were still unaware what happened, not to mention whose wish it was to inflict all this death, of trillions. Was going to write ‘destruction’, but there was none — which I loved about it as there is way too much of it in superhero movies, which I don’t get as every piece of rubble adds to the CGI budget. Which is why DC movies are so bloated, both with wreckage and budget.

We will only be afraid if we understand the motivation. That’s also the reason why I’m not drawn into horror — they scare you for literally no reason. They obviously get off by it, but why? The greatest thing about ‘Get Out’ was that I knew why the so-called white antagonists invited the black protagonist there and why they had the weekend with the auction and everything. The whole point of the movie was to test whether the audience puts the pieces together before the reveal of the car keys. Which is exactly how the viewer ought to be exposed to the villain’s reasoning. Perhaps even the plan, although we learned of Thanos’ intentions early on. The main thing is being aware of the plan and the rationale before the fight for preventing it.

The reason why the antagonists should have their own origin movie is that their reasons for doing those horrible deeds are so much more varied and obscure at the same time. Also, how they go from an innocent child into a full blown mass-murderer is so much more captivating compared to the time spent on the “origin of the villain”, which movies have invested into those stories. (Except the Joker, of course — leaving that origin untold is what makes him scary, proven by Dark Knight.) Compared to heroes at least, who we all just understand. Because every hero’s motivation for trying to keep the antagonist from inflicting pain is to have good in the world by saving lives. That’s it. The only interesting story beat there is how they do it — do they build a suit or get injected with a super serum or any of the other thousand roads to being a hero. While their opposer doesn’t just have their way of killing but why, which can differ even more than the how. That’s why I like two Marvel villains — Vulture in Spider-Man and Thanos in Avengers. They have a goal and even though they have no problem killing someone standing on their way…that in itself is not their ultimate goal. Goal being something that is the causation of their past experiences. Because everyone behaves the way they do due to what they have gone through— which is why Asimov’s Foundation Series was able to make psychohistoric prediction the main plot point. The only difference is the choices they have made. Which is another (would-be) great pair-arc to follow. Both experience similar tragedies, but end up differently due to the choices they’ve made. Some other time.

If antagonist’s life causes him to hate the movie civilians so much that his only purpose becomes sniffing out their lives then I call that a boring villain. And what’s even more important… an unrelatable one. The audience doesn’t have to support (sympathise with) him, but they need to understand (empathise). That only happens by knowing that if those things happened to them then there’s a chance they would end up in the same way.

Another rule for writing antagonists should be that they have to beat the protagonist at every step of the way. Like Thanos did by winning in every situation in the whole movie, even though heroes gave their best. Often it’s just a movie about a bad guy who for some reason gets blown to pieces in every clash like in second Avengers, with Ultron. Where’s the challenge in that? They even said repeatedly that “let’s just get the job done, guys, and GTFO”, which doesn’t really strike fear of failure in the hearts of the audience. In the end of the movie I as an audience will feel the same as there was nothing to overcome, meaning that the ones we root for never went against the odds — a good example for going against the odds is Star Wars that explicitly states that. And now Infinity War where the heroes win only in one scenario out of the 14 million. I actually hope that in the end of Avengers 4 it turns out that the scenario where they won…was actually not seen by Dr. Strange. Because when you try to predict the future, even the next hour opposed to years in the movie….you have endless possibilities how it might unravel. Possible trillions instead of millions, as the real-life (as well in the movie) is stochastic. Thus, it’d be cool if the ‘snapped’ heroes came back and Strange was like “Yeah, I actually didn’t see the outcome where you travelled back in time. I’ve still got two movies left in my own trilogy so I’m not yet at the top of my game here.”