I used to think nuance was needed for realism to help me believe it. But the real villains of the world are just pure absolute evil sick bastards that want to take everything for themselves just for the sake of it.
MAYBE there's some nuance of needing to feel like winners or something. Live up to their father's name. But I have zero pity for them. Fuck that narcissist rapist Donald Trump.
The difference is that narcissist, rapist Donald Trump still thinks of himself as a good guy. OG Magneto was even more two-dimensional than that. I mean, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby gave his group the name "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants".
If they procreate on the cost of our lives then they are pretty evil (to us). I don't see how being animals have anything to do with this. Humans are animals too.
We do have good old fashioned evil villains. They're us.
We're the ones destroying the world, killing wildlife, and enslaving the innocent. We're not doing it with a space aged death ray, but by emitting carbon where we don't need. We're not putting chains on the people living down the block and selling them into slavery, but we are supporting slavery when we buy T-shirts made of cotton from Xinjiang whose culture and religion are slowing being erased.
Classic comic book villains look pretty shallow and vanilla when you learn what we're doing thats far worse.