See no evil: why have baddies vanished from our cinema screens?
See no evil: why have baddies vanished from our cinema screens?
An uncomplicatedly bad villain used to feature in every action film worth its salt, but a more globalised industry has made the universally hated figure a tricky character to pull off
Archived version: https://archive.li/25ZWC
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The author seems ambivalent about the dwindling place of the villain in Hollywoodian cinema. I'm quite happy about it to be honest. Like it's said in the article, the way villains were depicted was often quite xenophobic. On top of it it's just such a lazy device especially when there's just no backstory to justify the villain's resentment. It makes the whole thing awfully predictable. I'd take a good old McGuffin over a villain any day.
Totally agreed. I'm Ukrainian and nothing gets me as heated watching any movie as Russian villains (almost always played by non-Russian-speaking actors). Hollywood looooves movie villains that reflect the government's Big Bad Wolves and it's just disgusting to me. Beyond the obvious facts that xenophobia is bad and using the film industry to stoke the fires of the US's international feuds is bad, it just fucking hurts the way it feels like people put on costumes to approximate my dad's appearance and voice because it's the most basic shorthand for "evil" they can think of.