One Man's Villain Is Another Man's Hero

The world of film lives and breathes on a bare blueprint of stories based on archetypes and stereotypes, and built upon the bones of myth, legend, and history.

As such, to tell any decent story well, you need strong protagonists and stronger antagonists.

From the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greek fables—villains and antagonists on the most part with duplicitous reasoning and nefariously complex motivations—to the tragic heroes and villains of comic book lore, all stories revolve around six or seven formats as old as storytelling itself; from cave paintings to the earliest folk tales and fairy stories—and almost all involve a good guy and a bad guy in some way or another.

In film, villains usually fall under two categories: the ones who grandstand and are denied victory by the way of their own hubris, or the super-villains who enjoy victory through crafty master-plans usually designed toward bringing the hero to the point of collapse, resignation, and literal abandonment of their ideals, principles, and values, making them no better than the villain they face off against.

To this end, we now take a look at the villains who make the movie and— despite all the protagonists’ best efforts—see out the movies and films victorious at the heroes' expense.Beware: Past this point—SPOILERS.

'The Dark Knight' (2008)

Director:Christopher NolanVillain: Joker (Heath Ledger.)

Was it really almost ten years ago that the most Shakespearian of comic book movies was released upon the silver screen, depicting what could well be THE defining portrayal of the classic four colour villain?

The Dark Knight is famous for a number of reasons as both a comic book movie and also a treatise in the downfall of proud, good men.

Jokers masterpiece of a plan is the testing of a mans patience, willpower and ethics until they break, or, they die trying to maintain their stance. He doesn’t care if he lives or dies. Indeed, on several occasions, he tests other characters' resolve, putting his own life, and therefore his entire plan, directly on the line as a pawn on a living, breathing chessboard.

(See the scene where he first meets the heads of the families and reveals his grenade-laden jacket, or, when he allows a coin flip to seal his fate in the hospital.)

At no point does Heath Ledger's Joker ever care if he lives or dies. He dances merrily through the story, giddy on chaos and allowing the chips to fall as they may, not interested in money, fame, or advancing his standing among the families—No, his one and only reason for being is the insemination of anarchy upon the cast of characters around him.

Yes, you could argue he hopes that Batman will kill. He hopes that the ship's crews will decide to execute one or the other, but you sense that he knows in this man he has met the wall that will not fall, and the other is a minor flaw in a plan where his end game is met otherwise without any hitch. The hero of the tale—Harvey Dent, the white knight of Gotham—well and truly broken and becoming the villain he had predicted all good men will become if they outlive their use as a hero.

The Joker may be caught, incarcerated, and locked away in Black Gate, but at the end, swinging as he is from the end of the rope, laughing away at the world he has unleashed, watching the Batman fall into the darkness he has allowed inside, the Joker is indeed victorious.

'Nightcrawler'

Director: Dan GilroyVillain:Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal)

Arguably Gyllenhaal’s greatest role—Lou Bloom is a shitty person trapped in a spiral of shitty actions and shitty jobs trying to carve a living in a world that doesn’t really give a shit about him.

He is a grifter, a thief, and a conniving pseudo con-man who takes advantage of situations to try and find a pot of gold in every situation and dead end he finds himself in. With a few minor characteristic shifts, he could be an amazing antihero—a Robin Hood character that is lovable and easy to root for with cloudy but noble intentions—instead, Gyllenhaal takes the road less traveled and revels in creating a character who is extremely unlikable, utterly dripping in disdain, and has no discernible traits.

Lou Bloom is a villain; make no mistake.

His shift from common grafter to ambulance chasing opportunistic sociopath is one that is truly compelling in its raw honesty that this is a man who could be anyone of us. His descent into true villainy is one that is laid out in three steps.

• Find a niche someone has made their own and is benefiting from.
• Steal the idea and twist it to your own means.
• Lose yourself to the process at the expense of common sense and regard for the law of man—without technically ever breaking any laws yourself.

I say TECHNICALLY because it wouldn’t take a genius lawyer to prosecute against his actions, as despicable as they are; nor would it take a hotshot lawyer to exonerate him. His crimes once he is thrust into the murky world of chasing ambulances, police, and accidents, after all, are misdemeanors at the very least—and arguably negligent at worst.

Right up until the house…

He watches his driver die, filming it as he does. He breaks into a house with multiple murders and rearranges the scene to sensationalize the footage.

But his worst crime is the way he manipulates the people around him to his own end and builds his empire on the actions of the network who buy his footage and deal with him. Soon, lines between the people steering the narrative and those who are manipulating the narrative blur so much that there are no good guys and bad guys, there are only grey people involved in grey acts of horrendous ugliness.

In the middle orchestrating everything is Lou.

Devoid of soul, conscious, and reason. To the end making a quick buck off the misery of others.

A villain reveling with an absolute lack of joy in his own success.

'Oldboy' (2003)

DIRECTOR:Chan-Wook ParkVILLAIN:Woo-Jin Lee - Ji-Tae Yu

The thing about Oldboy, both the original Korean masterpiece and Spike Lee’s well-intentioned but sadly flawed remake is this…

There is no good guy.

They are all villains.

Now, I know there are others who will fight me and argue that Min-Sik Choi’s Dae-Su is a hero of sorts, but he really isn’t. At the start of the film he is a flawed, broken lump of a man, drunk and arguably a failed husband and father. He is a man burdened by his past and simultaneously living off the back of his past glories as a popular kid at school. He is a failure as a man and regardless of his arc as a character post-kidnap, he is never a hero, rather a broadly painted Anti-hero who fulfills the classic redemption archetype well—but who falls someway short of being reborn in pearly white heroes garb.

No. He is as much a villain as the film's ultimate big bad.

However, where he is living off the fumes of past glory, the real villain of the piece is largely absent throughout the entire film until the end of the final third act, but his fingerprints are indelible from the start and his plan has a numbing, brutalist finality to it that means that we are passengers in a train hurtling headlong into a ending that will ruin all involved.

Woo-Jin Lee is a masterclass in villainy.

His plan is both heartbreaking poignant and simple, his reasoning is deadly and unwavering, his motivation is depressingly sad and understandable, as much as it is repulsive and alien.

He is a perfect foil for the reborn, newly motivated Dae-Su, who after 15 years of captivity, daily work out, and strict diet has become a clockwork machine of revenge and nothing else. Dae-Su has one motivation: to find the man who held him from his family for 15 years and to find his daughter. Drip-fed information about his family by constant TV reports beamed directly into his prison room, no context and no filter or substance of what is real or fantasy—he is convinced he knows the story of his daughter…instead… he is set upon a path, wandering wildly into a perfect trap from the man whose life he effected so long ago.To watch as one man's life is so devoutly ruined, unwound, and dissembled by a villain who is always watching, but never actively, physically tussling with the protagonist is a brave and unique move.To see his masterplan aim toward a truly harrowing conclusion is a dark, testing watch, but from a cinematic point of view, it's a beautiful unveiling with a brilliantly bleak finality.The film is a winding, serpentine two hour reveal. The villain is a shadowy playboy who appears briefly and leaves a bitter, violent conclusion, which leaves a horrendous taste that lingers for days after the closing credits.Our "protagonist" is left altered forever by the "antagonist," and the villain most definitely wins, even if it is after a fashion.His victory is sealed the minute the penny drops, and when it does, the breath will leave your body cold and viciously.Beware.

'The Usual Suspects' (1995)

DIRECTOR:Bryan SingerVILLAIN:Keyser SozeThe Usual Suspects is a film that gives you everything in the first shot, runs rampant with fantasy for its entire running time, and then has the gall to drop a nuclear bomb of story craft and cinematic brilliance with its final shot of the film. And never once does it stay long enough to assume if you have kept up, let alone care if you get it.The villain of the piece doesn't even show up—not really.But there he is, on screen for the majority of the film, staring you in the face.It's beautiful.Whats more, the question burns deep into your cortex as to whether he even is a villain at all. The more you think about it, the more you weigh up his motivation against his actions and the benefit of the actions to himself, the more it appears that there is a wide, depraved grey area that almost gives him a validation for his actions.But anyway — I digress.Taking Soze to one side, a faceless villain as he is for the whole film, until the deceptive, brilliant, genius final shot. The real villain is sitting centre stage for the entire film's running time and in my mind, that villain is Roger "Verbal" Kint.Yes, I know what you are thinking: Kint IS Soze, but that's not the point.Kint leads the entire patchwork tale from first word to last, leading the police on a merry chase, inventing the entire series of events that plays out in the narrative from the top of his head, prompted only by the noticeboard behind Detective Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri).Kint is very much the villain here, pulling the strings, buying time, orchestrating chaos, and acting like a fool in the middle of a grand conspiracy he has set up, organised, conducted, and executed to kill his enemies and destroy their infrastructure as an act of grand revenge and a gesture of perfect one-upmanship.He is a circus master, leading the police (the clowns in this analogy) in circles even after he has set up his supposed friend Keaton and their fellow lags into their various ugly fates and inevitable demises.The only thing that matters is the final play—the final coup de grace—and Kint leads the whole lot of them there, with a baying crowd eating popcorn the whole way, watching on with baited breath.Up until the final reveal, Soze is nothing but a myth, a legend. Kint is a genuine revelation of a villain. An avatar for an idea so unstoppable and so prominent that anything that gets in the way is simply chum for the shark.Kint is the villain. And by the final scene, when his mask slips and his bare flesh is exposed (the flesh being Soze), he gets away with everything without anyone knowing what just happened. In the centre of a police station, he spins himself a story that is so believable and so impenetrable he can walk out without being touched.Spreading his wings and floating away as if he was made of air.

In conclusion...Though there are many more films where villains ultimately win out against the protagonist, a fair few of them are questionable victories where the plot has led you to a false conclusion the whole way.I prefer to think of a victory as being something philosophical or allegorical. In my mind, the villain of Blade Runner, Roy Batty, wins out against Deckard, our protagonist, simply by virtue of the fact he makes the hero question his every decision, his every preconception, his entire own existence. Deckard is left a broken shell of a man, doubting his own humanity, rushing to the side of a woman he knows is doomed to die, who he knows is not real—clasping to his own mortality and quickly flailing humanity in the face of Baty's parting words and wisdom...At the end, the villain far more human than the real men of the story.The clockwork man displaying the most human emotions in the face of his own artificiality.The list above is not exhaustive by any means. Films like Devil's Advocate, The Vanishing, Seven, all have victorious villains, and there are many more lists out there on the internet that document the reasons and list the argument for their actions....For me, though, the above are my favourites. These are the creme de la creme of victorious villains.I'd love to hear your thoughts and favourites.Sometimes, the hero is a sacrificial lamb, destined for the slaughterhouse. Often a hero has one purpose, and that is to deliver us to the ending; the endgame. My interest is in a villainous counterfoil that orchestrates like a fine concerto the entire story, knowing when to pluck the violin strings to ramp the tension, when to unfurl the brass to release the bombast, and when to stroke his arms to a silent slice and stop the music to let the shock seep in, creating the awe-inspiring opera upon which our story has been built.The greatest villains are as precise as machinery, and as beautifully complex as the most stunning composition.Musical misery.