Falling in Love With the Villain

              We all have our favorite hero or heroes. But generally, we don’t think about our favorite villain—but we all have one. Villains have become increasingly popular in the past decade. Despicable Me proved that with a story all about rooting for the villain. Jack Sparrow—Captain Jack Sparrow, is obviously the villainous figure in the Caribbean. The Governor and his men are clearly the ones who stand for good and democracy and Jack stands for revolt and piracy. However, everyone roots for the pirates and you want Jack to get away with it and have it “be the day when you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow.” There’s a certain thing about these sorts of villains that turn them into more of anti-heroes and make the audience like them. And part of this is because of the increasing amount of prequels coming out of Hollywood in the past decade.

                Darth Vader is the most beloved villain of all time. In Return of the Jedi he becomes good and he ends the reign of the Emperor, dying in the process. From then on, Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker becomes a villain people enjoy and they don’t want to see him lose. Then when George Lucas creates the prequels and we see Anakin as a child and learn why he becomes Darth Vader, we fall more and more in love with seeing the ominous, masked villain. Throughout the Harry Potter series we learn more and more about Lord Voldemort’s childhood and his history. We learn it’s not the best childhood and we sympathize a little with him. A better example is Professor Snape. He is portrayed as a more villainous character throughout the series until we go back in his life and see that he was scarred by the loss of a loved one and we see why he was so villainous. We sympathize with their stories.

                Villain’s stories are the best stories. They’re often better than the actual protagonist’s story and you can learn more from the villain than you can the hero. That’s why the world has fallen in love with the villain.