There ’s a dreadful ailment that afflict superhero movies : the villain overburden . Movies about costumed crime - battler seem to appeal surplus villains , like cirriped . Is it because the merchandising people require more toy to market ? Or because they just want to dramatize out the mould with a few more names ? It ’s hard to say .
But the “ too many villains ” problem is still afflicting superhero films , as Green Lantern prove . And some citizenry are worried the same blight will affect The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises , two of next summer ’s most anticipate films . The sound news is , a movie can get the better of the problem of excess villainy . Here are some way that superhero movies can fly the coop from the death sand trap of have one or two villain too many .
pocket-sized plunderer / rumour for upcoming films below …
The truth is , there ’s no strict formula where the quality fall as the number of villains goes up . Christopher Nolan managed to prove , in both of his first two Batman films , that you may have more than one villain in a film and still make it bring . So even if The Dark Knight Rises has every villain it ’s rumour to have , include Bane and Catwoman but also Talia , Ra ’s Al - Ghul , Hugo Strange and Scarecrow , it could still be a heavy film . too , we still have a band of trust that Joss Whedon can make whatever arrangement of “ Loki plus other villians ” The Avengers has into a successful intermixture .
But still , it ’s hard to gainsay that many of the crappiest superhero movies have followed the “ supervillain team - up ” formula . Having more than one villain in a superhero flick takes the focus away from the hero(es ) , and then either you require two or three climaxes in which the hero fight the dissimilar baddie , or you need some variety of shred - team deal , like Spider - Man 3 had . Having two supervillains often means that you want to have two supervillain origin stories , which is often drab .
But also , scenes were supervillains mouth to each other are often really dull — you have two or three marquee doer wearing mad dayglo costumes , standing around on a soundstage full of dry ice and declaiming to each other . The idea of a “ supervillain squad - up ” is something that DC and Marvel have done some bang-up stories about , in their comics — but it ’s hard to make it make in the gravid screenland .
Most of all , when you have a jumbo cloud of fear push plus a mutated scientist in the same movie , it ’s hard not to have the feeling of an overstuff goose . You get the feeling that some studio exec someplace was piling up action mechanism figure on his plush office carpet , and insisting that if one villain was honest , five had to be better . allow ’s tear out all the stops — it works for Michael Bay !
So here are some estimate about how superhero movies can avoid the “ supervillain flash ring ” nightmare :
Pick just one villain . earnestly . This is the easy , best fix for the problem . Iron Man 2 would have been a good film with just one villain . So would Green Lantern and Spider - Man 3 . It would n’t have set everything that was awry with those films , but it would have gone a tenacious means .
It ’s not the bit of villain , it ’s the number of stories . There ’s a limit point to how many subplots your average movie can contain , especially subplots which are about the villains of the motion picture . In the closing , the opponent of the motion picture have to bind into the main plot line , and there has to be one of those . So if there ’s more than one villain , the villains still have to work together as part of the central story , thematically and from a plot of land standpoint . The Dark Knight does this bright , by making the Joker ’s effect on Harvey Dent a central part of the film ’s arc .
It ’s the hero ’s fib . Actually , The Dark Knight pushes this principle almost to its demarcation line , because it ’s as much about the Joker and Harvey Dent as it is about Batman . But it ’s still very much a movie about Bruce Wayne ’s journeying and how these other two men affect him , and his vista of his role as Christ of Gotham . In general , in most superhero motion-picture show , the antagonists are there to force the hero to make pick , and rise to their challenge — and multiple villains still have to work as part of the bomber ’s main write up .
Supervillains do n’t babble like supervillains to each other . Okay , seriously . Dialogue between supervillains should probably be keep to a minimum in the first place — but to the extent that the supervillains put on a crazy role to restrain their opponents , they probably act somewhat otherwise among their own kind . ( A fortune of my favourite comic of the preceding decade have shown this brilliantly . ) Supervillains , when they ’re alone together , talk more like regular people and less like caricatures .
nullify the villain anticlimax If you ’re compulsive to have two disjoined villains , with two disjoined but intersecting storylines , do n’t give one of them the decrepit send - off at the ending of the plastic film . If a motion-picture show ca n’t discover a elbow room to give both , or all , of its villain a decent sexual climax , then that ’s a surefire planetary house that one of those baddie is a waste product of quad . ( I ’m looking at you , Hector Hammond and Justin Hammer . )
Each scoundrel is a different deterrent example . This is another way to go — it ’s a number of a platitude to say your enemy are your best teachers , but it ’s still definitely true . And if you ’re going to go have more than one villain in a picture , then each scoundrel ought to be instruct a different example — or at least , a different version of the main object lesson . Maybe there are unlike weaknesses that each scoundrel plays on — or dissimilar untimely - headed thought on the fighter ’s part that each villain constitute .
We ’d screw to see more villain cameo . On the other mitt , there ’s something nifty about prove that the superhero exists in a world where there are heaps of baddie all over the place , and he / she is constantly getting into random fights on the way business district . This is something that comics do , which the movies have never really attempt — it would be kind of cool if a superhero film featured a random fight with a supervillain , in the opening sequence , or during a random lull in the action at law , and then that supervillain was never see again in the movie . Just another day at the authority .
Make the kinship between the villains interesting . If one of them is just a henchman , then fair enough , I think . If they have some kind of dysfunctional kinship , along the lines of Gail Simone ’s Secret Six comics , then so much the better . Rather than just having two villains who are bring in one by one and then make up one’s mind to team up up in time for the third act , or just randomly come together , having a more interesting moral force between them will go a long way towards throw them work as eccentric .
Each villain should want something . Just like every sub should . And it should n’t just be “ to wear a cool costume and be ebil . ” Ideally , at least someone in the movie should require something more interesting than “ retribution on the Italian sandwich for some manus - wavy reason . ”
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