I just finished watching an anime I’ve been meaning to get to for a long time. I saw the first version of it and read a lot of the manga, but this was the new version that I finally got my hands on. Refused to watch it unless I know I had every episode. Anyway, this anime brought up two questions. One needs very little explanation and one might need a bit due to past discussions.
- Is there a scene in a book, movie, video game, or TV show that will make you tear up or feel a pain in the heart every time you watch it?
- How do you feel about villain deaths being kind of sad and dramatic?
That second question is what needs the explanation because I hear ‘I want my villains evil and irredeemable’ all the time. We seem to fear having a touch of humanity in the bad guys even though these are the characters we remember. Somebody about a villain doing horrible things and then dying in a way that makes you feel a little sorry for them is rather interesting. In the anime I just finished, the main bad guy’s ending was well-deserved, but I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. This stems from the dialogue and the final scene. I guess you could say that the way it came off, I couldn’t really cheer because it was rather sad. It really makes me hope to create a villain one day who is both hated and loved.
Due to spoilers, I’m only going to answer that first question with the name of the series. Anyone who watched this will know the death/funeral scene that I’m talking about:
Fullmetal Alchemist
Legends of Windemere 
I can answer both questions with one word: “Bladerunner.”
Roy Beatty’s death in Bladerunner is, in my opinion, one of the most powerful scenes ever filmed.
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. A battle fleet on fire off the shoulder of Orion. And when I am dead, all of these memories will be gone, like tears in the rain.
“Time now to die.”
I get all choked up just thinking about it.
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I have an urge to watch that movie over the weekend now. Definitely one of the best villain deaths.
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I think villains deserve the kind of death that represents the kind of life force they had. If they aren’t a good villain then they deserve a boring death.
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Interesting concept. So if a boring villain is killed in a dramatic manner then it could be seen as out of place. Same with a flamboyant and bug personality villain getting a lame death.
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Exactly. If the villain was really important to the main protagonist it might be weird if they didn’t have a big death scene too, or if there weren’t any emotions displayed.
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Yeah. There should be some connection between them even if it’s hatred. It would be weird if the hero killed the villain and simply walked away without a second thought. Kind of makes one wonder if the hero is turning bad.
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Or if he read the previous books lol
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I hate it when a character is suddenly different and you wonder if they forgot everything that happened. I’ll give a little bit of leeway on the off-chance that something happened during a time skip (mind control, love one died, etc.), but it can really kill a character.
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My pet peeve is a character that will deny knowledge of an event in a later book as if they don’t remember it…plot hole…
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What about if they received several shots to the head?
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Maybe. Depends on if they remember other stuff
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Ugh. Selective memory of characters. Maybe it’s a sign that the author forgot something.
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I’m really terrible at remembering lines from movies or even movie names, but on several occasions I have found myself feeling sympathy for an evil villain upon his death. Usually when there is some tragic incident that occurred in his past that made him/her the way they are. I think that this type of thing makes the book or movie more dramatic. I don’t think however, that an evil villain needs to be evil with no redeeming qualities, at least not in every instance. Just my opinion.
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Tragic events in a villain’s past are certainly interesting. It makes one wonder if the villain could have been a hero if things had worked out differently.
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I suppose that it does. Look how tragic events form people in real life. For example, most serial killers are victims of abuse of one form or another from the time they are small children. Although I am not a psychologist, I think that very few people are born evil, but rather circumstance makes them that way.
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True. There’s always something that rears up in a person’s past. Even an event that might be benign to the rest of us, people take stress and trauma at different levels.
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They certainly do and if there is some mental defect to start with the event may be far more influential than in so called “normal” people.
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I don’t think any of us are normal, but you’re right. 😉
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I guess we tear up because we’ve internalized something abut the characters – even the villain.
There’s a scene, in the movie Reds, where the lovers reunite at a train station that makes me tear up each time I watch it…her determination and joy/his joy and disillusionment.
Ellespeth
Ellespeth
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Never heard of that movie. I’ll have to look it up. 🙂
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Not sure if this counts, but I always tear up at the end of Troy when Achilles dies. The problem with Troy is you’ve got the clear-cut heroes (Paris, fighting for love, Hector, fighting for his family). Then you’ve got the morally ambiguous Achilles — at first he’s fighting for personal glory, then for love … but in the process of fighting for love he has no problem going along with a plan that involves the mass slaughter of an entire city. So I guess that makes him more an anti-hero than a villain. I’m not sure where I’m going with this. The point is, his death is really freakin’ sad. So … make of that what you will, lol.
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I think the only character I felt sorry for in that movie was Hector. Poor guy got screwed by the actions and decisions of others. They gave him and Achilles some good death scenes.
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I felt pretty bad for Andromache as well (Hector’s wife). I mean, at least Hector was a man, so he got to sort of make decisions for himself — she just had to sit there and watch as the world burned down around her and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
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She so should slapped Helen for starting the war that killed Hector. Maybe a groin kick to Paris.
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I can’t think of a crying scene right now. I do believe that the best villains are those who could be friends with the protagonist given different circumstances. I always think of the Lich and the fact that his admiration for Luke is palitable. If situations (like Lich turned over a new leaf) were different I think they coud be allies
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They’d certainly make an odd pair. Same goes for the Hellfire Elf and how he develops some respect for Luke. The Nyx/Trinity rivalry is another good one.
I’m surprised nobody has brought up Bambi’s mom and Mufasa. 😀
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oh well that’s like shooting fish in a barrel
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Always wondered who tested that theory. Not counting Mythbusters.
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The best characters, good or bad, are always a mixture of light and darkness, just skewed one way or the other. That’s what makes them real and relatable. No one is 100% bad (or 100% good for that matter) and neither should a villain in a book or movie be. That isn’t how the world works. Giving the bad guy a touch of humanity adds a depth to the character that you’ll never see with a character that is pure evil and irredeemable.
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Good point. Funny how some people want fictional characters to be 100% good or evil. Yet they also want realism.
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I love sympathetic villains. To me I’m not interested in a story unless the villain is somewhat sympathetic. For instance, Scorpius from Farscape is probably my all time favorite TV villain (if not villain ever). Sometimes you’d think he and the hero Crighton would be best buddies, but then he always does something to remind us how villainous he is. Plus I love a good manipulative villain.
I think Scorpius probably inspired my own villains in a way. I mean, not all villains can be Scorpius, but I think there should be something likable about the villain. After all, a villain has a reason for becoming who they did. Sometimes it’s just a noble goal, but with a nefarious way of getting there that has destroyed them. I think the most deep villains are the ones who never set out to be evil, but compromised their souls away until there was nothing left. And they both admire and despise the hero for trying to reach their own goals but without all the darkness.
Great topic!
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Those are great stories. For some reason I’m thinking of Envy from FMA on that last point. As an author, I find part of the fun is when a villain develops more humanity than I expect. All but one of my bad guys seems to have something oddly admirable about them or their reason isn’t an evil one. Think I got that from watching a lot of anime.
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One of things about fiction, though, is sometimes people look for more clarity and tidy endings than they can have in real life. Thus you have people insisting that villains should always be punished and never “get away with it.” Readers who express that they want their villains to be utterly evil are voicing a variation of this, I’d suspect.
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I know quite a few people like that. They also tend to be the first to complain about bland, unrealistic villains with no depth to them. Funny thing about the punishment scenario is that it doesn’t always have to be death, but people seem to always want that.
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The same sort of person also doesn’t want “real heroes” to bloody their hands — which is why in Disney movies, the villains so often die by falling from a height. But then these readers also complain that the heroic character is bland.
Actually, you just can’t please some people! So you have to write the truth as you believe it, and know that some readers are just going to complain.
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I’ve actually run into more people who seem to want a hero who is morally upright AND will bloody their hands at every opportunity. Those don’t seem to match up. I imagine a hero who will protect the innocent, but slaughter a tavern full of men who make fun of his shoes. 🙂
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