Villain Perspective

A villain perspective plot is a story that is built with an evil character in the role of Hero. This can be done well, is frequently done badly, and involves several modifications to the ordinary course of archetypal relationships if it is going to work.

The greatest mistake made by authors of villain perspective stories is the loss of a moral groundwork for the tale. The audience's sympathy for a villainous Hero should never lead them to suspect that evil is good, or that good is evil, nor should it result in a tale where there simply is not any moral compass at all to give the work shape. Narratives require the tension between good and evil to thrive; moral mushes in which the lesser of two evils is arbitrarily labeled “good” will ultimately fail (HBO's Carnivale is a particularly disappointing case in point.) Stories about how bad people do bad things and the world is bad are...well, bad.

This said, the first decision that an author needs to make when deciding to use an evil perspective character is whether or not to make the Hero sympathetic. There are several great works of literature in which the perspective character is decidedly unsympathetic to most readers (John Fowles' The Collector, Dostoyevski's “Notes from Underground”). On the other hand, sympathetic villainous perspective characters can also be very successful – Raskolnikov is the emblematic ideal of the type, but he is joined by a bevy of delightful sympathetic villain Heroes: Heathcliff, Barry Lindon, Macbeth, Tuco, Medea, and so forth.

The second choice that must be made is how immersive the villain perspective will be. In Fowle's Collector, Clegg's Cripple perspective is relieved, for a long period, by the perspective of Miranda. This means that the audience is able to see the captive woman as a full character, that her dimensions are not dictated by Clegg's obsessive love/hatred. On the other hand, Crime and Punishment is so deeply immersive that, on first reading, it is difficult not to think of Porfiry Petrovich as an evil, scheming policeman who is unjustly persecuting poor Rodya.

When writing from a villain's perspective, the ordinary archetypal relationships become perverted or fallen. The Villain, in relationship to a villainous hero, will be a heroic character who may well have more of the audience's sympathy than the perspective character. The initial season of Columbo, which was based on the idea of making a mystery series from the perspective of the murderer, is a fine case in point: obviously it is the Foolish-Judge, with his rumpled coat and his chain-smoked cigars, that has the affections of the viewer. Now, regardless of where the audience's sympathy actually lies, we do ultimately want to see the Hero fail, and the Villain succeed, if the Hero is evil. When Macduff marches the head of Macbeth about Scotland, the audience is relieved that order has been restored; when Jimmy in Mystic River gets away with murdering an innocent man, we feel a sense of continuing unease.

The Lover in a villain perspective piece, is generally in a mutually destructive relationship to the villain-Hero. She may be a classic Jezebel type, luring her husband or lover into ever greater depths of evil, or she may be someone who destroys, and is likewise destroyed by, her beloved, as Catherine is by Heathcliff. If the Hero is a villainess, her lover might be someone who encourages her delusions, as Max encourages Norma Desmond, or he might be a star-crossed lover who leads her to her downfall, as Romeo leads Juliet. In any case, the relationship will look more like Tom Waits' “Poor Edward” than like the Righteous Brother's “Unchained Melody.”

The Nemesis is the relationship least changed by villain perspective; she, or he, remains a character of the opposite gender and alignment who is the ultimate destruction of the hero. The difference is that in a narrative with a good hero, the Nemesis will either move towards mutual destruction, or bring the hero down to her level. In a villain perspective story, the Nemesis is still the antithesis of everything that the villain is and holds most valuable, but she just might succeed in bringing him up to her level – as Sonia does in Crime and Punishment. This means that a Nemesis story in a villain perspective piece may, instead of being the story of a Tragic Fall, be the story of a Joyous Redemption. It is, however, a relationship that appears very rarely, and is little explored.

The secondary characters suffer the same kind of transformation. The Sidekick may be a rival who doesn't actually get along with the hero at all, or he may be a kind of henchman, a junior partner in evil – though usually the villain will ultimately find him disappointing, and as much a liability, as Brandon finds Phillip in Hitchcock's Rope. The Villain's Lieutenant may simply be a character who assists the heroic Villain in opposing the villainous Hero, or, in an interesting twist, they may be a good friend of the Hero who appears to be a threat simply because he doesn't have the Hero's villainous interests at heart – a Banquo, for example, or a Ruzumikhin. The Hapless Lover is likely to be a poor girl, or poor man, of limited moral character, who has had the misfortune of falling for the Hero. Often an object of scorn, she or he may be used by the villain-Hero to get what they want, the way that Redmond Barry uses Lady Lindon. Finally, the Ball & Chain, rather than being an evil character who is trying to drag the Hero down, is a good character who is trying, and usually failing, to bring him back to the light. This is often used to great effect in order to heighten the poigniancy of the narrative: when a Cowardly Hero in a Film Noir leaves his saintly and faithful girlfriend in order to chase after the no-good woman who will ultimately destroy him, the regular reappearance of the charming Intercessor serves to heighten the audience's sense of the tragic stupidity of his actions.

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