That’s the easiest way to make complex villains, give them a relatable goal with terrible means. Activates the good old “do the ends justify the means” question and tempts the audience. The best superhero movies give the hero a strong moral backbone to “save” the audience and find the truth between the two. Look at how Black Panther learns from Killmonger’s criticism but does it without war and hatred
Edit: Also The Batman is pretty solid with this aspect. He sees how his quest for revenge encourages violent vigilantism and inspires the incel-like Riddler. Because of this he decides to turn toward hope and helping others instead
I don’t disagree with the sentiment. The problem is that it gives the impression that people irl are willing to go to these extreme and illogical means to achieve their otherwise good ends. That’s not the case. Indeed it’s often the opposite. The people trying to do good things are almost always unwilling to do anything ‘bad’ to achieve their aims. They usually refuse even to defend themselves against reaction.
This kind of writing is poor because it’s easy and removes any subtlety from the equation. No reasonable person on earth is going to think a villain is right to commit genocide to fix the world’s major problems. Nevermind lesser problems. Irl it’s the billionaires who are willing to cause untold suffering in the search for profit. There are ways to make that dramatic and exciting but Hollywood is not set to to write it.
This kind of writing is propaganda. It wraps human action in individualism and builds a model of ‘villain’ that can be invoked every time imperialists want to start another war. Later, the subjects of this propaganda rarely if ever seriously question the motives of the people destroyed by imperialist war in part because they’ve been conditioned to think in a certain way about the ‘enemy’.
I absolutely agree that putting that dilemma into a story can be great for drama. I just reject the Hollywood rendition of it because it’s always the same. When I watch most action movies, I time how long it takes to reveal that the volunteer at the soup kitchen suddenly tells the audience that the best way to feed the homeless is to the lions.
I’m not talking about Poison Ivy and Batman, yet. I can’t talk to Poison Ivy or to Batman in the specific. In the abstract, philanthropy and an individual approach to solving crime can never be successful. These are palatable methods because the writers want people to limit what they think is possible. If they were serious about creating a model for helping people they’d show someone organising the workers e.g. in Gotham or elsewhere rather than thinking anyone can solve everything alone. (That said, I’m not against Batman in the way that I’m against Marvel.)
Show me the dilemma faced by all the people who, to pay their bills, are sat in an office in New York committing slow violence against child labourers being poisoned by chemicals in a garment factory in India. Then show me the workers organising themselves to improve working conditions.
In the sequel, they can overthrow the directors of the company. In the third movie, they can start a revolution. If this were written by Hollywood, those workers would be the villains, pointlessly terrorising random targets. But irl the only violence they’d be involved in is as victim of the state and the employer.
That’s the easiest way to make complex villains, give them a relatable goal with terrible means. Activates the good old “do the ends justify the means” question and tempts the audience. The best superhero movies give the hero a strong moral backbone to “save” the audience and find the truth between the two. Look at how Black Panther learns from Killmonger’s criticism but does it without war and hatred
Edit: Also The Batman is pretty solid with this aspect. He sees how his quest for revenge encourages violent vigilantism and inspires the incel-like Riddler. Because of this he decides to turn toward hope and helping others instead
I don’t disagree with the sentiment. The problem is that it gives the impression that people irl are willing to go to these extreme and illogical means to achieve their otherwise good ends. That’s not the case. Indeed it’s often the opposite. The people trying to do good things are almost always unwilling to do anything ‘bad’ to achieve their aims. They usually refuse even to defend themselves against reaction.
This kind of writing is poor because it’s easy and removes any subtlety from the equation. No reasonable person on earth is going to think a villain is right to commit genocide to fix the world’s major problems. Nevermind lesser problems. Irl it’s the billionaires who are willing to cause untold suffering in the search for profit. There are ways to make that dramatic and exciting but Hollywood is not set to to write it.
This kind of writing is propaganda. It wraps human action in individualism and builds a model of ‘villain’ that can be invoked every time imperialists want to start another war. Later, the subjects of this propaganda rarely if ever seriously question the motives of the people destroyed by imperialist war in part because they’ve been conditioned to think in a certain way about the ‘enemy’.
I absolutely agree that putting that dilemma into a story can be great for drama. I just reject the Hollywood rendition of it because it’s always the same. When I watch most action movies, I time how long it takes to reveal that the volunteer at the soup kitchen suddenly tells the audience that the best way to feed the homeless is to the lions.
I’m not talking about Poison Ivy and Batman, yet. I can’t talk to Poison Ivy or to Batman in the specific. In the abstract, philanthropy and an individual approach to solving crime can never be successful. These are palatable methods because the writers want people to limit what they think is possible. If they were serious about creating a model for helping people they’d show someone organising the workers e.g. in Gotham or elsewhere rather than thinking anyone can solve everything alone. (That said, I’m not against Batman in the way that I’m against Marvel.)
Show me the dilemma faced by all the people who, to pay their bills, are sat in an office in New York committing slow violence against child labourers being poisoned by chemicals in a garment factory in India. Then show me the workers organising themselves to improve working conditions.
In the sequel, they can overthrow the directors of the company. In the third movie, they can start a revolution. If this were written by Hollywood, those workers would be the villains, pointlessly terrorising random targets. But irl the only violence they’d be involved in is as victim of the state and the employer.