Movies about Villain as protagonist
Plenty of movies have villain protagonists. Joker and American Psycho are just two examples. These films typically look at the evolution of villains, often explaining how they came to be. With some movies, however, the distinction isn’t quite as obvious. When looked at from one angle, they seem to have traditional heroes as their main characters, yet when you look at them from a slightly different angle, you can make a strong case that the bad guy is actually the most important character in the story.
What makes these examples interesting is how they sneak up on you. It might take a second — or even a third — viewing to grasp just how central the antagonist is to the plot. The hero goes on a notable journey in these pictures, but it’s more than likely a familiar one. The villain, on the other hand, goes on one that’s less predicable and more surprising. Pulling back to examine them from a fresh perspective reveals that the arc of the hero wouldn’t even be possible without the arc of the bad guy. The following films all exemplify the phenomenon perfectly.
Anton Chigurh In ‘No Country for Old Men’
Anton Chigurh, the psychopath played by Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men , has a very simple, straightforward mission. He wants to retrieve the satchel full of money that a Texas welder stumbled upon in the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong. It’s his cash, after all, and he wants it back. No one will stand in his way. If they do, he’ll terminate them with the bolt gun he carries around. Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel, No Country for Old Men is about the changing face of evil. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is on the hunt for Chigurh, but the more he sees of the madman’s bloody work, the more unnerved he becomes, to the point where he eventually gives up the pursuit. That’s a provocative take for a thriller. It doesn’t work unless we comprehend what Bell is so afraid of. Chigurh gets away with all his transgressions at the end. Getting hit by a car is the extent of the repercussions he faces. This calm-but-terrifying cinematic villain delivers the movie’s central message, namely that if you’re evil enough, you just might scare off the people who should bring you to justice.
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Hans Landa In ‘Inglourious Basterds’
The traditional «hero» of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds doesn’t arrive on-screen until almost 20 minutes in. Instead, the picture opens with Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), an SS officer who shows up at the home of a French farmer who may be hiding a Jewish family. He shrewdly interrogates the man, lulls him into a sense of security with false promises that he won’t harm anyone, and then has his men gun down the family through the floorboards. The sequence runs a good 15 minutes. Why spend so much time on the villain at the top? Because Landa is arguably the main character, not Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine. Yes, Aldo and his team are looking to kill Nazis, particularly by blowing up a cinema hosting a number of high-ranking German officials. Landa is what gives the film its pulse, though. He’s pursuing Shosanna Dreyfus, the now-grown woman who escaped from that French farmhouse the day he arrived. Because he’s so unrepentantly evil, we root harder for Raine and his men to succeed in their mission. Put another way, he stands in for the entire Third Reich. Any movie about the cruel acts of the SS fundamentally needs to have a focus on someone like Landa. Nothing else works if the audience doesn’t understand the pure malice at the heart of the movement.
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Villain Protagonist / Akční filmy
Barry: I should hang; I’m a hypocrite. I ask for sincerity, and I lie. I denounce the system as I embrace it. I want money and power and prestige: I want ratings and success. And I don’t give a damn about you, or the world. That’s the truth: for that I could say I’m sorry, but I won’t. Why should I?
- When Thelma really, truly desires something, she can make that happen. What does she really desire?
- To start with, when she is around six, to kill her newborn baby brother, who probably annoyed her with his crying here and there, in a gruesome way, and she makes him drown under an iced over lake.
- Then to kill her father, who surely enough was repressive, but was like that only because he wanted to avoid seeing his daughter replicate what she did with her baby brother, and does so by burning him alive in the same lake where she killed her baby brother. And then makes a half-hearted try to find his body, giving up as soon as she remembers her hot lover (who she couldn’t have, if she followed her father’s decisions).
- Of course, one could argue that most of the bad things happen when she is sleeping or without her knowing her powers, but, to start with, to truly want to kill your baby brother just because he annoys you is undoubtedly a mark of evil.
- But, even more, we see the difference with what happens to Anja. Thelma kills her baby brother and her father, but «only» makes Anja disappear. Eventually Thelma can fix the last action, but is unable (or unwilling) to fix the others too. And she doesn’t care to do it, either.
- To put the cherry on the top, there is the chance that Thelma has (unconsciously) brainwashed the same Anja into loving her, and the movie ends with Thelma «calling back» Anja from where she was, and making out with her, without any remorse or worry about that possibility.
Movies Where Hero and Villain Never Meet – Top 10
In the realm of storytelling, few dynamics are as compelling as the clash between hero and villain. Yet, some films choose to defy this conventional wisdom, opting for narratives where the protagonist and antagonist never actually meet face-to-face. Such films present a unique, often more realistic or suspenseful view of conflict, where battles aren’t always waged in physical confrontations but in a psychological, ideological, or even metaphysical arena. The absence of a direct meeting adds layers of complexity and nuance, allowing for intricate story arcs and emotional depth. In this article “Movies Where Hero and Villain Never Meet – Top 10”, we’ll dive into, movies where hero and villain exist in parallel universes of the same narrative but never intersect.
Movies Where Hero and Villain Never Meet – Top 10
- Žádná země pro staré (2007)
- Memories of Murder (2003)
- Zodiac (2007)
- Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
- Trilogie Pán prstenů
- Hvězdné války: Epizoda IV — Nová naděje (1977)
- Pátý prvek (1997)
- Statečné srdce (1995)
- Opravdová romance (1993)
- Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
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