For the past few years, villains and their stories have been making their way onto the Internet with vicious rising popularity. For example, movies like Cruella and Maleficent delve into the infamous, enigmatic villains of childhood Disney movies. These stories have risen to the top and piqued the general public’s interest in villains and their origins, but what really makes such stories so popular?
If you took a trip back in time, you would notice a common theme in movies of the past: black-and-white morality. According to TV Tropes, black-and-white morality is “the most basic form of fictional morality. [It] deals with the battle between pure good and absolute evil.” To put it simply, stories in the past were predictable. Due to this, the common pattern of the glorious, worthy, honorable protagonist defeating the malicious, wicked, corrupt antagonist became uninteresting after watching dozens of movies with this same concept. This is often why villains and their stories are becoming much more favored in the media. A survey by BookTrib says that among 497 respondents, a quarter was found to prefer villains over heroes, while another survey of 2,011 American adults revealed that sixty percent of them watched a series or movie just for the villain. This is because villains play just as big of a role in the movie as the protagonist. However, we often direct loathing towards the villain for their nefarious actions, especially compared to the protagonist, who is showered with the spotlight of glory.
Of course, a sob story rarely justifies the villain’s actions. However, their origin stories have been growing in popularity due to the way they allow people to think critically and question stereotypes. In black-and-white morality, we see the negative side of the villain—when they harm others and their decisions are immoral. However, when we see where they’ve come from, why they act in such ways, and the times when they have once been neglected by the protagonists in their own lives, we feel sympathy. We connect with the idea of not always doing the right thing at the right time because we, too, make bad decisions. (Perhaps not decisions like cursing a child so that she falls into eternal slumber on her sixteenth birthday, but the concept is still there.) Rethinking initial impressions of a malicious character after possibly seeing ourselves and some truth and justice in what they do stimulates our minds and awakens our emotions. It makes us ponder over the matter of who was truly in the wrong when we feel so emotionally attached to an immoral character.
For the past few years, protagonists and their journeys have undoubtedly become a part of our childhood and unforgettable aspects of our lives. However, just as light cannot exist without darkness, the hero cannot exist without a villain. There is a required equilibrium in the art of storytelling, and a villain’s backstory is a unique take on balancing and studying morality in a main character. As more and more films centered around villains are brought into the spotlight, we are reminded of the reality that not everything in the world is black and white.
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