What Makes a Great Villain? — & DIE HARD Sequence 2
Screenwriting Tricks for Authors
Continuing our discussion on Villains and Antagonists in general, and Die Hard in particular!
Sequence 1 of Die Hard was quite a bit about setting up the iconic protagonist, John McLean. Sequence 2 is largely about setting up the possibly even more iconic villain: the inimitable Hans Gruber, and his TEAM of henchmen.
In my breakdown I’m pointing out what the filmmakers - and I very much include Alan Rickman in that group! - are doing to give Gruber his magnetic power.
Gruber is a classic, unrepentant villain. But an antagonist isn’t necessarily a villain, and isn’t necessarily human, either!
For contrast, I’m also linking to several posts and videos below which discuss other powerful antagonists of different types, including antagonists who have character arcs of their own, like Abuela in Encanto and President Lyndon Johnson in Selma, which also brilliantly portrays the iron grip of institutional racism and a whole slew of individual racists.
But - start with this general post if you haven’t read it:
About that Villain: Forces of Antagonism & Non-Human Antagonists
And I very strongly recommend reading Chapters 10 & 11 in Stealing Hollywood for a very in-depth discussion.
Click through to read the full Sequence 2 breakdown:
Encanto is a great example of how an Antagonist doesn’t have to be a villain; it can be a person, group or force that opposes the Protagonist in some way. In these stories, typically both the Protagonist and the Antagonist will have a powerful CHARACTER ARC, and reconcile in some way. (See Kramer vs. Kramer and The Fugitive for classic examples of this dual arc.)
Ava DuVernay’s Selma is one of the best examples I know of the powerhouse storytelling technique of building FORCES OF ANTAGONISM, and for portraying a NON-HUMAN VILLAIN:
Next week we’ll discuss some techniques for creating a great Villain, and continue with the Die Hard analysis.
Hoping everyone remains safe from the fires, and from fascism.
Alex
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Hi Alex. I've a question for you. It's not related to what you've posted but think about it. You always talk about how we can use three act eight sequence structure in our novels. But how we can do this :-
Suppose the story is about five friends who went into the woods and something terrible happened in the woods. Only four came back. Now, the story moves forward 16 years later, we show the life of those four say A, B, C, D. One day all of them received a message from an anonymous number which says “ I know what you did with E.” They meet up to discuss this then the past scenes comes where they claimed they were innocent and police let them go. Ok, now my question comes :-
Whenever we see a Netflix series, they do it so brilliantly that immediately we want to see one more episode before we sleep and then we watch another and this goes on until the series ends. Say, an episode is 50 mins long, so when we come on the 46th or 47th min, they drop something. Back to my five friends story. Now we're on the 47th min and four different scenes comes in these 3 mins :-
A remembers how he had a fight with E.
B remembers how he did what he did.
C recives a message from one of the others ( name not revealed on the screen) the message says “ if I go to prison then you will too. So keep your mouth shut asshole.”
And in the last scene, D is shown where she opens a drawer in her wardrobe to reveal a hanky stains with blood.
{ The episode ends here }
Now my question :-
Now you'll say that these are cliffhangers or some revelations. I know they're but my question is we can't do the same thing in our book. If I'm writing this story then I've to write four different chapters with POV's of A, B, C and D then at the end of each chapter I can throw something but Netflix people do it so brilliantly. It won't work in a chapter like I've written above. Is there any way we can do it the same way they're doing? Or do we have to go by the boring route?
If you don't get my question then watch any of the Harlan Cohen's series on Netflix or One Of Us zis Lying. You'll understand what I'm asking. And I really want to know your views on One Of Us Is Lying. I'm fascinated by this series. Brilliantly executed.