I just played Diablo 4; it had its own problems but overall it's a great game. It got me thinking, the villain had a pretty good reason for her horrendous actions. Not saying that she is a good person for doing so though.
Looking back, films have been making a lot of villains with reasonable cause nowadays. Movies, TV series, even some video games. It’s very weird. It’s almost as if show makers and all are determined to make villains more relatable by giving them an understandable reason for their actions. Like they think we’ll only like the villains if they are written like that.
It’s also making it harder and harder to connect with the heroes too. They’ve been making heroes “save” people to doom the rest. Even after the villains told the hero their reason for their atrocities. Some people have to be sacrificed to save the rest. If no one does this then hell wins and all humans die. Determined this is the better outcome, the villains chose survival.
People of course don’t want to die but they also don’t want to sacrifice. Same with the hero so the heroes chose to save the lives of the innocent today to doom the rest in the future. Quite horrible if you understand the implications. Then afterward when all hell breaks loose, people die, enslaved and tortured, they start to complain.
I think we got here because back in the days all villains are like I will destroy the world for no reason. We didn’t really question it back then. Too starved for entertainment I believe, the stories produced must have been compelling enough to not ask too many questions. And now we are like why? What for? We need better writing and character than this. So they gave us one.
Of course, there are still some villains that do stuff just because they can. But it’s not as prevalent as before. Sure it ain’t right to kill innocents, but what other choice do you have when Armageddon and extinction is around the corner. And if you have a method to save your people, would you really not choose to do it? Even if it might cause many to hate you? Throw you under the light of a villain?
Honestly humanity has been doing this too. History has shown that we do it all the time, whether it is in God's name or selfish interest. We enslave and kill those that we deem impure. It ain’t the same as the survival of the people but it hits the same genocidal notes all the same.
I do think that these villains could have done better though, like there might have been a better way or at least a way that sacrifices less people to achieve it. Problem is that most of these stories put them in a time sensitive situation so they can’t really go that route.
After that though, the writer has to find a way for the heroes to overcome that very same challenge. Most of the time it is always something that just so happens to do what they want. Very convenient, suspiciously so. Writers have to sacrifice in this aspect when they write the villains like this. So the story and character development always fell short in the end.
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