With today’s release of “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith,” George Lucas’ epic series finally embraces its true star: Darth Vader.
Darth, destroyer of worlds.
Darth, yearning for his son.
The extravagantly costumed bad guy with the hunger for galactic dominion is beset with internal complexities.
While the series has wandered since the release of its 1977 debut, “Star Wars,” never did it stray far from the brooding Vader who animated a multibillion-dollar cinematic, literary, video game and toy enterprise.
To our craven delight, “Star Wars” and other films capitalize on the power of the villain – whether the villain is the focus of the movie or the adversary who vainly attempts to defeat the hero.
With many of the most popular cinematic franchises – “Star Wars,” Harry Potter, “Silence of the Lambs” – heroes and villains, good and evil, engage in warfare. We root for the flailing heroes, but we often identify with the complexities of villains.
Villains give form to our wicked imaginings: the things we would like to say to abusive bosses, the actions we would like to take against those we loathe, the power we wish we wielded over the idiot in the parking lot. Villains live freely, crackling with criminal electricity, unhinged from binding morality.
They live in war-torn futures, fantastical other realms, and in the here and now, sometimes wearing not capes and helmets but double-breasted suits. The movie “Wall Street” involves several plots, but what we remember is Michael Douglas in all of his greedy glory. Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of King Richard the Third” – as well as its film adaptations – centers on the conniving, vile Richard of Gloucester, The Joker beguiles us in “Batman,” and what young child hasn’t turned “The Wizard of Oz” into a movie about a nasty witch?
At its essence, the core of the villain speaks “to the basic desire we have to be able to do whatever we want to anybody at any time in any way without any constraints,” says Christopher Sharrett, a professor of film studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.
“The villain is the guy who transgresses all boundaries, whether it’s by his wit or savagery or talent. He is the ultimate rebel figure, but one who is especially dangerous because he’s not rebelling within the confines of a system; he is simply the lone individual who is striking out of that civilization.”
For fictional villainy to resonate, writers who conjure them must deliver them to us as person of awesome power, but also someone with unfulfilled need.
Vader wants the universe, but he yearns for his good-guy son, Luke Skywalker. Lord Voldemort desires dark reign over the Earth, but his relationship with Harry Potter confounds him. Hannibal Lecter in “Silence of the Lambs” dreams of satiating his lust for killing, but he has feelings for Clarice Starling – a chink in his diabolical armor.
Villains must embody evil to satisfy our desire for a great tale, but a compelling evildoer’s soul will contain more than pure distillate of bad. Within their curdled hearts will live embers of good. Like in “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” villains have it within themselves to transform.
They rarely do – there’s only one Grinch, after all – but it’s the possibility that counts.
“Villains are in essence the heroes of their own journeys,” says Stuart Voytilla, author of the book “Myth and the Movies.”
“The villain has to have a recognizable goal. Goldfinger (a James Bond archenemy) wants to contaminate the U.S. gold supply, and that has to be identifiable. I must understand why he wants to do this.”
Usually, the journeys of villains and heroes intersect, and clash. Powerful meetings between good and evil can create intense villains, he says.
Darth Vader was a triumph in the first “Star Wars,” Voytilla says, but “he became a memorable villain in the second film, when it was revealed that he was Luke’s father.”
When does the fictional development of a villain fail? “When they fall into cliché. ‘Ooh, I’ve got a nasty plan, and I’m going to destroy the world, and that’s it,’ ” Voytilla says.
Says Brett Head, a middle-aged Denver banker, “I don’t want simple-minded villains; I want thinkers.”
With villains, he says, “I think of someone who brings more to the table than just being ruthless. They have a great level of intelligence.”
In many cases, Head says, the role of the villain serves to introduce a familiar struggle.
“You’re seeing the same story as being played out in the Bible,” he says. “Do you want to come with us to the good side, or go to the dark side.”
Seth Johnson, 24, of Boulder, responded immediately when asked who ranks as the worst in his pantheon of villains.
“Honestly, the devil,” he says, smoking a cigarette in a Superior shopping center parking lot. “Because he’s the devil. Evil.”
Long before Darth Vader and Dracula, the ultimate villain, Satan, captured the imaginations of people versed in the Bible. Contemplation of his power – and fall from grace – has not diminished among Christians.
In fact, the best villains at one point stood on the side of good.
“You can’t have a character who is truly bad if they weren’t at some point good, or had some goodness in them,” says Patricia Hanson, executive editor of the American Film Institute’s catalog, a detailed record of information about films made in America since the 19th century. “The fallen angel, that’s a very universal concept.”
The catalog recently sought votes from film scholars, executives, critics and others for the top 50 heroes and villains of all time. The top hero? Atticus Finch, from “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Top villain? Hannibal Lecter. “Psycho’s” Norman Bates nabbed bad-guy second place, with Darth Vader placing third.
While many lasting villains were good before they rebelled, the reverse too holds true: Interesting heroes often have repulsive sides they revisit now and again. The difference between heroes and villains is sometimes a hair’s breadth of inner fortitude. The hero flirts with evil, is seduced by it, but manages to push himself away. The villain submits to the dark side.
“I think there is a very strong public fascination with the idea that there are no real heroes or villains,” Sharrett says. “If you look deeply, you can find some good in the villain, and some evil in the so-called hero.”
Asked to name a memorable villain, Michelle Pearl, 28, a
Louisville physical therapist, answered: Spider-Man’s nemesis, the Green Goblin.
The villain, she says, “made it exciting.”
“The love story wouldn’t have been enough to pull the movie through,” she says, the John Grisham book “The Last Juror” in her lap as she waits for massage-therapy customers in a Superior Wild Oats foyer. “You need the villain.”
Staff writer Douglas Brown can be reached at 303-820-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com.
