Why Do We Tell Villain Stories?

By Siena East

*If you have ever had a general meeting with me or gotten me really drunk it’s not necessary for you to read this essay as I have probably just said all this to you with out loud words*

Genre (looking at the Oxford Dictionary) is defined as “a category of artistic composition characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.” For many years “super hero” was treated as a singular genre. Due to this belief it was thought that some super hero movies worked and some just didn’t. X-Men and Spider-Man worked, but Ghost Rider, The Incredible Hulk, and Catwoman just didn’t. However, with the gargantuan expansion of superhero movies it has become self evident that there are four genres of super hero movie, and that the difference between making a super hero movie that “works” and one that “doesn’t” is knowing what kind of super hero story you are telling and, more importantly, why that story is being told. It may be redundant to say, but I’m trying to make a fucking point: Genres create expectations for the audience. In a super hero movie the expectations are that a hero with some sort of special ability saves the world. While the abilities vary (shooting lasers, being really smart, being really rich, being crazy good with a gun, being magic), it is in the nuance of why that hero saves the world in which we find genre. In my analysis of super hero movies the oldest of the genres are: 

1. Great Power

2. Redemption

3. Found Family

The most recognizable of the genres is “With great power comes great responsibility”, films in which the hero has been gifted power and because of that gift is responsible for saving the world. This includes Superman, Spider-man, Black Panther, Thor, Captain America, and Aquaman. While each has its own nuances (Superman carries the weight of being an immigrant, Spiderman carries the weight of youth, both Black Panther, Aquaman, Captain America and Thor carry the weight of their respective communities) all of the aforementioned heroes’ powers are a gift that they are expected to use for the good of others as is imprinted upon them by their respective caretakers (which is beautifully reappropriated in Gunn’s new SUPERMAN movie). These heroes save the world because their power is a gift and it is their responsibility to use that gift for the good of others. 

A fan favorite genre is the “Redemption” superhero movie in which the hero must save the world in order to undo a past sin they have committed in their present quest for personal redemption. This includes Iron Man, Batman, Antman, Deadpool, Black Widow, and Hellboy: all characters who feel that some cardinal sin has defined them. The legitimacy of that sin does not matter as long as the protagonist feels the sin is legitimate. Iron Man DID do war crimes which is a pretty real thing to redeem yourself from, but Batman’s big sin is that his parents were murdered and he will never truly be able redeem himself from that because he was a kid and it wasn’t his fault——- which is why many non-fans just wonder why Batman doesn’t go to therapy. Iron Man is a great example of the use of sin from film to film. The act of sin drives the movie from Civil War where Iron Man is reckoning with the death that his careless superhero actions have caused to Iron Man 3 where Iron Man is reckoning with his past of being a huge dick. In order to keep telling new stories the redemptions are often nuanced and can change with the times as we look at Matt Reeves “The Batman” which sets up an interesting franchise by giving Batman a legitimate sin. Instead of his sin being that his parents died, Batman’s sin in “The Batman” is his unresolved anger over the death of his parents which causes him to bring terror instead of hope to Gotham. This is not a The Batman essay, but if you’re curious I’ve got an Instagram story bubble about why I love that movie. Moving on. At the core of redemption super hero movies, these heroes must save the world to rid themselves of a terrible sin.

Another classic of the well established super hero genres is Found Family. These heroes save the world not for the world itself, but to protect the family they have found within it. This includes the X-Men, the Guardians of the Galaxy, The Fantastic Four (really interesting how they did this in the 2025 film by expanding the expectation of what a family is), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Thunderbolts. In these films the world has on some level rejected our heroes leaving them to feel isolated until they find a family of similar rejects. These rejects range in type: they could be exiled by prejudice like the mutants experience in X-Men, or exiled for having a more nuanced version of morality that legally and socially is unaccetable like the Guardians of the Galaxy or the Thunderbolts (Starlord is a thief scavenger, Red Guardian is a communist). No matter the case, when these characters find each other they discover they must save the world in order to protect the new family they have finally found. 

It is not hard to see how each reason to save the world resonates with an audience. While these are traditionally epic stories, we find relatbility in them that doesn’t just make the story human– it offers catharsis. Some people really do have unique talents, some people really have or feel like they’ve fucked up, and others have found a home in people they must protect. We tell these stories to contend with truths within ourselves. So what truth do villain stories offer?

4. Villain?

In popular cinema, these characters are NOT anti-heroes. They have been antagonists who were never before expected to carry a film without their hero counterpart. Unlike antiheroes such as Blade and Ghost Rider (who seek redemption), these supervillains are characters who existed for and within the narratives of other superheroes. Venom exists within the context of Spiderman. Harley Quinn exists within the context of Batman. Loki exists within the context of Thor. This is not to say that these characters don’t carry their own narratives in the comic book world, but within the live action film space, the expectations of an audience and studio dictate how we understand and digest these characters. After the success of a bunch of hero movies, there was a boom of super villain centric narratives: Venom, Suicide Squad, Venom 2, The Suicide Squad, Loki, Wandavision, Morbius, Kraven: the Hunter, Black Adam, Birds of Prey the Fantabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn, Venom 3 and Peacemaker. They were villains and they saved the world. Did that make them heroes? Or did it make them villains who saved the world? It was a splatter shot of misunderstood studio successes and misunderstood studio failures. I spent a lot of time wondering— why do people want these movies? Why do they then reject them? What is their purpose? I did not start to truly understand villain movies until I watched James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad.

The premise of the Suicide Squad is simple: a task force of super villains who are currently being held in Belle Reve (a special prison for crazy bad guys) are promised commuted sentences if they carry out missions for the US government under Amanda Waller, very cold very evil bad guy executive lady played by Viola Davis. If they deviate from the mission, Waller presses a button and kills them. The film opens with a team of supervillains who are either deplorable (Blackguard played by Pete Davidson) or insane (Harley Quinn played by Margot Robbie). They are backed by Waller’s team of special agents back at Belle Reve who work in a sort of computer/surveillance lab that allows them to watch the team of villains. Disillusioned by the dirty work of keeping the status quo for the world, the special agents prove to also be shit people as they bet on which villains will live and who will die. This is a world where everyone sucks and no one cares. When the team lands on the beach, they all are killed by military forces waiting for them except for Harley Quinn and the non-villain team leader, Rick Flag. Flag is an army guy who is heroic and kind and a super bad ass so he can manage all these bag guys. With the team we’ve been following since the beginning of the movie mostly dead, we cut to the protagonist of the film Bloodsport (played by Idris Elba) and his team: Peacemaker, King Shark, Polkadot man, and Rat Catcher 2.  After revealing he’s leading a second team of supervillains on the same mission, we flash back to Bloodsport in Belle Reve doing shit jobs: cleaning a toilet, mopping, scraping up gum etc. Waller introduces him saying “Robert Dubough, a world class marksman. In his hands anything is a deadly weapon. His father was a mercenary who trained his son to kill from the moment he was born.” We learn Bloodsport has a daughter and they have a terrible relationship. Bloodsport has been refusing to join the suicide squad, but Waller is able to force his hand by threatening to put his daughter in jail and have her killed. It’s probably the lowest bar for a dad to pass: not wanting your daughter to die in prison, but the movie is aware of it, not valorizing his actions. There are no tears for his daughter when he joins the suicide squad, only anger that he was bested by Waller. All this is very serious until Waller introduces the first member of his team Peacemaker (John Cena). Waller introduces Peacemaker saying he’s “a world class marksman. In his hands anything is a deadly weapon. His father was a mercenary who trained his son to kill from the moment he was born.” Bloodsport double takes, acknowledging that Peacemaker has HIS SAME EXACT BACKSTORY WORD FOR WORD. It undercuts everything “cool and tragic” about Bloodsport because it’s clear he is just like Peacemaker… and Peacemaker isn’t cool. He IS a douchebag. The rest of the team is introduced and we find out their mission: invade Corto Maltese, a country recently taken over by an anti-American government, and destroy Jötunheim, an evil sicence lab the new regime has taken control of, which contains the mysterious “Project Starfish”.

The comparisons between Bloodsport and Peacemaker continue and are important to track as their arcs are pivotal in understanding the film. As they head off on their mission, Bloodsport and Peacemaker butt heads— they may have the same backstory, but they both think the other sucks. Bloodsport thinks Peacemaker uses “liberty” as an excuse to commit acts of violence, while Peacemaker thinks Bloodsport is a bullshit guy because he kills for something as petty as money. The question of what makes a hero begins as we hear Polkadot Man’s backstory— his mom was obsessed with superheroes and tried to use science to make him one. Instead she got her son infected by a space virus that makes him shoot polkadots and if he doesn’t shoot the polkadots he will die. He’s deeply traumatized by the whole thing. Polkadot man has powers, but it’s clear: he’s not a hero. Our supervillains are not here to empathize with each other’s traumas, but instead to delegitimize one another’s tragic backstories. Bloodsport looks at Peacemaker who has the same trauma as him and is like “this guy in an idiot! What is he bitching about!” The two have a pissing contest as they stumble upon an armed camp. Bloodsport and Peacemaker compete to kill as many people as possible, but when they find Flag there, we discover this camp was a group of rebels against the new regime and they had helped Flag with the intent of helping them on their mission. When the leader of the rebels presses on why this happened, none of the squad take responsibility for killing everyone real fast. This is where the film takes a hard turn to catch up with Harley Quinn. 

On an uncritical watch, it’s easy to see how some could write off Harley’s story as fun, but generally unimportant— and that couldn’t be more wrong. For those who are choosing to read an essay about supervillains and don’t know her comic book back story, Harley Quinn was once Harleen Quinzel, an ambitious psychotherapist. Hoping to attain fame, she became Joker’s therapist only to be consumed by his charm and fall deeply in love with him. In the original DC run she actively chose to pursue a life of crime and be Joker’s on-again off-again girlfriend, but in the new 52 (the DC comics world rebooted) she becomes his partner in crime after he shoves her into a vat of acid which I think is stupid. In both iterations of the comics, Harley Quinn is a victim of her love for Joker and the consequences of choosing a life of villainy are the destruction of her sanity as well as the physical and emotional abuse of Joker. Created by Paul Dini in 1993 for Batman the Animated Series, her backstory was inspired by his friend who was in an abusive relationship. Harley Quinn holds a special place in the hearts of DC fans. Whether you romanticize her toxic relationship or pity the tragedy of her choices, there is a human complexity that has brought her, a relatively new character, to the forefront of DC. This brings us to her arc in Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. After the first supervillain team loses the battle on the beach, Harley is taken to the new regime’s leader, Presidente General Silvio Luna and TWIST it’s romantic. The two proceed to have a dreamy and romantic day together. At the end of the day, he asks for Harley’s hand in marriage. Both admitting their love, they bang like crazy until they end up lying on the ground in a post-sex haze. Silvio then reveals the mystery of Jötunheim and Project Starfish. He explains Nazi scientists experimented on a space beast there. His regime learned how evil the beast was after they took over Jötunheim. Worried about how his voice is starting to sound sinister, Harley interrupts saying it must be a relief to have the monster in his hands now instead of at his throat, but Silvio evilly continues— he plans to feed all dissidents of his new regime to the beast, listing whole families as his targets including grandparents and children. He’s still mid-speech when Harley shoots him. As he dies she tells him “Recently I made a promise to myself that if I got a boyfriend I’d look out for red flags and if I saw any I’d do the healthy thing… and I would murder him. And killing kids… kinda a red flag.” He bleeds out and she finishes with “when your taste in men is as bad as mine they don’t go away easily.” Knowing Harley’s comic book history, it’s a powerful moment. Harley has historically been the victim of powerful men she is romantically entwined with (Joker) and her choice to ignore what’s bad about these men has been destructive to her life. While it’s obviously not her fault that men like Joker are violent and cruel to her, she does not let that pain control her. She might have been a victim, but now Harley takes control over her own life, and this choice to take agency rings through the rest of the film. 

The movie really ramps up. The team goes to save Harley from the government, but she escapes on her own. They work with the resistance to capture the lead scientist on project Starfish, but Bloodsport reminds the resistance he is not here to help their people. The movie makes it clear, just because Bloodsport has found himself in a situation that could be misconstrued as heroic, Bloodsport is not a hero. Before we enter the final sequence, Bloodsport shares a little bit of his tragic backstory— and this time the film treats it as tragic. A major conflict throughout the film has been between Bloodsport and Ratcatcher 2… because he is afraid of her rats. When he was a child was locked in a crate full of starving rats by his father. While his fear of rats has been treated as comical previously, it becomes complex in this moment as we understand the rats are symbolic of Bloodsports trauma. He did not choose to become a mercenary his father forced him to be one through torture and violence personified in this moment by a small rat. With Bloodsport and Ratcatcher 2 coming to a new understanding of one another, the team heads off to Yodenheim with plans to blow it up so they can destroy all the evidence. Flag and Ratcatcher 2 end up in the lab that produced project Starfish. It’s horrific as they pass hundreds of caged people with starfishes covering their faces calling out for help. These people are dead and their bodies are controlled by STARRO THE CONQUEROR, a giant alien starfish in a tank at the center of the room. Rick is horrified by what has been done here, but the lead scientist reveals that project Starfish was originated by the American government. They chose to do the experiments here in Corto Maltese to keep it off American soil. The scientist tells Flag “your government didn’t send you here to protect the world from alien technology, your government sent you to cover up their part in it.” Flag heroically grabs the Project Starfish files to share with journalists who will hold the American government accountable, but he is stopped by Peacemaker. Waller charged Peacemaker with making sure that the Project Starfish files stay secret. As Peacemaker points his gun at Flag and says “Don’t make me do this”, we see that Peacemaker refuses to take responsibility for his actions. As Peacemaker becomes the true villain of the villains, the building crashes down on him and we cut to Bloodsport, who is about to become the hero of this team of villains. 

Bloodsport’s team is planting explosives when they fuck it up, sending only half the building crashing down with them still in it. Bloodsport falls through the floors, landing in the aftermath of the conflict with Flag and Peacemaker. Flag is dead. Peacemaker is preparing to kill Ratcatcher 2 in order to keep Project Starfish secret. Bloodsport saves Ratcatcher 2 by killing Peacemaker. They escape and join the remainder of the squad (Harley Quinn, Poladot man and King Shark) and the military where they all discover that the battle is far from over. Starro has escaped his confinement and is taking vengeance on the city. Bloodsport updates Waller on their failure, but she sees this as a positive: all information connecting this to the United States is gone, and now a nation considered hostile is under alien invasion. She tells them their mission is over and to come home. The team is no longer in peril, but the city very much is. We see the civilians of the city underattack— face huggers killing people, Starro stepping on and crushing homes, and then we cut to a fucking lone baby crying. Bloodsport turns away from the city, ready to follow orders and leave this city in the wake of Starro, but then he stops. He takes agency over his situation and chooses to help the city. Waller tells Bloodsport to stop, but he does not listen. Ratcatcher 2 warns Bloodsport that Waller will kill him but he says “That’s her business.” The whole film it's been clear: Bloodsport’s choices have not been his own. He did not choose to be a killer, his father trained him. He did not choose to have a child, she was born without his approval. He did not choose to join the Suicide Squad, Waller forced his hand– and Bloodsport is aware of all this. For all his whining about his life and whose fault it is that he’s in this place, Bloodsport stops letting the world make choices for him. He makes the choice to fight for this city, going against Waller and knowing the possible consequences. Bloodsport accepts what is not in his control and what is in his control: himself. As her tech team watches Bloodsport’s choice, they hit Waller over the head, also choosing to save the city knowing the consquences. One by one the squad and the tech team take agency over the situation and by extension their lives as together they work to defeat Starro. If it wasn’t clear enough that this choice makes them heroes, when Polkadot man joins, literally envisioning Starro as his abusive mom and as he fights Starro he proclaims “I”M A SUPERHERO.” A combination of standing up to his mom/Starro to protect others helps Polkadot man contend with his trauma and take agency over his life– making him a hero. Starro kills Polkadot man, but Ratcatcher 2 saves herself and Bloodsport by summoning rats to shield them. As Bloodsport is covered in rats, he is forced to confront the trauma of his childhood. Bloodsport’s daughter sees him on the news being heroic as the world is updated that Corto Maltese is going to have free elections. She’s moved by the good he has done, stating to herself “That’s my Dad.” They save the day, use the evidence to free themselves from Waller’s control, and copter home. The movie ends as Bloodsport sits in the copter, and Ratcatcher 2’s rat climbs onto his thigh. Brave but afraid, Bloodsport pets the rat, freeing himself from his past.

Gunn makes it clear why these characters, these villains, become heroes and save the world. Their lives are out of control, and their choice to save the world is inspired by their choice to take control of the one thing they can: themselves. In doing so they free themselves from their past and trauma. One could argue that Gunn just made a really good movie and that is why it resonated with people, but I would disagree. Long before The Suicide Squad, two films took villains center stage: David Ayer’s Suicide Squad (no “the”) and Ruben Fleischer’s Venom. While critics panned both films, looking at their audience scores it is clear that Venom resonated with audiences and Suicide Squad didn’t. Regardless of any of the factors that make a movie critically good, a movie that resonates with people is a movie that resonates with people. There is power in tapping into what is desired by audiences— and Venom had it, while Suicide Squad did not. Suicide Squad was panned by both critics and audiences. Earning a 26% with critics and a 58% with audiences, the reviews were not kind. Christy Lemire at RobertEbert.com said "It's massive, messy and noisy. And it stinks.” Normally I am not interested in Rotten Tomatoes, but it is interesting to see Venom’s comparative 31% with critics as opposed to its audience score which was 80%. Clearly, audiences can love a movie that isn’t considered “good.” Many hopeful DCEU fans who were disappointed in Suicide Squad argued the fault was in false advertising and the butchering done in editing with the support of nervous execs desperate to differentiate the film from the studio’s most recent bomb: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The jarring difference in Suicide Squad’s trailers alone provides enough evidence to support that argument (the comic-con first look was an overly serious, gloomy and artsy with a haunting rendition of the Bee Gee’s I Started a Joke over it VS the first trailer which was a poppy comic action filled romp with Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody under the whole thing), but I think the drastic differences in trailers is just a symptom of the larger problem. Ayer’s Suicide Squad struggles to understand why it’s telling a villain story and because of that, the studio struggled to advertise it.

This is my best attempt to summarize what is important in Suicide Squad. Ayer’s Suicide Squad follows a team of villains consisting of Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, El Diablo, Killer Croc, and Slipknot led by Rick Flag and Katana. Deadshot (Will Smith) is our protagonist as the story follows his character turns and clearly centers his good relationship with his daughter who he wants to get back to, but can’t because he is in super bad guy jail (Belle Reve). Deadshot chooses to join the team in order to get custody of his daughter and get her admitted to an Ivy League school. He’s a really good Dad and he knows it. Deadshot is the most wanted hitman in the world and they introduce his name in lights with a bad ass light up list of all his skills. Batman catches him when he is weak (with his daughter) right when he was talking about fixing things with his family because he’s such a good dad and Batman didn’t know that and totally fucked it up. Not all the characters get intros, but when they do they are colorful, lit up, bad ass, cool, sexy and tragic. The team is sent on a mission to defeat Enchantress, an evil witch who onced worked for Waller, but now is turning people into like monster blobs, is taking over a city, and is going to kill all people everywhere. Is it an oversimplification of the story? I’d argue barely as having a super evil witch big bad who wants to do the most objectively evil thing like ever so we don’t have to feel bad about our protagonists fucking killing her blob minions offers us very little emotional complexity. It holds none of the weight of The Suicide Squad’s mission to invade a country on behalf of the American government to cover up their crimes against humanity as each character wrestles with their complicity in the violence of the state. In contrast Suicide Squad posits “Our bad guy team isn’t as bad as Enchantress who wants to kill everybody so are they even bad?” Suicide Squad itself is a confused and odd edit, giving characters multiple introductions, blaring pop songs over dialogue, and action sequences that could be interesting and brutal if they were fighting anything more than like monster blobs. The full intent of the film is stated in the third act. The team fails on their mission to… stop Enchantress??-- so Deadshot leads them to the bar to give up, have a drink, and share their pain. As they cheers, Deadshot gives a speech suggesting that none of the team are actually bad guys. He explains that the worst part of not being able to save the world is that they are going to be blamed for… not saving the world— tragically he says “We’re the patsies, the cover up. Don’t forget… we’re the bag guys. For about two seconds… I had hope.” Hope for what? It’s unclear. To… save the world? Be seen as a good guy? The scene turns when Diablo confronts Deadshot for like no reason as he asks “How many people have you killed?” Deadshot is offended, but as Diablo presses, we discover Deadshot has never killed any women or children… which is supposed to recontextualize him for the audience as a good guy? Diablo reveals his tragic backstory where his wife got mad at him for doing gang shit so then he kills them with his fire powers or… as he tells it “When I get mad you know, I just don’t know what I do” and we cut to, not the violence or terror he caused, but the pain he feels as he holds his dead wife, fire swirling around them and he shouts “NOOOOOOO!” In this monologue Diablo doesn’t take responsibility for his actions and neither does the film. He tells his story of familicide real sad, suggesting being out of control isn’t really his fault. To make it worse, the movie itself only chooses to show us his pain and regret in the flashback, centering Diablo in a narrative where he ‘not on purpose’ killed his whole family. Everyone looks at him after the speech and feels real bad for him, except for Harley who is offended he is trying to excuse himself for the murder of his family and tells him to “own that shit”, but as Diablo starts to cry Deadshot tells her to back off. Harley continues, but instead of saying anything to decenter Diablo from the narrative of his violence she says “Normal is a setting on the dryer. People like us, we don’t get normal” because apparently not being normal is why they have shit lives. The moment gets further derailed by Captain Boomerang coming at Harley telling her she’s ugly on the inside, and then she brightens up and says they are all ugly on the inside, except for Killer Croc who is ugly on the outside too. The scene wraps up as Rick Flag comes in to get the team back on track by reminding Deadshot and the audience that Deadshot is actually really good because his daughter writes him lots of letters. The team is inspired and they head off to the final battle joined by the military. Deadshot and Diablo walk to where Enchantress is, but before they go to fight Diablo worriedly asks “What if a lose control” referencing when he lost control and killed his whole family and Deadshot responds with “Then maybe we’ll actually have a chance” framing Diablo's weakness that killed his whole family as actually a good thing. Diablo sacrifices himself by fighting so good and they are able to defeat Enchantress after Deadshot shoots her with Harley’s gun that rotates between saying love and hate with each shot. As he shoots it, it fatefully turns to the side that says ‘Love’. In the end, the film suggests our villains aren’t very bad and maybe they are even misunderstood. SEE!? Given the right objectively super evil villain, they can even save the day. What makes these villains heroes is… a worse villain. 

If we were to look at Ayer’s Suicide Squad it is a story about misunderstood people who have done bad things, but didn’t really mean it and also they love each other now. There are elements of found family narratives as well as redemption narratives, but there is little evidence that the characters find family together outside of the film stating it at the end and even less evidence that they desire any sort of redemption since they are all convinced everything bad they’ve done isn’t really their fault. The world should have given them a chance and so it’s the world’s fault they are bad guys except for Diablo kind of but not really. There are a small amount of people who liked the movie, but one could surmise from the films thesis these are people are looking for a movie to tell them the consequences of their actions are not their own fault or as Rotten Tomatoes would suggest—- a bunch of people who really wanted to see Harley and Joker fuck. The film does not resonate or inspire because it refuses to have its character’s take agency of their lives. They remain tools of the state throughout the entire movie even actively collaborating with the military in the end. Thematically it exists in direct opposition to The Suicide Squad, and the many parallels make you wonder if Gunn is aware of this. There are clear parallels between Deadshot and Bloodsport, both trained killers with daughters who are used as tools that get them to obey Wallter. Both films have bar bonding sequences for their characters— Suicide Squad’s being pivotal nonsense, and The Suicide Squad’s which does not actualize any real bonds between it’s characters. Long instructional speeches delivered by Flag where he ends each command with if you do this “you die”, but in The Suicide Squad it’s treated as a vehicle for jokes as opposed to a bad ass cool guy speech. But in the end, Suicide Squad offers it’s audience no catharsis, no freedom as it’s characters are thrown back in jail– waiting to be used again, still consumed by their traumas. The Suicide Squad offers it’s audience catharsis as it’s characters are freed from the control of Amanda Waller and are taking control of their lives and their traumas. 

In spirit, Venom has much more in common with The Suicide Squad than Suicide Squad. When the Venom movie came out… it felt like an insane and desperate move from Sony. Okay so if you don’t know– while Spiderman is a part of the Marvel Universe, his film rights are not owned by Marvel or by extension, Disney, but instead are owned by Sony. With excitement around Spiderman’s entry into the MCU, Sony decided to capitalize on the fervor by choosing to develop a shared movie universe for Spiderman’s villains in 2016. In 2018, Venom was released. I really think you only need the preface to Venom and I don’t want to make this essay long for no reason. The basic plot of Venom is that Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is an investigative journalist and his life fucking sucks. He was really obsessed with this evil company and he went after them so hard that he and his fiance Anne (Michelle Williams) both lost their jobs and she dumped him. His life is still a mess, but he doesn’t give up the investigation and gets infected by the alien symbiote the evil company has– he gets infected by Venom. They go on a bunch of adventures and we see Eddie’s shitty apartment, Anne’s NEW boyfriend who’s a doctor, and also how much Venom sucks. He just wants to kill people and eat cats but Eddie is like no way that’s bad. Venom and Eddie together are strong– without Eddie ,Venom is just like an alien parasite goo, and without Venom, Eddie is just a loser guy with no strength, no powers, no job, and no girlfriend. They argue a lot, but in the end, Eddie and Venom get on the same page as Venom says to Eddie “On my planet, I am kind of a loser, like you, but here we could be more”-- their trauma, the bad thing that happened to them is that they are losers. However, instead of choosing to wallow in their loserdom, both take agency over their lives and fight the coming alien invasion. There’s a lot of nonsense in the movie, but it resonates because it offers an audience catharsis that just because shit goes bad… doesn’t mean you can’t take control of your life. Doesn’t mean you don’t have power. Doesn’t mean you can’t do something good. With the humanity we feel in Venom, a character who is evil for no real good reason, it makes one ask… what makes a villain? What makes a hero?

I’d argue a villain is a character who does not take agency over their life. Their worlds are out of control, their choices are not their own, their identities are decided outside of themselves– they are so caught up on their own personal tragedies they let those tragedies control them. A villain is so consumed by victimhood that they let their pasts, their abusers, their outward perceptions to overrun them. Sometimes their wounds are truly tragic– the horrors of war, violence, prejudice plague them and we feel their pain. Sometimes their wounds are terrifying– consumed by anger or insanity so wild we are left scared of their pain. Sometimes their wounds are really stupid– like they feel like a loser or they are really smart and no one notices them– and we feel their pettiness– and sometimes we find it in ourselves. In the real world, bad things happen to people. From serious tragedies, to systematic oppression, to feeling like a loser after being dumped– for everyday people the world can feel out of control. These issues are what make villains relatable. A misconception of the popularity of villain stories is that they offer a power fantasy– not having morals, stealing, blasting stuff, wearing really sexy tight leather clothes– but this surface understanding leads to shallow tellings of these stories. Films like Kraven or Morbius struggle because they do not reckon with what truly makes a villain. They frame these characters as straight up heroes, but bad ass and crazy, and in that tell stories that feel false to audiences. They offer no catharsis, only a power fantasy that leaves a viewer feeling just as disenfranchised as they started. A villain is first and foremost a victim, and what makes a villain a hero is not the circumstances around them. Not a bigger bad or falling into a situation where they accidentally do good. A hero is a character who faces their traumas, who doesn’t let those traumas define them. They feel the weight of their trauma, allowing it to expand their understanding of the world, but they do not allow it to dictate what they are. Villains become heroes when they stop being victims and take agency over their lives. Villain movies offer a cry of hope more than anything. Like us, they’ve had bad shit happen to them that’s not their fault. They are not Iron Man who really did do war crimes, they are Wanda Maximoff whose love of her life died for no good fucking reason— and so many more people have lost a love of their life for no fucking reason than done war crimes. In a time where the world feels more out of control than ever, villain stories offer a new perspective– to take control of your life. They offer us agency, hope, and empathy for the sins of the world that are not and have never been our own, but ask us not to be controlled by those sins. They ask us to take control of the one thing we can: ourselves– people like Venom because Venom said “Hey do you feel like a fucking loser? Do something about it” and that radical idea… is quite lovely.