What happened to the bad guys?
We, as a society, are fed up with moral absolutism.
Good and Evil.
Right and Wrong.
These have become dismissive terms in our literature.
No individual is infallible, no cause is so worthy that it is beyond reproach.
Our heroes are crumbled idols, and our villains are misguided do gooders.
You’ll forgive me for sounding like a Bond villain.
That is the way these things used to go right?
The hero trapped, strapped to some diabolical device, hapless in the face of his tormentor who now decides, in lengthy, long sentences, to offer a soliloquy about the tribulations of society.
Forget gross looking pets or sinister theme music, the hallmark of a true villain was, the moment he had you in his clutches…
They’d always launch some far fetched pitch for you to see their side of the story. Right? Join in allegiance with true reason.
What a douche, hey?
That’s always been the villains thing; they believe they’re in the right.
And, what’s more, they want you on board.
The hero never gets it.
So the villain tries harder. Cursing the poor fools inability to see reason.
Deep down, the heroes and villains were more similar than different. At least, that’s what the bad guys always wanted us to believe.
It was funny. Or scary. Villains, they never learn do they?
But then, something strange happened.
It wasn’t a single moment. It was a gradual slope. The scene changed.
Over the decades, re-writes and reincarnations have made our heroes less heroic, and our villains less villainous.
Suddenly, it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad.
And harder still, to draw the line between the two.
1973 marked the end of “The Golden Age” of comic book heroes. With the release of the issue above, “The Silver Age” stories began to deviate from the standard norms set by the cheesy Bond villains pre-Daniel Craig.
The tone grew grittier, more cynical.
Darker.
Gwen Stacey’s death at the hands of Spiderman’s arch nemesis set the stage for his gradual decline. The most popular Marvel hero, the webslingers superhero supremacy turned to a delineating fall from grace.
Gwen’s death provided the potential for previously untapped story arcs. Ones with serious metaphorical consequences.
For the nature of her demise issued an uncomfortable fact; it was not the Green Goblin that killed her, but Spiderman himself.
It was a blemish on an untarnished career. One that stuck, defining the character, and the superhero genre for decades to come.
Spiderman was no longer just a hero, but a failure as well. A man who let the woman he loved die, after he put her in harms way.
Spiderman had been beaten before, he wasn’t undefeated. But this, this was tragedy. What’s more, is that the response by Spiderman isn’t one you’d expect from a comic book hero, especially one set in this time.
Holding his dead girlfriend in his arms he cries out for vengeance.
Not in the name of truth.
Not on behalf of justice.
Not for his city, or, certainly not, all that is good.
But for himself.
His vengeance. His justice.
That’s the shift.
The beef became personal.
Not just for Spiderman. But for all our heroes.
Heroes care less about defeating evil and more about beating the evildoer.
They’re less concerned with championing causes; fighting for liberty, free will, fairness and morality.
We, in turn, have stopped identifying the good guys with these ideals.
The focus has turned to he person; what the fight is doing to hero. We pay to see the price enacted on our champions. The toll it takes on their lives.
As it has always been in our stories, what matters most, to our heroes, is what matters to us.
Fuck America.
Fuck England.
Canada.
NATO.
Fuck Metropolis. Gotham. Central City.
What about our friends? Our family? Our wives, girlfriends and children?
Our pets?
What did their fates involve? What did that do to us?
This became the key.
Dispassionate servitude to grand ideals met little emotional need, not when compared to the possible drama that came from conflict over a dead lover.
Preaching from the tip tops of sky scrapers? That wasn’t something we could identify with.
We started lowering our sights, fixating on causes closer to home.
Heroes nowdays are street level. They’ve either gone rogue, playing by their own rules, or are disillusioned monks; bound to a code that rest of society can’t seem to understand.
Where once they stood at the front lines, now they sit at the back of the pack.
Critiquing us.
Chipping away at the structure of our publics pantheon of belief, we have crumbled our own idols.
Heroes are weak now. Flawed.
And we seek refuge in their weakness, their vulnerability, not their strengths.
Their moral dilemma’s highlight our capacity to fail, where once they taught us to dream for heights we could not possibly achieve.
It makes them closer to us, more coruptable, less immortal.
Spiderman doesn’t care about being a champion for good anymore. He’s just a friendly neighbourhood Spiderman.
Batman is ferocious.
The camp, playful roustabout of the Adam West television series has gone full blown vigilante, billionaire tycoon, and borderline committable public offender.
In his most recent trilogy, Batman begins saving his city from moral and literal corruption. Yet, he ends battling it out on the streets with Bane, who crippled him and left him for dead.
Bruce loses his parents to a mugger. The Joker murders his true love and life long friend.
Slowly, bit by bit, one partner after another, in crime or otherwise, bites the dust.
Heroes these days are salvaged wrecks, piecing themselves back together, as we watch them carry on with the fight.
Bond has always been licensed to kill. He’s conducted his dirty business on behalf of king, then queen, and always country. An impartial emissary of good government. The shadowy hand. An uncomfortable necessity.
But what is he now?
He contends with the organization that orchestrates the deaths of his lovers, mentors, and closest friends. Not some quack with a geopolitical scheme, hidden in an outrageous evil lair on a ludicrous remote island.
12 actors, 26 movies and 58 years have seen the worlds most famous spy go from racially insensitive dress up enthusiast:
To spectacularly flamboyant camouflage artist:
To hilarious gimmicks and gadgets and gizmos:
To his latest rendering:
An assassin, promoted for nefarious purposes, who subsequently murders scores of men in brutal fashion while seducing and bedding their lovers before they themselves are murdered gruesomely.
A full blown narcissistic psychopath. Play it off however you want, DC JB is a goddam horrifying monster of a human being.
Bond movies are not about stopping The Bad Guy anymore.
They’re about James Bond, the man.
Not his cause.
Such an individualized focus on our heroes means that the ideals they fight for are neglected.
There’s no guarentee that the hero will fight for anything anymore, or even care.
It’s all about them.
The well of camp, tongue and cheek, happy go lucky, tomfoolery ran dry.
So we dug into our heroes instead. We picked them apart as people. Got into what made them tick.
And, like the dwarves in The Mines of Moria, we delved too greedily and too deep.
And we awoke new adversaries, in the dark.
Enter the villain(?)
The hero changed. Disregarding good and evil, they embraced their humanity.
Their individuality. Their fragility.
Thus the villain, the natural counterpart, shifted and transformed.
Where once Sauron, and other Dark Lords, masters of evil, reigned supreme, a splinter faction grew amongst the antagonists.
A group, more subtle in execution, yet no less teriffying.
No longer singularly dimensional, simply evil for its own sake.
These are brutally flawed, idealists, dreamers and big whigs.
These men and women care little for world domination. Their schemes were less grand and half assed, more focused and fully baked.
Cold, calculated, stylish, chaos magnates.
They don’t want to rule anymore. Ruling is for the real bad guys: The Vader’s and the Voldemort's.
These villains, they just want their day. They have a voice, and they want to be heard.
And we have begun to listen.
For that is the key to the modern day villain: They have a point.
Under the guise of an outlandish idea, they sow simple seeds of logic.
We’re reluctant to admit it, but there can be no denying it:
Bad Guys are at their best when they are fighting with good intentions.
It’s what makes the conflict so saucy.
Sure, we’ve got legitimate grievances with how the villains operate.
They’re a little too cool and casual with the killing.
But if The Good Guys don’t present a strong case, we will fall in love with the bad.
The burden of proof is on our heroes shoulders now. Don’t take that switch for granted.
It seems to me, that we have begun to judge our heroes more harshly than our villains.
Heroes now fight for personal vendettas. They settle old scores, while their villains uphold lofty ideals.
True, their methods do not always sit right with us, but that is the dividing line: Ends and means.
Not good and evil, those are absolutes.
And, like a great Jedi once said…
So what becomes of us now?
We are left with moral ambiguity.
No longer is it a certainty that the good guys will prevail. Or even that their cause is the just one.
The villains have successfully muddied the waters.
The only certainty is uncertainty.
Which side claims victory holds no sway over the emmotional balance of the story. The scales of right and wrong are forever rapt in a perpetual state of paralysis.
There are no villains anymore. No Heroes.
Only Grey Characters.
Black with white stripes, or white with black stripes, depending on what you see.
No longer are our heroes the guardians of good, nor our villains the wardens of evil.
Good guy.
Bad guy.
Hero.
Villain.
Protagonist.
Antagonist.
These are now just words.
