Anti-Villains & Sympathetic Villains
Just as there is a spectrum of heroism that ranges from paragons to antiheroes, villainy also exists on a sliding scale. On one side, there are your true, pure evil villains. On the other hand, there is the anti-villain.
An anti-villain is to villainy what the antihero is to heroism. They are villains who are not traditionally villainous. Generally, this means they are villains who are committing evil acts in service to a goal that is at least arguably noble. They are trying to change the world for the better, it is their methodology that is morally unacceptable.
Interestingly enough, this contributes to a lot of murkiness in the classification of anti-villains, because the definition of an anti-villain is practically identical to that of an antihero. Both are characters who are attempting to achieve a positive end result for the world with morally dubious methodology.
So how do we tell the difference between antiheroes and anti-villains? It’s not always easy, especially when you start doing things like throwing villain protagonists into the mix. The most important distinction is that an anti-villain is still a villain. Most definitions of a villain simply refer to them as a character whose evil is important to the plot. Others also make note of a villain being deliberately malicious, evil and cruel. If that is the case, then the distinction between an anti-villain is twofold:
An anti-villain’s evil is more important to the plot of the story than their more noble motivations.
The anti-villain is aware that despite the nobility of their goal, their actions are still morally dubious at best. They choose to take these actions anyway.
Comparatively, an antihero’s heroism is more important to the plot and they actively believe their actions are morally just. However, the blurry line between antihero and anti-villain is not the only way anti-villains can be confused. Enter the sympathetic villain.
Sympathetic villains are often conflated with anti-villains. Even the Wikipedia page on villains lists the two as synonyms. However, I would argue not all sympathetic villains are anti-villains. A sympathetic villain is any such character who has motivations and origins that make them relatable to the audience and thus easy to sympathise and empathise with. However, if the character’s evil acts are not done with the explicit intention of improving the world in the long run and are instead more petty or malignant in nature, then they cannot be classified as an anti-villain because their ambitions are not in contrast to those of a typical, traditional villain.
Magneto from the X-Men franchise is an anti-villain because he is actively trying to improve the world for a subset of society that is actively oppressed and victimised. He is also sympathetic because of his origins growing up Jewish during World War Two. The portrayal of Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar is a very similar anti-villain, strangely enough. He betrays Jesus because he believes it to be the only way to protect their people from Jesus’ growing fame and infamy. He is aware this is a treacherous and evil act though and is even driven to suicide by his guilt over that decision. Comparatively, Galbatorix from The Inheritance Cycle is sympathetic on account of his tragic history, but is by no means an anti-villain as he has no desire to improve the world he rules over and is actively making it worse. Ozymandius from The Watchmen isn’t particularly sympathetic at all, but is very much an anti-villain since his plan is to commit evil acts for a perceived common good.
The question then remains, what is the purpose of these archetypes? Why make villains who have noble goals or sympathetic motivations at all? Wouldn’t it make more sense to make it easy to hate a villain? I think the answer to that last question depends on what your answer to the first question is.
There is a very good reason to create an anti-villain. It makes your audience and your character’s both think. It can even give them pause and force them to re-examine their own morality and perspective. Anti-villains force the world they exist in to be examined with a different lens. They make stories become much more morally complex and ambiguous and, in turn, compelling because of the philosophising they promote. Anti-villains are also characters who can be reasoned with, persuaded and negotiated with and who in turn can do so with heroes. Effectively, anti-villains allow for much more nuanced stories with a very different dynamic between its heroes and villains and this can be extremely compelling to explore. It is also more true to life in that very few people genuinely believe themselves to be bad or think that their actions are unjustified. This can lead these stories to feel more grounded as well, regardless of how fantastical they are.
Making a villain sympathetic, however, is a different matter entirely. Often, sympathetic villains serve a purpose such as highlighting the humanity of a hero through their pity of the villain or by highlighting the moral point of how easy it is for someone to become villainous because of their negative experiences. It can also just provide context for why a villain acts the way they act, providing some emotional depth to an otherwise shallow character. These characters are less about creating interesting dynamics or raising moral quandaries and more about how a story feels on account of their humanisation.
Unfortunately, this can also mean sympathetic villains feel trite and manipulative on the part of the author - less about context or narrative direction and more about taking cheap shots at the emotions of the audience to make a story appear more profound than it is.
This becomes especially problematic when an evil character with a sympathetic origin or motivation is presented by a story as an anti-villain when their goals are ultimately petty, personal and/or actively bad for the world around them. Not a villain protagonist, but a true villain a story tries to convince us is justified in their actions.
As with most things, it ultimately comes down to the choices of the author and the quality of the story. In recent years, I have noticed a fair few people want to see a return to form where villains are pure evil and unsympathetic. Many of those people cite the very issue I just talked about. Personally though, I think that if there is a problem it is more to do with oversaturation than anything. Naturally, with modern stories tending towards more moral ambiguity and the rise of antiheroes and anti-villains to prominence, we are more likely to see both good and bad examples due to the sheer size of the pool we are drawing from.
I feel like there are very good reasons for the continued use of such characters, but we should keep in mind the differences between them as well to better make use of them in the stories we tell.
