Apologises to the great Stephen Moffatt for cribbing his episode title for this blog but all will become clear…
When I watched Captain America yesterday* it illustrated perfectly what I think is one of the more interesting concepts in fiction, the consequences of pushing the nice guy hero to far. **
In this case it’s just one line in the movie but given what we know of the character of Steve Rogers it’s very effective. The line is question is uttered by Tommy Lee Jones to Arim Zola (Toby Jones) advising him that as he was responsible for the death of Rogers’ best friend he could not count on Cap’s protection against the Red Skull. It’s almost a throw away line but given how they have made a big deal of Cap’s goodness it shows you how angry and upset he is far better than if Cap himself had performed a rage filled interrogation.
The anti hero is a character that has been explored many times in fiction. A person who through circumstance or a change of heart becomes a good guy but retains his edginess that the reader thinks is so cool. Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a prime example of this and a great example of how tired the concept has become. On the flip side however Buffy’s sister show, Angel gives us one of the best examples of a good guy gone bad in Angel; but not I suspect in the way you think, I am not talking about Angelus I am referring to the season two arc where Angel distances himself from the team to hunt Darla and Drusilla.
Again it’s a line of dialogue uttered that emphasises the change in the character. When a very angry Angel corners the two of them, they think at first Angelus has returned,But with a look of shock on her face Drusilla warns that this is not Angelus, or Angel but something far worse….. This is of course leads to the great “I just can’t seem to care” line that signifies that Angel has taken a darker turn in his life, and is about to give us some great TV.
Hopefully those two examples give you a good idea as to what I’m driving at. A character that has been built up to be just, moral and heroic being pushed to the absolute edge becomes a compelling character. What happened to them to cause this? How far are they willing to go? Is there any chance of them coming back from the edge? These are just a few of the questions the writer (and their audience) can explore and look forward to answering, and that to me is more interesting that starting as a man with a dark past.
Of course I am not saying that the anti-hero has no place, or am I saying that all heroes should go dark. What I am saying is that it is good to mix them up once in a while, variety is after all, the spice of life.
*Great movie BTW
** As does in fact the eppisode of Dr Who I stole the title from.
3 comments
“Good men don’t need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.” – The Doctor
I suspect it worked well on ANGEL because they were able to spend the time building their house of cards. MAD MAX has a bit of that too; baby-face Mel Gibson plays Rockatansky as an almost-innocent trying to keep his soul in a soulless world.
By way of contrast, Harvey Dent in DARK KNIGHT is how *not* to do this, or rather how to skip the character and go for the obvious “bent on revenge” bit. They almost had it, too . . .
One last thing about Spike in the Buffy-verse: Mutant Enemy were never able to really make that work because they tried to have their cake and eat it too. All the rules were set about what is and what isn’t a vampire capable of – rules they consistently broke with William the Bloody. Still a fascinating bloke but only a part of what could have been.
But Two-Face wasn’t an anti-hero, he was an anti-villain. The difference lies in motivation: the anti-hero will ultimately work to do good using less than heroic means, whereas an anti-villain will try to achieve a bad end with a good effect.
ie: “these guys will pay for fucking me over, I will kill them all” is a villainous motivation, but we can sympathize with him doing so.
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