Villain Rule #1: The Villain Cannot Take Shit From The Hero
So here's a scene from A New Hope, which is a real Star Wars movie.
Notice what Vader does here (in the film the dialogue's a tiny bit different, but who cares, the beats are the same tightened for clarity and quality. "You passed directly through a restricted system" makes him sound like a frickin hall monitor). It's true that Leia is trying to give him shit. He cuts her off and tells her "I see through your bullshit, you're in a lot of trouble." She tries again; he steps on her line and basically shuts her up. He refuses to take any of her shit.
Later, in the only scene where any of the heroes actually come face-to-face with the villain of Star Wars:
Leia has a few insults to throw at Tarkin. He brushes them off with class, but what he's actually saying is "I don't care what you call me. You and your rebel friends will all be dead soon."
Here's the turn. With six words, "...on your home planet of Alderaan," Tarkin effortlessly turns Leia from a smart-mouthed brat to a begging captive.
Broken, and done. Tarkin's (and Vader's) interactions with the heroes are kept to an absolute minimum - I remember coming back to A New Hope after Rogue One and paying close attention to Peter Cushing's performance and wishing he was in it more, but Lucas understood that keeping the heroes and villains in close proximity for too long would ultimately lessen the villains' threat. (Trivia: after the destruction of Alderaan, everything except the scene where he and Vader discuss the homing beacon and the "Evacuate? In our moment of triumph?" scene is recycled stock footage of him. That's how little he's in the movie and he's still an effective villain.)
Obi-Wan tries to give Vader a little shit during their duel, but Vader survives the duel and Obi-wan doesn't, so who cares?
Likewise, in Empire, Luke tries giving Vader a microscopic amount of shit ("You'll find I'm full of surprises!") to which Vader responds by knocking him into the carbonite pit. ("All too easy. Perhaps you are not as strong as the Emperor thought.") And later by cutting off his hand.
In Jedi, Luke tries giving the Emperor shit. It doesn't go anywhere; the Emperor gives as good as he gets. ("Your overconfidence is your weakness."/"Your faith in your friends is yours.")
Interestingly, there's not a whole amount of shit-talking in the prequels. There is literally no dialogue exchanged between the heroes and Darth Maul. Maul is just a brutal, savage barbarian. As in A New Hope, the heroes and villains never directly interact unless the story absolutely requires it.
Dooku and Kenobi have a respectful conversation (Dooku, having trained Obi-Wan's master, is basically Obi-Wan's evil grandfather).
The only people who give Palpatine any shit get thoroughly trounced by him.
I'm not going to discuss Nute Gunray outside of this paragraph, which only exists to tell you why I'm not going to discuss him: he's a catspaw. Quite like Joffrey Lannister, he may have a position of power, but he's never the main threat in the story.
General Grievous is the weakest of the prequel villains, but that doesn't have as much to do with any trash-talking as with the fact that he never lives up to his reputation.
Villain Rule #2: The Villain Must Live Up To His Reputation
Grievous is presented as "the fiendish droid leader" of the Confederacy. We're told that he killed several Jedi and has their lightsabers in his collection. The problem is, his leadership seems to consist of running away from fights. At one point he issues orders to the over Confederate leaders, but he's just parroting the orders he got from Sidious. We never see him kill any Jedi. His fight with Obi-Wan is limp and uninspiring because it's obvious that Obi-Wan is fighting a CGI drawing. Simply put, Grievous is a failure of a villain.
But until the Disney Trilogy, he was the only one.
When Leia tells Vader "Only you could be so bold," she's bestowing Reputation on Vader. He's the Emperor's top hench-dog. He'd better back it up. So he: 1) force-chokes Motti 2) tracks and defeats Obi-Wan 3) kills seven (?) rebel pilots 4) is the only imperial to escape the destruction of the Death Star. And he's not even the main villain of A New Hope! For most of the film, he's just Tarkin's attack dog. And Tarkin? Tarkin breaks Leia. Yeah she lied to him, but he blew up her home planet.
Vader takes center stage as the villain of Empire. He spearheads an attack on the rebel base, forcing them to evacuate and retreat. He relentlessly pursues the Millennium Falcon until he captures her crew, whom he then uses as bait to set a trap for Luke Skywalker. He springs the trap successfully, breaking Skywalker in both body and spirit. The heroes only manage to escape him by the skin of their teeth.
The Emperor is presented as the ultimate evil in the galaxy. ("The Emperor is coming here? ...We shall redouble our efforts!") So in Jedi, he orchestrates a massive trap to destroy the rebellion. He tries to turn Luke to the Dark Side. He blasts Luke and Vader with Force Lightning.
In the prequels, we know that Palpatine will become the Emperor. We see his machinations play out. He's helped by the fact that the good guys are clueless morons, yes, but he creates two armies, sets them against each other, and erodes whatever constitutional restraints he's supposed to be under until he can finally declare himself Emperor. He defeats three Jedi Masters without breaking a sweat. He forces Yoda to break off his attack and retreat. He takes the Greatest Jedi Who Ever Lived and turns him into a loyal slave. And, oh yes, "Execute Order Sixty-Six."
Maul isn't given much of a Reputation to live up to. He's just Sidious's apprentice, and the Stereotypes are afraid of him. But he turns out to be a fierce warrior who kills a Jedi Master.
Dooku is presented as a renegade "political idealist." Personally I think Christopher Lee was criminally underused, but we still got an effective performance from him. When we (finally) meet him more than halfway through Attack of the Clones, he's heading the war meeting from The Daleks' Master Plan. This Sith Lord is completely unlike the savage Maul; he's erudite and classy, basically Tarkin with a lightsaber (appropriate, as Lee and Peter Cushing were best friends in real life). Despite his genteel exterior, he thrashes Obi-Wan and Anakin in their duels. We saw his political insight when dealing with the war council, and we see his military insight when he realizes that - through no fault of his own - the Confederacy must retreat from Geonosis. When he's killed at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, his death proves how far Anakin has come (and how far the young Jedi has fallen, as well).
Villain Rule #3: The Villain Can Only Be Defeated Once
Technically that should read "The hero can never defeat the villain until the story no longer has a use for the villain," but that's rather cumbersome. Basically the point here is that once a villain is defeated by the hero, he's never a credible threat ever again. This is part of the reason why heroes and villains should avoid interacting directly with each other as much as possible; every interaction is an opportunity to lessen the villain. If Anakin had defeated Dooku at the climax of Attack of the Clones, he would be an empty threat at the start of Revenge of the Sith. Dooku is killed at the beginning of Revenge for the reasons I mentioned above, but importantly, the story no longer needs him. Anakin has outgrown him as a threat, and so Dooku can be defeated.
This is important. We're supposed to be watching our heroes grow and become more powerful. Forcing them to keep fighting the same starter villain over and over again would undercut that growth. Does the guy James Bond defeats in the pre-credits sequence come back for more in the film? No, of course not.
So too is Maul killed when Obi-Wan defeats him. He's a starter villain; Obi-Wan outgrows that threat. He would have been ineffective and unbelievable as a serious threat to the heroes if he'd been allowed to survive.
Now you might be thinking that Yoda defeats Dooku at the conclusion of Attack of the Clones, or that Windu defeats Palpatine midway through Revenge of the Sith. Both allegations are suspect. Yoda held his own against Dooku, but there's no indication that he was actually winning before Dooku broke off the fight and forced Yoda to save Anakin and Obi-Wan instead of chase him. And in any case, Yoda is presented as being leagues ahead of Anakin, so if Yoda can only fight him to a standstill, what hope does Anakin have?
Likewise, Mace Windu's alleged defeat of Palpatine is suspect. One possibility is that Palpatine threw the fight in order to force Anakin to side with him and betray the Jedi Order. Another possibility is that Mace legitimately won, but a) Mace is not the hero, and b) Mace dies immediately thereafter. So the only guy who could defeat Palpatine in the Prequel Trilogy is no more. Palpatine's threat, therefore, is not diminished.
In the Classic Trilogy, all three of the villains are killed the first time they're defeated. Tarkin goes down on Death Star I. Vader is crippled by Luke and killed by Palpatine's Force Lightning. Palpatine is defeated and thrown down a reactor shaft by Vader. Again, you could argue that Vader was defeated in the dogfight over Death Star I, except a) no he wasn't, he was taken out by a lucky accident when his wingman clipped him, and b) he's never put in a TIE fighter again, so the heroes never have to face the allegedly-diminished threat of Vader's piloting skills.
I'm going to step away from Star Wars for a second to discuss the giant glowing eye in the room, because you might be thinking of one very famous villain who was defeated before the story he appeared in ever began: Sauron, the eponymous Lord of the Rings. Sauron was defeated hundreds of years ago by Isildur, and he's been incorporeal ever since. But putting aside the fact that Isildur is long-dead and not the hero of the story, is Sauron himself ever presented as a physical threat? Sauron embodies the concept of evil, both its corrupting influence (the One Ring) and its destructive power (the armies of Mordor). Furthermore, Sauron's defeat was so long ago it's basically the stuff of legend, and his defeat came at such great cost; "does this generation have what it takes to defeat him?" is a question that lingers over the entire story.
The Disney Trilogy villains break all three rules.
Did you notice how the Emperor never appears in A New Hope? That's so that Tarkin's defeat at the end of the film doesn't taint the Emperor. In the Disney Trilogy, all three villains are present; all three have an interest in Starkiller Base; in effect, all three are defeated at the film's conclusion. And none were good villains to begin with.
Snoke is a cheap Gollum Palpatine. We know how Palpatine came to power, and it gives him Reputation points: he corrupted the office of Chancellor, engineered a war, and accrued emergency powers until he could declare himself Emperor. (Even in the Classic Trilogy, we knew that Palpatine birthed the Empire from the ashes of the Old Republic; Obi-Wan relates that the Jedi were "the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic... before the dark times, before the Empire. ... A young Jedi named Darth Vader... helped the Emperor hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights.") Snoke is just this guy who came out of nowhere and suddenly has a new army under his command.
Snoke doesn't take any shit, but he's forced to moderate a Kylo/Hux bitch-fest. This does him no favors, because his chosen underlings are immature dweebs.
Hux has to take Kylo's shit because... well, because Snoke is a shitty leader, I guess. In A New Hope, it was evident that Tarkin was Vader's superior. Do you think the Emperor would have tolerated Vader and Tarkin getting into a bitch-fest? Hux has to take Poe's shit in The Last Jedi because, well, because he's a pathetic excuse for a villain, that's why.
As for Hux's reputation... he doesn't really have one. He's just this guy who gives a speech and, in the sequel, turns into a Verizon Wireless ad. It's terrible.
This brings us to Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren is the worst abomination ever to pollute a Star Wars film. I would rather watch six hours of Star Wars: Gungans than suffer through a trilogy with him as the most significant villain.
So one of the first things that happens in The Force Awakens is Kylo blocks a blaster bolt. Neat! This gives him instant Reputation; this man is obviously a badass. Then Poe Dameron, the closest thing The Force Awakens has to an actual character, is dragged in front of him. Kylo immediately drops down to talk face-to-face with Poe. This is a stupid idea. Villains should tower over heroes; villains should never lower themselves to the hero's level; and Kylo's pose looks fucking ridiculous.
Then Poe makes a quip. Does Kylo immediately melt his brain? No. Does he shut him down, a la Vader or Tarkin? No. Does he even manage to muster up a quip of his own? No. In the span of fifteen seconds, Kylo has both taken shit and failed to live up to his reputation. FAIL.
Now I could go on, at length, about how an immature brat with Force powers is both exactly what we hated about the prequels and in no way a credible threat to the heroes, but I'll save some time. At the conclusion of The Force Awakens, Kylo is trounced so badly that, if you were watching the fight in isolation as merely a film student, you would be forgiven for thinking that Kylo was the hero and Rey the villain.
If I had to sum up everything wrong with Kylo Ren, it would be this. No villain in cinematic history could recover after stumbling backwards away from an implacable, advancing threat. It takes him five steps to regain some semblance of form! And Daisy's comment, "She's super strong and he's so weak" is spot on. You cannot have a heroic display against a weak villain!
So no. There is no redeeming these characters. Kill them all, and bring in some real villains.
Because you cannot have real heroics without real villains to fight.
Interestingly, there's not a whole amount of shit-talking in the prequels. There is literally no dialogue exchanged between the heroes and Darth Maul. Maul is just a brutal, savage barbarian. As in A New Hope, the heroes and villains never directly interact unless the story absolutely requires it.
Dooku and Kenobi have a respectful conversation (Dooku, having trained Obi-Wan's master, is basically Obi-Wan's evil grandfather).
The only people who give Palpatine any shit get thoroughly trounced by him.
I'm not going to discuss Nute Gunray outside of this paragraph, which only exists to tell you why I'm not going to discuss him: he's a catspaw. Quite like Joffrey Lannister, he may have a position of power, but he's never the main threat in the story.
General Grievous is the weakest of the prequel villains, but that doesn't have as much to do with any trash-talking as with the fact that he never lives up to his reputation.
Villain Rule #2: The Villain Must Live Up To His Reputation
Grievous is presented as "the fiendish droid leader" of the Confederacy. We're told that he killed several Jedi and has their lightsabers in his collection. The problem is, his leadership seems to consist of running away from fights. At one point he issues orders to the over Confederate leaders, but he's just parroting the orders he got from Sidious. We never see him kill any Jedi. His fight with Obi-Wan is limp and uninspiring because it's obvious that Obi-Wan is fighting a CGI drawing. Simply put, Grievous is a failure of a villain.
But until the Disney Trilogy, he was the only one.
When Leia tells Vader "Only you could be so bold," she's bestowing Reputation on Vader. He's the Emperor's top hench-dog. He'd better back it up. So he: 1) force-chokes Motti 2) tracks and defeats Obi-Wan 3) kills seven (?) rebel pilots 4) is the only imperial to escape the destruction of the Death Star. And he's not even the main villain of A New Hope! For most of the film, he's just Tarkin's attack dog. And Tarkin? Tarkin breaks Leia. Yeah she lied to him, but he blew up her home planet.
Vader takes center stage as the villain of Empire. He spearheads an attack on the rebel base, forcing them to evacuate and retreat. He relentlessly pursues the Millennium Falcon until he captures her crew, whom he then uses as bait to set a trap for Luke Skywalker. He springs the trap successfully, breaking Skywalker in both body and spirit. The heroes only manage to escape him by the skin of their teeth.
The Emperor is presented as the ultimate evil in the galaxy. ("The Emperor is coming here? ...We shall redouble our efforts!") So in Jedi, he orchestrates a massive trap to destroy the rebellion. He tries to turn Luke to the Dark Side. He blasts Luke and Vader with Force Lightning.
In the prequels, we know that Palpatine will become the Emperor. We see his machinations play out. He's helped by the fact that the good guys are clueless morons, yes, but he creates two armies, sets them against each other, and erodes whatever constitutional restraints he's supposed to be under until he can finally declare himself Emperor. He defeats three Jedi Masters without breaking a sweat. He forces Yoda to break off his attack and retreat. He takes the Greatest Jedi Who Ever Lived and turns him into a loyal slave. And, oh yes, "Execute Order Sixty-Six."
Maul isn't given much of a Reputation to live up to. He's just Sidious's apprentice, and the Stereotypes are afraid of him. But he turns out to be a fierce warrior who kills a Jedi Master.
Dooku is presented as a renegade "political idealist." Personally I think Christopher Lee was criminally underused, but we still got an effective performance from him. When we (finally) meet him more than halfway through Attack of the Clones, he's heading the war meeting from The Daleks' Master Plan. This Sith Lord is completely unlike the savage Maul; he's erudite and classy, basically Tarkin with a lightsaber (appropriate, as Lee and Peter Cushing were best friends in real life). Despite his genteel exterior, he thrashes Obi-Wan and Anakin in their duels. We saw his political insight when dealing with the war council, and we see his military insight when he realizes that - through no fault of his own - the Confederacy must retreat from Geonosis. When he's killed at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, his death proves how far Anakin has come (and how far the young Jedi has fallen, as well).
Villain Rule #3: The Villain Can Only Be Defeated Once
Technically that should read "The hero can never defeat the villain until the story no longer has a use for the villain," but that's rather cumbersome. Basically the point here is that once a villain is defeated by the hero, he's never a credible threat ever again. This is part of the reason why heroes and villains should avoid interacting directly with each other as much as possible; every interaction is an opportunity to lessen the villain. If Anakin had defeated Dooku at the climax of Attack of the Clones, he would be an empty threat at the start of Revenge of the Sith. Dooku is killed at the beginning of Revenge for the reasons I mentioned above, but importantly, the story no longer needs him. Anakin has outgrown him as a threat, and so Dooku can be defeated.
This is important. We're supposed to be watching our heroes grow and become more powerful. Forcing them to keep fighting the same starter villain over and over again would undercut that growth. Does the guy James Bond defeats in the pre-credits sequence come back for more in the film? No, of course not.
So too is Maul killed when Obi-Wan defeats him. He's a starter villain; Obi-Wan outgrows that threat. He would have been ineffective and unbelievable as a serious threat to the heroes if he'd been allowed to survive.
Now you might be thinking that Yoda defeats Dooku at the conclusion of Attack of the Clones, or that Windu defeats Palpatine midway through Revenge of the Sith. Both allegations are suspect. Yoda held his own against Dooku, but there's no indication that he was actually winning before Dooku broke off the fight and forced Yoda to save Anakin and Obi-Wan instead of chase him. And in any case, Yoda is presented as being leagues ahead of Anakin, so if Yoda can only fight him to a standstill, what hope does Anakin have?
Likewise, Mace Windu's alleged defeat of Palpatine is suspect. One possibility is that Palpatine threw the fight in order to force Anakin to side with him and betray the Jedi Order. Another possibility is that Mace legitimately won, but a) Mace is not the hero, and b) Mace dies immediately thereafter. So the only guy who could defeat Palpatine in the Prequel Trilogy is no more. Palpatine's threat, therefore, is not diminished.
In the Classic Trilogy, all three of the villains are killed the first time they're defeated. Tarkin goes down on Death Star I. Vader is crippled by Luke and killed by Palpatine's Force Lightning. Palpatine is defeated and thrown down a reactor shaft by Vader. Again, you could argue that Vader was defeated in the dogfight over Death Star I, except a) no he wasn't, he was taken out by a lucky accident when his wingman clipped him, and b) he's never put in a TIE fighter again, so the heroes never have to face the allegedly-diminished threat of Vader's piloting skills.
I'm going to step away from Star Wars for a second to discuss the giant glowing eye in the room, because you might be thinking of one very famous villain who was defeated before the story he appeared in ever began: Sauron, the eponymous Lord of the Rings. Sauron was defeated hundreds of years ago by Isildur, and he's been incorporeal ever since. But putting aside the fact that Isildur is long-dead and not the hero of the story, is Sauron himself ever presented as a physical threat? Sauron embodies the concept of evil, both its corrupting influence (the One Ring) and its destructive power (the armies of Mordor). Furthermore, Sauron's defeat was so long ago it's basically the stuff of legend, and his defeat came at such great cost; "does this generation have what it takes to defeat him?" is a question that lingers over the entire story.
The Disney Trilogy villains break all three rules.
Did you notice how the Emperor never appears in A New Hope? That's so that Tarkin's defeat at the end of the film doesn't taint the Emperor. In the Disney Trilogy, all three villains are present; all three have an interest in Starkiller Base; in effect, all three are defeated at the film's conclusion. And none were good villains to begin with.
Snoke is a cheap Gollum Palpatine. We know how Palpatine came to power, and it gives him Reputation points: he corrupted the office of Chancellor, engineered a war, and accrued emergency powers until he could declare himself Emperor. (Even in the Classic Trilogy, we knew that Palpatine birthed the Empire from the ashes of the Old Republic; Obi-Wan relates that the Jedi were "the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic... before the dark times, before the Empire. ... A young Jedi named Darth Vader... helped the Emperor hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights.") Snoke is just this guy who came out of nowhere and suddenly has a new army under his command.
Snoke doesn't take any shit, but he's forced to moderate a Kylo/Hux bitch-fest. This does him no favors, because his chosen underlings are immature dweebs.
Hux has to take Kylo's shit because... well, because Snoke is a shitty leader, I guess. In A New Hope, it was evident that Tarkin was Vader's superior. Do you think the Emperor would have tolerated Vader and Tarkin getting into a bitch-fest? Hux has to take Poe's shit in The Last Jedi because, well, because he's a pathetic excuse for a villain, that's why.
As for Hux's reputation... he doesn't really have one. He's just this guy who gives a speech and, in the sequel, turns into a Verizon Wireless ad. It's terrible.
This brings us to Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren is the worst abomination ever to pollute a Star Wars film. I would rather watch six hours of Star Wars: Gungans than suffer through a trilogy with him as the most significant villain.
So one of the first things that happens in The Force Awakens is Kylo blocks a blaster bolt. Neat! This gives him instant Reputation; this man is obviously a badass. Then Poe Dameron, the closest thing The Force Awakens has to an actual character, is dragged in front of him. Kylo immediately drops down to talk face-to-face with Poe. This is a stupid idea. Villains should tower over heroes; villains should never lower themselves to the hero's level; and Kylo's pose looks fucking ridiculous.
Then Poe makes a quip. Does Kylo immediately melt his brain? No. Does he shut him down, a la Vader or Tarkin? No. Does he even manage to muster up a quip of his own? No. In the span of fifteen seconds, Kylo has both taken shit and failed to live up to his reputation. FAIL.
Now I could go on, at length, about how an immature brat with Force powers is both exactly what we hated about the prequels and in no way a credible threat to the heroes, but I'll save some time. At the conclusion of The Force Awakens, Kylo is trounced so badly that, if you were watching the fight in isolation as merely a film student, you would be forgiven for thinking that Kylo was the hero and Rey the villain.
If I had to sum up everything wrong with Kylo Ren, it would be this. No villain in cinematic history could recover after stumbling backwards away from an implacable, advancing threat. It takes him five steps to regain some semblance of form! And Daisy's comment, "She's super strong and he's so weak" is spot on. You cannot have a heroic display against a weak villain!
So no. There is no redeeming these characters. Kill them all, and bring in some real villains.
Because you cannot have real heroics without real villains to fight.
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