Accurate villainy?

“Don’t write cardboard villains,” your creative writing teacher will say on the first day of class. You’re supposed to write villains who have a rationale. Who make sense to themselves. They feel what they are doing is right.

I don’t disagree with this advice. I love when the “bad guys” are reasonable from their own point of view. But I also love when they are simple. Darth Vader is a fantastic villain—especially in the first movies where he’s the embodiment of evil, set to ominous music. The prequels should never have tried to humanize him.

But what is the accurate view of villainy? When I read accounts of atrocities—the Holocaust, the gulags, the Rwandan genocide, the South African apartheid—I’m struck by how simple-minded the true-life villains are. Why do they kill, torture, and rape? Because they want to.

I’m not saying they don’t have reasons for what they do. But those reasons are a combination of their genetics, upbringing, and political climate—not a mere difference of opinion.

So it turns out the “realistic” depiction of villainy is not always realistic. Sometimes Darth Vader is closer to the truth. So don’t listen to your creative writing teacher. He’s naive.