The Villain Your Heroes Can't And Shouldn't Beat

HGohwell 2020-01-07 16:54:54 UTC #1

This is more me musing on one particular villain more than anything but then it occurred to me that I have the same situation (I'm not going to call it a problem because I don't think it is) with both the pieces I'm currently working on. The thing is, there are villains your hero just can't (or shouldn't) be able to beat. And I think this is ok.

If you're not interesting in backstory for this ramble skip down to the last paragraph below the video:

This particular train of thought came up because today one of my favourite villain's had a new character song release and it always gets me thinking about villains and escalation. Quite simply, Carol is a level of villain that the heroes couldn't, or shouldn't, be able to beat because she was so beyond them. In the end it was Carol who defeated herself. Her plan involved her minions jobbing early on when they quite clearly have been shown to vastly out-power to heroes and Carol herself vastly out-powers them. But even by the end of the heroes arc, they still can't really match her and its her own memories that do her in at the end. She then returns several seasons later, at the same sort of power level and very handily defeats the miniboss squad the heroes have been struggling with through half the season and then very nearly defeats a literal god.

And rather than using things like love and friendship, Carol stands almost entirely on her own, even when on the side of the heroes.She relies on things like logic and science in the form of her alchemy, and interestingly it's never really presented as a bad thing, just coming from the wrong place when being used to harm. Yes, in the end it is the power of love that wins, but it's very clear that Carol's power is beyond that of the heroes.

And it really got me thinking about the villains that are so vastly out of the heroes league. And there's nothing wrong with this in my opinion. As I mentioned, I realised that both of my current projects the person behind everything is someone not really the sort of people the heroes can defeat. They are beyond our heroes capability and power levels. And I think sometimes stories get too carried away with defeating the ultimate villain. And I understand why in a child's series, they much prefer a full resolution where you can say all the villains have been defeated. But in more mature series where you can have some nuance, the need to remove everyone villain until the world is saved can get the author carried away.

There are some villains that are just beyond the level of the heroes and I think some stories need to that. Some stories need the scope to be toned down. I think sometimes, I respect an author more for just saying "this is the character's power level and that's where it's staying" and if you must defeat other villains, find a smarter way to do it than just constantly making your hero more and more powerful. What does everyone else think about villains that are beyond the hero being allowed to be just that; beyond the hero?

keii4ii 2020-01-07 17:07:28 UTC #2

Might be a bit of a tangent, but I appreciate it when stories acknowledge that not every problem can be solved no matter how hard you try. I, personally, am at a point in my life where I want affirmation that it's okay to fail, it's okay to run into problems that you couldn't possibly solve, that these things happen IRL and it does not make you an unworthy person.

(And this preference doesn't make me a more mature person, lol. It's just where I am at right now, and who knows, maybe I'll start seeking out more uplifting "don't give up until you reach victory!" stories later?)

I didn't watch this in its entirety, but Terminator 3 (I just caught like 2 minutes of it toward the end) had an ending that fit that theme. They couldn't prevent the war. They couldn't prevent the downfall of humanity. All they were tasked to do, which they didn't realize until the end, was to prepare themselves for the inevitable.

My own comic has a sorta-similar-ish situation going on.

antimekii 2020-01-07 17:09:56 UTC #3

This one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to shounen anime? Authors who are incapable of handling overpowered villains. Usually the way around these stuff are just outsmarting the villains in their own game, if not I'd welcome a story which deals with a story where a hero genuinely can not defeat a villain...or metaphorical villain. I guess for metaphorical villains, the story should center around the hero dealing with the effects of the villain's wrongdoing.

keii4ii 2020-01-07 17:16:55 UTC #4

I also just remembered!

There is a Korean webcomic about labor union leaders struggling against powerful, greedy companies, and against internal conflicts within the union. Some court victories were had, but the main character becomes increasingly doubtful: was he the right person to lead these people? Were the struggles even worth it in the first place? The victories seemed few, and the prices too high.

The series ends with pretty much all the Evil Rich Entities still rich and powerful, but the main character gains the motivation/will to keep fighting. He accepts that the fight will never end, that the underdogs will forever be underdogs... but all the effort and tears, it's still worth it.

I found that far more uplifting than it would've been if the story ended with the union crushing the evil rich corporations in some landslide court victory.

darthmongoose 2020-01-07 17:31:17 UTC #5

I think too often shows and movies seem to forget what their antagonist is actually for. Like this isn't even just an anime problem, a lot of Marvel Movies have been awful for setting up a villain who ultimately is just a big ol' monstery bad version of the hero who the hero has to fight at the end.

Ultimately when you create an antagonist, their level of power should be decided by what lesson your hero needs to learn in order to overcome them, by overcoming their own internal flaws.
In some cases, this may mean pushing themselves to overcome their limits and defeat a superior opponent in combat. But in a lot of cases, it may actually mean realising that their flaw is self destructive and the villain has it too, and that you can actually just not engage and let that villain destroy themselves, or perhaps realising that the villain's violence is actually a reflection of their own and that they must instead show love and be a peacemaker... There are a bunch of ways a villain can be undone, and a lot of them are way more interesting than just "Smack the villain a bunch, almost lose but then decide not to lose and win instead and almost die, but then decide not to die when all the other characters cry over you".
A good antagonist is menacing, poses a genuine threat to things the hero holds dear, and would be insurmountable for the hero as they are at the start of the story. By the end of the story, the hero can overcome the villain, by stopping them, foiling their plan, making them go away, changing them etc. etc. and how they do it will be inspired by the lesson the hero learned. That makes the process sound boring and formulaic, but it isn't because there are like a million ways to do it.

DokiDokiTsuna 2020-01-07 17:35:53 UTC #6

FRICK, THAT WAS TODAY??

...Ahem...anyway, I guess it's true that not every villain can be physically beaten, and it kind of destroys the tension when you know, no matter what happens, the protagonists will just get a power boost and win in the end. Or when a certain protagonist is just too "special" to ever really lose (I don't dislike Hibiki, but there's a reason she's never been my favorite Gear User). If you have to make those kinds of addenda to the character's ability catalog over and over in order to keep the story going, maybe you should have just stopped after the first villain died. =/

But if you really want more and more villains...why can't they all be at the same (or similar) levels?? What's wrong with going from serial killer to anarchist to terrorist, instead of serial killer to alien invader to literal god of destruction??

I've never really understood this obsession with 'saving the world/universe'...not everything has to be at that scale. It's okay (and to be honest, it's more realistic) to be saving different groups of people from different localized threats, rather than saving everything in existence from one giant mega-threat. There are more kinds of tension to have in a story than just "CAN this villain be beaten??"

And if you work like that, guess what? Your protags probably won't need a giant logic-straining power-up every season, and you probably won't have to try so hard to come up with each new villain. It's a win-win situation that I wish more action-hero writers would take advantage of...

HGohwell 2020-01-07 19:16:44 UTC #7

These are really important to me too. I feel like the main conflict should be overcome usually but it should be ok for there to be a wider situation that you can't fix. Or that just can't be fixed with your skill set and that's ok. There are plenty of ways to handle and I wish more stories would.

I really wish more stories would do this tbh. So many stories just go "and here's a new power up so you can punch harder" rather than figuring out a smarter way around it.

This is the sort of thing I've ended up with in my own projects. The big powerful evil figures behind it all are still there and realistically there's not anything the heroes can do. Even falling into the lesser of two evils where trying to defeat them, even if they could, would be worse than leaving them in place.

I mean, yeah basically. It can be done well but it is boring a lot of them and relies on just one way of doing things. Punching someone shouldn't work for everything.

It is! And both Sforzando and the Zababa duet are everything they promised to be.

It can definitely work to an extent but it really does ruin a lot of the tension. Even with formulaic series, you should be able to build tension in how they're going to beat them even if you can't say if they're going to beat them. (I always preferred Maria in that respect, we always knew she was pretty strong she just needed to get her head in the right place to use her strength properly).

I think this is one of the problems with people thinking they have to escalate with every new villain. Gotta be bigger stakes than before and things get too big so their hero has to get stronger too. (It's why I especially started going off how they were handling Hibiki in GX's finale and especially the AXZ finale with everyone's powers combined).

burginlewis 2020-01-07 19:38:16 UTC #8

The NRA.

Seriously, though: anybody with a gun. It's a running joke/theme in the story. My peeps have all manner of superpowers, but they can't really deal with projectiles.

skicoak 2020-01-07 20:53:00 UTC #9

There's an old Marvel Comics equivalent with Spider-man often engaging an overpowered villain in the hopes of stalling them long enough for the Avengers or Fantastic Four to show up.

nathanKmcwilliams 2020-01-07 20:55:32 UTC #10

Like when he ended up fighting Firelord. He got his ass handed to him there. Wasn't it the FF that saved his bacon on that one?

joannekwan 2020-01-07 20:59:49 UTC #11

I can't agree with this more!!!

I'm currently wrapping up Demon House and so many comments are expressing the wish to see the demons permanently freed from the house and I'm like: I never even considered that because that is way beyond Tula's scope of capability and that wasn't ever one of the problems I set them up to solve in the first place?? The demons being bound to the house is just a fact of life, and that's just how it is.

CodeMonkeyArts 2020-01-07 21:21:02 UTC #12

My villain is the protagonist and she, along with her squad, are absurdly rich and powerful. I never intend for the heroes to even be close enough to beat my villain protagonist within the story and it will take a lot more than love and determination to bring down a mafia family.

skicoak 2020-01-07 21:22:35 UTC #13

I was thinking more of when he was trying to stop Juggernaut ...

And he didn't "win" in any traditional way...

But that Firelord fight sounds familiar too.

nathanKmcwilliams 2020-01-07 21:31:43 UTC #14

Yeah I remember him vs Juggernaut too. There's been quite a few times Spidey's been up against enemies way out of his league.

Even most of his own rogue's gallery is stronger than he is.

Outsmarting his opponents is one of his calling cards. Electro was a biggie way back in the silver age. He ended up making a rubber suit.