For the highest profit they need to appeal to all the audiences. For profit writing will always choose to make the bad guys as strong and as cool as possible in order to offset the fact that framing them as the bad guys has potential to alienate a part of the potential audience who finds themselves on that side.
You could make them snivelling weasels nobody would like quite easily. But it would be less appealing to part of the audience. The choice to write them as strong and cool is a profit driven one.
I think you would still have strong and cool villains, yes even fascist ones, without profit motive because strong and cool villains are just fun to write. If every villain was a sniveling weasel media wouldn’t be very much fun. I like a good charismatic villain.
And I mean, its also reflective of reality. Some real world “villains” ARE strong/coolaesthetically/charming/charismatic/interesting/complicated/(initially has good motives but goes off the rails with their methods)/havegoodqualitiesaswell ect ect. Its good to have a variety.
You could make them snivelling weasels nobody would like quite easily. But it would be less appealing to part of the audience. The choice to write them as strong and cool is a profit driven one.
Hence why Tolkien wins (in this very narrow thing, the rest is a bit ) Grima Wormtongue is an absolutely detestable low-level villain that nobody thinks is cool, but he’s also the reason Saruman, one of the “cooler” villains, dies, both in the book and in the movies.
Gotta throw down a mostly unrelated fact cause I saw Wormtongue mentioned. I’ve seen meme being like "Tolkien, master of language, names a traitorous dude Wormtongue. And yeah, the rohirrim speak ango saxon and worm comes from warm as in dragon and tongue from tong as in sword. He’s Grima dragonsword in universe. The Rohirrim literally speak Anglo Saxon
they only kinda-literally speak anglo-saxon, because everything is “translated”
in reality they speak a language related to westron.
but yeah, the translation conceit came later, the rohirrim became what they are cos tolkien went “what if anglo saxons but with horses! wouldnt that be coooooool?”
For the highest profit they need to appeal to all the audiences. For profit writing will always choose to make the bad guys as strong and as cool as possible in order to offset the fact that framing them as the bad guys has potential to alienate a part of the potential audience who finds themselves on that side.
You could make them snivelling weasels nobody would like quite easily. But it would be less appealing to part of the audience. The choice to write them as strong and cool is a profit driven one.
I think you would still have strong and cool villains, yes even fascist ones, without profit motive because strong and cool villains are just fun to write. If every villain was a sniveling weasel media wouldn’t be very much fun. I like a good charismatic villain.
And I mean, its also reflective of reality. Some real world “villains” ARE strong/coolaesthetically/charming/charismatic/interesting/complicated/(initially has good motives but goes off the rails with their methods)/havegoodqualitiesaswell ect ect. Its good to have a variety.
Hence why Tolkien wins (in this very narrow thing, the rest is a bit
) Grima Wormtongue is an absolutely detestable low-level villain that nobody thinks is cool, but he’s also the reason Saruman, one of the “cooler” villains, dies, both in the book and in the movies.
Gotta throw down a mostly unrelated fact cause I saw Wormtongue mentioned. I’ve seen meme being like "Tolkien, master of language, names a traitorous dude Wormtongue. And yeah, the rohirrim speak ango saxon and worm comes from warm as in dragon and tongue from tong as in sword. He’s Grima dragonsword in universe. The Rohirrim literally speak Anglo Saxon
Rohan is evil confirmed.
God Tolkien was such a fucking nerd. I love it.
they only kinda-literally speak anglo-saxon, because everything is “translated”
in reality they speak a language related to westron.
but yeah, the translation conceit came later, the rohirrim became what they are cos tolkien went “what if anglo saxons but with horses! wouldnt that be coooooool?”