Why villains can't be villains nowdays...

Manchildren are convinced that layers-of-grey equals "mature". Star Wars EU has been struggling with this problem for decades.

>Why villains can't be villains nowdays?

M8 is pretty common knowledge that Doom is pleb writer filter, only retarded hacks write him as sympathetic, he's supposed to be so fucking douche that is hilarious.

blame Mr. Freeze

Better than “LOL I AM SO EVIL BECAUSE IT IS FUN” with the depth of a spilled thimble of milk

Doom started as a straight up bad guy while Magneto was always an anti villain.

>while Magneto was always an anti villain.
I take it you've never read Silver Age X-Men then.

You mean you want more Red Skulls.

Sorry, you only get one.

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But 7/10 times it's not really

Sheev is the greatest villain of all time exactly because of that. He isn't evil because of muh sob story.

Even Red Skull eventually got a tragic backstory where his mother died giving birth to him and he grew up in poverty in post-WWI Germany raised by his abusive alcoholic father. And then said father died and he ended up in a terrible orphanage, and then became a drifter until he finally got a stable job as a bellboy.

hahahaha, this faggot thinks people on Yea Forums read comics.

it enables much more options
perfect hero going against the incarnation of the devil itself gets boring sometimes, unless you have something going on like on shonnens: great action

>Sheev is the greatest villain of all time

Wild fucking claim right here lads

Name an interesting villain without a tragic backstory that is not completelly insane.

Because the best villains are those with tragic backstories.

Now hold on, this doesn't mean that those with tragic backstories are automatically good. In fact, a lot of them are just hackneyed garbage that comes off as 'well this dude was mean to me at work once, so I became a serial killer'. But the best villains, the truly best, all have tragic backstories and make up the small percentage at the top.

You can have evil, whiny and jealous, but the best of those are either because they fit the theme of the story so well, or because it's amusing how much of a dick they are. This even applies for villains within the same universe.

>Darth Traya was more memorable than Darth Malak
>Nox was more memorable than anything bar maybe the appreciation of breasts and butts in Wakfu AND Dofus
>Zuko and Iroh were more memorable and liked than Ozai and Azula, though I do think all four are great
>Freeze is liked more than Scarecrow

That being said, there's an awful lot of fucking awful 'sad backstory' villains, who just come off as whiners with too much power

>Darth Box's entire crew of Sith are essentially dickheads, despite having 'tragic' lore
>Vitiate is Vitiate
>Doom is mad that Richards still lives/will live/once existed, and now hates everyone
>Still not exactly sure what Snoke is
>Kuvira was a pampered orphan who was fostered by the richest family in the richest area in her country, was well loved, and subsequently starts a fascist empire and ethnic based gulags because 'waaah ORPHAN WAAAAAH'

doom is a hero

As far as I know, Mysterio has no tragic backstory.

>checks wiki
Nope, just a special effects guy that decided to turn to crime.

Palpatine got no backstory at all,in his first canon cameo he was already middle aged and a master sith about to put his master plan in action.

We don't know anything about him at all besidess the fact he's a politician that know how to use the force.

Except Vader's only treated in that manner after they've made it clear that he's subordinate to Palpatine, whose villain status is never a matter for speculation.

Killer Moth?

Sorry man, but SW always was overrated pap. It's pretty much ground zero for this modern phenomenon of nostalgia worship and creative bankruptcy.

Zerg

Mysterio is not even on Spider-Man top 5 most popular villains, hell he's not even in the top 10.
>b-but the Movie
Vulture is still a literal who and his movie version if pretty different from the comics, being a strong middle aged charismatic crime boss instead of the frail elder in the comics.

Who is Yea Forums's equivalent to Dio Brando, Larfleeze?

>the entire senate and jedi council had to be retarded just so Sheev could become emperor.
how convenient

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Norman is one of the few Marvel villains who started off sympathetic and got retconned into being totally evil.

It's pretty funny going back and looking at the likes of Doc Ock, Sandman, Rhino etc. and seeing how them portrayed less sympathetically than Stormin Norman.

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A tragic backstory doesn’t make a villain less guilty of his crimes
We all suffer in this world, not everyone chooses to act like an asshole about it
understand and pity them maybe, but don’t forgive them

Villains who are just evil for no reason are literal shit tier boring. Its interesting when a villain has either a reason for being the way he is, or simply has a belief that makes him feel like his way of doing things is better.

"I'm just SO EVIL FOR NO reason is hehehe" is child tier storytelling.

Zod

Kang the Conqueror had no tragic backstory. He was just an extremely bored normal guy living in his utopian future, so he took his ancestor's time machine to go fight wars in the past and future.

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He's at least a contender for top 10.
Only Goblin, Venom and Doc Ock are known in the mainstream consciousness anyway.

Dio has the death of his mom and growing up in poverty with an asshole drunk for a dad.

What villains literally have no reason for being evil? Don’t fucking say the joker because his origin has never been explicitly told. There’s a place for any kind of villain if it’s told in the right way

If it's done well, you should be able to make a link between the tragic backstory and their evil actions.

But some writers think any tacked on sob story will do.
>I want to manipulate the motor industry to forcibly insert automatic speed limits into smart cars to prevent road accidents, because when I was 6, my dog was killed in a hit and run incident
Is a bit silly but would still give you insight into the villains outloom
>I want to start a war between two nations because when I was 6, my dog was killed in a hit and run incident.
Is just nonsensical and wouldn't generate any sympathy at all.

Those poor dogs

Those are just plot devices to get him into the Joestar mansion.

He's a completelly normal guy that thinks that being a villain is fun.

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Doom is a fucking PUNK.

Everyone talks about how horrible a villain he is, yet every damn one of his reads, at least the ones that I've seen or been suggested to see by Yea Forums, depict him as more of a fucking antihero than an actual villain.

Joker -- Killed Jason Todd, paralyzed Barbara, killed Sarah, etc.

Magneto -- Ripped Wolverine's fucking skeleton out

Green Goblin -- Killed Gwen Stacy, all of the psychological damage to his own fucking son

Doom -- The nigga delivered Reed Richards' child.

His big "act of villainy" there was just NAMING THE GIRL. Sure, you can toss out the whole "oh well he was proving that he could do something that Richards couldn't, he could help his family when Richards could not", or the bs "Oh well he's a classy motherfucker dohoho/he's an honorable villain" crap out there, but when it comes down to it, Doom hasn't done SHIT.

That all being said, Doom crying at 9/11 wasn't any sort of break in character or anything to me. Hell, I would even go as far to say that it was entirely IN character.

I can't say much about the Star Wars EU but Zuko and Iroh were antagonistic forces, not villains. For all the screeching Zucunt made before he reconcilled with his uncle, we knew he was just a hystrionic soldier doing his job just like most of the Fire Nation.

Freeze is similar, most of the things he did in Batman were for the sake of his wife and even in his stories he antagonized Batman because Bats was the Law made physical and opposed Freeze's methods not his goals. If you want to be anal about, before the Animated series, Freeze was a villain because Ice is nIce and he loved robbing banks with his wacky ice gun.

The only villain on top of my head that I can think of as interesting with a truly tragic backstory is Oedipus Rex and that's mostly because his circumstances were part of a giant self-fullfiling prophecy spawning across two generations.

Often, if a villain is given a tragic backstory it's either because he isn't the true villain but an antagonist in the story and that's only because the viewer has spent most of his time with the main characters rather than their opponents or if they are given one it's in the most manchildish way of "WOE IS ME I'M A SHIT". If Magneto becomes a hero every Thursday instead of being Mutant Jew Hitler it's not interesting because that implies he's not a villain just a hystrionic manbaby with mood swings, whereas as a villain, his situations would make sense as his rage and situations molded his rage and blinded him into thinking he is right and the cure for the world. And yes, I'm using the old Magneto origin stories not that Max Eisenhart bullshit. Magneto was Eric Lensher Magnus and that's that.

The thing is, the capes(and older fantasy and adventure stories like the ones Star Wars was based off of and is) don't really lend themselves to the writting of good villains because they are used as the primary source of action, as they should be. The great thing about capes is that they can have that but they can also have an antagonist to bounce off verbally their ideas and explore themes and have adventures devoid of villains to show their innate heroism and values or even their flaws and how they can overcome to ascned from heroes to superheroes.

because we are all now aware that there is no good and evil and everyone has nuanced motives.

FUCKING THANK YOU. Somebody finally gets it.

Shut up Buddha.

Because anytime you have a purely evil character these days it becomes a political shitfest or some idiot who reads tv tropes trying to sound smarter than they are. And that's not counting the self inserters and shippers that can't stand the character they like being evil so the excuses start.

>Mysterio
>Not even top 10

Kill yourself

>Mysterio not in the top 5 or 10 of popular spider man villains
Yeah eat a dick buddy. Nobody knows any spider-man villains after goblin venom and ock, Mysterio might at least get a couple people to call him the “fishbowl guy” in passing at least

>villain without a tragic backstory that is not completelly insane.

Abarekiller in Super Sentai. A doctor who was bored of his life

Norman Osborne.
Anthony Stark.
Brainiac.

>Norman Osborne.
>lost his fortune as a kid
>drunk father constantly tortured him to the point he got several phobias.

Also mongul. You can make an argument he’s insane in certain stories like when he attacked coast city but otherwise he’s just running warworld to himself

>I'm just SO EVIL FOR NO reason

There are people in real life that are evil killers just for the lolz and pleasure

And there are people who think playing as murderhobos is good roleplay because there are druggy lunatics in real life.

Yeah but it's never used as a justification or to frame him as poor victim who needs to be saved.
It's more recounting how Norman got his outlook on life.

Wasn't Doom in the same boat as Reed Richards, but he just wasn't as lucky?

I miss moustache rolling villains. They were at least funny, not the fragile villains we have today with their sob stories.

>Kills a Dog for no reason
>Disrepects everyone around him
>Massacres a whole ass town

He has every trait befitting of an interesting villian except that he isn't because psyche bitch he is the villian he has no redeeming qualities

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Palpatine from star wars.

How is Adrian fucking Toomes is more of a villain than Thanos in the movies.

Doom does as he pleases.

It's more of a cultural thing, we can't just have snidly whiplash duct taping a girl to the train tracks or a bank robber with a sock over his face anymore, because somebody is going to ask or write "Why he's doing this?" and give it an extra layer of "Depth". Hell, we can't even write old rich white guys as cartoonish villains like Smithers or Dr.Wily anymore because "Maybe they're onto something here".

In Magneto's first appearance he tried to steal nuclear missiles in order to nuke major population centers in order to exterminate Humans and make more Mutants. He believed that Mutants were unquestionably superior to Humans and was written as Literal Mutant Hitler. The sympathetic backstory didn't come in till much later.

Dubs and trips of truth have spoken.

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They did such a good job making it easy to hate Micah.

>selling weapons and attempted murder against a teenager vs. randomly wiping out half of the universe

X-fags are infamous for telling people to start with Claremont, it always seems like an attempt to cover up Silver Age Magneto, and to pretend X-Men was always about the minority metaphor. Silver Age X-Men isn't anywhere near as bad as they claim, it just doesn't fit their narrative.

Silver Age X-Men is bad and boring, at least the Neal Adams stuff looks good though

Pretty much. Writers have been struggling with Magneto's early characterization for years.

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That is probably the easiest way to avoid a sympathetic backstory while keeping a villain compelling, make him a warlord who sees himself as a man of destiny.

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Yeah Stern was a big "Magneto is irredeemable and evil" guy. nobody's perfect. There was a big fight over the end of X-Men vs Avengers because of it

It's not Lee or Kirby's best work, but it's a mid-tier Silver Age comic. It doesn't deserve the level of hatred it gets.

That's basically Vegeta and Freeza

Megatron used to be a warlord villain like this, who enjoyed being cruel and oppressive, but IDW have given him a sympathetic origin that's seems to be sticking.

>redlelmediafag

>Freeza
He's just a thief who steal land to sell to rich businessmen, not really a warlord wanting to take over the universe.

apparently only joker can be bad for the sake of being bad

Joker is mentally ill and there is several characters like that.

Carnage is literally a serial killer that was born a sociopath and started murdering for no reason at all;

Joker is mentally ill because of his tragic backstory. Or one of them is...maybe.

Holy shit you idiot eunuch

Wasn’t it explained Kassidy believed he was freeing people by murdering them or some pseudo philosophical bullshit?

starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Yuuzhan_Vong

>It’s an easy way to make a character interesting.
Only if you're a hack writer

>literally fanfiction

I think that was the Amazing Spider-man 2 game that got it from a limited series run. All I remember was Cleetus was mad crazy and when he was happy he liked killing dudes. When he was sad and mad, he liked shanking dudes till they day. Then symbiotes happened and every day he was happy.

Toriyama confirmed it when he describes Freeza's personality as that of a loanshark mobster who goes around basically building an empire through mob enforcing and protection money except with land and planets. And he likes that top.

Villains with tragic backstories are shit, villains who are evil just because and aren't poorly written are the fucking best.
>Makuta
>Aku
>The Green Goblin
>Black Manta (he gives no shits about his dad dying he just hates aquaman fuck off boon)

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Every character needs a motivation. Nobody does stuff for no reason whatsoever. Just because you have a reason doesn't excuse your behavior. Even Satan has a backstory.

>Nobody does stuff for no reason whatsoever
Every user on Yea Forums hates "the other" for no reason whatsoever, so your reasoning is inaccurate.

The results they achieve have no bearing on how evil they are.

What's wrong with a tragedy being a defining motivator for the Villain's actions? Plenty of heroes have a tragedy in their backstory which motivated them, and they didn't become villains, so there's still an internal element that led them to becoming villains.

>Every user on Yea Forums hates "the other" for no reason whatsoever

That's not true, The Other is not even close to being the most-hated Spider-Man event.

As opposed to the real life events that were recorded by George Lucas and his team of historians?

What about comedic villains that are still a massive threat? I know people like Aku and Emperor Zurg for those reasons. Are there even any other examples of this out there?

Yes

Silver Age X-men was cancelled for a reason. Even the vastly improved Adams/Thomas run wasn't enough to save them.

>Every user on Yea Forums hates "the other" for no reason whatsoever
There is a reason they hate the other, and if you were going to do a story about a 4channer, then you'd probably address this.

Silver Age Hulk and Silver Surfer were cancelled as well, all with sales that would make any modern book a top-seller. The years when X-Men was a reprint book, it sold better than most current books do.

Villains without a compelling back story are either 1) XD EVIL IS JUST FUN or 2) utterly banal

Both can exist, but neither are interesting.

The Joker, duh.

>Silver Age Hulk and Silver Surfer were cancelled as well, all with sales that would make any modern book a top-seller.

Opportunity cost nigger. Not only was Marvel healthier back then (not reliant on a relaunched #1s, gimmicky crossovers every 4 months and 3 alternate covers per book) but for an extended stretch they were limited in how many books they could publish because of their distribution deal. Profit is good but more profit is more gooder.

>joker
>good

>joker
>comedic