i rewatched 1984 some time ago and it occurred to me that in good cinema, as in real life. there are no goodies and baddies. a good protagonist should have flaws and a good villain should have redeemable qualities (winston is prepared to do reprehensible acts, some of o'briens methods and beliefs make sense). its almost like the protagonist of a film could be the baddy in a film written from the point of view the antagonist.
i shouldnt be rooting for the protagonist just because hes doing what he feels obligated to do because its objectively the right thing to do. i should be watching someone grow as a person and try and reconcile moral ambiguity.
the antagonist shouldnt be 1 dimensionally evil. they too should be struggling to overcome adversity, but their conclusions on what needs to be done should contrast and conflict with the protagonist to help the protagonist better understand their choices.
and then you have silco
i want to see him shit all over the bourgeoisie but his methods are reprehensible.
i hate him for turning jinx into a degenerate whore but at least he was there for her
his goals are just but his motives are born out of negativity
i dont know whether i want to kick his ass or help him out.
he seems that he is redeemable but i feel like trying would be futile.
he has completely ruined vilains in most media i watch now. i see some 1 dimensional villain, who is unequivocally evil and have no interest in what they are doing, all i feel is that it would be better if they werent doing what they were doing. this servers to push the plot forward without offering any intrigue.
as a side note, i think this is one of the reasons i dont like comic book movies.
You sound like a schizo ESL who misinterpreted some of the show but you're not wrong in the sense that he's an entire tier above every other character. He carried the story.
I dont watch/read much either because of this too. I especially hate it when the author gets on a soapbox and uses the medium to preach at their audience. The latest thing I enjoyed was Golden Kamuy, though its heavier on the jokes and gags compared to Arcane. Maybe you can give it a try (manga is better btw).
I don't knkow about ever but at least when it comes to modern western cartoons he's probably the only really successfully executed morally gray/actually had a point villain I've seen
This show is going to have the same problem as Game of Thrones. Has a very good initial premise for how a conflict begins and how the status quo is established, but it accomplishes that by burning through interesting situations far too quickly and by getting rid of the best characters, by discarding what made the show initially work. Silco was like Ned Stark and Tywin compressed into one, he and the dynamics he created (mainly with Jinx) was lightning in a bottle. I'm worried the show will gradually become worse and become shackled to the task of having to strictly adhere to the status quo that is now existing in the source material.
>a good villain should have redeemable qualities This is unnecessary. The only thing a villain needs is to be >cool >imposing that's it. If you make your villain cool - so cool that he's the center of attention whenever he's on screen, then he will be memorable. It also makes the heroes look better by defeating a cool villain. A common trap that hack writers - especially those with social justice tendencies - fall into is to make their villains pathetic. See Hux or whatever from nu-star wars. This is because they don't want to glorify the villain's point of view but it's a big mistake because nobody likes a pathetic villain. They aren't cool or interesting and they're no fun for the audience. If anything your hero should be pathetic so that they have some room to grow.
he should have been kept alive for a few seasons and slowly redeemed only to be turned into some evil soulless character like shaco completely undoing everything he worked toward
