Heroes, Villains, and the Art of Creating Characters

In television, especially in the recent years, you often find a very fine line between heroes and villains. As opposed to comics where the villain is some sort of easily distinguishable hideous monster with sharp fangs and dirty claws.

While the hero on the other hand is probably some sort of beautiful and muscular person, with solid principles and an unshakable moral code... Oh and who usually wears their underwear on top of their yoga pants.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s take one of the most popular shows recently, say Game of Thrones. It’s easy to observe that most of the characters have done seriously questionable things, and by questionable things I mean downright cruel.

Jaime Lannister, one of the most popular characters on the show has among other things thrown a child out of a castle, and raped his own sister next to the barely cold body of their incestuous son.

Tyrion, another one of the most beloved characters has killed his girlfriend when he caught her cheating.

Even Jon Snow - arguably the kindest of all - has once killed an old man called Janos Slynt for refusing to obey his orders and go to what he perceived as a suicide mission, even after the latter retracted, admitted that fear got the best of him and asked for mercy.

But even by those parameters, none of these characters would ever appear to be a villain to the vast majority of viewers. In fact, people are more likely to root for them to win the game of thrones.

There’s a couple of reasons why that happens.

The first reason is that the story-line hosts a couple of truly disturbed and seriously malignant characters such as King Joffrey and Ramsay Bolton, far and away the two most evil characters in the series.

You see, their malevolence is so glaringly palpable that it makes people want to root for anyone else, but them.

The difference maker in this case is that when it comes to perceived morality, every other character shows a few shades of grey, thus standing in strong contrast with these two villains whose moral code is unquestionably pitch black.

In essence, George RR Martin was very ingenious in creating a couple of characters that are overtly and an unapologetically evil, causing the audience to empathize with the rest of the cast.

Some may even root for some seriously shady characters such as Bronn or The Hound due to the highly distinguishable contrast that is created between the two sets of villains.

In Layman’s terms, people are rooting for the lesser of two evils.

The Lesser of Two Evils, where have we heard that before?

There are of course other ingredients that cause the audience to root for these characters. For example, creating empathy from the get go.

You see, everyone of the main characters has encountered some big tragedy from the beginning. Every single one of them in fact.

Tyrion is born deformed in the books, Jon snow is a bastard, Jaime Lannister lost his hand, Daenarys Stromborn was forced to an arranged marriage as a teenager.

Each of the main protagonists was in one way or another presented in a manner that would cause the audience to empathize with them.

The Hero’s Journey, undoubtedly one of the most notorious story archetypes in the art of storytelling has one main premise: Tragedy - Struggle - Catharsis.

The reason why many storytellers open with a tragedy out of the gates is to cause the audience to empathize to these characters, or maybe even relate to them. And examples of that are many:

From the Gladiator whose family has been murdered by the Roman empire in the biggest of blockbusters, to the ‘lost’ twin who was given to a poor family in the lamest of Telenovelas… The structure remains the same.

Think of any movie that you’ve seen recently, Guardians of the Galaxy? Star-lord’s mom died in the opening scene of the movie when he was a child.

Luke Skywalker? More of the same. Bruce Wayne? His family was killed when he was a child… In front of his eyes.

How about The Godfather? He has been ‘forced’ to a life of crime after his family was murdered by rivals. Shawshank redemption? The protagonist is unjustly imprisoned.

How about The Green Mile?

Do you see where this going?

However, there’s a new TV show that has bravely defied all these traditional character structures and successfully broke every single rule of the book, presenting a new and revolutionary way for character building… And I have to tell you, that was truly refreshing.

And that my friends, will be the subject of the next post, so...

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