HEROES & ANTIHEROES – How Far is Too Far?
Posted by Steve Moody on Aug 5, 2011 in News | 13 commentsHow far is too far? At what point do an antihero’s actions push him over the edge into villain territory? Or do we sometimes refer to a character as an antihero when he’s been a villain all along? Sometimes an antihero is a good person forced to do some bad things, or a bad person who is forced to do good things or does them accidentally, as a byproduct of his otherwise bad actions. A lot of it is to do with context. Mainly we accept our fictional protagonist doing all kinds of morally dubious deeds, provided the antagonist is at least marginally worse. Let’s have a look at some of these characters who push – or simply smash through – the boundaries.
SNAKE PLISSKEN – ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK & ESCAPE FROM LA
Snake is a highly decorated ex-war hero who turned to a life of crime. In the first movie he is sent to rescue the President of America, who has been captured by a gang of criminals, and to retrieve information that could bring World War III to an end. The second movie has a very similar plot. Snake however isn’t interested in saving the world, and in fact seems to actively dislike it. He only agrees to the missions because of implants that will kill him if he doesn’t comply. At the end of the first movie he destroys the tape, ensuring that the war will continue. The second movie concludes with Snake activating an EMP device which will shut down all the Earth’s machines, no doubt plunging the entire planet into chaos and a new dark age. He does these things seemingly out of spite and disdain for the human race. Verdict? Villain.
“I don’t give a **** about your war… or your president.”
LOBO – DC COMICS
He’s an alien bounty hunter, whose main activity is hunting down the vilest criminals in the universe and, usually, killing them with extreme violence. For a while his humorous adventures made him one of the company’s most popular characters. He will never break his word, is kind to space dolphins and protective of Al and Darlene who work in his favourite diner. Doesn’t sound that bad does he? As long as those he kills are real scum, right? Except this is a guy who, in order to be unique, murdered everybody on his home planet with a horrible plague. His violence extends to pretty much anyone who crosses his path. His wholesale slaughter of innocent men, women and children take him from antihero to villain. That’s genocide for you.
“FRAG!”
RORSCHACH – WATCHMEN (MOVIE & DC COMIC)
A masked vigilante superhero that makes Batman look cheerful. He has no mercy for criminals and hunts them obsessively. Normally he’d be a hero, plain and simple, but his crusade against crime is definitely in the realm of monomania and he has gone off the edge of sanity. Unlike many superheroes his priority is not protecting the innocent, it is punishing the guilty. He has a pretty bleak view of his fellow humans, and little desire to save them. He started off as a typical “good” vigilante, but exposure to life’s worst elements gradually chipped away and he went insane. However he at least focuses his rage on criminals and only hurts innocent people if they get in the way of his “work,” such as police officers trying to apprehend him. At the time of his death I would say he was still in the category of antihero (just), but if he’d survived longer he would gradually have gone further and further into the realm of villain as he lost more of his mind.
‘Rorschach’s Journal. October 12th, 1985: Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!”… and I’ll whisper “no.”‘
So looking at these examples – and I’m sure you can think of many more – it would seem that one important factor in whether a character has gone from antihero to villain is their attitude toward innocent people. We don’t mind them killing or torturing people who deserve it, beating confessions or information out of lowlifes, planting evidence or breaking and entering if they need to get the job done. Intimidation and threats are the antiheroes’ stock in trade and often we wouldn’t have it any other way. Our acceptance of the antiheroes’ methods can sometimes apply to real life, not just in fiction. Recently the newspapers reported the following story: a man woke one night to discover a group of masked men ransacking his home; he struggled with them and as a result he stabbed one of the burglars to death. He was arrested on suspicion of murder but was later released without charge as the judge decided he had used justifiable force in protecting himself and his family. “Good, one less burglar on the streets” you may think, as does everyone I’ve heard speak about the case. But would you think the same if the dead burglar was one of your loved ones who had fallen on hard times and was robbing the place out of desperation rather than greed?
We don’t often analyse the actions of our antihero protagonists, if we did we might not like what we see. One example that has been debated often on the internet is the first Matrix movie, when Neo and Trinity blast their way through an army of nameless security guards. As far as we know every anonymous cannon fodder was an innocent man just doing his job, with no knowledge of the real situation. Did they deserve to be slaughtered? Sure, it made for a thrilling climax, but was murdering them the only way to save their friend?
The fact is although we love to read or watch the Punisher throwing a drug dealer off a roof, or Judge Dredd blowing away bank robbers, we probably wouldn’t want to meet these kind of people in the real world.
Snake Plisskin a villain? What are you some kind of establishment apologist? Hey, man. Snake is the only honest man in a totally corrupt world— a world I was frankly happy to see him pull the plug on. The whole point of the two films, one a remake of the other, was to show how corrupt the society he lived in was. Hopefully in the ensuing chaos created by turning off the machines a better world will emerge. Not a villain. Not an anti-hero. A HERO!
Sure, wouldn’t want a run in with either of those characters you mentioned…on one side of the law or the other, but they sure are fun to watch/read. Sometimes we need a little wholesale mayhem…as long as its on the silverscreen or printed page. Would rather read/see all that versus the current human/vampire/werewolf ménage à trois garbage.
One man’s hero is another’s villian. Pancho Villa raided a quiet town town in Texas and had to be chased off by the US Army. He became a villain to the US and precipitated the US army’s invasion of Mexico.
He also fought against a corrupt government, built countless schools, led great armies to victory in battle, worked to establish order, honest government, feed the masses, get land for the common man.
Hero, anti-hero, or villian? depends which side of the gun you’re on.
Well, first off let me say that I think Snake is a great character and it’s his belligerant, anti-social attitude that makes him so. It’s not really the loss of innocent lives due to his actions that makes him a villain I think, because under certain circumstances that can be unavoidable (towns and cities bombed during a war for example). What makes him a villain is his motive. Pure malice and contempt for everyone and everything. I think he’d hate to be called a hero, he’s far too cynical for that.
And it’s that attitude that makes him stand out from the crowd of “Goody Two-Shoes” heroes.
Snake doesn’t have pure malice and contempt for everyone and everything. Where’d you get that idea, Steve? He just hates AUTHORITY. Because in the John Carpenter/Snake Plissken universe, all authority figures are corrupt a–holes with motivations far sinister than anything Snake could be found guilty of. What’s really interesting about Escape from New York is that within the prison/island where the worst criminal elements live, one figure, the Duke of NY, has seized power and become the corrupt authority figure within that system. He’s a villain, not Snake. The Duke of NY is one level of villainy, the prison system that injects Snake with miniature explosives to force him to rescue the Pres is another level. And Carpenter had fun with the President too, as the ultimate authority figure, making him look like a buffoon. You wrote a nice, well-written article, but I think your premise at least in regard to Snake is completely wrong.
I too tended to see Snake as a hero, or at least anti-hero. He disdains society as a whole but seems to care about at least some individuals he meets. A good character to consider here is Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane. Definitely a villain in most cases, since he is clearly out for himself. But I still kind of like him. Weird.
John, I agree with you that authority in Snake’s world is corrupt, and he’s right to hold it in contempt. However Snake’s ultimate act of revenge (destroying all the world’s machines)doesn’t just target authority. It condemns the entire human race to chaos, most of whom haven’t done anything to earn his disdain. Imagine what would happen! The riots, the looting and rampaging. The loss of innocent lives would be immense, planes would fall from the skies, hospitals would become defunct, starvation alone would kill millions of people who are not part of the authority that Snake rightly hates. In my opinion it’s his willingness to allow all those innocents to suffer and die without a second thought, just to get revenge or prove a point, that shows he doesn’t value innocent lives and it’s that which makes him a villain. A very cool, entertaining villain, but a villain nonetheless. Of course, that’s just MY opinion. I haven’t seen the films in quite a while, and when I see them again I’ll be paying extra attention to see if Mr Plissken can change my mind.
Firstly, I am horrified that someone could write an article about anti-hero archetypes in F and SF and not mention Han Solo, but that aside…
The entire attraction of anti-heroes is watching them walk the line between near-villany and villany. Characters like V in ‘V for vendetta’ are not really heroic, they could best be described as bag guys who just happen to be working for the good guys. Trying to determine to what level and what limit a character will go before their ‘morals’ or internal limits kick in is part of the fascination. And when those characters go over the edge, they tend to need secondary characters to bring them back. Witness sarah Conner in Terminator 2. She goes ‘too far’ for the audience, attempting to kill an innocent family man for his research, and is dragged back from the line by her son.
The conflict is interesting, but it is also somewhat more realistic, and that i feel is what brings the reader in. Nobody really wears a white hat or a black hat in real life. If you want a n amazing view of the ultimate anti-hero (and one based in reality) go and watch ‘Elizabeth’ and keep your eyes on Walsignham, played by Geoffrey Rush.
Heroes are boring. Villains are predictable. Anti-heros, and their corrolary, anti-Villans (Sympathetic Villains with their own internal codes despite their actions and goals) are far more real, more visceral, and more fun to watch/read.
Allen, I mentioned Han Solo in my first article, and I dare say he’ll crop up again. I think, when I was a kid, he was one of the first antiheroes I encountered.
And I agree with you: “Heroes are boring. Villains are predictable. Anti-heros, and their corrolary, anti-Villans (Sympathetic Villains with their own internal codes despite their actions and goals) are far more real, more visceral, and more fun to watch/read.”
That’s why I was never a big fan of Superman and similar types. Batman was always more interesting.
Indeed, I think this is why many people, whether they realised it or not, were infuriated by Greedo ‘shooting first’ in the re-release. Suddenly his first big chops as an antihero are lost.
That really was annoying. Han shot first!
Does anyone know why Snake went from a war hero to a master criminal?
Read the novelisation by Mike McQuay.
The deleted prologue to Escape from New York is available via You Tube as well.
Snake came back from the war against Russia a hero. America was in chaos due to the Russian bombs and nerve gas. The United States Police Force took over and cleared the streets of the crazies and the homeless, hungry mobs.
Snake’s innocent parents were killed in a USPF action.
The first day back from the war Snake blew up a police car…and that’s how it started.
He wasn’t a criminal so much as a one man revolution. That’s why so many people know who he is in the story. None of this was explained in the movie of course. Mike McQuay did an excellent job of putting all the pieces together in the novel.
Let’s not talk about Escape from LA. That was just crap every which way. A rip-off movie to make a quick buck from the people who so enjoyed the first movie.
The ending was the best part.
Snake’s sick of the new USA and the way the planet is being run. He figures (perhaps rightly) that maybe we need a new beginning.
One press of that button and our one man revolution wins the day.
As for the innocents who might be killed or thrown into chaos by Snake’s actions…in war there’s always innocent victims and people are always going to suffer.
When Snake killed people in the war he was a hero. When he did it for himself he became a criminal/killer.
I don’t see Snake as a hero or a villian. Just a man who was pushed too far and who pushed back, but harder.
The best anti-hero on the screen in recent times was Vin Diesel in Pitch Black. Now there was a chararcter you were never completly sure about.
It’s a shame they ruined the second movie by going all big time saga storyline.
I understand there’s a third movie being made, more in line with the first one. Hope so.
Hey Jaq, glad to see you in these here parts!
And a great comment too, with lots to think upon.