Gaining understanding of a villain, the “why” behind their crazy, is a relatively new concept in cinema. Starting around the 1980’s, horror films began to delve into the backstory of monsters. Audiences are allowed into their minds, their pasts, and to understand why it is they do what they do, how they became this monster. Society has embraced this new normal of villain backstories because it gives them a feeling of control, closeness to the character(s), and makes them feel better about themselves when they do bad things. It allows them to justify their actions and be good by comparison. Audiences root for the villains in film because they are the villains in real life. The humanization of villains in cinema corresponds to the acceptance
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They were more comparable to entities of evil like in Le Chaudron Infernal (1903). The demons were green and had horns. In Frankenstein (1910) the monster was so odd in aesthetic and movement. Even in movies like The Werewolf (1913) when there was a story to be told of good to evil the werewolf was still completely foreign in its nature. However, some decades later it was more common to have glimpses of human nature in the same monsters that terrorized humanity. We see this in Hellraiser when Pinhead, the lead demon with a head covered in long nails, is having flashbacks to his previous human life before he unwillingly became this evil entity. We see this in Freddy v. Jason when Freddy Kruger, a mass murderer with a knack for children, torments Jason Voorhees, a masked serial killer who slices teens with a machete, by forcing him to revert back to his child state, in which he is vulnerable and terrified of his mother. We see this in Nightmare on Elm Street when we learn Freddy Kruger was a child molester and murderer until a neighborhood of parents decided to burn him alive. We also see this in Saw when we finally learn the entire story of John Kramer, A.K.A. Jigsaw, a man who puts unsuspecting people in live-or-die traps, to find out his wife’s miscarriage, a car accident, and his attempted suicide are the reasons behind his …show more content…
Empathizing not necessarily meaning that people feel sorry for them or sympathize with their point of view, but rather tend to be more tuned into the pain they are experiencing. People are biologically inclined to want and need to understand their enemy’s pain. “When you watch an action movie and the bad guy appears to be defeated, the moment of his demise draws our focus intensely,” explains Aziz-Zadeh in a press release. “We watch him closely to see whether he’s really down for the count, because it’s critical for predicting his potential for retribution in the future.” People will experience a heightened sense of awareness as it pertains to the pain experienced by villains so that they can better assess their fate. Society needs to know these pain ques and weaknesses of villains so they can find comfort in being able to predict the next move of the
They were more comparable to entities of evil like in Le Chaudron Infernal (1903). The demons were green and had horns. In Frankenstein (1910) the monster was so odd in aesthetic and movement. Even in movies like The Werewolf (1913) when there was a story to be told of good to evil the werewolf was still completely foreign in its nature. However, some decades later it was more common to have glimpses of human nature in the same monsters that terrorized humanity. We see this in Hellraiser when Pinhead, the lead demon with a head covered in long nails, is having flashbacks to his previous human life before he unwillingly became this evil entity. We see this in Freddy v. Jason when Freddy Kruger, a mass murderer with a knack for children, torments Jason Voorhees, a masked serial killer who slices teens with a machete, by forcing him to revert back to his child state, in which he is vulnerable and terrified of his mother. We see this in Nightmare on Elm Street when we learn Freddy Kruger was a child molester and murderer until a neighborhood of parents decided to burn him alive. We also see this in Saw when we finally learn the entire story of John Kramer, A.K.A. Jigsaw, a man who puts unsuspecting people in live-or-die traps, to find out his wife’s miscarriage, a car accident, and his attempted suicide are the reasons behind his …show more content…
Empathizing not necessarily meaning that people feel sorry for them or sympathize with their point of view, but rather tend to be more tuned into the pain they are experiencing. People are biologically inclined to want and need to understand their enemy’s pain. “When you watch an action movie and the bad guy appears to be defeated, the moment of his demise draws our focus intensely,” explains Aziz-Zadeh in a press release. “We watch him closely to see whether he’s really down for the count, because it’s critical for predicting his potential for retribution in the future.” People will experience a heightened sense of awareness as it pertains to the pain experienced by villains so that they can better assess their fate. Society needs to know these pain ques and weaknesses of villains so they can find comfort in being able to predict the next move of the