Posted June 2, 2008
By tseigler

Bad guys aren’t bad, they’re just misunderstood. Sure, their devious plots to rule the world and increase the size of their bank accounts might result in collateral damage on an epic scale, but they’re just more assertive than the rest of us. You’re just pissed that you didn’t think of it first.

In the movies, bad guys are almost always more compelling when they’re fleshed out by dynamic actors. Jack Nicholson stole the first “Batman” movie, just as the (regrettably) late Heath Ledger looks to do in the latest installment. Marlon Brando didn’t show up until the last act of “Apocalypse Now,” but he made quite an impression. And no list of villains would be complete without the baddest bad man of all time, the original “Man in Black,” Darth Vader. No amount of whiny prequel Anakin crying can ruin that.

Why do we like the bad boys, the ones who blow stuff up and then have a “what, me?” look on their face afterwards? It has something to do with the attractive nature of the world’s first villain, Satan himself. Even John Milton couldn’t resist turning him into a sympathetic figure, just a regular guy who wanted his shot at being the big cheese. That deserves eternal damnation, showing a little gumption?

In a world of real-life bad guys (Hitler, Saddam, Barry Bonds, etc.), many of whom don’t give us the benefit of revealing their hilariously over-the-top schemes before sending us into an easily escapable “death trap,” we need the release that hockey-masked axe killers give us. They’re not attractive just because they’re bad; they’re appealing because they usually get theirs in the end. But they have a hell of a lot of fun getting there.