Why do most Hollywood movies have cartoon villains?

quote:

---

There are some great, complex villians out there.

---

maybe in some of the better TV writing recently but I'm not seeing it happen in any 2 hour Hollywood blockbusters.

quote:

---

I was actually rooting for the "villain" in Avatar.

---

Yeah, I didn't for a second buy Jake betraying his entire species just for flying velociraptors and cat pussy. Plus Jake kicking the humans off the planet is an overwhelmingly stupid decision given that the humans now know the weak spot and in a generation are just going to come back and nuke that tree from space. He's pretty much doomed them as a whole.

quote:

---

Consider a pos movie like Avatar for example. Bad guys are cardboard character who have nothing but a 5yo view on good vs evil.

---

Umm, you just described every single character in Avatar.

for the 1000th time, Hollywood is in the business of making money; they are not in the business of making works of art. Cartoon villains is a proven money maker just like mary sue is a proven money maker. These are kiss method approaches.

quote:

---

Consider a pos movie like Avatar for example. Bad guys are cardboard character who have nothing but a 5yo view on good vs evil.

Then look at most Japanese movies. I'll use Miyazaki as an example. Almost every single movie he's written has cookie-cutter villains in the beginning who evolve throughout the movie and by the end you have sympathy for their position and how they came to be the way they are. Often the bad guys end up unexpectedly being somewhat heroic or simply misguided. I know that's a shocking concept for the shitty writing talent in LA.

Ironic since these movies are literally cartoons yet the characters are written in a thoughtful mature way.

Hollywood feels like cheap propaganda by comparison. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie where the "bad guy" was written in a way that made you understand why they are the way they are.

---

It's kind of funny that Loki got slammed in the villain thread. He was too high for sure, but he is outside of the box in terms of modern villains.

Big budget tentpoles, the movies that get the majority of marketing and press, are nearly always going to have simply defined heroes and villains. That much is true. I'd argue a different problem, that we've gotten far too far into moral relativity for there to be compelling villains, this is why often villains are conveniently created or just exist for a "greater purpose," rather than just that purpose to "be evil."

Villains don't need to be grey to be complex, so insinuating that a good way to make one is via them being sort of heroic or misguided is just as weak as something who has simple motivations.

Evil should be interesting, and scary. It shouldn't be "Well, just look at it from their perspective. They aren't really evil."