What's my point? My point is that these guys were VILLAINS! They were evil, they lived and breathed evil, and you knew it. There was no ambiguity in their evilness, they didn't believe they were doing something nice, and you could feel good about fighting them. As opposed to like you were kicking a puppy or something that just so happened to not know it shouldn't pee on the carpet and launch a bomb that would destroy a city in some effort to save humanity from... what was I talking about?
Now, though, there's just no FUN to these villains. They're all a bunch of wusses. Some of them will actually cry if you beat them, and some of them certainly don't know how to do PROPER evil! Let's describe something for you. We have a villain who is going around, stealing people's souls and using ancient artifacts as part of some scheme to unleash ancient unspeakable evil upon the earth, granting himself insane amounts of power. THAT right there is a hardcore INTENSE villain who you couldn't POSSIBLY ruin by-
Oh, I guess you COULD ruin a villain like that. See, back in the 80s this villain would have LOOKED like Skeletor, or Megatron (maybe they would have stolen engines instead of souls, I don't know), or SOMETHING evil. This guy? This guy looks like he's about to go to a rather interesting sort of club and experience all sorts of cosmic horrors (but none of them related to souls). He's a wuss! Baby-faced pretty boy wearing, of all things, eyeliner (or is that mascara?), and pink. Not a pink polo, or something- that just makes him a fratboy background extra- but a pink... is that some sort of hoody/blouse combination?
I'd like to repeat once again that this isn't the fruity sidekick, because that's becoming the norm. This isn't the hero in some Japanese perversion. THIS IS THE VILLAIN. You are supposed to cower in fear of this guy as he steals your soul by- wait, defeating you in a card game? Really? So all I have to do is not carry around a deck of cards, or at least not pull it out, and I'm safe? Really? How am I supposed to actually take this show seriously? One good punch to pretty-boy here and he'll be gone, you can take back his souls... oh, whatever.
I could go on all day. But instead I'll talk about a villain from my childhood who used to be awesome: Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik. See, the Robotnik you know from the games was going around, taking animals and stuffing them into robots, and trying to collect the magical gemstones that would give him all sorts of power. Sounds only somewhat threatening until you consider that in the second game he built a giant Death Star equivalent. And he was going to use these gemstones to superpower this thing and... I don't know, unleash ultimate doom or something? The games don't really say, and to be honest it was kind of a dumb idea because if you blew the planet up or damaged it you'd have to land eventually to eat- unless he had internal farms- BUT DUMB IDEAS ARE A HALLMARK OF GOOD VILLAINY! Somehow.
And then there was the cartoon (SatAM, not AoSTH, for those who saw either/or), where he looked more evil, had already taken over the world and was just converting EVERYONE into his evil army. AWESOME! Dr. Robotnik you are one AWESOME villain, especially for a kid-friendly franchise, and you are hereby inducted into the Samcasm Hall of-
Huh? Who are you? Are you actually the same guy? *scrolls up* Yeah, I did call you Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, so you must be. Well, still, you're just a modernized, updated LOOK to an old villain, right? OK, let's go watch your show for some memorable quotes and-
OK, so THIS Robotnik just said something about "But when you actually HURT someone that's going too far!" which is just sad. I mean, really, Robot- I mean, "Eggman"? Really? You built a giant death station, you fought a guy from within space, you built machines that threw around FIRE or destroyed landscapes in order to try and kill one hedgehog, and finally, you detonated an entire island that would presumably have had military personnel on it! I mean, really, how can you even change your stance like this?! It's too late for you to-
Wait.
Wait.
Maybe Eggman still IS a good villain.
HURTING someone is going too far. That is crossing the line, if you will. Now hurting someone could go only as far as say, a minor bruise. Killing someone would be going a lot farther. Much, much farther. And if you go TOO far you will actually travel across the ENTIRE EARTH, traveling farther and farther away from the original line, until you could very well CROSS THE LINE TWICE. Logically if you have crossed the line twice you are on the right side of the line again. (Alternatively maybe you just wind up on the original side of the line or something.) So maybe, JUST MAYBE, hurting someone is going too far because it's evil- BUT NOT EVIL ENOUGH!
So there you have it folks. We can't create NEW good villains. If you want a villain, go look back to at least the 90s and update him a little, throw in a few lines that may confuse the parents, and come out with something awesome. At least I think that's how it works. Just don't do something like taking the original Gaius Baltar and making him some conflicted accidental traitor instead of a genocidal maniac...
