Villains Pt. 1

There might be some people who argue otherwise, but I'm pretty sure
the villain, or antagonist, is of tantamount importance to the manner
in which a story is told. Imagine "Star Wars" without Darth Vader.
Imagine Indiana Jones without the Nazis. Imagine "Twister" without the
tornado.

Some of you reading that might think, "Twister", really? You saw that?

Yes. The reason I mention it here is because there's no hard and fast
rule that the antagonist in a story needs to be a human. I think that
is one mighty big flaw in the idea of saying Villain. The tornado is
the primary antagonist, and easily outshines the mostly pointless part
portrayed by Cary Elwes. So why do we remember the tornado and not Mr.
Elwes?

Simple. The tornado presented a heady challenge to the hero. And the
special effects. But I think it also has something to do with the
universal cultural fear of something. We all can understand the vague
concept of the destructive power of a tornado. I mean, we might not
know the exact nature of the tornado. We might not have seen,
firsthand, the destructive power of the tornado, but we can imagine
it. And it seems monstrous and insurmountable.

Perhaps, then a good question might be to query why volcanos make poor
antagonists? I propose, because they are too mountainous.

Sorry.

I think there is something overpowering about the volcano. It's too
big. Too insurmountable. We see the hero go up against the volcano,
and it just seems ridiculous.

Of course, this brings up the problem of man vs nature. As far as I've
seem, and forgive me for just using the masculine pronoun but let us
just pretend it can leap about and stand for all the genders (I mean,
isn't that the point of generalizing?), there are a few ways to
generalize protagonist vs antagonist. Man vs nature. Man vs man. And
man vs himself.

Can man ever win against Narture? I mean, the realest answer I can
think of is survival. But is that a victory or just a postponement of
the battle?

One manner in which there's a difference between, say "Dante's Peak"
and "Twister" is the goal of the protagonist. Not just survival, but
something else. And it is this something else that injects something
new to the man vs nature. See, by not just surviving, by trying to
overcome and best this element of nature, I think we, the audience can
be pulled in somehow. We see there is a possibility that victory, and
not just survival, is possible. We can feel that, and that inner
caveman is intrigued by the idea of beating nature.

You know? Survival has been played out. We want more. We want to
conquer.

Next time man vs nature again... Animals.

Sent from my iPod