Writing the Antihero
Making Your Audience Love the Bad Guy
by Jaden
What is an antihero?
An antihero is a villainous main character of your story, a protagonist who is not quite as nice or good or perfect as the archetypical hero. An antihero has serious personality flaws and often may be the stereotypical bad guy, a downright villain, but for some reason, we like him or her. Antiheroes are often criminals and we see the story from their perspective, which causes us to relate.
An archetypical hero may be beautiful, strong, noble, rich, blessed, intelligent, lucky, or have super powers; an antihero will try to get those things in corrupt ways.
The envy and hate a person may feel towards the hero may create an antihero, a less fortunate person driven by sin, basic instinct, or need to ignoble actions.
The antihero can be the underdog who becomes top dog by unscrupulous methods.
A most famous example of an antihero is the character Tony Montana played by Al Pacino in Scarface (1983), a poor Cuban guy with a crazy temper who climbs up to great wealth as a drug dealer, pictured above with his foxy wife played by Michelle Pfeiffer.
Why do you have to make your audience love your antihero?
Your audience has to love your antihero or your script won’t sell. Movies with fully detestable lead characters do not sell.
People do not want to be angered or depressed by a movie, they want to feel charged and rejuvenated. When people go to see a movie, they want relief in some sort of way. If your lead character only makes people feel uncomfortable and frustrated, or they do not relate to him or her at all, you will have a flop of a movie.
The antihero serves the common people by taking action where the rest of us don’t because our good morals and laws prevent us. The antihero reacts to his anger about perceived injustices that may have to do with money, crime, war, bad manners, or relationships, whereas the average person will do nothing. We want this bad guy to succeed because we are secretly angry too, but we can’t do anything about it.
The antihero serves a very important part of society, filling a void in our lives, the void where we feel powerless. The antihero makes us feel like something right is being done to equalize things, even if it is wrong.
The antihero is our hero because he is doing what no one else wants to do and he takes all the heat for it.
How do you write your antihero into your script so that your audience will love him or her?
By telling the story from your villainous antihero’s perspective, the audience is forced to relate with him or her on some level. You must show why your antihero became the way he did, why he does what he does, and give the audience a reasonable answer to which we can all relate.
The antihero must have traits to which the audience can relate. The antihero may have a family he is trying to save, protect, or support. The antihero may have basic needs that everyone has, trying to make money to eat and support himself. The antihero may have a love interest who is his weakness — we can all relate to being in love.
No matter how bad you make your antihero, as long as he or she has personality traits and life circumstances to which the audience can relate, you can write a successful antihero.
The motivations of your antihero have to be something to which your audience can relate. Wanting money, power, living comforts, and love are some of the most common motivations with which we can empathize.
As the antihero is doing bad things, he must be punished, so don’t forget to punish your antihero. If he doesn’t get punished, then he is just another bad guy, an antagonist, and your audience will hate (and envy) him for getting away with it, which is not good if you want to make money as a screenwriter.
The audience must sympathize with your antihero.
When you write your story for your antihero, imagine that the audience is a court jury and you are the antihero’s defense attorney. It is your duty to convince the jury, that despite all the bad things your client has done, he doesn’t deserve to be punished. And why he doesn’t deserve to be punished (even though he will get punished) is because your jury audience can relate to the motivations of why he did what he did. If you can’t make the jury understand his perspective, you have just another loser creep on the stand that everyone wants to give the death penalty, and that my friend, is not a good antihero and not a financially successful movie either, and you have failed as a defense attorney and as a writer because your client is just so bad and inhuman that no one can relate to him, nobody likes him.
Ultimately, your lead character, whether good or bad, has to win a popularity contest. The majority of people must like him. That’s what movie sales are, they are the public saying, yeah, we love that one, we love that guy. Blockbuster hits are the winners of popularity contests. Love it or hate it, that’s just the way it is. The most popular guy or gal is not necessarily a good person, but it is the person who is most liked.
A well-written antihero will evoke thoughts from the audience like these :
That’s a bad guy, but I can understand why he does what he does. I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side, but I would sure like him on my team. I secretly love him and sometimes wish I was him, but I probably wouldn’t admit that to anyone.
Who are your favorite antiheroes?
Please share in the comments section.
Like this article? Other ScreenwritingforHollywood articles you may like are:
Turning Bad Guys into Good Characters
15 New Script Reviews About 15 Old Movies
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10 Responses to “Writing the Antihero”
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My friend and I were arguing about this! Now I know that I was right. lol! Thanks for making me sure!
Sent from my iPad 4G
VTR Lady — :-) Good. Glad I could help.
As I was reading this, the name “Benjamin Linus” kept flashing. Granted, you are talking about movies and Ben Linus is on LOST which… well.. could by a very very long movie, but I think he fits the antihero role. Sure, he’s considered a villain, but he’s one that I like a lot. In fact, hearing about him so much is what made me want to watch the show. Then, you never really know if he’s good or bad. What is his true purpose for doing what he’s doing? Then again, a lot of characters on LOST might be considered antiheroes, but I think Ben might take the cake.
As for movies, The Joker has been my all time favorite villain. I don’t think he fits antihero at all. As Alfred said in The Dark Knight “Some people just like to watch the world burn.” So I don’t see any justification in evil doing that he does. But he’s such a delightful bad guy, I keep coming back for more. And I mean the Joker in all incarnations, not just Ledger’s portrayal.
I don’t mean to dwell on comic book movies, but many of the characters from Watchmen are antiheroes, from the Comedian, Rorschach… Dr. Manhattan? I’m not sure. I don’t want to give them all away in case you haven’t seen it, but they do some pretty bad things for what they feel are the right reasons. Saving the day, I suppose.
My other antihero that I was actually thinking about last night might be Marv from Sin City. He def fits the description of wanting him on your team, but not your enemy. But usually when I think of antiheroes, they are people who work outside of the law, or may even be running from them… such is the case with Marv.
And here’s a leap… Jack Sparrow? (I was playing 6 degrees of separation and went to Once Upon a Time in Mexico with Johnny Depp’s character a possible antihero.) Sparrow is a pirate, which is supposed to be bad, yet we want him to win. Plus, how can you not love Jack Sparrow?
I actually have a lot of fun thinking about villains, bad guys, antiheroes and the like, so I could probably go on for a while making a case for each one I think up… so I’ll stop now.
favorite anti-heroes, and people who portray them perfectly:
Zatoitchi – The Blind Swordsman
(If you’ve never seen any of these films, it’s worthwhile to see at least one, all available free from Hulu. Unless you like Japanese Samurai films, they get a little repetitive, but *just one * is definitely worthwhile.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zatoichi
Bruce Willis – Die Hard
Eddie Murphy (Beverly Hills Cop , Golden Child)
Darth Vader
Alice (Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil series)
and
my favorite female anti-hero
Alberta Watson (Madeline on La Femme Nikita)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0914491/
t.sterling — Great additions. Thanks.
An Antihero is the lead star of the movie; the antihero may indeed be bad, but he is the guy for whom we are rooting, the lead character.
The Joker would be considered a Villain; he is the Bad Guy. The Joker is not the central figure, even if people are rooting for him. Also, he is too bad to be a hero. An Antihero has more redeeming qualities than the Joker has.
Batman would be closer to an Antihero than the Joker because Batman, although he is the Hero and serving for good causes, is a very dark person in dark world, and he is absolutely the lead character around which the Batman series revolves.
To show what I mean, in contrast, Superman and Spiderman are just straight up Good Guys, they are classic movie Heroes.
An Antihero is the lead character, but somewhat darker and more dysfunctional than a classic Hero.
A Villain is a supplemental character, an antagonist who is mostly bad, and probably is going to be killed. The Joker is a quintessential bad guy.
Yes, WATCHMEN and JACK SPARROW the pirate are great examples of Antiheroes!
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dustin asch –
All good examples of Antiheroes.
Darth Vadar is a villain though. Again, he is not the lead character and he is represented as the epitome of evil.
Antiheroes have good intentions and naughty techniques.
Yes, La Femme Nikita is one of my absolute favorites, and yes, a PERFECT example of an Antihero. Here she is, this drug addict, captured, and turned into an assassin for good causes. She is exactly an Antihero, the lead character around whom the story revolves. She has a conscience that bothers her, yet is forced to be in difficult situations. She is good at heart, but does really bad things.
[...] the movie Waterworld starring antihero Kevin Costner, it is one of the highest costing films of all time with its budget of $175,000,000 [...]
I think relating to a character is very important. And as far as perspective goes I have to cite the example of Psycho…where when Norman bates goes to dump the body even when you know he is on the wrong you want the car to sink as quickly so that he is not discovered.
Whenever I am in need of inspiration I come to you.
Always fresh with ideas that are applicable.
I am an aspiring screenwriter from India and I know that a writer has to write there are no two ways about it. This is my first post.
Cheers everyone!
Swati Trivedi — Thanks for joining us. Psycho Norman Bates is an EXCELLENT example of the anti-hero; thanks for adding that one. For a writer to make the audience sympathize with a freak like that, that is one great writer! Perfect example.
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