Each issue presents a different topic on the story design of popular movies.

THE ANTAGONIST

The antagonist is the character who opposes the desires and primary objective of the protagonist. He is the villain who is always in conflict with the protagonist, either directly or through his surrogates. While both the protagonist and antagonist must persevere to bring the fight to the climax, the antagonist is the character who is ruthless and will stop at nothing to obtain his goal. He is the relentless force that the protagonist must finally defeat. He is also the character that generates the most dangerous obstacles for the protagonist.

Some antagonists are anti-human and reptilian in appearance, such as the Great White Shark (Jaws), Raptors (Jurassic Park), the Aliens (ID4), the Edgar-Bug (MIB), and Randall (Monsters, Inc.). These characters are naturally terrifying and repulsive to most people in the audience.

The antagonist usually wants power and control over the lives of the other characters. He or she will break all codes of human conduct to achieve this end. The antagonist often has a complete disregard for human life and will kill any character that opposes his objectives. He will kill even his most loyal friends, if it serves his purposes. Terror and betrayal are the standard modes of behavior for the antagonist, as best exemplified by the Joker in Batman, who kills his loyal bodyguard Bob. The audience learns that this is a character that they cannot trust.

The audience must understand the motivation of the antagonist, and these motivations must be believable. The more negative emotional involvement the audience has with the antagonist, the more engrossed they will become with the story. The audience should hate him so much that they will want to see the antagonist destroyed at the climax scene of the movie. For example in Batman, the Joker reveals his evil nature by disfiguring works of art in the Flugelheim Museum and scarring the face of his beautiful girlfriend, Alicia. He is a character that has no shred of humanity left with which the audience can identify.

At the beginning of the story, the antagonist is more powerful than the protagonist. This makes the protagonist’s struggle to achieve his primary objective much more difficult. The antagonist is usually in control of the concrete object or the protagonist’s love interest during the third act, before the climax scene. The protagonist must defeat the antagonist without destroying the love interest, while still attempting to achieve his primary objective. By this time in the story, the audience should have a great empathy for both the protagonist and his love interest, and therefore, the audience’s emotional stake in the outcome of the climax will also be high. In the climax scene, the life-and-death battle, the antagonist wants to destroy the protagonist. In Lord of the Rings, the Dark Lord Sauron through his supporters wants to destroy Frodo and capture the One Ring; Voldemort wants to kill Harry Potter; Scar wants to destroy Simba in The Lion King; the Green Goblin wants to kill Spider-Man; and in Monster’s Inc. Randall wants to destroy the human child, Boo.

The antagonist is the character that the filmmaker wants the audience to hate. But this does not have to be true in every scene of the movie. In Batman, the audience has some sympathy for the Joker because he is betrayed by Boss Grissom and horribly disfigured when dropped into the vat containing toxic chemicals. But most importantly, the Joker makes the audience laugh. The audience likes any character that has a sense of humor. Yet by the end of climax scene, the audience wants the mad Joker destroyed.

In order for the writer to ensure that the audience hates the villain, the writer will have the antagonist associated with characters that are evil, vicious and deserving of the audience’s enmity. This is usually the function of the villain’s henchmen. In Star Wars, the Commander of the Death Star destroys the planet Alderan even after Princess Leia has told him what he wants to know. He kills the whole population of a world just to test the destructive capacity of the Death Star. In Spider-Man, the Green Goblin attacks and terrorizes Peter Parker’s Aunt May. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, this is accomplished by having one of Belloc’s associates, the fiendish German, be the character that is hated for his sadistic acts. Hate by association is then transferred to Belloc. This technique allows Belloc to function as a realistic rival for the affections of Marion, the love interest of the story. The audience can have sympathy for Marion’s emotional conflicts as she tries to choose between Jones and Belloc.

Deception is often used by the antagonist in his battle with the protagonist. Sometimes the true identity of the real villain is withheld from the protagonist and the audience until the climax. This device has been used in the Harry Potter movies, in which we finally discover that Voldemort is really controlling Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and Voldemort is really Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Below are the antagonists in the megahit movies.

Titanic: Cal

Star Wars: Darth Vader

E.T. : "Keys" and the Government Agents

The Phantom Menace: Darth Sidious

Spider-Man: Green Goblin

Lord of the Rings-Return of the King: The Dark Lord Sauron

Jurassic Park: The Raptors

Forrest Gump: Being Normal

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: Voldemort (Prof. Quirrell)

Lord of the Rings-The Fellowship of the Rings: Dark Lord Sauron

The Lion King: Scar

Lord of the Rings-The Two Towers: Dark Lord Sauron

Finding Nemo: The Dentist and Darla

Return of the Jedi: The Emperor

Independence Day : The Aliens

Star Wars- Attack of the Clones: Count Dooku

The Sixth Sense: Dead People

Empire Strikes Back: Darth Vader

Pirates of the Caribbean: Barbossa

Home Alone: The Two Burglars

Matrix Reloaded: The Matrix and Agent Smiths

Shrek: Lord Farquaad

Jaws: The Great White Shark

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets : Voldemort (Tom Riddle)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas: Mayor August May Who

Monsters, Inc.: Randall

Batman : The Joker

Men In Black : The Edgar-Bug Alien

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