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Post by The Mad Plumber on Jul 5, 2011 13:17:11 GMT -5
I'm finishing up an article to ultimately post to my website. The article reviews a film that I noted as not having a true identifiable villain. Most films seem to features villains of some sort and it is of particular difficulty to name films that do not feature villains. So, I thought I would open this thread to see if our board's users could help identify films that meet the criteria of this thread. Also, users should politely highlight when they think that a mentioned film does not meet the criteria of this thread.
So far, I can only think of two films that meet this thread's criteria.
Kiki's Delivery Service While there might be the occasional character with a slightly antagonistic attitude towards our protagonist, there is certainly no villainy in their behavior. The real conflict in this picture is Kiki versus her own demons.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind It's been a little more than a year since I've seen it, but I think this film meets the criteria. However, there is something of a fake-out since, given the child's abduction, we might be given to think that the aliens are the villain. Furthermore, there is certainly no maliciousness on part of the military to throw them into the camp of villainy.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Jul 5, 2011 13:35:45 GMT -5
my favorite film ever, Days of Heaven by Terrence Mallick, has only main characters whose motivations you are led to understanding.
A movie I also really liked--probably in my top 50 of all time--was a little British film called Lawless Heart, in which you get to view the story events three times from various perspectives, which accomplishes a number of things, including seeing many sides of the conflicts in the story.
Before Sunrise didn't have any bad guys. Or conflict. Or plot. I think there are oodles of independent films that you could say that about. Like...did My Dinner with Andre have a bad guy? I don't think Conversations with Other Woman had one...probably there are many more.
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Post by Shep on Jul 5, 2011 14:38:21 GMT -5
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jul 9, 2011 10:01:52 GMT -5
Apollo 13 was the first I thought of on seeing this title.
Re Kiki, one thing I like about a lot of Japanese films is that they seem to muddy up the antagonists to the point where "villain" seems too strong a word for them. Mononoke Hime is another Miyazaki film which particularly comes to mind there. While the samurai in that are presented as a fairly villainous bunch, characters like Jigo-bou or especially Lady Eboshi are given a lot more redeeming qualities than I suspect they would have had in a US development of the same concept.
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Post by angilasman on Jul 9, 2011 13:40:38 GMT -5
You can count most of Miyazaki's work. Only Castle of Cagliostro and Castle in the Sky have clear-cut villians.
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Post by The Mad Plumber on Jul 9, 2011 13:51:45 GMT -5
You can count most of Miyazaki's work. Only Castle of Cagliostro and Castle in the Sky have clear-cut villians. I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree. Yes, characters like Lady Eboshi and Moro fall into gray areas, and thus they are more like antagonists than villains. However, you cannot discount characters like the Witch of the Waste (or by proxy Madame Suliman), the Seaplane Pirates, or Yubaba simply because they have one or two redeeming values or because they absolve themselves in the final act.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jul 9, 2011 16:17:32 GMT -5
It does seem like you sort of have to define "villain," though. Aside from Miyazaki, some of the specific cases I'm thinking of are the Onmyoji movies, both of which are marked by antagonist characters who are driven to extremes by initially righteous senses of vengeance. Their presentation is really quite sympathetic.
There's also the whole anti-hero sort of genre, of which I'm reminded by some of Beat Takeshi's films, that don't make the hero/villain distinction as sharp. But then, that would extend to cover a lot of other ground as well.
Edit: Speaking of Kitano, Kikujiro's Summer is another film that clearly has no villain, though Beat's character is certainly in the roguish mold.
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Post by Mr. Atari on Jul 9, 2011 16:29:12 GMT -5
What about Woody Allen's movies? Sweet and Lowdown comes immediately to mind.
I'm sure there are a lot of movies like that where the only real villain is the protagonist's own inner conflict.
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jul 9, 2011 17:16:57 GMT -5
Yes, I guess my reaction to this question stemmed partly from shooting the breeze with a buddy of mine just last week. He teaches English in Tokyo, and reported a student asking him why US movies went to such lengths to make sure the bad guys had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
If such a wholly black-hatted standard is used, then it doesn't seem at all hard to list movies without villains. I suppose another definition might be some particular character who consciously obstructs the protagonist over an irreconcilable conflict, which I suppose would get around Mr. A's man-vs-self case as well as man-vs-nature, but only through a technicality. Much beyond that and it seems that "villain" just equates with "antagonist," inherent in any conflict.
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Post by BJ on Jul 9, 2011 19:40:20 GMT -5
^ I think you've found the problem with a question like this. When I looked at my IMDB vote history, I saw a large amount of films that had no villain, but I think I'm on the more lenient side when judging characters. Is Roy Batty a villain, or any of the other characters in Blade Runner? I don't think so. Who is the villain in Citizen Kane or Maltese Falcon?
Ijon brings up the antihero genre. In a land of selfish, often evil people, it can be hard for a true villain to exist. MST3K did many films where a group of people is stranded somewhere, trying to survive. Is mother nature the villain, or the vacuum of space? How about films with basically one character, such as Cast Away, or films with two likeable characters going at it, such as Catch Me If You Can? Then there's the human interest/love story, maybe a Wes Anderson film (or Mr. Atari's Woody Allen example). There's no real villain in these everyman going through life types of stories. Office Space just popped in my head, with Lumbergh. Early on, he's set up as a paper villain, but by the end Peter realizes he's just another harmless jerk. Are these characters villains, simply because the protagonist doesn't like them?
Anyway, for what it's worth, the first thing I thought of was Troy, specifically the battle between Achilles and Hector. The film was never meant to be loyal to Homer's poems, but the complexity of heroism is definitely there. Neither Hector nor Achilles is a villain, yet neither is perfect. It's up to viewers to decide what we think about these men, their actions, their motivations, and what makes someone a hero.
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Post by angilasman on Jul 9, 2011 20:52:32 GMT -5
I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree. Yes, characters like Lady Eboshi and Moro fall into gray areas, and thus they are more like antagonists than villains. However, you cannot discount characters like the Witch of the Waste (or by proxy Madame Suliman), the Seaplane Pirates, or Yubaba simply because they have one or two redeeming values or because they absolve themselves in the final act. The Witch of the Waste.... hmmmm, plays the role of both antagonist and eventually a companion of the heroes. The Seaplane Pirates are too jovial and Beagle Boy-like to be total villians. Yubaba I will give you, although we don't totally hate her for some reason I don't quite understand (just Miyazaki doing his thing, I suppose). What I mean is that even Miyazaki's villians aren't (usually) the clear-cut villians we're used to... but you're right: they do serve the narrative function of villian. The plots of Kurt Vonnegut's novels rarely feature villians.
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Post by zombiewhacker on Jul 17, 2011 3:54:05 GMT -5
The Big Chill.
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Post by The Mad Plumber on Jul 27, 2011 16:30:40 GMT -5
Rain Man This one might be questionable since out main character could be defined as perhaps an anti-hero or an anti-villain. This is a character development piece where our protagonist of sorts grows through trying to understand this brother he never knew he had.
Rocky Future sequels have clear-cut villains. Apollo Creed, however, is not a villain or even an antagonist by my standards. Rocky is another character piece dealing with our hero's relationships with his closest friends.
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Post by Don Quixote on Jul 29, 2011 20:43:08 GMT -5
Monster A-Go-Go doesn't have a villain. Or a plot. Or any redeeming qualities whatsoever.
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Post by jackbauer on Aug 2, 2011 10:15:58 GMT -5
Kiki's Delivery ServiceWhile there might be the occasional character with a slightly antagonistic attitude towards our protagonist, there is certainly no villainy in their behavior. The real conflict in this picture is Kiki versus her own demons. A lot of Miyazaki films lack "villains" (most recently Ponyo).
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