The Sympathetic Villain | Why The Bad Guy Is Taking Over

Which superpower is the greatest of them all: super strength or invisibility? On our collaborative @Netflix Film Club series “Take Two,“ we’re answering this question through the movie Thunder Force: ​ Watch it now on the Netflix Film Club YouTube channel! | Today we’ve moved beyond The Age of the Antihero to center someone even worse: The Sympathetic Villain. Increasingly, we’re seeing stories with a villain-protagonist, who might not be contrasted with any likable, featured hero. A story about a Sympathetic Villain is a bold experiment, but it might not always work. Yet at their best, the Sympathetic Villain is a means for articulating a fascinating critique of society and its mores -- as we can see from some enduring cinema classics who were actually about sympathetic villains all along. When it succeeds, the Sympathetic Villain story makes us see ourselves in the villain -- and see the villainy in ourselves. Support The Take: Shop our Limited Edition Merch: