Bad Guys Rule

In all the stories told throughout the world there are the good guys and the bad guys. The story is always basically the same as well; the bad guy always has a master plan to do something bad, be it world destruction / domination or the gain of ultimate power, but just at the last second the good guy swoops in and saves the day against all odds, and nursing a bullet wound that has little to no effect on his handling of heavy equipment and execution of complex martial arts moves.

At the end of the day we all feel good because good prevailed and evil was vanquished. Not me. I love the bad guys; they are just far better than any of the good guys could ever dream of being. In fact, they have everything that the good guys lack and far more. I guess that it is this reason that against all odds, I always root for the villain, even though his chances of winning are little to nothing.

Except of course in Swordfish, which I am ecstatic about.

Anyway, with this article it is my master plan to attempt to convert some of you to the “Dark Side of the Force” by explaining just why I support the bad guys and why they should always win.

They are FAR more intelligent:
World domination or Ultimate power does not come easily. It takes a large amount of meticulous planning and preparation before it can come into fruition. In fact - most of the Master Plans are so well thought out that the heroes never even catch an inkling of it before it is way too late.

Furthermore, everything in the Master Plan has a contingency plan. There is no possible way that a good guy or even an arb pleb could come up with the plans that the bad guys cook up. They are so twisted and interweaved that there is absolutely no way for the hero of the story to ever truly understand it. Thus they are forced to rely on the villain to explaining it to them in very little words before they can even grasp the basic concept.

They have stronger personalities:
We all have seen this - the Villain knows that he is great and far superior to everyone else. If not he would have been one of the arb plebs instead of the ruler of his own domain or legion of terror. This is a very important trait, as with no self-doubt there is nothing holding him back from his true goal.

He has no problems with moral dilemmas or the fact that his mother never held him as a child or how his ex mysteriously arrives on the scene. In fact he WAS the one that stole the ex, and why wouldn’t she change sides? On the one hand she has an arb wimp and on the other she has a guy who is the ruler of his domain. I’m not a woman, but I know which one I would take.

What’s more Villains have brilliant charisma - sure they have a “dark side”, but how else did they get where they are without some charisma and political skill?


They have direction in their lives:
They know what they want and exactly how to get it. There is no “for the good of humanity” or other such intangible concepts with them. They do it for money or power - that is it. They see what they want and they get it no matter what the cost. Isn’t that why they have a legion of terror in the first place?

Nothing, not even puny little laws and governments, can come between them and their goal, but then that is why they are intelligent in the first place. They sit in HUGE houses eating Caviar and drinking Champagne while the hero is trying to pull his shattered life back together and just getting by.

They are better dressers:
Sure they can afford entire teams of fashion designers and the likes but it doesn’t take much to realise that drab brown is not exactly the top of the fashion lists. Meanwhile the Dark Lords are dressed in black, or at least very Dark Lordy and powerful, and they always look impeccable. If the Heroes would just catch a bit of a wake up in this regard maybe the woman wouldn’t leave them and they wouldn’t have to be trying to pull their lives back together.

Sure there are some exceptions to the good guy looking like he slept in his clothes. Bond would never look like that even if he did. I swear the man has a Q iron somewhere in his shoe, but while he still has to Q iron his cloths the bad guy can just sit back and allow for his millions of little people to do his clothes for him.

They have the best lines:
This is obvious, just think of most of the movies that you have seen. They have wonderful things like: “Mr. Anderson” from the Matrix and “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!” from Goldfinger and many, many more. While the poor heroes are stuck with the usual “I’ll be Back.” This of course is an obvious offshoot from their supreme self-confidence and far higher intelligence. It is these displays of their superiority that makes them so much more than the hero of the day could even dream of ever being.

They are firm believers of the big gun theory:
Smith in the Matrix uses a Desert Eagle .50, the biggest handgun in the world, while on most of the Sci-Fi’s and the likes the bad guy is almost always building a decent weapon of mass destruction; anything else is just a total waste of time. After all, why use many when only one will do? Just look at the Death Star in A New Hope -Alderaan betrayed the empire and instead of a long drawn out discussion that eventually got them nowhere, they simply blew up the planet with the biggest gun I have ever seen. This attitude brings me round to my next point:

They will not tolerate incompetence or disobedience:
Again we have a look at the Star Wars universe and good old Darth Vader - the people that fail are automatically killed and replaced. They also have such creative ways of killing people too. Using the force to strangle someone aside - they have cool walkways that drop people into rivers of Piranhas, electric armchairs, shark tanks and the likes.

This weeding process has many benefits to it. Firstly, it weeds out the incompetent instead of nursing them and allowing them to fail again later when it is really important that they don’t. Secondly it gives some decent motivation to strive to be the best, as promotion opportunities are greatly increased. Thirdly, it keeps the blood young and fresh with little chance of stagnation or the likes.

Basically all they expect is the best. If you are pathetically incompetent then you should have joined the good guys where you’ll fit in.

With all this greatness about them I guess it is totally justifiable that they all suffer from the one thing that seems to constantly be their downfall - their arrogance. For some reason they always in their arrogance leave the hero to die, after explaining their master plan to them and giving them plenty of time to escape and then cause untold amounts of havoc and ultimately defeating the Master of Darkness and Lord of all Terror.

I wish that just once they would kill the good guy with the same prejudice as they do their incompetent subordinates. It is really not all that hard:

“Hi, you are the good guy, right?”
“That’s right, I am here to…”

*Bang!*