Alike and Antithetical Adversaries

We can tell a lot about a person by knowing what groups they're a part of. What's more, we can tell a lot about a conflict depending on who makes up the given groups. Authors can take advantage of this to design the overtones of a conflict by engineering the groups at war into being homogeneous (all alike) and/or heterogeneous (all different). This can have up to four combinations^note or eight if it's a three sided conflict, but we won't go there, as detailed below.

This comes in four flavors.

• Heterogeneous Heroes vs. Homogeneous Villains: The "classic" set up. This is used when an author wants to portray good as multicultural or what not and the bad guys as all alike and all equally evil. The good guys will often work by Teeth-Clenched Teamwork and be a very diverse Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, both superficially (race, using Custom Uniforms), and seriously -socially, culturally, religiously, or temperamentally. To contrast, the baddies will usually be monochromatic in very obvious ways. At the very least they will all dress alike, and complement that overt gesture by being ideological or religious extremists, all the same ethnicity, being solely men or women, or even implying that an entire species are all equally villainous. One extreme representation of this is to make the villains Not Even Human, rather being a horde of identical robots, insects or clones. The symbolism here is that heroes can come from any walk of life, but villains are all the same. This can be especially useful when using non-human enemies or imaginary ideologies, as it can avoid designating any real world equivalents as bad^note (Of course, it may instead make the kids at home think that all aliens are evil).
• Homogeneous Heroes vs. Heterogeneous Villains: Flipping the above has an interesting effect. Having the heroes share the same background (be it family, home town, or ideology) or world view can make it easier to bring them together. The similarities don't necessarily have to be religious, ethnic or even in wardrobe, however they share enough similarities of one kind or another that viewers who know the characters can infer that good people share these same unifying trait(s) and values. Conversely, a bunch of diverse minions led by the Cosmopolitan Council show that evil can take any shape, and warns that The Dark Side isn't exclusive in its membership (and avoid irate censors). One interpretation of this is that evil is divisive, while good is unifying. Heroes can work together, villains backstab each other into failure.
• Heterogeneous Heroes vs. Heterogeneous Villains: Portraying both as heterogeneous groups has the effect of making a conflict seem very worldly, or possibly even gray. By removing easily identifiable unifying traits it makes it difficult to tell apart heroes and villains, at least in terms of characterization, and allows the author to dive right into questions of just what separates good and evil, heroes and villains. In these cases the conflict may be characterized as The Federation against the Anti-Human Alliance.
• Homogeneous Heroes vs. Homogeneous Villains: On the other hand, monochromatic bands of heroes and villains are very... well, archetypal. Here the differences between characters are drawn not from obvious background or appearance, but in motivation and character. A story where both bands are of "identical" groups can focus more on what brings entire groups into Always Lawful Good and Always Chaotic Evil territory, while spending time focusing on individual motivation.

It's worth mentioning that a story can begin with either side (or both) as homogeneous and transition into a completely heterogeneous cast with the help of characterization, an Enemy Civil War, and of course the Defector from Decadence who protests their brother's ways. If this is Speculative Fiction, then sometimes In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race will come up.

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Examples:

Het-H vs. Hom-V:

Film

• Star Wars:
  • Return of the Jedi has the multi-species Rebels and the implied in costume fascist Empire. EU material confirms the Empire to be speciesist, employing (mostly) only white male humans.
  • In A New Hope all rebels are human as well, making it Hom-H vs. Hom-V. And in The Empire Strikes Back, the use of the bounty hunters makes it more Hom-H vs Het-V. It is explained in the EU material that in the beginning the military branch of The Alliance was indeed mostly human, because the Empire's treatment of non-humans made them distrustful of all humans and because humans are the only ones allowed into military training and only human worlds are allowed to have a militia.
• Harry Potter Also an example of Het-H vs Hom-V, as the members and allies of the Order of the Phoenix have varied backgrounds and include different species (werewolf, half-giants, house-elves), while the Death Eaters are all pureblood white men and Bellatrix who use other creatures as mere footsoldiers.
• The Matrix:
  • The Matrix takes this trope to the next level: it has a diverse group of characters as the rebellion, spanning multiple races, ages, and genders, but the villains -the agents- are as homogeneous as you can get: they have the same appearance, voice, costume, etc.
  • The Matrix Revolutions: The ruling Council of Zion has a non-white majority of councillors and a majority of women (Hamman is the only white male on the Council), while the villain that emerges as the primary antagonist begins literally turning everyone in the Matrix itself into copies of himself; its hard to get more homogenous than that with your evil army.
• Monsters vs. Aliens has a group of extremely unique protagonists, led by a Reasonable Authority Figure. The villain is a standard Omnicidal Maniac who wants to Take Over the World, and his plan mostly involves cloning himself to create an army.
• In Zootopia, the heroes are a fairly diverse police force, comprising all kinds of animals, and the main character is an outlier even for them. The villains- while they claim to be working for all prey species- are all sheep.

Literature

• The City We Became: The diverse main cast, representing New York, is contrasted with the uniformity of the Enemy which tries to make cities more uniform, and the Woman in White always appears as a white woman as well as being the Anthropomorphic Personification of a scarily uniform city herself.

Live Action Television

• In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Federation was a peaceful amalgam of various species who each bring their own unique culture and perspective to the table as they working together to explore the universe and learn about each other and themselves. The Borg share many of the strengths of the Federation, such as cohesion/cooperation, adaptability, the drive towards self-improvement, but distort them into villainous traits. Cooperation is achieved through total conformity and enslavement to the Hive Mind, their adaptability makes them a terrifying threat that can overcome any enemy strategy or technology eventually, and their drive towards improvement and "perfection" is not a journey of self-reflection and personal achievement but an endless war of expansion and conquest across the galaxy in which they improve themselves by assimilating other races and technology through force.
• The original Star Trek also had this with the Enterprise bridge crew being ethnically diverse including a black woman, which would have been impossible at the time, and an half alien whereas the main enemies were the Klingons and Romulans who were portrayed as fairly homogeneous.

Video Games

• Subtly done in Saints Row 2 (though you would hardly call the protagonists heroes). While gang members at the bottom of a gang tend to be any gender or race, the further up you go in a gang the more homogeneous in race and origin they tend to be (for example, the top Ronin leaders are all rich Japanese guys). Right from the start, the generals in the Saints are a diverse group.

Western Animation

• By the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender, members of all four nations are working to defeat The Fire Nation, including characters from all over the already-highly-heterogeneous Earth Kingdom.
• In Shadow Raiders the four main planets in the story (Rock, Ice, Fire, and Bone) have spent generations raiding each other for resources but join forces to survive against the onslaught of the Beast Planet. Teeth-Clenched Teamwork is in full effect for the heroes, while the villains field thousands upon thousands of literally Faceless Mooks; the only conflict on their side is the opposing styles of their generals, which can be summed up as Attack! Attack! Attack! versus invoking Divided We Fall via subterfuge, with a third entity acting as the representative of the Beast itself casting the tie-breaking vote.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: The Planeteers have different personalities and traits, while the villains plans all involve the destruction of the environment or the social order.
• Some Transformers series employ this on a physical level. In G1, it's implied a large portion of the Decepticon army has the same body-type as Starscream◊ (in addition to the named main Decepticons that also resemble Starscream), in contrast to the relatively varied designs of the Autobots. Otherwise, the Decepticons use different types of identical Mooks (ex. the Sweeps) or Faceless Goons (ex. Prime Vehicons), which the Autobots usually don't have equivalents of.

Hom-H vs. Het-V:

Films - Animation

• Children VS Wizards: Being an Orthodox Christian propaganda film, this variant is invoked to fit with the film's ultranationalistic agenda. The antagonists (if their names and horrendously offensive accents are any indication) include Jewish people, East Asians, Britons, Americans, Arabs, traitorous Russians, and more. The protagonists, meanwhile, are all Slavic, Eastern Orthodox, and ethnic Russian. Even fellow Orthodox Christians - the two Greek priests and the Kosovo Serb old woman appearing in a flashback - are mere supporting characters who do not involve themselves in any action.

Live Action Television

• Various breeds of Power Rangers, most notably the first group, consisted of a group of teenage martial artists from Angel Grove fighting a seemingly random mishmash of human- and non-human-shaped monsters. Interesting, some of the human-shaped monsters came from a family that was predominantly monster-shaped, and vice-versa, further underscoring the heterogeneous mix that was evil.

Western Animation

• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: The Planeteers are a good example of an on the surface diverse cast that is nonetheless homogeneous. They all come from different continents and backgrounds, but share a common passion to save the planet. Meanwhile, their Rogues Gallery is amazingly diverse, being motivated by greed, pride, gluttony or sheer spite. While the good guys are all united in saving the planet for the same reason (which is that you should), the villains all have very different motivations.
• ThunderCats:
  • The early episodes of the ThunderCats: the title heroes (with the exception of Non-Human Sidekick Snarf) were all Thunderian Catfolk, while the mutants were several varieties of Beastmen. As the setting developed, it became more Het-v.-Het, as the ThunderCats allied themselves with other residents of Third Earth, including the Amazon women and robot teddy-bears.
  • This pattern holds in Continuity Reboot Thunder Cats 2011, with The Hero Lion-O coming to understand that to defeat Evil Overlord Mumm-Ra's multi-species armies, he must gather Beastmen allies as well.

Het-H vs. Het-V:

Comic Books

• The X-Men vs. bigot group of the week. The X-Men, being mutants, come from diverse walks of life, and the humans who "hate and fear them" and routinely mess up their front yard are also (usually) very diverse. The message being that bigotry and intolerance, like goodness and heroism, can come in any shape and size.
• Transformers has traditionally been very black and white with its faction, but the IDW run of comics has cemented shades of grey on both sides of the war (and introduced neutrals too). The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye has nearly an all-Autobot cast and yet features some of the most evil and twisted characters in Transformers history. In a similar manner, many Decepticons are shown to be misguided revolutionaries who originally were fighting for a good cause.

Film - Live-Action

• The prequel trilogy in Star Wars uses this in the leader heroes and antagonists to demonstrate just how morally gray the war is. The Separatists aren't all bad, nor are the heroes fighting for the right reasons. They're all Darth Sidious' pawns.

Literature

• In Animorphs, both sides of the conflict are very heterogeneous, both in species and personalities. Yeerks, by their very nature, must essentially become different species (in addition to more traditionally recruiting other species, like the Taxxons, for their uses). Humans, Hork-Bajir, and Andalites all oppose the Yeerk forces. Both factions have individuals who switch sides or change beliefs or alliances, and a major theme of the series as a whole is that no one species is all good or all bad.
• In The Zombie Knight, this is zig-zagged. Abolish, the heroes, Vanguard, and presumably also the independents are all varied, however, Abolish seems to only have four basic types: psychopaths, mindless dupes, fanatics and people trying to get out. On the other other hand, the villains do get a lot of characterization, and the heroes may seem more heterogeneous only because they get even more.

Live Action Television

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine featured The Federation, the Klingon Empire, and The Romulans, against The Dominion ^note  itself made up of several different species, the Cardassians, and the Breen. This, along with many other elements, went along with this show being Darker and Edgier than The Next Generation had been.

Video Games

• The Alliance and the Horde in World of Warcraft each consist of five or six different races united towards common goals. Graying things up further is that, despite their own animosity, the Horde and Alliance have (reluctantly) worked together in the face of common enemies.
  • A much less gray example from the same game is Twilight's Hammer (villainous) vs. The Earthen Ring (heroic).

Western Animation

• Masters of the Universe: Both the Masters and their adversaries are extremely diverse.
• The Legend of Korra: Unlike its predecessor's Het-H and Hom-V status (the Four Nations versus the Fire Nation), the show introduces season finale villains of each bending type as well as a balance between male and female antagonists.
  • Special recognition to the Red Lotus, the Book 3 villain team consisting of equal genders and a bender of each element (each possessing unique abilities with their element), led by an Airbender. This parallels the original Gaang's diversity, to showcase the aspirations of the villains aiming to Save the World.

Hom-H vs. Hom-V:

Film — Animated

• Fire and Ice (1983) has the heroes all represented as caucasian, while the bad guys are Beast Men who are led by The Man Behind the Monsters.

Film — Live-Action

• Star Wars: In the prequel trilogy, the infantry troops are all nearly identical, whether genetically or by being the same model of robot.

Literature

• Harry Potter has courageous heroes motivated by The Power Of Love and cruel villains motivated by self-interest, prejudice and insanity (in varying quantities).
• Though in terms of alliances The Lord of the Rings has both sides of the conflict employ diverse peoples and even species, on the ground Sauron was the only one to employ mixed forces with Goblins, Orcs, Uruk Hai, Trolls and Easterlings. The hero factions only unite on the field on a handful of occasions. Interestingly, the diversity of The Fellowship is often remarked upon.

Western Animation

• The Transformers traditionally has very unified factions. Despite their quirks, the Autobots are all generally moral, peace-loving and defenders of good. Decepticons, similarly, are all cruel, oppressive, selfish and power-hungry.

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