"Never thought it would end this way… Killed by something I can't even punch…"
— The Hulk, referring to the sun from the Acts of Vengeance storyline.note
"Notice that I used the term “antagonist,” above. Not “villain.” “Not “bad guy.” Not “black hat.” In the real world there are no villains. No one actually sets out to do evil. Yes, there are madmen and murderers and rapists and crooked politicians and greedy land developers and all sorts of villainous behaviors. But each of those people believes that he is doing what is necessary, and maybe even good. Every tyrant in history was convinced that he had to do the things he did for his own good and for the good of the people around him. Fiction mirrors life. Or, more accurately, fiction serves as a lens to focus what we know of life and bring its realities into sharper, clearer understanding for us. There are no villains cackling and rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate their evil deeds. There are only people with problems, struggling to solve them. Just as your protagonist is struggling to solve her problems, your antagonist is struggling to solve his. It’s all a matter of viewpoint. You could write Hamlet, for example, from the viewpoint of Claudius, the king who murdered Hamlet’s father (his own brother) and married his widow. You might even make a truly powerful story about a man who loved his brother’s wife too much, and dared to what he did to win her. But he wouldn’t be a villain."
— Ben Bova
"I had a professor once who liked to tell his students that there were only 10 different plots in all of fiction. Well, I'm here to tell you he was wrong. There is only one: 'Who am I?'"
Chris Ellis: When we started to work on the movie, Tom and I had a little confab about how [Phil Horace] would develop throughout the movie. And I said, “Where do I screw over the band?” And he held up his hands with two stop signs and said, “No bad guys in my movie.” I know what happened to garage bands, and they got fucked across the board. That’s just how the industry was. He held up the stop signs again: “No bad guys in my movie.”
Tom Hanks: I don’t believe guys that are overtly evil and demonstrate how overtly evil they are. I like guys who are conflicted, who do things that are not pleasant but everybody understands why.
—The Oral History of That Thing You Do!, The Ringer
