No, the other one.
I don't think wanting to see more of the villains but still wanting them to not succeed with their villainous plans counts as Rooting for the Empire.
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I was wondering - what about the opposite reaction? That is, when the antagonists were likely meant to be somewhat grey or borderline sympathetic, yet the actual result wasn't too effective, with fans wanting to see less of them. My own picks in that regard would be Angela Petrelli and the Dominion. The latter in particular had me all but cheering for Section 31's proposed genocidal solution, when I agreed with it being considered too inhumane even against the Borg. Funnily enough, the Dominion used the same fanatically obedient clone army plot device years before the Star Wars prequels revealed it in full.
Maybe it's again a matter of style, or lack thereof - the Dominion ships weren't particularly cool, especially not next to the Klingons' rugged preybird charm, the Romulans' sleek sophistication, or the Borg creepy geometric utilitarianism. Same can be said of their soldiers. As bad guys, I thought they were just too... generic. Consequently, this leaves the Section 31 extremists (who kinda-sorta did solve the war problem by going forward with said final solution, even if it was ultimately averted in the end) as the "antagonist with unwarranted fan support" of the show. That, and Dukat... before he was turned into the Space Devil, apparently for being too popular.
I rooted for Zeus in GOWIII. Kratos is so unlikeable in that game complete with being absolutely remorseless with destroying the world that Zeus, who happens to want to preserve the world, is more likable and noble. The facts that in myth Zeus was not the God of Evil, but much more balanced and in the game itself Zeus is only really evil thanks to the evils of Pandora's box only push things more in that direction.
Inglourious Basterds, Metal Gear Solid, Saints Row 2...
How about we just go with every "intentionally morally ambiguous" work ever made?
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So the antagonists actually did their jobs?
It depends - there can be hero antagonists; in fact that's why the term itself is preferred over "villain" in most cases. Still, I too find a lot of supposedly morally ambiguous works to simply have jerkish heroes and vaguely motivated villains, while the actual story transpires in just the same black and white fashion. That's what I didn't like about the Dominion - they were set up as a multi-species foil of the Federation, topped by a formerly oppressed people rife with paranoia against outsiders, much like the Bajorans, yet still uneasy about fighting one of their own in the face of Odo. For all practical purposes however, all they did was send bland shock troops and smug snake officers for the main cast to growl and frown against.
I get a similar unfortunate vibe from superhero works - no matter how complex the antagonists are set up to be, with extensive backstories and conflicted motivations, all this just has to be thrown away by the third act, in preparation for the obligatory big fight against the contractually incorruptible hero.
On the other hand, this is also why I appreciate characters like Deadpool and Deathstroke - since they're not so much ambiguous, but ultimately neutral in the overall framework of their respective universes, their stories don't have to rely on definite villains. Instead, Deadpool is just as casual joking around with H.Y.D.R.A. mooks as he is when rubbing shoulders with the X-Men, while Deathstroke's perennial foe is his own estranged family. They're not styled as heroes, so they don't really need villains to look good against. Consequently, it is this sort of worldview that makes for genuine multi-layered stories, as opposed to the aforementioned nominal ambiguity.
edited 21st Oct '14 4:45:44 AM by indiana404
More like they did their job better than they were supposed to.
I think a lot of cases also abide by whether their treatment fits their actions. A few intentionally sympathetic villains get redeemed, but if they've still spent as much time gleefully committing mass genocide as a standard evil villain, it doesn't quite make the transition and just makes them look like a Karma Houdini.
The Empire itself isn't immune to this, Vader was rewarded eternal life after one noble act, you know, within years of cold blooded murder and torture of innocents.
I think this is why a badly written/jerkish hero tends to be far more unpopular than a villain. Most villains are jerks, but outside the aforementioned examples, are usually punished and treated proportionally to their cruelty. A hero almost always comes out on top.
edited 21st Oct '14 11:21:30 AM by Psi001
Lost in Space
Vader's on-screen body count is rather small, all things considered. I exempt him from direct moral responsibility for the casualties in the war with the Rebellion because that is, well, a war, and there is an expectation that soldiers in a war may die. But if you add up the deaths and other heinous acts (mainly torture) for which he is personally responsible, there aren't all that many in a relative sense.
Yes, I know he murdered all the Jedi younglings, and that's infamous for retroactively robbing him of any sympathetic characteristics. We can chalk that one up to Lucas' ineptitude at storytelling, but as of the release of ROTJ, he wasn't so heinous that he couldn't be reasonably redeemed.
For similar reasons, we can't count the EU against the character's heinousness within the films.
edited 21st Oct '14 11:30:48 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
The same goes for Vader's redemption in light of the padawan massacre, maybe even the sand people village culling. Instead of having logical consequences, these events are framed within the blatant in-universe karma meter of the Force itself, where apparently "reconcile with estranged son" gives you all the light side points needed to compensate for "commit enough atrocities to make baby Lucifer cry". I've said it before - it's no mystery why the one guy who doesn't get death eater'd is also the one with no regard for such mysticism altogether.
(Speaking of which, there really should have been a neutral faction in The Old Republic MMO - the Underworld, perhaps - with smugglers and bounty hunters as mainstays, and maybe the Dathomiri as resident saber wielders. Then it would've been interesting to see how the playerbase turned out.)
Lost in Space
The Sandpeople culling was not intended to be seen as an MEH crossing, but rather a start down the path of the Dark Side. Anakin could have sought to atone for it, but instead he concealed it from Obi-Wan and the Jedi Council. That was his first unambiguously evil act.
It's rather jarring how ideally heroic Anakin becomes in the Clone Wars series given the precedent set by AotC, but one should not expect any sort of narrative moral consistency from the Star Wars universe.
edited 21st Oct '14 1:28:31 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Hence me never really getting into that show, among other reasons. And also why I consider half the franchise itself as 
an extremely narrow-minded and biased account of an otherwise pretty complex string of events. The propensity for single-character-archetype species should have been a dead giveaway already. Laughably, a lot of the EU tried to go for an evil racist Empire angle, while the movies actually came closer to having evil races. I somehow doubt that, say, having Trandoshans or Sand People be enslaved would tug as many heartstrings as the fluffy and marketable Wookiees. I mentioned a while ago how the former are always antagonists, even when it shouldn't have made any sense for them to be so. Conversely, the walking carpets (in Leia's words) are always the good guys, despite a reputation for mauling people over board game losses. And I thought Magic The Gathering players got too worked up.
edited 21st Oct '14 2:01:35 PM by indiana404
Lost in Space
Well, here's the thing, and this goes back to the topic of the thread. If the author is clearly that inept at portraying a morally consistent universe, then I won't start rooting for the notional bad guys out of pique, I'll just stop watching the show.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Quite. That sort of thing rarely bothers me in movie, since two hours are usually easy enough for a single sit through, especially if the effects are decent; and in video games, since most of them aren't known for multi-dimensional characters anyway. In books or TV shows, though, it's a deal-breaker. It's already a risky proposition to watch a currently ongoing series where the villains are more likable than the heroes. But in a book where you can see what happens on the last page, or a show that's already over - that's a reason for audience aversion then and there.
Still, the Star Wars Legacy comics and the Loki phenomenon do demonstrate how vocally cheering for the bad guy can change his status as a bad guy to begin with. Even Stephen Lang got a role as basically a non-genocidal Quaritch in Terra Nova, so the planned reprisal in Avatar's sequel can go either way. It's kind of a morality-based fanservice, where plot and character progression is realigned with audience demand. Not exactly storytelling gold, but hey - watching Tom Hiddleston overshadow the ostensible protagonist for a third time is still a decent use for a few Lincolns. Now if someone could just license a proper Star Wars anime
, that would be great.
The Planet of Hats thing is mostly due the EU. The movies themselves never indicate any evil races. There are evil individuals of a bunch of races, but for example the Neimodians, who are mostly evil, are not "The Neimodians", they're the Trade Federation which happens to be headed by a group Neimodians. An entirely different scheme.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Lost in Space
Let me be clear: I don't mind watching the Clone Wars animated series over my son's shoulder (he loves it), but I don't watch it for the intricate morality plays. Clearly there's a defined set of good guys and a defined set of bad guys, and the bad guys kick puppies to prove it, and that's that.
What's funny is that among the episodes that my son seems to enjoy most are the ones that do have serious moral ambiguities. He's very sensitive to that, which I think is a good thing.
edited 21st Oct '14 8:30:34 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I've noticed a similar trend in comics, though not always well played - heroes are far more often billed against one another, since this leaves some uncertainty as to who will be in the right and who will come out on top in the end. Meanwhile, popular villains frequently ascend to anti-hero status, in some cases staying there for decades. Let's see, the Wilson ninjas aside, there's Catwoman, Lobo, the Punisher, Taskmaster, Venom, the Red Hulk, Electra, Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Sinestro, Magneto and his kids, the Winter Soldier, and of course, Wolverine. And now Dr. Doom is raising Mr. Fantastic's daughter (he's also her godfather, mind you), while Lex Luthor and Captain Cold are members of the Justice League... though I'm sure those will be revealed as part of the inevitable needlessly evil scheme. It's actually an interesting contrast between the pretty complex affairs in actual comics, and the sanitized monochromatic version of the films and cartoons.
For Star Wars, the EU gave us a stern-but-fair Galactic Empire with an equal opportunity Stormtrooper Corps, darksiders with more complex goals than cookie-cutter world domination, and with The Old Republic, Sith that actually have personality options, to match their players' will. I find it rather inspiring how fans seem to prefer the more complex characters and themes, even if, as mentioned above, a lot of those are just window dressing for the usual simplistic stories. Could be a case of moral guardians-induced writer cop out, especially if it involves impressionable-children-friendly cartoons and/or the one space opera universe that literally runs of black and white morality. If you ask me, it's a miracle the paper-based EU managed to get as far as it did before the Disney culling.
edited 21st Oct '14 11:59:56 PM by indiana404
The novels probably got as far as they did because while most kids will watch a movie/tv show just fine, most of them aren't going to read 300+ page novels until they're young teens at least, by which time they've figured the universe really isn't black and white. So having a morally grey Star Wars universe isn't a problem for them.
becuase is the issue with sympathy: the more complex become a chararter and more sympathy then the question "why he doent join the good guy" pop in, and something it happens
Another reason could be the realization that the things vilified in the story aren't really deserving of it, at least not at face value. As people who were once acceptable targets get a fairer treatment, stories who vilified them are themselves seen in a new light, with plenty of unfortunate implications regarding their authors. Moreover, the very fact of acceptable targets losing that status as society marches on, can have a chilling effect on any story that gets a bit too slap-happy with its designated villains.
This is why I so much focus on motivation and core concept, and how if at all they relate to the less-ambiguous demonstrations of villainy. Comicbook supervillains are a veritable case study in that regard, as most of them are resourceful enough to meet their goals legitimately. Thus, along come the massive array of armchair-psychology excuses, ranging from your generic violent insanity, to nigh-biblical pride and of course, evil ambition.
At some point, all of this stops being convincing, and such stories start speaking more of their heroes and authors, rather than their villains. It's easy enough now to recognize Ming the Merciless as a ridiculous yellow peril stereotype born of mostly baseless chauvinist paranoia. Or the early Lex Luthor and similar mad scientists as little more than technophobic strawmen. As for the Sith and the Empire, well - the idea of evil wizards and witches fought by good holy knights rings a whole new bell these days, while the notion of evil government is more or less cyclical, yet still only strongly held by a relative minority, usually not the sensible kind.
In short, look for who is made a villain, and how their evil is demonstrated. If, as @Fighteer noted, it's down to kicking puppies and wearing spiked shoulder-pads, chances are they not only have more fans than the ostensible good guys, but, on the purely conceptual level, fully deserve to.
edited 24th Oct '14 12:51:19 PM by indiana404
I find it utterly ridiculous to reduce every villain to a set of Unfortunate Implications. There are cases, such as Ming the Merciless, where yes, this is a point, but going around saying the concept of the Jedi and Sith equals religious fundamentalism in real life is just outright distorting the facts to suit your point.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Not really. Conceptually, the Jedi are already shady enough - politically influential mystics who recruit and indoctrinate children to act as a telepathic secret police masquerading as a diplomatic and peacekeeping force. That's one of a great many things that probably sounded better in Lucas's head, much like his dialogue. The Sith, on the other hand, are given little characterization beyond "evil guys avenging something" in the movies, while their chief trait in the EU is using their emotions to empower themselves instead of suppressing them - y'know, like Starfire. That, and they actually derive from the Jedi, so a religious schism analogy is quite apt, with their exaggerated evilness mirroring how certain faiths view apostasy.
The same can be said of the Trade Federation, the CIS, and the Empire itself. Protesting a tax raise doesn't exactly spell evil on its own, particularly as the Republic doesn't seem to offer much in return for its fees. Nor is the CIS decision to secede a bad thing per se. If anything, it would probably have seemed more than a little hypocritical of the Republic to expect its constituents to handle their own self-defense from piracy (explaining why entire planets are run by crime syndicates), yet breaking out a large and expensive army to stop any attempt at secession. As for the Empire, the only noted difference in its policies is a further federalization of government. And that's terrible.
This is where the tacked-on puppy-kicking starts, lacking any relation to the underlying concept, while the shadier aspects of the designated heroes are summarily ignored. This is were a mystical moral compass is employed, with all the subtlety of a Chick Tract. To contrast, antagonists like serial killers or drug dealers in cop shows rarely get any sympathy, because the core concept of a serial killer or drug dealer is bad enough on its own.
And this is also where properly written motivation comes in play, since poor villains are essentially tautological in nature - they do nasty stuff 'cause they're evil, and we know they're evil 'cause they do nasty stuff. Strip all that away, and it's easy to see who has been designed as a fully fleshed-out multi-dimensional character, and who's a likely candidate to be the next once acceptable target.
edited 24th Oct '14 6:35:25 PM by indiana404
about the mad scientist, many of them are play for laughts or a least they dosent use in full potencial, which is weird since we used to have so jewels like Mengele or the 781 unit, more jarring is the fact that both karma houdini all their way in life.
In fact many mad scientist are hammy or over the top with crazy death rays or otherr crazy plans, the trope get popular with the SF popularity in the 60 and the idea that since can also destroy us(atomic bomb and all that)
Also, many serial killers and drug dealers get simpathy, with the former it pretty much codifed freduian excuses since it show where their evilness come from) and a least with mad men they have show some simpathy for Walter.
In fact something I have nothing is that a freduian excuse is the only diferent between a chararter who does horrible things and a complete monster
edited 24th Oct '14 11:43:48 PM by unknowing
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Mad scientists started out even earlier, in the 1930's and 40's - the first Superman cartoon was literally called "The Mad Scientist". Along with Howard Hughes-type entrepreneurs, these are among the perennial villains of superhero stories, with Lex Luthor a mixture of both archetypes.
You're right about criminals getting sympathy though, which brings me to another point. Namely, that heroes themselves need to have proper reasoning for going after the villains. That's easy enough in a cop show - fighting criminals is their job description. But a lot of epic fantasy and military science fiction tales actually hinge on pretty biased views on otherwise pretty grey subjects. Take royal heritage, for instance - Arthurian legends and Shakespearean dramas are essentially built on the notion that any competitor for the throne is a Villain by Default, while being born into power is definite proof that you deserve it. (You'd think a country founded on rejecting that idea wouldn't be so fond of it in fiction.) And when it comes to external threats, works like Ender's Game are pretty rare examples of how a bug war is not automatically guilt-free.
This is what I like about even the silliest action flicks like Commando and Conan the Barbarian and even the first Batman film - as cliched as the villains were, the hero had a personal reason to go after them, and that drove the plot. You could be a saint for all I care, but touch Arnie's kid and you're going down. To contrast, the Jedi-Sith conflict is pretty much based around religious persecution on either side, while most comic book supervillains are exaggerated strawmen in their own right, with the only ones of any enduring relevance being the aforementioned career criminals.
edited 25th Oct '14 1:19:09 AM by indiana404
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manga or anime? i dont remenber that in the anime
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