Why Do You Think Most Villains Are a Bad Boss?

Very rarely is a villain a Benevolent Boss. Most of the time, they treat their minions like utter shit.

So why do you think this trope is so popular? Is it because it shows how bad the villain is? Or do you find the Bad Boss trope to be cliche?

Well, most villains are not decent human beings, so....

I think its definitely to show just how bad the villain is. As for it being cliche...while I want to give a vehement yes, I also would have to say that it depends. The naked trope, i.e., the villain is a complete jerk to his/her subordinates just because, is very overused. However if it is explored—such as the minions dissatisfaction is taken advantage of by the heroes, or causes them to falter in their duties, or is used to humanize them, then it can be made into something of a villain flaw or a plot device.

It is a cliché yes, but the functional purpose of the trope is to display the villain has not a shred of empathy for anyone. It's reasonable to a human mind that the villain would be trying to kill the hero, after all the hero is (usually) trying to stop him, so even though you disagree with him, you can understand his reasoning to trying to kill the hero. He's in his way.

His minions however, are actively helping his evil machinations, so reasonably speaking he has no motive to kill them, yet the villain still shows no sympathy for them or care for their lives, to the point of killing them himself. Why? Because he's not just a man trying to achieve his ambition, he's an asshole trying to achieve his ambition.

It's basically to establish that the villain isn't just an enemy to the hero, he's an enemy to human life in general, even the lives of his own men.

Besides, being a Benevolent Boss is freaking hard, even to decent people.

Beyond a certain point of villiany, there is an open question, as others have noted, of whether the guy in charge is capable of understanding, bothers to understand, or cares about the damage he's doing.

If he doesn't/can't, then you have to look about and see if he would for anyone else.

Also, the minions are already bad, so you can see the villain killing someone without none of the characters you're supposed to care about being hurt.

edited 18th Oct '15 4:18:07 PM by MeetTheNewBoss

For all that it's a cliche, it has a basis in reality. Your average dictatorial ruler, mob kingpin, terrorist mastermind, or would-be world conqueror is unlikely to be the most understanding of employers. Even if they aren't dropping minions left, right, and centre, the chances that they don't give a damn about casualties is pretty good.

Ultimately, if you are engaged in immoral or outright criminal activity, odds are you are an immoral person. Your sense of empathy, if not actively impaired, ain't what it ought to be, and that's not great news for anybody who screws up while in your employ.

I think a better question would be "Why would the villain ever be a benevolent boss?". The only reason you'd have the villain be nice to their minions is to show that "Well, they aren't as evil as they could be".

Having the villain be a bad boss also helps to make his mooks a bit more sympathetic.

No, it could also be a case of Pragmatic Villainy.

Compare these two scenes:

I don't think this one serves as a good comparison: the first one is clearly incompetent, so anything compared to it would be seen as better, pragmatic or not.

But yes, point taken. It could be due to pragmatism.

mostly to compare them as to the heroes: the bad guys are driven by fear to their boss who push them around and yell at them and most oportunity while the heroes are drive by friendship and good mentoring.

Or to put it more simply: bad boss are bad because it is bad, good ones because it is good, even pragmatic villiany is that: pragmatist first and foremost

I prefer Pragmatic Villainy; so, Evil Pays Better and Evil Is Easy.

My own preference is for Equal-Opportunity Evil, particularly as it was practiced by a lot of real life empires dubbed evil by their enemies - the Persians and the Mongols for instance. And, slight bouts of antisemitism aside, the Communists turned it into an art form. Meanwhile, most known dictators in history were noted as actually rather nice to their staff, and mob bosses like Capone ran multi-ethnic organizations back when segregation was the norm, so I don't think the trope applies that much in real life. It's a sympathy-depriving cliche.

and yet you have acount of Stalin being and utter dick to everyone around him with her secreaty being the exception(also his tendecy of disposing underling border in typical villiany).

But you are right, is usually a sympathy drive point to make them more evil against the hero or to make the villian more creepy depending of how serious is the job.

That's the point. Every single Bad Boss who ISN'T Played for Laughs is shown to be totally incompetant, and for good reason. Even if you have no empathy or compassion whatsoever, your soldiers are still a resource. Only an idiot wastes resources.

Still doesn't make it a good comparison. And once again, yes, I do get the point (I'm saying it not to make myself appear annoyed, because I am not, but rather because I do agree with you on this part but not on the suitability of the specific example you'd used).

Because really, there are examples of evil bosses/rulers/whatever who are much closer to the second example than to the first while still ruling with fear and anger rather than employee benefits and benevolence. Do they fare as well as the one you'd shown in your example? Depends on the kind of people in their employ because some are inherently loyal (they react to benevolence better) and some instead have to be cowed into not mutinying but are still worth it if you can keep them under control (and those types are better ruled with fear, unless you have a way to control them that comes from another source). On average, I'd say that they are probably slightly worse off than the guy you'd described in your second example, sure; but their success rate is far from the first example of yours because lack of benevolence does not equal incompetence.

That is why I disagreed about the suitability of the example. Because it puts forth a correlation that isn't really there.

I'd say the trope can work well within some boundaries. For instance, executing a failed minion can be both vicious and somewhat warranted if said minion acted on his own accord - like when Darth Vader kills an openly incompetent admiral, or when Thrawn orders the execution of an officer both incompetent and trying to pin the blame on another. Another good reason is as a preventive measure against Klingon promotion attempts, which I find applies in Stalin's case.

However, if the violent acts are utterly unwarranted, like with random whippings or shooting any bearer of bad news, then the whole thing looks unconvincing, as it raises the question of why the person in charge hasn't been fragged by someone else already, or why the underlings haven't abandoned them altogether.

That's most likely due to Negative Selection. The Evil Overlord, wishing to remain in power forever, chooses subordinates who are not capable of removing him from power, either by challenging him directly or by undermining his authority. In short, he picks incompetent flunkies and ineffectual toadies. The second-tier hierarchy, in turn, chooses minions who cannot do likewise to them, and so on all the way down the ladder.

So it's no wonder that the Big Bad frequently complains: "I'm Surrounded by Idiots!" He is, and it's his own fault.

And if acknowledged in-series, that'd be fine.

I kinda want to see a scene, where a big bad villain faces one of his minions that failed him, and it seems as if the villain is going to kill his minion for failing him...

...only for him to just fire, demote, or reassign the minion.

Jedi Outcast had the main character overhearing just such a transmission.

In general, the aforementioned implication of the villain being incompetent risks turning them into an underwhelming paper tiger, which in turn speaks even more poorly of any protagonist who cannot easily outwit them.

For that matter, the trope's use so as to make the villain unlikable to the audience is what makes it so gratuitous in the first place. It's not the audience that's supposed to dislike the villain, it's the hero who needs to be motivated to go against them. Alternatively, it could be used to show a change in the villain's character - Darth Vader ordering people killed is boring; Darth Vader later sacrificing himself for his son is what makes the previous viciousness poignant, as it shows a clear change in his attitude. Too bad most imitators only focus on the former, rather than the latter.

Villains treat their underlings like shit because it shows that they are terrible people that the audience should not be rooting for, and establishes a character flaw that the heroes can exploit to achieve victory.

This is not rocket science.

edited 4th Nov '15 3:17:25 AM by Tungsten74

Yet most of the time, it simply makes for an increasing number of plot holes as to how the villain remains or even got in power with such lousy people and management skills. Never mind the whole "audience shouldn't like that guy" explanation pretty much ruining suspension of disbelief.

All in all, it's an unnecessary cliche that, in my opinion, if any story resolves to use for its villains, it simply means the villains themselves are cliched and need reworking.

That's not how people in this sort of situation think, though. They don't surround themselves with idiots, they surround themselves with loyalists. The fact they're incompetent isn't something the man at the top usually perceives; all failure is disloyalty first. It's cliche because it's true. People lie about not meeting quota or other objectives (not even necessarily because they're incompetent; stuff happens) in an autocracy/to an autocrat because to the state or leader, failure is treason before it is incompetence, and thus any isolated failure would be punished like it was disloyalty.

The whole surrounded by idiots thing is a natural outgrowth of such a system meeting a real challenge. Everyone's been lying to save their hides so long when the pedal actually meets the metal it falls apart. Nobody knows what the ground truth is. It's the only situation in which the leader would assume stupidity first, because that's marginally better than assuming they've surrounded themselves with the disloyal.

edited 4th Nov '15 10:41:11 AM by Night