Is Bond Villain Stupidity a Bad Trope?

Like is it detrimental to the quality of a villain if they just stand around gloating at the hero rather than just shooting them?

Like most tropes, it depends. How do you want the villain to come of? Stupid Evil is a fairly common trope (Joffrey for example). Even competent villains can have flaws such as pride and arrogance, as long as they get away with them long enough before it bites them back in the butt. Bond Villain Stupidity is a reflection of that overconfident.

Namely guys that would wipe out the heroes with a wave of their hands if they wanted to, but decide to break them down slowly instead because it's a lot more fun.

It's not a "bad trope", but it can be a sign of lazy writing. There's an eternal paradox for writers: how do you make a powerful, capable villain who poses a significant threat to the world (or at least to the protagonists), yet also whom the protagonists can plausibly defeat? For all but the darkest or most subversive stories, the Anthropic Principle requires that there be an interesting conflict and that the heroes win in the end. If the villain captures the hero and shoots him on the spot... well, there goes that story into the trash.

One way to handle this is to have the villain be dedicated to some ideal of fair play, or have a addiction to excessively complex plans, or some other flaw or personality trait that explains why they'd keep giving the hero(es) a chance to escape. Of course, far too many writers don't do this well and have the Big Bad suddenly latch onto the Villain Ball with a death grip, because otherwise the story would paint itself into a corner.

edited 25th May '17 3:18:34 PM by Fighteer

It can easily be justified as the villain desiring to see the hero suffer rather than just not eliminating a threat to their goals. That has its own problems as a cliche but it's still a valid story angle. Realize too, the trope namer is rooted in a franchise where the hero and villain usually come to see each other as a Worthy Opponent.

Bad Writing tropes typically occur because of ignorance of its implications, not because the trope itself is bad. Bare minimum, playing such tropes for comedy is a sign that the writer is not ignorant of its implications. With a hands-on touch such tropes can easily be used to the story's advantage.

Most tropes that bend the characters or events in favour of the plot are easily mishandled, since they require a bit more of a thought put into them when they're used. Pretty much all of them are "easily" justifiable, but it depends a little on what kind of justification you want, and what kind the tone of the story requires. However, since they do twist things in the story to suit the plot, they needs to make internal sense so they're not just obvious plot devices put in place because the creator couldn't be arsed to figure out a coherent story. All that said, enter Sturgeon's Law.

This an excellent point. All actions taken by the characters in any story serve the requirements of its plot. That's what gives us a story instead of a loosely related accounting of a bunch of stuff that happens. The task of a good writer is making those actions feel like they arise organically from the motivations and flaws of the characters rather than from a series of cardboard cutouts reading a script.

Part of that is internally justifying the use of tropes — making them fit into the narrative rather than jump in as contrivances that throw us out of Willing Suspension of Disbelief. This is why we say that Tropes Are Tools. It's not the tropes themselves that are good or bad, but how the writer wields them. Some tropes tend to be misused more than others, of course, which is why they are on the Bad Writing Index. But that doesn't mean you cannot use them effectively, just that you should think things through if you intend to.

edited 26th May '17 7:18:37 PM by Fighteer