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Author: Mr.Movie

Jun 16th 2014 at 6:50:37 PM

Let me explain it this way: Lex Luthor is toast in a fair, direct confrontation, and thus the very fact that he has to rely on indirect means such as kryptonite, powered armor, hostage-taking, deception, manipulation, etc. proves that he is the underdog.

However, that is not to say everything all comes down to physical combat. If you had a hero and villain who both tried to be the ManipulativeBastard type, the villain would be the underdog despite superior combat skills if they were stupid/uneducated/NoSocialSkills while the hero wasn't.

The question I think that would be good for determining whether or not someone is a villainous underdog is this: As their abilities stand relative to each other, who must work with the most indirect means to achieve their goal?

In other words, the generic villain I mentioned above would not be the underdog if his/her goal was to "kill the hero", barring external help on the hero's side.
 
Through this reasoning, if Lex wants to kill Superman and Superman wants to capture Lex, then Lex Luthor says, "I need to take a hostage, and when Supes shows up, whip out the green rocks." (indirect means) while Superman says "I will swoop in with my super speed to save the hostage and brad Lex before he can exploit my weakness." (inherent powers are direct).

Does all of that make sense?