Sméagol/Gollum

My last post on dragons got me thinking about my favorite villain in all of film and literature: Gollum of “Lord of the Rings“. In the title I included his other name which reflects his fair nature. As a person he is conflicted (mostly apparent in the film), he doesn’t know if he wants to be good or evil. I also like to think of the Iraqis in “Three Kings” as humans we sympathize with. Or Doc Octopus in the second Spiderman film. Villains who don’t want to be villains.

In my opinion this makes the best villain ever. I like Gollum because he makes me feel conflicted and confused. Like going to a horror movie to feel scared or a romance flick to feel warm and mushy. I enjoy these characters because in life bad people are three dimensional too.   A story is no good if it only affirms what you already think.

So a good guy does good and you feel good. So what?

To wish for simpler characters is to wish for a tepid world.  I do not wish for a tepid world.

Dragons

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” the characters encounter the dragon Smaug inside the Lonely Mountain. They send Bilbo in to see the treasure hoarded inside. We, the readers, don’t know what to expect of the encounter. We know Smaug is powerful and breaths fire (literally, but we will also explore it as a metaphor). What will happen to the halfling? Will he be eaten? Cooked by the breath of Smaug? Or will he fight and slay the foe?

No, the dragon speaks eloquently to convince Bilbo to betray his friends and take enough treasure for himself and only for himself. This is the true evil of the dragon: He brings people into evil, before destroying them physically. This is also the characteristic of the serpent of Genesis.

These two examples of dragons have sent me searching for more villains of the same archetype. I don’t think the “dragon” of a story has to be a scaly beast, just as a Christ figure doesn’t need to be a man, or human. It is an evil character who, with words like honey, convinces others to do evil. This can be done using appeals to good or bad values held by the coerced character.

I recently watched “Apt Pupil“. What the former Nazi (skillfully played by Sir Ian McKellen) passes along to the young man (the “pupil”) is not the values of the Nazi party. What he teaches him is to lie cheat and steal for self preservation and self promotion. The dragon here succeeds in creating a new dragon. The worst case scenario, for the good people of the world.

The dragon becomes more than a simple monster, it becomes the corrupting element on Earth, and a most excellent villain.