A story certainly doesn’t have to have villains. The Greeks versus the Trojans – a great story, neither side is evil, on both sides we see admirably heroic characters. In real life, many bad people may be weak, despicable or insane – but they don’t make the best villains in stories. As John’s original post explained, the most effective villains are the ones we can understand. They see themselves as being in the right. We don’t have to agree with them (we are able to see the moral flaw that they can’t perceive in themselves) but they will be more memorable for not simply being portrayed as doing evil for the sake of it.

Best example I can think of: Unbreakable, where we essentially have two protagonists. For a long time it looks like a hero-&-mentor story, but look how their arcs are complementary. (I won’t give any spoilers here for where that ends up.)

The nines is about loving only one person. And conflicts discussing that theme in spesific, but i could be wrong. A movie without any villians really. All those people just love eachother.

In the absence of the concepts of good and evil, the universe is indifferent between me loving and caring for my children and me torturing them to death and eating them.

Ignoring for the moment a motive of attaining some eternal reward or avoiding eternal damnation in the afterlife, if there is a stable equilibrium of interpersonal behavior which maximizes human welfare and longevity as a species, it is more likely to be attained from good behavior than evil. Just because evil can make a persuasive argument for its actions, doesn’t mean we must accept its sophistry. Evil is as evil does.

When we entertain the notion that evil-doers such as Alexander de Large, Al Capone, Bonny and Clyde, Jesse James, Timothy McVeigh, or Nidal Hasan might have had well-reasoned good intentions from their point of view, we are merely releasing pressure from our own internal mechanisms of self-control. I can vicariously cheer Alex beating up the bum, raping the snobbish socialite, and flaunting authority. But I don’t commit acts of robbery, murder, rape, violence, or disorderly conduct – not merely out of fear of retribution but out of regard for right and wrong. Simply put, I know better. “Do unto others” is indeed the Golden Rule. A man of good will and good intentions resorts to violence only as a last resort and only on those whose disregard for the well-being of others is a danger to everyone around them. I much prefer to live in a safe, orderly society of mutual rules which abridge existential freedom than suffer the perpetual fear of chaotic society.

Alex in Clockwork Orange is a classic antihero. Rather than expecting us to find something in Alex that we admire, Burgess is inviting us to see the world through his eyes – to imaginatively roleplay what it might be like to live in that society. Alex’s violence is a product of that society, and his stand against conformity is like a darkly refracted version of McMurphy’s in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Both those movies belong to the genre Blake Snyder labelled “Institutionalized”. The only difference is that when we turn off our “negative capability” and surface out of the world of the story, we most likely still would empathize with McMurphy but most of us would not with Alex. He’s still the protagonist, however.

Again, for me the scariest, most threatening and best villains are those which love and revel not only in the darkness, destruction and suffering that they bestow upon the world but absolutely passionately love the darkness or “evil” that it is merely inherent within them. They are “bad” or villainous simply because that is who they are or what they find to be the most satisfying path to embrace. They don’t see what they are doing as the “right” thing to do and cherish that blackest of black feelings from the moment they arise to the moment they fall to slumber.

Villains who are simply misguided, mentally-ill or otherwise have a much tougher time for me to feel greatly threatened or in danger by them as I end up feeling sorry for them or too much sympathy (i.e. the character becomes too tragic), or I feel there is a very solid chance they can be reasoned with or bribed in some fashion.

Side Note: How could Alex DeLarge of “A Clockwork Orange” be viewed as a hero at all?

In Austin Powers, Dr. Evil’s sole objective is to be evil. His criminal endeavours themselves (like his $100 ransom) are of little importance to him; they are no more than the necessary activities of a villain.

This magnificent character creation proposes that a baddie who’s goal is to be bad, is laughable.

(And in fact, I’ve always felt the story of Othello is far more Iago’s tragedy than the Moor’s.)