When Villains go bad and not in a good way

 

For me when a book, movie or tv show has a villain that play a central role to the story arch, he or she better be a good one. A lot of the time, sadly, the villain is cardboard cut out of what the creator thinks evil should be. Here is of list of a few things that make for crappy villains in my opinion. 

1. The speech of death. A common ploy in a book or movie is to have the villain to have a long monologue on the awful and evil things that he is going to do to the hero. The purpose of said situation is to give the hero enough time to escape to stop the evil plan or for his save the day team to get there to save him. Thinks like this drive me crazy. I really rather see the villain do the stuff he said he will do !!!!

2. No back story or little back story: As in the villain was evil for the sake of being evil or he just had awful parents that abused him. Yes, some people that have horrible upbringings turn out to be bastards and psychopaths but tons of psychopaths come from nice well to do families too.If the villain is just evil because he was born that way or because of one bad thing in his childhood, I instantly don't take him seriously anymore.

3. No shades of grey: No, I don't mean the erotic novel. I mean the fact that everything in whatever universe the hero and the villain are in , everything is either black or white. The hero is always good and the villain is always bad. Another way to put it is everything the hero does is glorified  because everything  he does is seen in a positive light,  while everything the villain does is is in some way evidence to his  evil ways .If the villain saves someone from dying , people are going to think he some evil motive driving him to do it. People are never black or white . We do bad and good whether we like it or not. For characters to be convincing to me they have to resemble the reality of human nature.

4. Stupid beyond belief : This is sort of related to the aforementioned topic. A lot of villains out there are branded as stupid to make the hero seem more intelligent because the hero has to have all of the glory. Most of the times the villain will screw up in a big way so the hero catches him the last five seconds of the film. Villains can be mentally challenged, that's not the issue. The issue I have with dumb as nails villains is they are stupid for the sake of being stupid. Instead of writings and creators make villains that actually out smart the hero, the creators want dumb villains so the hero catches them easier.

5. Why you so Weak ?? This pertains to a villain that has the strangest weakness in the world that the hero just suddenly finds out about or the villain is killed by the stupidest method ever.  Villains are people too, in most things, so they are going to have a weakness or too. That's fine. Flaws are a good think in my book. What gets on my nerves are villains that are immune to everything but a rare flower or the power of love, because we all know, if you are evil you have no heart what so ever.