Dear Creative LazyWeb-sters:

[mlerules]

A friend is currently mulling over an idea for a film with a completely off-stage main villain. This is what he says and I'm spreading the question further w/this post:

I can think of a couple of examples of this that, in my opinion, don't work well (Blair Witch Project springs to mind, as does one horrific Enterprise episode), but I'm at a loss for examples of people who've done it well. As a general rule, if the audience doesn't ultimately confront the villain (vicariously through the main characters, of course) they're left feeling unsatisfied with the narrative. But for every rule there's an exception, so I'm sure they must be out there.

So, can anyone out there come up with an example (preferably on screen, but also in prose, and preferably in science fiction, comedy, or drama and not horror) where the non-appearance of the antagonist is either not a hinderance or actually an enhancement to the storytelling?

Comments

[ericgriffith.livejournal.com]

I agree Em. As an actor and director, I can tell you that the audience ABSOLUTEY hates that kind of film. The only time it "sort of " works is when the antagonist is a demon or ghost. Even then, the audience feels ripped off if it doesn't manifest somehow (appearing in smoke, shadow etc..). There was one good film "FALLEN" (1998 with Denzel Washington and John Goodman). Here it was a demon and it got away, but the audience still saw it move around the film and take over characters (Great rental btw: )

[clayshaper.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I would say they take it allright if no one 'else' sees the antagonist- but they /audience/ has to get some kind of GLIMPSE of it...

And if you draw it out too long, they can get annoyed- at the very least, a shadow, footprints, some indication of IT, should show.

In the movie "Paranormal Activity", you never 'see' the ghost/demon/whatever... but you DO see manifestations of it- and even then some people are vaguely put out that there's not more.

[evilgerbil.livejournal.com]

I might be an atypical movie watcher, but I don't feel this way. The point of the antagonist is to give the protagonist something to struggle against. If the struggle is portrayed well, I don't care if there's never any "payoff". Maybe I don't have the right definition of these terms. I'm thinking X-Files, where for years Mulder is chasing shadowy alien conspiracies and it works, because it's not about seeing them and who they really are, but what it does to him. In fact when there is a payoff, it's a huge let down because all the tension is gone.

[ericgriffith.livejournal.com]

Ah the X files T.V. show. Well don't forget that the alien conspiracy was actually a sub plot. It was the motivation for why Mulder did what he did. The vast majority of the shows were about he and Sculley finding the monster or person behind the problem of the day. The antagonist was witnessed and then it died, was killed or "taken care of" by the smoking man crew. Then there was the movie The X files (a good demonstration of what I was trying to say). The movie showed you the antagonist right up front.

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

Another series with a good overarching [sub]plot involving an unknown or nebulous antagonist was Alias. While the beginning seasons of the show were better at this than the later seasons, even in the later seasons while you saw all the different characters, there was enough uncertainty about what their roles really were that it was essentially like having the antagonist "hidden in full view" half the time.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

The irony is that Fallen was a terrible bomb, and it has poisoned the waters for anyone trying to do something like that.

It's very difficult to have a disembodied or non-present antagonist in an action story; if there's nobody for the hero to challenge directly, it's very frustrating. (You can sometimes deal with that by giving the villain corporeal allies/henchmen/worshippers, like the aforementioned LOTR.) In a story that's really about something else, like a procedural where the hero must struggle with his or her superiors, or a romantic comedy, you can get by, because the nominal villain really becomes a stalking horse for the actual conflict.

Still, the less tangible presence the villain or threat has, the less dramatic force it carries. This is why Back to the Future 2 doesn't work as well dramatically as Back to the Future. In the first movie, if Marty doesn't reunite his parents, he will cease to exist, and we have the (contrived) device of the photo that keeps changing as a gauge to measure his progress against nonexistence. In the second film, the threat is not even Biff himself, but the unfavorable alterations of history, which is awfully murky from a dramatic standpoint.