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

[quetz.livejournal.com]

The bad guy in The Fifth Element is a big black void. (okay it's also the Ross Perot wannabe)

Even better: The bad guy is THE SYSTEM in things like Falling Down or Network.

[jimkeller.livejournal.com]

Falling Down and Network are excellent examples, actually. Psychological dramas in general are about an internal conflict that need not have an external force driving them. It's rare to find films that do them well, and these two certainly did.

[ericgriffith.livejournal.com]

Ah I love this discussion! As it turns out Falling Down was actually the story of the antagonist (Michale Duglas). It went through examples of what pissed him off and in the end the good guy (detective Prendergast) killed him. There was a secondary antagonist in the story too, it was the gang that Michael fought against. Brilliant, but it still showed you the antagonist and he was killed.

Network was twisted, so it's hard to make out. The two antagonists in that story though are (1) The networks chairman Arthur Jensen and (2) One of the network's producers Diana Christensen. Unfortunately in this story, the bad guys win and anchor Howard Beale is assassinated.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

Although psychological dramas and individual-against-the-System stories still need to have some visible sources of conflict. Falling Down presents a whole series of external obstacles, while Network has several "villains." This is the reason I think some well-intentioned movies like The Constant Gardener don't work dramatically; they don't have forces of antagonism or goals that the viewer can engage emotionally.

One of the more skillful recent examples of that trick is again, The Fellowship of the Ring, where the film builds up a central orc captain as the big heavy of the orcs, and then has Aragorn kill him after the death of Boromir. It's noteworthy because that character is in the movie purely for that piece of emotional catharsis. In a rational sense, it's a false catharsis, since it accomplishes nothing in the furtherance of the characters' actual goals; it's not even a setback for Saruman and Sauron, who clearly consider the orcs disposable. It's just there so that at what is really quite a bleak point in the story, the audience can breathe a sign of relief and say, "Well, at least they got the bad guy who killed Boromir."

[ericgriffith.livejournal.com]

Oh 5th Element! The void is shown as a planet thing at the very beginning. You remember they tried to blow it up, but it didn't work. Don't forget the voids "emissary" that buck toothed guy with the funny hair and clear plastic hat.