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]

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.