If you were to ask most people who James Bond arch nemesis was and you will invariably get the answer Ernst Stavro Blofeld. However in the EON series of Bond movies - Blofeld has only appeared four times (and in Thunderball he was a shadowy figure who had no contact with Bond at all). Many people imagine that Sherlock Holmes was constantly locked in a contest of brains and willpower against Professor James Moriarty. Not true, Holmes faced Moriarty twice in Conan Doyle's canon of Holmes adventures - this figure is vastly increased when one examines the many non-Doyle stories that have been written. Moriarty has made appearances in such diverse stories as "Young Sherlock Holmes", "Sherlock Holmes and the case of the missing Martian" and perhaps most memorably "The Seven Percent Solution".
Why have these villains become so ensconced in the mythologies of these heroes considering their minimal appearances? It is easy to understand why Ming the Merciless will always be associated with Flash Gordon as they faced each other all the time. This is the same with Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker - again a constant force of darkness in the "Star Wars" saga. Could it be that a hero needs someone who is diametrically opposed to whatever they believe in?
In "Raiders of the Lost Ark", Rene Belloq tells Indy that they are very similar men - it would only take a nudge to turn Indy into a man like Belloq. In the teaser to "Raiders", Indy is going after the golden idol of a fertility goddess from a temple in Peru. He gets it and manages to escape from the self-destructing temple by the skin of his teeth - however Belloq is waiting with a whole posse of Hovito warriors. When the Frenchman takes it from him, Indy says
"It's too bad the Hovito's don't know you like I do Belloq!"
However, what was Belloq going to do that Indy wasn't? Our intrepid hero was still going to take this religious relic away from the people who worshipped it - however, unlike Belloq his motivations were different. Indy was going to put it in a museum, Belloq was going to sell it to a private collector. They were both different sides of the same coin. Two men of similar capabilities, but with different motivations! Is a hero someone who has just made one correct decision in his life? Is a villain someone who has slipped up at some point - a theme that is being explored in the first three episodes of the Star Wars saga.?
Often a villain can be defined by his masterplan - I mean how many villainous masterminds want to destroy the world? It's quite acceptable for Emperor Ming to do so, after all he doesn't stay here - but the average Bond villain who has designs to destroy the planet . . . well, it could be argued that it shows a lack of planning on their part. However, many villains are portrayed as being insane - in "The Spy Who Loved Me" Stromberg wishes to destroy all surface life so that he can rule an undersea kingdom. In "Moonraker", Drax wishes to destroy all life on Earth with a virus so that he, and his master race can take over the remnants of the planet from his safety net of a space station when the virus is gone. Both of these men are undeniably insane, but the fact of the matter is they have reasons for their evil. A villain must have a reason for their actions, otherwise they are just random and there is too much random violence and evil in the world for us to have to face it in escapist entertainment.
Anyone who writes adventure stories must relate the forces of evil to the forces of good - it would be an easy fought battle if Sherlock Holmes was pitted against a villainous version of Forrest Gump. In the saga of Batman, many of the villains are faintly ridiculous looking but not any less dangerous because of it. Whereas Batman is a dark figure in a cowl and a cape, the Joker is adorned in bright garish colours - a bizarre diametric mirror image appearance wise. Batman is arguably a psychotic figure - but compared to the Joker he's an example of sanity and social acceptability. It is an accepted idiom that a hero is only as good as his villain and more often than not a villain is by far the most memorable character in a movie, novel or comic book. A good case in point is Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves", whereas Robin Hood in this version of the story was quite bland and dull, Rickman chewed the scenery with malicious glee. Also witness the success of Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter character - a vile and evil man who ends up being the focus of our interest in the trilogy of novels and both movies. In fact we end up rooting for him and hoping that he escapes from the forces of justice.
A villain is probably the cornerstone of a good adventure fiction and hopefully the Hannibal King saga has had enough memorable bad guys to make the movies interesting.
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