Whether you’re watching your Saturday morning cartoons or playing your favorite Super Nintendo game, sometimes you just have to ask to nobody in particular: “Why does the villain want to destroy the earth?” Doesn’t matter if the villain is a robot, an alien, a monster, or an ordinary human with extraordinary powers; chances are good he wants to destroy the world for no fucking reason other than to flex his muscle. You hear him cackle like a madman. You hear him barking orders at his minions even though he’s capable of doing a much better job. But that’s about all you hear. No motives, no thorough planning, and if he does have the latter, it’ll be explained in intricate detail to the protagonist rather than using that precious time to murder the motherfucker. All you know about the villain is that he wants to destroy the earth, but you don’t know why.
Do you realize what happens when the earth is destroyed? There’s a very real possibility that the main villain lives on planet earth, so if he destroys the whole fucking thing, where is he going to live? He’d better have a spaceship handy. If he does, what planet is going to take him in whilst being able to support human life? Even if the planet did support human life, why would they willingly want a genocidal maniac as part of their world population? Does the villain want to destroy his new home world too? Is that all this asshole does on his spare time? Just destroy worlds haphazardly without thinking about the consequences of mass genocide? At least Freiza from Dragon Ball Z had a motive. He wiped out the planet’s population and sold the planet to the highest bidder. He was a businessman. A ruthless businessman, but as we’ve seen with corporate America, that’s really a redundant phrase at this point.
I suppose any villain could use the CEO excuse to destroy random planets, but people who have seen Dragon Ball Z would know where the motive came from and accusations of plagiarism would be louder than a Super Saiyan screaming before he throws a Kamehameha wave…out of his ass…after eating a hundred dollars worth of Taco Bell food. Yes, I know, there’s no such thing as an original idea. Everything comes from somewhere. But surely there are more motives for committing genocide on a planet’s population than just dollars and cents, right? Yes, dollars and cents are very enticing to villains with a shallow point of view, or even a desperate debtor. But it’s hardly the only reason why someone would want to destroy a whole planet.
Destroying the earth seems to have lost its luster over time due to the backwards logistics of it all. But it doesn’t have to be. Part of the fun of being a professional author is spinning tropes on their heads. Maybe the threat of global destruction is part of an ultimatum. “Give me a gazillion dollars or I’m going to blow up a major world city every hour on the hour.” We’ve seen that in movies before, but why would a genocidal lunatic need a gazillion dollars? Climbing out of poverty? Buying a vacation home in somewhere other than a targeted city? Clinging to an expensive cocaine and hooker addiction? These are all solid reasons for world destruction. They’re shitty things to do, but as far as character arcs go, they’ll go a long way in giving villains all three of their much-needed dimensions. The audience will laugh at villains for being cheesy and one-dimensional. Why not make them blackmailers of the most disgusting kind?
But why is it just blackmail? Can a villain want to destroy the earth just for the satisfaction of watching the world burn? Dead bodies can be very satisfying to a villain with a constant Joker’s grin. But after one dead body, he’d have to keep achieving that high in order to maintain satisfaction. When the bodies run out, then what is he going to do? But maybe he will find satisfaction in worldwide genocide, because he sees his abusers in every person he meets. Or maybe he was raised with a Nazi ideology and sees himself as the purest human. Maybe the parents who gave him his Nazi ideology were abusive themselves. In the bloody war between nature and nurture, nurture wins hands down.
Can a villain be born evil, though? Certain genes could allow that to happen, like a predisposition for psychopathy, sociopathy, and narcissism. Maybe the villain is beyond help and can’t help himself when he kills large numbers of people. Maybe he legitimately doesn’t see the consequences of his actions and kills just because. But when he’s criticized or punished for his heinous crimes, he suddenly plays the sympathy card like a little coward. We’ve seen that in movies and TV shows before, because it continues to work. Hell, we see this shit in today’s world news with certain politicians, pundits, and bullies in general. I’m sure they’d love to watch the world burn just because.
What if a magical voice tells the villain to commit worldwide genocide and will only give him relief from his mind-fuck when he completes his task. Where is this voice coming from? The depths of hell? A sorcerer long believed to be dead? A bug implanted in his ear? A caterpillar that crawls up his nose and infests his brain? A psychoactive drug with micro-insects swimming through it? But if you as a writer choose to go down this route, you’ll want to remove it as far as you can from actual real world schizophrenia. Schizophrenics have enough stigmas attached to them as it is. The magical voice has to be purely from a magical or science-fiction standpoint. You can even take a page out of the Cyberpunk 2020 playbook and have the cyborg lose his humanity after overusing his mechanical limbs.
There are thousands of reasons why a villain would want to destroy the earth. Pick one and stick with it. You could have a laughing skeleton in a dark cloak carrying a fiery battleaxe, but unless you give him some reasons for doing the things he does, he’s going to come off as cheesy and clownish. Imagine if Darth Vader, one of the most iconic Star Wars villains of all time, destroyed worlds willy-nilly and had no real reason for it. He lusted for power, above all else. It’s a simple motive, but power is enticing to psychopaths who need to be in control of their environment at all times. Is the lust for power over-used? Could be. But if everything else about the villain clicks, whether it’s the dialogue, the presentation, or the power he already has, then the audience will forgive you if you use the power-hunger trope one more time.
I’m currently in the process of rewriting a fantasy novel called Beautiful Monster for the third time in a row. For the first couple of drafts, Queen Shelly Atwood had no real reason for being a sex-crazed rapist who wanted to get as much power as she could. But in this current draft, she likes having the power and influence of a queen because it turns her on. The money she makes selling brainwashed sex slaves affords her pleasures, comforts, and conveniences she wouldn’t have had as a poor peasant. Power is addictive and so is the one-percent lifestyle. She’s gotten so used to being powerful that she must have things her way all the time. She doesn’t want to lose even a smidgen of that power to anybody. Whether she gains it from raping a future sex slave or making shady business deals, she’ll take it where she can get it. With this much power and money comes possessions that she wouldn’t otherwise have. Scary artwork, pornographic novels, ice cream ingredients, fine wine, powerful drugs, she’s like a spoiled brat on Christmas, but every day is Christmas and every night is Halloween for the ones she steps on.
Any goofy character can be made into a convincing badass as long as there are layers and dimensions to their personality. Any atrocious act of genocide can be justified in the mind of the villain as long as that justification is made loud and clear. Evil for the sake of evil comes across as hokey no matter what the story is. Evil has a purpose. Evil has a background story. Evil has personality. The villains themselves might even insist that they’re the good guys of their own story. They’re destroying the earth to put the miserable population out of their respective misery. They’re committing genocide because the population is somehow responsible for shunning him from all forms of society. The villain is killing at random because he has a heightened sense of alertness that won’t allow him to be taken by surprise even by the most mundane human being or animal.
The table is set, fellow authors. Flesh out your villains, flesh out your stories, flesh out your worlds, and make sure your audience notices all the hard work you put into your craft. Even the most random occurrences happen for a reason despite the reason not being readily available to the victims. They should be available to your readers, though. They’re not stupid. They see right through laziness. You don’t want to be the author who gives them a whole lot of nothing, right? Show us why the villain is evil, don’t just say he wants to destroy the earth. Any clown in a spaceship can destroy the earth. But a true villain can haunt the minds of his audience while he’s doing it.
