Creating Multiple Villains vs. One Villain
In many movies, there’s a single main villain with an army of henchmen who constantly attack and threaten the hero. Think of any James Bond movie, “Star Wars”, or “Die Hard” and you can see this single villain story structure in action.
When you have a single, all-powerful villain, the hero must react and stop the villain from achieving their goal. In “Star Wars”, Luke has to stop Darth Vader from blowing up the rebel base and in “Die Hard”, John McClane has to stop the villain from blowing up the hostages on the roof. However, many times the hero already has a goal and the story doesn’t lend itself to a single villain. That’s when you need multiple villains.
When a story has multiple villains, each villain isn’t necessarily evil and often works with the hero, which makes their conflict with the hero even tougher since they’re supposed to be on the same side. The whole purpose of multiple villains is to keep the hero constantly struggling to overcome a problem that a minor villain tries to achieve.
In “Top Gun: Maverick”, the first minor villain is an admiral who wants to shut down a top secret Mach 10 project. Since Maverick wants to test if this plane can hit Mach 10, this admiral is the villain even though both work for the Navy.
After Maverick defeats this villain by proving the plane can hit Mach 10, he faces the next villain, a commanding officer who goes by the call sign of Cyclone. Cyclone doesn’t want Maverick as the Top Gun instructor but Iceman, Maverick’s former wingman, has pushed for Maverick to become the instructor. Thus throughout Act II, Cyclone is constantly butting heads with Maverick.
First, Cyclone scolds Maverick for having his pilots fly too low. Then Cyclone expects the pilots to be training but Maverick has them playing football on the beach instead. After Cyclone relieves Maverick of his duties as an instructor and grounds him, Maverick steals a plane and proves that the mission can be done.
Another minor villain who should be a friend is Hangman, an arrogant pilot who constantly torments Rooster until they almost get into a fist fight. Hangman exists to make it harder for Maverick to repair his relationship with Rooster.
Once the mission starts, the villain is anything that threatens to keep Maverick from accomplishing his mission and coming back home alive. That includes a helicopter that tries to kill him (before Rooster blows it apart) and several enemy jet fighters that try to shoot him down.
When there is not a single villain but multiple villains, the conflict comes less from fighting the villain and more about the hero fighting their own internal demons. In “Top Gun: Maverick”, Maverick’s big struggle is dealing with his fractured relationship with Rooster.
“Little Miss Sunshine” is another movie that contains multiple villains who should be the hero’s friend. The hero, Olive, just wants to compete in a beauty pageant so the three main people supporting her are her mother, her uncle who tried to commit suicide, and especially her grandfather. Getting in her way are her brother, Dwayne, who has taken vow of silence and won’t speak to anyone, and her own father, Richard.
Dwayne’s silence makes things harder for the family but Richard’s insistence that the world consists of winners and losers is the real villain that Olive must overcome. Even after they get her to the beauty pageant, suddenly Dwayne and Richard don’t want Olive to compete because they fear she’ll embarrass herself. This opposition, from her own family, is the toughest battle Olive must survive.
The beauty pageant administrator is a true villain because she tries to stop Olive form entering and competing in the beauty pageant while never trying to help her at all, but she’s such a minor character that defeating her is far less important than defeating Richard, Olive’s own father. By simply competing, Olive proves that she’s a winner and rallies her whole family to support her, even her own father who now realizes that Olive is a winner after all.
Action thrillers and horror typically rely on a single villain for the hero to defeat while dramas, comedies, and romance often rely on multiple villains for the hero to defeat. When writing your own story, decide whether you need a single villain or lots of multiple villains instead. Either way can work as long as it works for your particular story.
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