The movie “Falling Down” is about a guy who’s had enough of modern society… and decides to rebel against it in the most misguided way possible.
It’s an excellent example of how you can write a story where the villain is the protagonist.
To do that you need THREE things, so let’s take a look at what they are!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we do a stream about “Falling Down and How to Write a Villain Protagonist.”
Watch the full video here or scroll down for highlights.
What is a “villain” and what is a “protagonist?”
- Quite often the terms “protagonist/hero” and “antagonist/villain” are used interchangeably.
- But actually, they’re very different!
- Protagonist/antagonist” are literary terms, whereas “hero/villain” are cultural terms.
- The protagonist is the main character of the story, the one whose journey we follow, and the antagonist is the character who opposes/is hostile to the protagonist.
- However, a “hero” in a story is simply someone who does good things, and a “villain” is someone who does bad things, which can vary between cultures/perspectives.
- For example: is a king who sacrifices his child to save the kingdom a hero or a villain? Is a racist police officer who solves crimes a hero or a villain? Is a firefighter who eats meat a hero or a villain?
- Because protagonists/heroes are different, the protagonist of your story does not necessarily have to be the hero.
- You can write your story so that the protagonist is the villain, and the antagonist is the hero.
- However, if you want to do that, there are three things to keep in mind. Let’s take a look at what they are with the movie “Falling Down.”
Three Things to Have for a Villain Protagonist
#1. Relatability
- In Falling Down, the first scene is the protagonist stuck in miserable traffic (WATCH IT HERE)
- This is super relatable, everyone has questioned their life/career decisions, got caught in the grind, etc.
- Having your villain be relatable is the same reason your hero needs to be relatable in a regular story: if they’re not, then the reader won’t be interested in following their journey
- They shouldn’t just do evil things for power/greed/randomly, they should think they’re a good person, doing what’s right, and have goals/fears/loves, etc.
- Even if they’re a psychopath, give them something human (a love for music, a pet, etc.)
- In a “normal” story with the hero as the protagonist, you don’t necessarily have to make the villain relatable (ie: Maleficent, Voldemort, Scar, etc.), but when the villain is the main character, it’s a requirement
#2. Going about their goal in the “wrong” way
- You might be wondering, if a villain is relatable, then what makes them a villain?
The difference between a hero/villain is simply in how they go about achieving their goal, and villains do it in a way that is culturally wrong (killing, terrorism, authoritarianism, etc) - In Falling Down, the protagonist has a relatable problem: he’s fed up with modern life and he hates what the world has become
- But he goes about trying to alleviate it in the wrong way (WATCH IT HERE)
- Instead of focusing on the actual issues such as corporate greed, institutional racism, or wage slavery, he focuses his anger/violence on immigrants, minorities, and poor people
- Having your villain go about their goal in the wrong way is what makes them a villain
- Death Note: Light has a progressive goal, but it costs too much blood
- You: The protagonist loves/wants to help a woman, but steals/kills to do it
- A Clockwork Orange: The protagonist wants to rebel/have fun, but goes too far by killing
#3. Pick an ending: retribution/change/stagnation
- Most stories where the protagonist is the villain can be divided into three different endings:
- Retribution: the villain pays for their crimes and usually dies
- This is how Death Note ends
- It shows that eventually karma will catch up to you
- Change: the villain sees the error of their way and changes to good
- This is how A Clockwork Orange ends
- It shows that there is hope even for the worst people
- Stagnation: the villain is not punished and lives on
- This is how You ends
- It shows that evil is eternal
- Retribution: the villain pays for their crimes and usually dies
- In Falling Down, the ending is one of retribution (WATCH IT HERE)
- It’s a big wake up call for anyone who watched the movie, thinking that the protagonist was the hero
- He dies because he was so short-sighted, he couldn’t see the bigger problems past the smaller ones, couldn’t appreciate the wonderful things he had because of minor annoyances
- It’s a message to the audience not to be like him, and to reevaluate themselves
After that, chat voted that we write this story with the villain as the protagonist: a prologue in which our main hero character is the most annoying, unlikeable person who ever existed. Any readers who make it through to the end of the prologue are rewarded by seeing their awful protagonist brutally killed by the villain, who proceeds to usurp Protagonist status.
Here’s what we came up with:
When Hiro awoke, he was in a completely different world. Slowly, he cracked his eyes open to see a wide open plains of blue grass, and a neon green sky above. A flock of birds flew overhead, cackling in unfamiliar cacophony, like metal pans and pots banging together. They burst into flames together as they flew toward the horizon, a herd of phoenix-like creatures, soaring toward the two suns setting in the distance.
Hiro immediately knew what was going on: he’d been transported to a different world.
“Well thankfully I was the best student in my class, and an Eagle Scout,” he said to himself. “Not to mention my first place finishes in track and field, competitive fishing, and plant identification. No matter what challenges are presented to me, I will be fine!”
Hiro stood up, only having to stretch for a second to get his bearings. His muscles were so tight and strong that they were ready to take on whatever he needed to do. He was still wearing his school uniform, a dark jacket and slacks from Wimbulton’s High, a prestigious private university preparation academy. Where he was, of course, student of the month for 36 months running.Only for a moment did Hiro allow himself to think about how he’d gotten here. He’d been walking home from school, mentally preparing his homework schedule like he always did, when something appeared beneath his feet. In a flash, he’d thought he’d stepped into an open manhole or something, but that was absurd; he was on the local council, and there was not a single pothole in the entire neighborhood thanks to his efforts.
There was no other explanation. That hole he’d fallen into had been a portal to another realm.
Hiro snapped into focus. Around the perimeter of the blue-tinted plains was a forest of strange trees, more like petrified tentacles than any floral specimen he’d ever encountered before. Tangled together in a deep violet, Hiro tried to deduce how they could potentially be used.
“Going by their physical color,” he spoke aloud, getting his thoughts in order, “the plants of this world do not have the same system of energy-allocation utilizing chlorophyll and chloroplasts like on Earth. Perhaps they utilize phycobilisomes? Further investigation is required.”
Hiro stepped toward the tentacle-bushes. They reminded him of that time he and his parents had gone out on one of their yachts and done some diving. The squids and octopedes—the proper plural of octopus, being of the Greek origin—had been beautiful. But now, seeing their appendages silent and still and pointed to the sky was slightly unsettling.
“Help!” came a voice from within the tentacle woods. Hiro shot a glance deeper into the forest. From a clearing ahead, fire-birds were screeching and fallen suckers from the tentacle trees were crunching on the ground. Someone was in danger! Hiro peered around the thick trunk of the tree to see what was going on.
A beautiful young woman Hiro’s age was being attacked by fire birds. She cowered in fear, hiding her head with her hands as her silky white cloth dress was picked at by the birds coming in from the sides. Her woven-gold hair hung across her face, and her arms and legs were pale as dew from heaven. Two long, pointed ears stuck out from beneath the foliage of her hair, as if trying to reach the sky for help.
She was alone, and in danger. Hiro didn’t know how she could speak English, or perhaps it was just some cosmological coincidence that the cry for help was the same in his superior language as it was hers, but he had to do something.
Thankfully, he was also a junior Olympics gold-medal winner for gymnastics.
He thrust his hands above his head, shifted his center of gravity to his palms, then kicked forward, performing a triple flip right into the clearing. Just by his dazzling entrance alone, half of the birds were so shocked that they fled, cawing the same metallic sounds as before.
“Unhand her, you fowl fiends!” Hiro called to the remaining ones.
The birds turned their attention to him, beaks out and clanging their horrific call. They burst into flames and flew right at Hiro, ready to bite out his eyes.
Thankfully, Hiro was a third-degree blackbelt in karate. And taekwondo.
All it took was a single hand-slice to the beaks of the birds to whack them straight to the ground. Hiro had easily identified that the nonflammable part of the bird was their mouth, and he knocked them all out without sustaining a single burn. Thanks to his part-time volunteering as a junior fighter fighter, he knew all about flammability.
With the birds defeated, Hiro sheathed his hand-weapons back into his pockets and approached the young woman. She was sitting sprawled on the ground, panting heavily, obviously still recovering from her attack. Not everyone had the lung capacity of a Wimbulton’s sprinter.
“Here, I can help you up,” Hiro said, extending a hand. Maybe this woman could tell him about this world. Or, even better, perhaps she was a princess and it was Hiro’s destiny to rescue her all along! He’d become king of this land, just as he had become king of the academy back home.
The young woman clasped his hand with hers. It was soft and wonderful. Hiro could feel the love in her already blossoming. That was fine though. Getting transported to another world meant he’d automatically broken up with his other girlfriends.
“Thank you so much,” the young woman said. She peered up at him, her wide eyes glistening with appreciation as she smiled from rosy cheek to rosy cheek. Hiro’s heart almost leapt at seeing her, but thankfully it was just as well trained as he was, and it stayed at its constant 60 beats per minute.
“It’s no problem,” Hiro said. He tried to pull back his hand, but the woman didn’t let go. Apparently she was a little clingy.
“We get travelers from all over who come through here,” she said. Her grip felt like it was tightening. Perhaps she was an orange belt?
“That’s nice,” Hiro said, now really trying to release his hand and failing. For the first time since he got an A- in third grade math class, a single bead of sweat dripped down his neck. “Would you please let go of my hand now?”
“But I’ve never seen a traveler quite like you before, one with such strong hands,” the woman said. “Won’t you please… give it to me?”
Hiro only felt the pain for a moment, before he had nothing left to feel it with. The woman yanked so hard on his hand that his arm ripped from its socket on his shoulder, tendrils of blood and arteries connecting them only briefly before they too snapped and fizzled.
Hiro screamed as his arm fell to the ground, pooling blood on the blue grass of the clearing. He collapsed to his knees, staring at the blacked hole where his arm had been. The woman dropped his useless appendage to the ground, walked over to him, and squatted right in front of his face.
“Now let’s stop that ungodly sound of yours,” she said, clasping onto his cheek.
She ripped the skin right across his face, peeling off his mouth like a bloodied sticker. Hiro’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the ground below, unmoving, unbreathing. The woman stood up and dropped the mouth on his back with a satisfying plop. She sighed as she stared at her latest quota fill.
“That’s the third one just this week,” she said to herself. “If we don’t put a stop to these travelers, then our world is going to be in trouble.”
Be sure to check out the video to see how this story would continue!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
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