Driven by specific goals or desires, protagonists are typically portrayed as relatable and morally upright. Their character is likely to develop or change for the better as the story progresses. The protagonist-antagonist relationship can be as simple as a hero versus a villain. But since that formula can become overly predictable, authors often create different types of antagonists to create different types of conflict. The protagonist of the TV series Breaking Bad is Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. In order to leave his family on secure financial footing, he begins making and selling the illegal drug known as crystal meth.

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Th dystopian novel 1984 depicts a political reality in which the present-day Great Britain, called Airstrip One in the novel, is controlled by a system of government called The Party. The narrative follows the protagonist Winston as he becomes critical of The Party and begins to keep a journal criticizing it. He begins a surreptitious affair with a woman named Julia after he discovers that she shares some of his feelings.

Villainous Characters

The central tension of the film is created by the comet’s path toward Earth, which makes the comet itself an example of a non-human antagonist. An antagonist is usually a character who opposes the protagonist (or main character) of a story, but the antagonist can also be a group of characters, institution, or force against which the protagonist must contend. A simple example of an antagonist is the Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, who opposes and wants to destroy Snow White. The simplest explanation is that an antagonist represents the opposite of the protagonist.

Man vs Nature

These are emotions you may want to avoid in your everyday life, but they make for great cinema. Coco also has a great hidden antagonist (spoilers ahead, folks). At the drug addiction blog beginning of the film, Miguel is obsessed with Ernesto de la Cruz, a famous dead musician. An anti-villain is a character who is doing bad things for good reasons.

Antagonists are conventionally presented as making moral choices less savory than those of protagonists. This condition is often used by an author to create conflict within a story. An example in which this is reversed can be seen in the character Macduff from Macbeth, who is arguably morally correct in his desire to fight the tyrant Macbeth, the protagonist. In some narratives, like Light Yagami and L in Death Note, the protagonist is a villain and the antagonist is an opposing hero. Despite its kind of complicated definition, the anti-villain is a pretty common protagonist foil.

The hidden antagonist is the opposite of the false antagonist. Here, a character who we initially think is benevolent ends up being a villain. Although we knew before this moment that Sauron was evil, we weren’t quite sure what role Saruman was going to play. But in revealing his villainous plan, we see that he is the most direct character-based obstacle for the Fellowship. Writers also refer to antagonists as “adversaries” or “adversarial forces.” This next video is taken from a lecture with professor Eric Edson of California State University, Northridge.

1. We as an audience are largely inclined to align ourselves with Carl’s morals as he searches to capture fraudster Abagnale.
2. In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the roles of protagonist, antagonist, and villain are subverted.
3. An internal enemy can be much more, diffucult, nuanced and, unfortunately, true to life.

We imported The Fellowship of the Ring script into StudioBinder’s screenwriting software to see how Saruman betrays Gandalf — and how he reveals he’s working to stop Frodo’s journey. As you’re reading, fentanyl withdrawal symptoms and timeline think about how Saruman is highlighted as a villain. The Joker is a character who works to generate chaos in Gotham. His entire existence serves to juxtapose Batman, the protagonist of the story.

Here, the function of the antagonist is to obstruct the main character’s progress, through evil plots and actions. Antigone, the protagonist, struggles against King Creon, the antagonist, in her effort to give her brother a respectable burial. Of course, stories can have multiple protagonists and antagonists, and dynamic characters can even switch between these roles as the story develops.

Evil antagonists are bad for the sake of being bad, and besides antagonizing the protagonist, often serve as a terror to the greater public. No matter its form, the antagonistic force should pose a realistic challenge to the protagonist that forces change or action. Every superhero has at least one antagonist, and usually several – Batman’s Joker, Superman’s Lex Luthor, or Thor’s Loki. Note that if the story is told from the villain’s perspective, then the superhero would become a hero antagonist.

A protagonist doesn’t always come face-to-face with the story’s antagonist. Generally, a story’s protagonist acknowledges the antagonist, or the antagonist’s role, in the plot, or it is made clear to the reader through other means. A villain is always an “evil” character, but as shown in the preceding examples, not all antagonists are necessarily evil or even true villains.

Stories are naturally driven by conflict, and the simplest form of conflict is waged between two or more characters. The hero has a goal; the villain hopes to thwart that goal; and conflict develops naturally. In order to make the story compelling, of course, https://sober-home.org/drugs-brains-and-behavior-the-science-of-addiction-2/ the antagonist must be well-written and believable. We’ll cover what that looks like in the “How to Create an Antagonist” section. If Homer  is the protagonist of The Simpsons, then he has many antagonists, some of them evil and others less so.