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Who do you think the archtypical 'bad guys' might be in film and video games in the future?
Obviously this depends heavily on one's interpretation and subsequent extrapolation of the current geopolitical climate. That being said Nazis, the Soviet Union and generic Middle Eastern terrorists will eventually fall out of vogue and lose their cultural significance with each passing generation. What might come next?
If nothing else, I suspect zombies will remain one of those recurring trends that come in waves.
I think we're moving away from the 'good guy' vs 'bad guy' mentality that came out of early cinema culture. We have been for a long time. Good/bad guys are simplistic fictions we use as crutches and our narratives suffer as a result. Real people are a mix of good and bad, no one ever sees themselves as the villain even if they have become a legendary one. The best stories we've seen in cinema and in television over the last few years avoid the mistake of a black vs white narrative.
I have noticed lately we're seeing a shift towards treating absolutist/extremist views of any stripe as the new main 'bad' element in a villain. Evil CEOs are in vogue, anti-capitalist sentiment is definitely higher now and I expect that trend will continue with bankers and wall street moguls.
Mad scientist types seem to have fallen out of favor, technology just isn't sexy enough anymore when it's all pew-pew lasers with no real science to make things interesting and set limits. All AI is still evil, though, no progress on that front at all, and it's kinda replaced the mad scientist. For a society that spends nearly every waking moment staring at a screen I suppose that's to be expected. Hackers have gone from being 'bad guys' and basement-dwelling caricatures to just 'good with computers' people.
Politicians are less likely to be the big bad now and more likely to be idiot pawns in the hands of the real villains - we don't even respect politicians in our entertainment media anymore. I don't see terrorists going away any time soon since that's more of a 'tactic' than a core motivation. The 'bad guys' will always blow people up to make a point, even if the point changes. I think we can look forward to seeing more 'christian' bad guys, though. That's been blacklist-level taboo in hollywood until very recently, the ice is beginning to thaw. The muslim 'good guy' still seems to be MIA, relegated to anonymous phone calls and bit parts in crime dramas.
I've been missing the 'see the world burn' style of villain. The pure psychopath who treats reality as his personal sandbox to do with as he pleases without even a passing thought of consequences or empathy. There's a certain purity in over-the-top megalomania without all the emotional hand-wringing.
Travellers has an interesting take on AI, don't want to spoil it too much, but it's more nuanced than the typical AI tropes.
I feel like Nazis might stay relevant. I'm sure WW2 will be remembered for quite a while. It was a pretty big deal obviously.
Yup. Global conflict, nice bright line between good guys and bad guys, charismatic characters, and the charm of the analog punctuated by the atomic.
It's got a lot going for it.
I disagree. I half-remember reading something that said events become history when everyone involved has died. When there's noone left alive who remembers the events, they become just something you read about in history books.
That said, there are a lot of people today who are doing their best to ensure that the memory of Nazism is kept alive and current - by emulating them. That may (sadly) help Nazism to buck the trend of becoming dry old history.
And yet we keep seeing movies about things even longer ago than that. Memories become legend, legend fades to myth, etc etc.
We also see stories about King Arthur, and Robin Hood, and Hercules, and other legendary figures. That's not quite the same as putting them front-and-centre as protagonists or antagonists in computer games. There's no sense of immediacy for these long-dead and vaguely remembered people from history.
What makes you think the European narrative is waning?
Idk, I've also noticed and rise in more Chinese narrative, but from what I can see it's from western companies expanding their productions to capture more of the growing Chinese market, not so much a dominant Chinese culture emanating from China. For whatever reason Chinese media has not captured western imagination, you don't see dubbed or subtitled Chinese films in cinemas or shows on tv, can't think of any video games either.
They'll continue to be predominantly male. I have trouble coming up with five female movie villains in the past 20 years. The female "bad guys" that do appear are often working in service of an evil mastermind who is male, or are manipulated against their will, or are secretly good but acting as a double-agent (and in this case usually die at the end).
Disney is an exception; Disney has a lot of female villains for some reason. But mostly older than the past 20 years.
My gut is that video games are slightly better in having more of a mix of male and female villains, but I'm not really sure. It also depends which genres of games you're looking at.
Edit: Relevant visualizations including gender representation: https://www.vulture.com/2017/06/30-years-action-movie-villains-11-infographics.html
A lot of the Disney female villains follow classical tropes you find in Roman and Greek literature, the manipulative stepmother, jealous stepsister etc. I think it's a good thing they have moved away form that, they are often cast as a reflection to what they are doing to the men in the story, thick with sexist moral lessons.
I think an interesting part of this is that "machine" villains often are "female" even if they aren't serving another, male villain. Movies like iRobot and Oblivion along with video games such Portal and Metroid feature "female" antagonist machines that are acting independently.
That will depend on future current events. The reason Nazis became bad guys was because of World War II. The Soviets became bad guys because of the Cold War. Muslims and Middle Eastern people became bad guys because of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Each new set of bad guys arose from real-world events.
It's therefore impossible to predict who future bad guys will be, because we can't predict future real-world events.
Exactly. That trend will die off, just as the vampire trend of the 1990s did. These things come and go in waves, as pop culture trends fluctuate.
Isn't that one of their defining characteristics? Not the movies but the Zombies themselves. They come in waves.
To be perfectly frank that was almost entirely an attempt at a bad pun.
Yes, I was going along with it.
I kind of think their will be more of a shift towards bad situations, or events. Zombies are a pretty good example of this, where it's just a thing that has happened maybe someone caused it but the story is focused on surviving the event, not fighting a well defined bad-guy. Coming from a reaction to large scale events that are sure to come in the future, be it climate change, natural disaster, or the subtle ways technology is influencing society. I think we are moving away form the big block mentality of the 20th century, the antagonists in our stories will change to reflect that.