I ' m excited about Star Trek Into Darkness , but a lot of
what I hear from Benedict Cumberbatch feels eerily
similar to the speeches we ' ve heard from The Dark
Knight , Skyfall, and the trailers for Iron Man 3 .
John Harrison (a . k . a . probably Khan ) : You think your
world is safe ? It is an illusion. A comforting lie told to
protect you .
Once again we have a villain with an aggressive anti-
establishment attitude who likes to discuss the ' lie ' of
society . The same lie the Joker believed civilization
bought into that kept them from turning on one another
and " eating each other " . The same lie Silva bought into
when he became an agent, believing that civilization is
good and worth serving . The Dark Knight and the Joker
w as not the first movie to use these basic tenants of
storytelling , but it popularized it to a ridiculous degree .
So much so that major movie villains all seem to be
delivering variations of the same basic principle . While
it' s easy to understand why these techniques are used ,
it does make me pine for a movie where the villain isn' t
inexplicably tied to the hero due to a shared history .
A Shared History
Most modern movie villains seem to be connected to
the hero where they share a common history or are
somehow tied to an event that is responsible for their
creation . The hero and villain are often split from the
same event . Christopher Nolan ' s first and third Batman
films are examples of this principle in action. In Batman
Begins, Ra ' s al Ghul heads The League of Shadows , a
group dedicated to the idea that society needs razing
every few generations. This goes back to the modern
villainous concept that civilization is a lie that needs to
be exposed . Batman was created because Thomas and
Martha Wayne were murdered . A murder that was the
product of The League of Shadows ' economic warfare
on Gotham which sent Bruce Wayne on a quest to
avenge their deaths . A quest that leads him to ... The
League of Shadows . Villain and hero intertwined at a
molecular level . In The Dark Knight Rises we deal with
the fallout from the end of Batman Begins . Batman kills
Ra ' s al Ghul . Talia al Ghul and Bane return to Gotham
to destroy Batman. Villains and hero intertwined at a
molecular level . The hero and the villains are linked
through a shared history . The villain creates the hero.
The hero creates the villain.
