By Susanda Wolf

There’s a strange comfort in watching someone do what we’d never dare.

They lie, manipulate, seduce, steal, destroy—and we lean in. Joker. Tom Ripley. Amy Dunne. Tony Montana. Villains once meant danger. Now, they mean depth. Complexity. Seduction. They’ve become the emotional center of modern cinema—and often, its most relatable figures. Why?

Because villains offer what we rarely get in real life: freedom without apology. And from the comfort of a dark theater or a glowing screen, it feels good to witness someone who doesn’t flinch. But beneath this aesthetic thrill is something deeper, more uncomfortable: to watch a villain and feel seen, is to confront the parts of ourselves we’ve been taught to suppress.

The best villains don’t just commit evil; they expose structures. They reveal the emotional, social, and economic forces that shape behavior—forces often ignored by the hero’s journey. While heroes act with hope, villains often act with clarity. They see the game for what it is, and their defiance becomes a form of knowledge.

Villains Are Not Born—They’re Designed by the System

Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is not a monster in a vacuum—he is a product of institutional failure and social alienation. Killmonger in Black Panther is not simply an enemy—he is a counter-narrative, an indictment of historical injustice and idealized diplomacy. Tom Ripley does not just impersonate wealth—he demonstrates how desire, class, and charisma are often all that separate the rich from the criminal.

These aren’t villains who “went wrong.” They’re characters who were never given the option to go right—at least not by society’s standards.

Think of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho—hyper-controlled, performatively perfect, until he collapses into chaos. Or Gone Girl’s Amy, who doesn’t just break the rules—she rewrites them.

These are characters who take control in worlds designed to control them. And while their actions are horrifying, the emotional undercurrent is strangely familiar: the desire to be understood, the exhaustion of pretending, the need to reclaim narrative power.

When we root for a villain, we’re not rooting for murder or manipulation. We’re rooting for unfiltered freedom of action. For the fantasy of being unleashed. We do not root for villains because they kill. We root for villains because they stop apologizing.

Modern life demands restraint. It demands likability. It celebrates personal branding as morality. In this context, the villain becomes a vessel for all the things we suppress: rage, desire, vengeance, power. What makes them dangerous isn’t just their violence. It’s that they refuse to perform goodness. Watching a villain can feel like a temporary release from the exhausting theater of virtue, free from judgment—even if just in fiction.

The Death of the Hero Is the Rise of the Watcher

Today, we live in a post-heroic society. We no longer believe in the spotless protagonist. The world feels too complex, too rigged, too mediated. So cinema has responded accordingly: heroes now hesitate, institutions now lie, justice is a matter of perspective.

And into this grey terrain steps the villain—not as the antagonist, but as the active force. They move the story. They seize control. They reflect our deeper suspicion: that to play by the rules is often to lose.

So yes, we watch the villain. We analyze them. Sometimes we even root for them. But only—only—because they stay behind the screen because loving a villain in fiction is thrilling. Living next to one not so much.

Author: Susanda Wolf