Don't Make Your "Villain" Have Too Just of a Mission

Friday I posted my mini-review of Creed III along with some other movies and the problem with that movie was I really had a hard time rooting against the villain.  In fact, I mostly agreed he got screwed, so why shouldn't he get revenge on the "hero?"

The setup was that when they were teenagers Adonis Creed and Dame Anderson were amateur boxers.  Dame actually wins the Golden Gloves tournament and is kind of an older brother to Adonis.  After the tournament they go to a party store to get some snacks.  Adonis sees a guy named Leon who was a neighborhood criminal.  Adonis punches Leon and gets jumped by a couple of thugs.  Then Dame pulls a gun to get the thugs to let Adonis go.  As the cops roll up, Adonis runs away while Dame is arrested and jailed for the next 20 years.

During that 20 years, Adonis becomes a rich, famous boxer with a wife and young daughter.  You could say he has Dame's life.  Meanwhile, he never writes, calls, or visits Dame in prison.  Yet Dame never ratted him out to the cops or media; the latter probably could have got him some money from a tabloid that he could have used on the outside to make a new life.

Given these facts, why is it I'm supposed to think Dame is the villain and Adonis is the hero?  When they have their big boxing match at Dodger Stadium, why am I supposed to be cheering for Adonis?  I mean, really, I was kinda siding with Dame.  He has a legitimate beef.  He protected Adonis and went to prison and Adonis never even sent him a thank you note.  Why shouldn't he want revenge for that?

Contrast this with Rocky III:  Clubber Lang (Mr. T--I pity the fool!) is a brutal boxer from the projects of Chicago.  He sees Rocky Balboa as this rich, soft white guy who's coasting into retirement.  Rocky's manager Mick won't give Clubber a fight because he knows Rocky would lose.  So Clubber crashes Rocky's retirement press conference to goad him into a fight by insulting him and even suggesting that Rocky's wife Adrian would prefer a "real man" instead.  Like Dame, Clubber has some good reasons, but in this case, Rocky is also justified in that Clubber is insulting him and his wife.  Whereas, what justification does Adonis have to be pissed at Dame?

Adding to why the plot of Rocky III works, there's also the redemption angle.  Rocky gets his ass kicked by Clubber and in the process his manager dies of a heart attack perhaps caused by Clubber shoving him and the beating he was giving Rocky.  To get his fighting mojo--and manhood--back, Rocky goes to see Adonis's dad in LA and trains to beat Clubber.

In Creed III there's not really a redemption angle.  Adonis retires after a fight in the beginning of the movie.  Thanks to Dame, some people start to question Adonis's toughness and all that but it really isn't that big of a deal.  I mean, in today's Internet culture you have people try to say Michael Jordan wasn't really that good--he was nothing without Pippen!  (Is that why the Bulls won 0 championships when MJ was "retired?"  And have won 0 championships since he retired for good?)

So the problem is two-fold with this movie:  the villain's motivation is actually too good and the hero's motivation is pretty weak.  Thus the epic fight at the end isn't really that epic.  If you really want the end battle to be epic, you have to make sure the motivations are clear and that what the bad guy wants is bad and what the good guy wants is good.  Otherwise, the stakes get pretty murky.

That doesn't mean your bad guy always has to be a mustache-twirling megalomaniac.  I mean in Rocky III, Clubber doesn't want to take over the world and he's not holding the arena hostage or anything.  But he is a brutal, nasty jerk who has done our hero wrong by insulting him and his wife, possibly killing his manager, and making Rocky question himself/his manhood.  So when Rocky wins the fight, we're glad because Clubber was a jerk and Rocky is a good guy.  Whereas in Creed III, why should I want Adonis to win?  What does he even win?  He gets the title belts back, but since he retired a champion he never really lost them.  Dame might have insulted him, but it was the truth, wasn't it?  Adonis ran away and abandoned his friend.  Sure he was young and stupid, but he was still a coward.  Why should I want the villain to fail?  Dame was kind of a jerk but he had a right to be, didn't he?  As I said, Adonis was basically living his life.  Not that he was blameless--he did have priors that contributed to his sentence and was not behaving well enough to get out early either--but he had a right to be mad and want revenge.  So when he loses, he loses a lot more than Adonis wins.

When writing a story then, it's important to make sure that your conflict has the proper stakes.  You want people to want the hero to win and win something important enough to make the journey worthwhile.  Otherwise, what's the point?