MY FANTASY LICENCE: The Bad Guy

by Lee Willett, brand partnership manager, Lime Communications, Promotions & Incentives 13-Nov-03

A good villain is a rare commodity. The villain is just there to make the good guy's life miserable before he's vanquished, right?

Wrong. Villains are a fantastic opportunity to explore your imagination.

Some of the most memorable characters from movies and books have been villains. After all, what would Star Wars be without Darth Vader? Or Batman without The Joker?

Good villains have depth, motivation and drive, just like heroes - sometimes more. After all, a lot of thought and effort went into those Bond villains' ideas for world domination.

Nor do they have to comply with the wearisome good-guy rules that constrain the hero. Wear a black hat in a Western and you're unburdened by little things like laws against cattle rustling.

Actors often say playing a villain is much more satisfying than playing a hero. I don't see why that can't be true for kids too.

So that's where "the bad guy" comes in. He is a generic evil-doer who can turn his hand to any offshoot: James Bond villain, Flash Gordon villain, Action Man villain, superhero villain. All we have to do is provide him with the outfits and he can turn his hand to any sort of skulduggery.

He will have fantastic gadgets, outfits, secret headquarters, ninja training schools and endless henchmen.

When he is a success we can even bring out a female version with a never-ending supply of really fantastic outfits.

Kids can spend hours thinking up plans and traps for our villain to put into action and their chosen hero to thwart. He will have great crossover appeal to students, with a Dr Evil-style appeal. Hell, we can all end up blaming our bad days at work on him.

Of course, mums will not like him that much, so he will have fantastic playground credibility. We'll have to be careful to stay on the right side of villainy to make sure we do not stray into unwanted areas. Our bad guy is a pantomime villain really.

In the end he will always lose to whichever good guy you match him up against, but he'll be back with bigger and more devious plans. And thinking those up should be half the fun.

It's no good having a world full of heroes if there is no one interesting to fight. And when consumers do finally get bored of his evil ways, we will send him into therapy and bring him back as a hero.