So apparently my review of Maleficent was so long my blog couldn't post it

So here it is on my tumblr

Comments

[iowaforever]

That's sort of how I felt about it, except you went into far more detail, which I applaud

[iowaforever]

Adding to that last comment, a backstory for the villain is always hard, because you always have the chance of making them less evil than you originally started out with ("De-villifying" them, in a way). From my own Maleficent review:

Writing the backstory to an established villain is tricky. As Rick Burlew said in the opening to Start of Darkness (probably one of the best villain backstories I've ever read), you risk making the villain too sympathetic so they are less of a villain and more of a well intentioned extremist, which is bad when your villain is shown using puppies as footballs and has babies for dessert. Burlew avoids this and makes it tragic by presenting the backstories to two villains of his comic Order of the Stick: Big Bad Xykon, lich sorcerer and self-proclaimed "Evil with a capital E", and Redcloak, his goblin lieutenant. Redcloak has the sympathetic backstory: He was an up and coming cleric when his village was razed by crusading Sapphire Guard Paladins, with only him and his younger brother escaping. Since then (and after coming into possession of a magical artifact known as the Crimson Mantle, which was created by the goblins' god to guide his people) he's been searching for a way to take control of one of several powerful gates which hold back an eldritch abomination called The Snarl, which can kill gods and will unmake reality if set loose (the plan being to warp the gate and hold the gods hostage until they give goblins a better deal). While his brother sees that maybe this isn't the best plan and tries to get Redcloak to see it too, Redcloak is so wrapped up in his plot that he can't pull out or the numerous deaths under his watch will be for nothing. Eventually, Redcloak is forced to kill his brother when he tries to kill Xykon, who Redcloak thinks is the best option they have for someone powerful enough to help warp the gate.
Xykon, being a Darkseid-Level dick since birth, knew about the attempt on his life the whole time and had made steps to prepare for it. He said nothing because he wanted to see how far Redcloak would go to make sure that his plan worked, and essentially declares that that makes Redcloak his bitch. Redcloak won't turn on Xykon because that means he murdered his brother in cold blood, and Redcloak can't raise his brother from the dead because he'll remember Redcloak killing him and will realize that he's too far gone.
Tears are shed. End book.

Maleficent should have done that instead of... well, what we ended up getting.

[Phoenix Avalon]

2637004 Yes, I feel that at the very least the backstory should serve to explain evil actions while not excusing them. We can sympathize with a character's wicked ways without excusing them (it's the reason I like MCU's Loki so much).

Though honestly I think with someone as foul as Maleficent she probably deserved no such treatment in the first place

I mean are we going to have a movie that tries to say the reason Cruella de Vil wanted to SKIN 101 PUPPIES was because she was always poor growing up and so never had a warm coat for winter? It just seems like going too far on the villain motivation scale, some villains work best with no backstory and zero motivation beyond Da Evulz.

But I'm so glad you liked the review and that was a really interesting story you posted in your last comment, I'd never heard of it before!

[iowaforever]

2642302 Exactly. Not every villain needs a backstory (looking at you, Joker), and the ones that do need to fit the modern day motivations of the character. Unless some major motive decay happened between the prequel and the now (like, a Well Intentioned Extremist starts emphasizing the "Extremist" part a bit too much), it's just going to derail the character.

As for the rest, Order of the Stick is probably one of the biggest influences on my writing, and I probably wouldn't have picked up a lot of my other interests if it wasn't for that. If you're interested, you can find it here, although the print versions have extra stuff (and the prequel books like Start of Darkness are print only). It starts off a bit rough, but picks up rather quickly