Some Thoughts on the Unlikable Protagonist

Since this is a screenwriting blog and I am constantly in the process refining my craft, on occasion I’d like to jot down my thoughts about a certain aspect or concept of writing that I’m working on. One of the notes I frequently get back when I ask people for feedback on my work is that my protagonists are too unlikable. Which got me thinking: what makes a morally-questionable protagonist sympathetic to the audience? We’ve seen plenty of detestable characters on-screen in the past: cold-blooded murderers, rapists, greedy opportunists…some real salt-of-the-earth folks. And yet, we often sympathize with their characters and even come to agree with (or at least accept) their actions. What factors and techniques lead to creating this bond between audience and psychopath?

 

Redemptive Arcs

The easiest way to get an audience to go along with a questionable character is to instill feelings of regret in them. If the character is self-aware enough to realize that they need to change their ways, it gives the writers a lot of leeway to demonstrate the depths of their depravity.

An easy example is Alex DeLarge in the Kubrick classic A Clockwork Orange. When we meet Alex, he is about the most despicable person you can imagine: violently assaulting innocent people, raping helpless women in their homes, manipulating his friends, and ultimately murdering someone when his wickedness gets out of control. We are not supposed to relate to Alex in any way during the first act of the film, and Kubrick goes out of his way to highlight just how repugnant of a person Alex is. However, in the second and third act, Alex gets what’s coming to him: he’s arrested and institutionalized, where he’s forced to undergo horrific treatment to understand just how evil his actions are. By the end of the film, Alex is portrayed almost as a tragic hero: he shows remorse for his actions and is released with a new positive outlook on life, but is mercilessly downtrodden by the public who refuse to see the good that has come out of him. We can sympathize with both parties here: we’ve just seen Alex genuinely reform and grow as a person, but we also remember how evil he started out and sympathize with the righteous anger of the people he wronged who now do wrong by him.

Another famous fictional character who undergoes such a change is Ebenezer Scrooge of the Dickens novel A Christmas Story. Scrooge begins the story as an out-of-touch businessman who loathes society, underpaying his workers, wishing death upon the poor, and refusing to donate to charity or even entertain the idea of goodwill. As the story progresses, he is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, which help him see the error of his ways and understand the inherent good of humanity. Dickens is able to present Scrooge as awfully a person as he needs to at the onset of the film, knowing that he will eventually repent and learn from his mistakes by recognizing them as such.

Finally, let’s consider Derek Vinyard of American History X, a Neo-Nazi who joins the Aryan Brotherhood. The film makes Derek sympathetic from the outset by having his father killed by black gang members; even if we disagree with his conclusions about non-white ethnic groups, we understand where he’s coming from. Derek does plenty of terrible things in the film, from harrassing Korean store owners, to launching racist tirades, to literally curb-stomping a man out of rage. But Derek has a change of heart while in prison for his crimes, realizing the humanity of those he once considered sub-human. He further recognizes the dangers of his actions when his little brother, Danny, begins to fall down the same path that he did. Derek takes it upon himself to encourage Danny not to make the same mistakes he does, knowing that it only leads to more anger and perpetuates the cycle of violence. The film culminates in the worst possible outcome: Danny is murdered as a result of his Neo-Nazi ties, a fate that Derek accepts partial responsibility for. The film doesn’t try to make us agree with Derek’s radical viewpoints, and is thus freed up for his character to come full-circle and see the terrible truth behind his life of hatred.

Even More Unlikable Villains

Sometimes in order to justify despicable actions, we need just as despicable antagonists necessitating them.

Last week I wrote at length about Hollywood’s portrayal of the 2007-08 financial meltdown, notably in The Big Short. Adam McKay’s film gives us three separate groups of protagonists: Michael Burry, the hedge fund manager who starts the credit default swap market; Mark Baum and his front point partners, who investigate the crisis and exploit the incoming shitstorm; and Charlie and Jamie, the young hotshots trying to break into the industry with a brilliant yet crazy idea. All three groups of people are fashioned as the heroes, even though they are ultimately just money-hungry opportunists, and the film gets away with it by demonizing Wall Street as a whole and fashioning the main characters as “outsiders.” By aligning themselves with the audience’s perception of Wall Street as greedy hogs, the protagonists are able to get away with their actions despite ultimately not being much better themselves.

The classic television example is Dexter Morgan, the serial killer of serial killers. He spends much of his screen time talking about his fantasies of blood and death, but the audience still roots for him. Dexter lives his life by an ethical “code” that he should only use his bloodlust for good, killing only people who have committed evil acts in their own lives, a la the Jigsaw killer. In addition, we get to see Dexter’s good side often, helping his sister get through life and connecting with a romantic partner and her offspring. The “vigilante” angle is common in genres like the Western, in which violent and aggressive men take out their anger on men who have done actual wrong by society. We are able to cheer Dexter on because he convinces us that his detestable qualities can be turned into something positive, especially when there are even worse guys out there using those same qualities for evil.

When we first meet Llewelyn Moss in the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men, he stumbles across the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong. The instinct of most people would be to call somebody for help, but Moss instead leaves a man to die and steals the money for himself. What follows is a cat-and-mouse chase in which Moss evades the law and the drug cartel to try and keep the money for himself. Why do we root for his survival? Because the man chasing him, Anton Chigurh, is the embodiment of pure evil. He kills a police officer to escape capture, murders an innocent man for his vehicle, and decides on the survival of those who irk him based on a pure coin toss. Every time Chigurh is on screen he repulses us with his unfathomable amorality, making Moss look like a saint in comparison. Tommy Lee Jones’ Officer Bell best encapsulates this phenomenon as he discusses his growing disillusionment with law enforcement: he can wrap his mind around a man committing crimes out of selfish desire, but the thought of crime for its own sake terrifies him. The opportunism of simple men is nothing compared to the terrifying force of random violence.

 

Victims of the System

There are two types of protagonists: those who proactively set events into motion, and those who react to things happening to them. Some protagonists are criticized for being too passive in this regard, but that’s not what I’m getting at here. When powerful forces outside of the protagonist’s control force them to adapt to a situation, the audience has a greater capacity to root for their success, even when the central character has questionable motives or traits.

Ender’s Game is one of my favorite examples of this. (The novel of course, not the travesty of a film adaptation.) Ender Wiggin is a sociopath: he’s hyper-intelligent, he struggles to fit in with and largely looks down upon his peers, and he fights to kill, ultimately committing mass genocide. But the story throws obstacle after obstacle at him: bullies on the playground mess with him, fellow students belittle him, adults orchestrate his life like puppeteers, and the threat of bugger annihilation looms overhead. Part of the story’s central theme is that Ender is rarely in control of his own life, merely presented with the illusion that he is. Yes, he does possess many of the attributes I’ve mentioned earlier: he’s intelligent and polite, he reckons with immoral peers, and he later gets a redemptive arc in the novel’s sequels like Speaker For the Dead. But he rarely takes action without it being absolutely necessary for survival, making it far easier for the audience to overlook his many flaws. Ender is definitely more of a hero than an anti-hero, but if you think about the overarching plot of the film – a sociopathic child exterminates an alien race, killing several of his peers in the process – it would be easy to label him as a villain. Forced perspective is the key here: by presenting Ender’s story as told from the humans’ point of view, and making it seem like Ender had no choice, his actions are more palatable.

Broader social commentary can also help mask a psychopath’s bad decisions. American Psycho‘s Patrick Bateman is perhaps the most detestable protagonist in film history, a blatant serial killer with absolute contempt for everybody. But the subtle brilliance of the film is in positioning Bateman within a satirical portrayal of American consumerism. Bateman’s day-to-day life consists of interacting with the ridiculous modern-day vanity and appearancism of corporate culture: the exchanging of lavish business cards, bragging about what restaurant reservations you obtain, and disregard for the personal identity of others. Bateman’s murderous actions, though extreme, can be interpreted as a disillusioned reaction to the ridiculous culture he is forced to reckon with.

Another nearly-identical theme is explored in Fight Club. Our protagonist/”Tyler Durden” escapes his doldrum life of consumer culture, obsessing over IKEA furniture and cookie-cutter corporatism, to become a domestic terrorist, manufacturing bombs in a plot to take down the big banks. This is not behavior that we the audience should sympathize with, but we do, because of the way it is presented: as a reaction to the stifling existence he rails against. This harkens back to the “even more unlikable villain” concept: while Tyler Durden commits terrible acts, the people he commits them against are portrayed as even more terrible to lessen the blow.

Freddie Quell in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master can arguably fall under this umbrella as well. Freddie has plenty of detestable qualities about him: he’s a sex-crazed drunkard who fights with everybody, abandons his sweetheart, and takes advantage of the generosity of others. He does have some semblance of a redemptive arc, but the film treats Freddie almost like a specimen under a microscope: a representation of the actions of men in distressed circumstances. Freddie is a war veteran, raising questions about mental illness in ex-soldiers and society’s poor treatment of them upon returning from war. Furthermore, he falls into the folds of a radical religious cult, where its leader, Lancaster Dodd, holds him up as an example of innate human depravity and attempts to “fix” him, much like the government does to Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange. Despite Freddie’s moral turpitude, the audience is invited to view him as part of a larger whole, a symptom of a greater problem rather than the problem itself. Whether it’s treatment of war veterans or the human need for a “master” to guide them, the film raises questions greater than Freddie’s singular actions, so in rooting for him, the audience roots for humanity as a whole.

The Lovable Antagonist

There’s a popular term called the “antihero” that I generally disagree with, which implies that all protagonists are the heroes of their own stories with varying degrees of heroism. I would argue instead that some films simply choose to follow the plot from the perspective of the antagonist. If Star Wars was told from the perspective of Darth Vader instead of Luke, would we call him an antihero? No, he is still the antagonist. Sure, he has a redemptive arc and tragic backstory of his own, but he is undeniably the negative force acting upon the plot, and whether or not he is the main character should be irrelevant to his status. (Note: Anakin Skywalker in the prequels doesn’t count; I mean the Darth Vader that exists in the original trilogy.) In the case of films that choose this approach, how does the screenwriter endear us to the antagonist we are meant to follow along with?

For a simple example, let’s look at Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. This film is basically what you’d get if you took the 1987 film Wall Street and followed Gordon Gecko around instead of Bud Fox. Belfort is greedy, corrupt, selfish, and uncompromising – and he makes no attempt to hide it. He breaks the fourth wall in order to invite the audience into the depravity, as if to say, “Yeah yeah, what I’m doing is wrong, but come see how much fun it is!” He could have been fashioned as a redemptive character who sees the error in his ways, but the film goes the opposite direction, embracing the extravagance of wealth and all of its perks: beautiful naked ladies, unrestrained drug use, f-bombs flowing like honey. The answer to how Belfort is made sympathetic is very simple: let the audience enjoy the spoils of his lavish life along with him, so we understand why he does it.

Aaron Sorkin’s rendition of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network is another good example of fashioning the antagonist as our main character. Mark is definitely the negative force in the central conflicts of the story: he backstabs two separate groups of people, the Winklevoss twins and Eduardo Saverin, both of whom could have feasibly been fashioned as protagonists. Public perception could come into play here as the audience goes in expecting to root for the guy who revolutionized (and arguably created) an entire industry that we all partake in. Mark has a bit of an underdog complex as well, reckoning with the struggles of being young and disrespected as well as being socially awkward with women. By leaning into these attributes, Sorkin is able to mask the fact that Mark takes some truly detestable actions to get to where he is today. See also Sorkin’s later portrayal of Steve Jobs as another example of a well-respected public figure manipulating those around him in the pursuit of some “greater good.”

Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler is a frequently-cited “antihero,” but I would also argue that he is the antagonist of the story. Much like Zuckerberg and Jobs, he revolutionizes an industry through morally-questionable actions and aggressive posturing. He snuffs out the competition, corners the video production market, exploits the needs of the “consumer” (the news studio), and backstabs his own partner to tie up loose ends. Why do we not consider him the evil villain? For one, he is a charming and hard-working underdog, and his hustle is admirable for people in similarly-destitute situations in life. For another, while his actions by the end are undeniably corrupt, the script eases us into it by making each step of his journey somewhat believable. He may ultimately be staging crimes and sacrificing his partner, but he starts out with more understandable bends of the law like stepping under crime tape or rearranging items to get a better shot. We come to recognize the cruel nature of the industry and the difficulties of making a living doing it, so Lou’s above-and-beyond approach is understandable, if not totally agreeable to us.

But the granddaddy of all characters blurring the lines between protagonist and antagonist is Walter White of TV’s Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan intentionally forces the audience to question our unflinching support of the main character by showing Walter’s full descent from mild-mannered high school teacher to ruthless drug kingpin. He begins with the usual trappings of a tragic hero: downtrodden by an unstoppable force (terminal cancer), motivated by primal need (providing for his family), coming into conflict with other despicable men (rival drug dealers and producers). But he soon transcends these humble beginnings and becomes the very thing we’re supposed to be rooting against. Walter White is a fascinating example of a writer toying with audience expectation: he gets us to take the bait by making him sympathetic to start, but by the end he is no longer keeping up the facade that we should be rooting for him, making us decide for ourselves. Look no further than the public hatred for Skyler White, the most misunderstood TV character of all time (don’t @ me), as proof that the writers have manipulated the audience into rooting for a monster.

Conclusion

There is a real risk for a screenwriter to get lazy because the audience enters into an unspoken pact with the protagonist when they sit down to watch a movie. The audience is expected to sympathize with the protagonist by default because that’s the way movies implicitly work: we follow the “hero” through the plot and project the way we would act onto this person based on what happens to them. So while the writer has a lot of leeway to get away with protagonists who don’t fit the classic mold, he/she still has to give the audience enough of a reason to care. This is especially true when the main character is not a good guy and our sympathy has to be stretched in order to go along with their decisions. I’m fascinated whenever a film manages to bend our expectations of what a protagonist can and should be, and it’s the one aspect of my own writing that I hope to improve at without losing the audience’s sympathy completely.

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