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Author Topic: Books and/or movies where the antagonist wins?  (Read 6242 times)

DarkWolfXV

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Re: Books and/or movies where the antagonist wins?
« Reply #15 on: February 21, 2013, 02:42:13 pm »

I've been toying around with an idea of flipping these. Basically this:
Starts with a destruction of a world and a single ship fleeing it.Cut to Earth where some sort of superhero shows up, not really human, does some helpful stuff and all that, saves our human connection, a girl of sorts (playing on the Twilight note here) who falls in love with the dashing hero with a troubled past. He in turn continues helping the humans super heroey stuff while there's indications that something bad is coming. Eventually he reveals to his now girlfriend of sorts that he is the last of his kind, fleeing from a race of warmongering aliens who destroyed his homeworld and are bent on wiping his species out, turns to the human race for help, they agree.
Big bad shows up, big talky buildup, some wierd things are said by the big bad (our hero translates for the humans in the piece). Some clashing, something to put our girl in danger, build up tension, critical moment of the movie, hero has to save the girl but sacrifice himself or something.
He doesn't, a cold and condescending speech is given by the hero, and it is revealed that it was him in fact who destroyed the planet at the beginning, and that he is the insane sociopath who's going around and wrecking shit while the big bad is some sort of vigilante or official trying to stop his rampage. Unfortunately he fails as the hero kills him and the girl. Afterward he goes back to Earth (this happened on a ship or something) and tells that he stopped the first one, but unfortunately his ship and girl have been lost, and worse yet, there will be more of these and he will need all of humanity to unite behind him if they are to live.

Or something like that, sorry for the maybe derail, had to get that out of my head, been mulling over it way too much.

Yes, i kind of thought of it like this but this is more flipping roles midway/late story.

Villian antagonist would mean the bad gus win
Villian protagonist would mean the good guys win.
Am i right?

Protagonist would be the main character, the story focuses on this character.  If the protagonist is a villain, it likely means the villain 'wins' at the end.
Antagonist is the opponent of the main character, the story usually does not focus as much, if at all.  If the antagonist is the villain, the villain is generally going to 'lose' at the end.

I meant a situation in which antagonist wins, doesnt have to be villian.
Also, is there anything like when antagonist knows hes the antagonist? That he knows that what he does is evil and stuff? Usually antagonist thinks that what he does is right.
Sure, in (mostly) bad writing where the bad guy is bad because....hey, evil is fun. And it feels good. Admittedly, if handled right it's way more terrifying than a conflicted villain or misguided zealot. The Joker in The Dark Knight fits the trope to a tee. Sure, he dresses it up with some spiels about chaos and doing the world a favor, but deep down you know he's just doing it because he fucking loves it.

But for every Joker there's a hundred Ming the Mercilesses who exist just to cackle and gloat and rub their hands together because it's their job.

Yes, i kind of thought of Joker, its a bad guy, does bad stuff, but to me he is kind of likeable, there is kind of a mystery about why does he do the bad stuff, and thats what makes him interesting. He is kinda classy, too.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2013, 04:20:29 pm by DarkWolfXV »
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Scoops Novel

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Re: Books and/or movies where the antagonist wins?
« Reply #16 on: February 21, 2013, 04:49:33 pm »

Personally, i fucking love Tarquin from order of the stick, because he's the kind of villain who actually exists and wins. The kind of villain who enjoys killing, opulence and domination, but also loves his family, has well thought out plans which sound like they could actually be justified if you didn't know him, and is dangerously genre savvy to the point of handing out his guards pamphlets against hero breaking and entering tropes which work. He's the kind who has consensual sex because its more fun that way. He even recognizes the "Evil always wins in the middle" in this case the evil empire, and is smart enough to realize that he wont be thinking about his defeat, he'll be thinking about all the years of his life where he lived like a god! And now that he knows that Elan is a hero fighting against him, it may well be done by his sons own hand and not some random character, which is even better! When he dies he'll end up ruling a good chunk of hell/find his way into heaven and you know that people like him are ruling the world or a good part of it somewhere.

It's fucking genius.

As for tying into your post, as it stands (I'll admit it hasn't ended), he can't lose through his current intentions. The only downside is that he's living in a universe with an existential nullifier (presumably).
« Last Edit: February 21, 2013, 05:39:03 pm by Novel »
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Muz

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Re: Books and/or movies where the antagonist wins?
« Reply #17 on: February 22, 2013, 03:07:39 am »

A lot of Stephen King's stuff. Not really "win", more like "survives and nobody bothers them". And in some of them, the antagonist is kinda the protagonist as well.
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Vector

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Re: Books and/or movies where the antagonist wins?
« Reply #18 on: February 22, 2013, 03:11:29 am »

Try Daemon and FreedomTM by Daniel Suarez.  They're tech thrillers where one of the antagonists tends to skirt the line pretty hard, but gets what he wants in the end.

... They're really cool.
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Dutchling

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Re: Books and/or movies where the antagonist wins?
« Reply #19 on: February 22, 2013, 04:54:17 am »

West Side story comes to mind ;_;

edit: Not really an antagonist though.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2013, 04:57:16 am by Dutchling »
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Neonivek

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Re: Books and/or movies where the antagonist wins?
« Reply #20 on: February 22, 2013, 09:44:21 am »

West Side story comes to mind ;_;

edit: Not really an antagonist though.

Except that isn't a story about how the antagonist won. It was about how 'everyone' loses.

There was no winner.
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i2amroy

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Re: Books and/or movies where the antagonist wins?
« Reply #21 on: February 22, 2013, 10:16:06 am »

You might have a little more luck looking for books where the antagonist gets off without any harm (effectively a tie) then ones where they win altogether. After all part of being the protagonist implicitly implies that your side will win eventually in the end, so the only real times that the antagonist wins are either dystopian books (such as 1984 by Orwell) or in stories where everyone is so "grey" that it's impossible to tell who the good guys are. As for a list, you might want to check out the "The Bad Guy Wins" page on tvtropes (warning).
« Last Edit: February 22, 2013, 10:18:49 am by i2amroy »
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Tellemurius

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Re: Books and/or movies where the antagonist wins?
« Reply #22 on: February 22, 2013, 10:27:05 am »

1984, Animal Farm (pretty much George Orwell)

Neonivek

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Re: Books and/or movies where the antagonist wins?
« Reply #23 on: February 22, 2013, 02:41:40 pm »

1984, Animal Farm (pretty much George Orwell)

Yeah I cannot even think of a George Orwell book where evil didn't win.

Well ok 1982 could be considered a EVERYONE LOSES scenario.
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palsch

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Re: Books and/or movies where the antagonist wins?
« Reply #24 on: February 22, 2013, 03:54:55 pm »

China Miéville's Bas Lag series tends to play with this. It's hard to say that there are any winners in his books, but highest death tolls are almost certainly among his protagonists. That's not mentioning the mutilations and other misfortunes they suffer.

As a brief idea of what these books are dealing with, at one point in the first one - Perdido Street Station - things get so fucked up that the Orwellian government appeal directly to Hell for help, and the devils turn them down out of fear. And by this point the good guys have it considerably worse.
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