How To Write A Terrifying Villain - Puss in Boots

[Music] I haven't used the phrase shiver me timbers in a long time or ever actually but the personification of death in Puss and Boots The Last Wish calls for it it's not just his intimidating presence but the complex and layered motives that make him truly sadistic head over to Reddit and you'll find people still questioning whether he's simply a force of nature or an actual villain we've covered Jack Herer before and how he's evil for Evil's sake interestingly he's only one of three villains in the film normally a film would find it hard to juggle

three bad guys and you'd expect the film to be a mess but you'd be wrong but how did a wolf become one of the most terrifying villains we've seen in animated Cinema and what can we learn from this character to create our own inevitable terrifying and redeemable villain we'll find [Music] out the interesting thing about wolf is that he has no backstory he's a Reaper who goes door too collecting Souls but the movie still manages to make him into such a layered in complex character how does it manage that we need to contextualize his Target

Puss in Boots as puss defeats the sleeping giant of Delmar we realize that he has no concern for his own life because well cats have nine lives and when the bell drops on him at the end the ball drops as well that makes eight po you are down to your last life these events set up the plot of the film puss comes face to face with his mortality and starts his pursuit of the Wishing Star to reclaim it Our Hero's First Step denial but it doesn't take long before he's roused out of it drinking yet

another evening away puss is confronted not just by the thought of death but the embodiment of it but this this clash with death starts off rather mildly we realize that something is fishy about the wolf as he appears out of thin air next to the cat while his sudden arrival next to a pouting puss smells fishy his mysterious demeanor makes us interested in him what really hooks the audience is how he casually strikes a conversation with our hero you are nobody Hunter you are death despite his mysterious nature he comes off as nothing more than

a stranger in a bar maybe someone we've all shared the odd drink with at some point in our lives but that's exactly why our parents told us to be wary of strangers the movie that had lulled us into a sense of security Now bared its teeth the wolf extends a bounty poster with his sharp nail signaling puss's fate but it's not just his appearance that puts us off it's his entire demeanor [Music] rarely do we see kids movies so heavily focused around the theme of death mostly because they're freaking kids movies but apparently director Joel

Crawford and DreamWorks animations were out of ducks to give and we know that it was a conscious decision because this is not a character from an old book or folk tale this is an original creation of the film's writers to understand why death is so well placed in the this beautifully crafted world we have to come to terms with the fact that generally death has no purpose it's devoid of meaning what gives it meaning is its mere opposite the weight of the lived life and the film has that in Spades but how this life is

presented to us in a joyous rambunctious manner is incredibly clever a card at the film's beginning establishes a key sentiment telling us that what we're about to see is nothing but a fairy tale at first this doesn't seem out of the ordinary it might not seem like a big deal but the card is a clever piece of misdirection and it's not just that one card the first scene shows a wishing star falling into a forest a perfect setup for a wholesome ride and who do you think needs a wish more than anyone our Rowdy scrawny

Jolly hero Puss and Boots by this point everybody's thinking oh what sweet fun now you've got a good reason for believing this the Shrek films were wholesome Adventure and so was the original Puss and Boots film we're acquainted with this universe and know what to expect but then you are down to your last life once death strikes the fear of God in the same Puss and Boots who I laugh at that he scurries away like a rat waddling through gutters gasping for another chance at life after a short stint at an old cat lady's house

puss sets out for the Wishing Star to restore his Nine Lives who'd help him out of this rut friends duh journeying alongside his ex with trust issues and a friendly dog and facing off against the two other villains of the film puss undergos major changes changes that would helps shape not only his character Arc but also bring about his courageous and defiant stand against death at the end of the film but what makes the character of death particularly Sinister the attire and character design the predatory stare the whistling well in my opinion it's a combination

of a few things most people believe that the wolf is not a villain there is some validity to this argument many argue that he's just doing his job and to some extent that makes sense in our initial encounter with him we learn that let no one's Escape me yet hey sounds like death to me nice try folks but this is not the case the claims of wolf not being a villain are overblown alone proponents of the force of nature Theory argue that he can be reasoned with bargained with has a ton of biases and is

clearly sadistic so he must simply be an element of nature but it's a matter of semantics if nature can be evil and he is an evil force of nature that makes him a villain his organic nature does not mean that he's allowed to change the laws of causation everyone is faded to die at a specific time but the wolf goes out of his way to fulfill his thirst before puss's time is up he is clearly overstepping his boundaries to please himself this makes his motivations Out Of Tune with the natural order of things what struck

me here so much was how much the film plays around with the portrayal of death normally in literature theater and visual arts including movies you have an indifferent Reaper who cares little for The Souls of the Damned after all he's been doing it for a long time this is just another Tuesday to him and that's a force of nature a reliable predictable inevitable harbinger of Fate that will arrive in time to do the deed it doesn't tease it doesn't struggle it doesn't do it for any other motives other than the fact that it must but

in The Last Wish we see a very different vision of death this wolf is Out For Blood and the energy he gives off is just very intimidating to say the least we know that the this isn't just a force of nature this is a fiend who's actively invested in puss's fate the Sinister creature bludgeons and slashes his way through the establishment in their first meeting bringing puss real close to his ninth and final death and when he says I just love the smell of fear as Thunder strikes and his sickles great against the floor boy

do I get goosebumps but why does he have an agenda against our hero this clearly isn't just another Tuesday to him because he chases the cat over multiple days if that's how death operated in real life there'd be a death once every Thursday or something death makes his Ambitions known in the scene inside the cave of lost souls here puss encounters his past eight lives and how he wasted his ears with the most minuscule and stupid things the wolf appears here and reveals to puss that his arrogance may have gotten him this far but it

was as far as it would lead him he then proceeds to shatter the crystals one by one each symbolizing one of puss's past lives it's the wolf's motivations so different from any other embodiment of death we've ever seen on the screen that make him so magnetic contrary to his average raping Journey this time he's out with a Vengeance he wants to make puss pay for wasting his eight lives away he wants to kill him before his time is up this persona ification of death flips the script take the portrayal of death in every other film

ah like the famous chess scene from the seventh seal in movies death declares the sequence of events a chain of causation that will happen no matter what but here the wolf cannot do that he's not following that chain of causation he's actively trying to distort it he has a goal one that can be foiled should the Wishing Star Grant puss's wish for nine lives when have we ever heard the angel of death death failing to collect the soul it never happens not in myths not in stories not in focal art but here puss escapes the

first time around It's Quickly established that failure is a real possibility simply because death is not waiting around for his faded time it's an active force in the world he wants puss's Soul now and that involves taking out the sickles to go after the cat all this means that Stakes are high not just for the doomed Puss in Boots but also the wolf who's out for his blood he's in a struggle as much as the hero he's annoyed at puss's arrogance there is something about this legendary Outlaw's Reckless disregard for life that has agitated him

so a change has occurred riing him out of the Slumber of his day-to-day duties just as puss's nonchalant Adventures has spurred the wolf out of his predictable life so does another choice at the end of the film change him once again when puss finally understands the importance of living he stops fearing death and grounds himself in the present and much to the surprise of the viewers the wolf walks away it was a particularly interesting twist for me but one that still maintained an air of plausibility initially you think why would the reaper ever let someone

go that doesn't make any sense but the more you look at it and reflect the more you realize that the film was giving you the signs all along the wolf was in it for the hunt he was in it for the fun of it this was just another one of his many errands maybe the film's events would have come across as low stakes When Death realizes that puss has learned his lesson of acceptance he can't keep up he then confesses that he was after an arrogant little Legend who thought he was Immortal but puss is

no longer that person just as Puss and Boots vile snobbery Falls to Pieces so does death's interest in taking his life even though he overpowers everybody and would eventually get to him he still respects the journey puss has been on and the change in is brought into him all this makes for an unusually multi-dimensional cartoon villain but how did he change puss we've just seen how puss affects and dictates the wolf's actions establishing his Arc but the other side of the coin is just as interesting the change in puss's values was brought forth due to

the arrival of death it was the thought of his own mortality an idea that the cat had never grappled with before that forced him to have a new perspective on life the same cat who'd thrown away eight lives now undertakes the most dangerous journey of his life setting him on a crash course with fate in most films the hero's intent is set up halfway through the film I have to destroy the villain or I have to save the city these are okay for the most part but since the antagonist is so uniquely connected to the

hero's own sense of self-worth it makes us doubly invested in the story puss cannot defeat death and he cannot save himself from it all that's left to do is accept his fate his fear of mortality is the one and only incentive that makes him question his long-held beliefs it is the impetus that snowballs one change after another in his life and even though he initially tries to shrug off the dog and snatch the map from Kitty because Puss and Boots walks alone he inevitably gives up fear makes him vulnerable and more reliant on those around

him helping establish arcs for multiple characters the existential crisis forc his puss toward introspection and hence becomes the main driver of the story at the end of the day despite his deviant from the norm the wolf is still a personification of death this idea we grapple with on a day-to-day basis that whistling wolf is the fear that pushes the entire story into motion and the fact that he is the literal manifestation of puss's nightmares means that his actions do not take away from the protagonist if anything they add to the agency of our hero DreamWorks

deliberately chose a wolf as his embodiment but why well wolves are coursing predators since they run their prey to death few managed to escape them but the filmmakers were not happy with that for animated characters everything must be exaggerated to drive the point home what could be more intimidating than a wolf gliding across the landscape to gouge on your body you ask well a wolf who stands on two hind legs towering over our comparably feeble protagonist shout out to DreamWorks for making sure parents have to clean their kids' beds over the next few nights I'm

telling you they did not hold back on this character not only does the wolf Tower over puss but he is also much quicker even if the hero could trick him he is highly adaptable when in a tiff he can call upon his pyromancy skills as well as combine his sickles to form a dueland polearm going to so many lengths to showcase his different abilities despite being Invincible not only makes him op but also one nasty [ __ ] and that's all before that harrowing whistle comes into play The Motif arrives like an ominous siren washing

away the warm colorful attires of the other characters villains included brooding and mysterious Hues take over the screen The Haunting visual motifs hang over puss's head even after he escapes from the villain's grasp and there's good reason for for this since puss's friends failed to see him over the film's multiple encounters it is implied that death can turn invisible when he wants to the wolf's set pieces are short but those few seconds count as they say imagination fills in the gaps for instance even when he's not around in the back of our minds we're still

aware of his gaze he stands stoically like a seasoned hunter in the wild the kind of figure who can disappear in the crowd and no one would notice this makes him nearly close to the idea of death it's all around us every day but we rarely take the time to reflect upon it it hits a little too close to home if you ask me while there are great villains out there that follow a similar rhyme and reason this death is different it's a unique character unlike anything we've seen in a children's film before so how

do you write such an intriguing character especially an original one in my opinion here are a few things that make death stand out that can be explored in other works as well a lot of villains give us the impression that they're Invincible they control the corporate sector the jobs the economy the media or all the analogous institutions of their universe but they are fallible most of them have a critical flaw when that eventually gets figured out they seem infallible not because they are but because they initially appear to be where the Last Wish upends the

whole formula is that it tells us from the get-go this is the personification of death we know that this villain cannot be defeated he cannot be escaped he is a reckoning force of nature coming Full Steam to a theater near you the fact that it is rooted in a universal idea makes it hard to separate the concept from the character and since we recognize and acknowledge the inevitability of death we also come to terms with the fact that death won't just go away so not only does the film start us off off with quite a

relatable premise it establishes a key point for us and for puss you can't win against everything this leads puss on an emotional journey to discover that truth for himself and we tag along for the ride we know that death is inevitable but it's the fact that it arrives much earlier than it's supposed to that throws us off now it's not easy to sell that for obvious reasons it seems exaggerated and ironically cartoony what makes a villain truly terrifying is that they have plausible motivations for their missions This lends them a sense of being grounded passions

like destroying the planet are outrageous and pull us out of the narrative but something personal engages us on a deeper level great villains don't do something because they saw it in a dream they do it because they're fueled by a need for change in themselves and in those around them in the last wish death isn't there to do his duties he has been LED astray by his passion to devour an arrogant Outlaw and it's not an entirely stupid passion either it's very much understandable that puss's egotism and pride gives him the ick so even though

the wolf is stalking him out of contempt his Chase doesn't make him foreign and irredeemable to us most villains threaten to destroy a person a location or a thing that is somehow important to the protagonist these threats while real pose merely a physical threat the psychological impact of these actions comes in proportion to the value attributed to said person location or thing but what if the physical harm was imminent what if the body was going to wither away no matter what the threat then becomes predictable it becomes uninspired so what should be done now this

is where direct psychological impact comes in a Villain Like the Wolf does not simply threaten to kill puss even though he does do that he makes him take stock of his past actions so the psychological impact of the story comes not from any associations it comes from the existential crisis within death here threatens something much worse than physical harm it threatens to invalidate puss's existence his actions and his core values the idea that everything he's done in his entire life has been a waste of time and energy how he's wasted Precious Moments this irks puss

more than any blade or Scythe ever could death appears on the screen for a handful full of moments but boy does the film make the most of those moments the fact that the villain relates to a universal idea means that the filmmakers don't need to rely on constant threats they don't need to bludgeon us with cruelty to get the point across they just need to invoke the very real omnipresent fear that lives rentree in our heads add some s tier art style visuals and costume work at voila you ruin children's childhoods Wolf's presence is calm

and collected for the most part but when he strikes everything seems Larger than Life The Robe flying through the air adds dynamism and his rounded weapons add flare that the otherwise boring weapons would have lacked the large pointy ears and red eyes top off his whole Aura the death from pen boots The Last Wish is one of the darkest and most unique villains in animation history his vual Spirit has a thirst of blood which is highly uncharacteristic of the stereotyp epical Grim Reaper he has been risen out of his Slumber and it's another evil the

evil of vanity and self-obsession that has forced him to commit his evils he will get his way eventually but he is driven by the passion to wipe the smug off puss's face he does not bother justifying his actions he's there to do as he himself says play with his food once the excitement of the chase wears off his gluttony goes away as well and to those still convinced that he's not a villain go go suck a thumb [Music]