When Villains Are Actually Bad

And Why Stories Sometimes Need Them to Stay That Way

I’ve been on an Alien franchise binge lately.

Part of it was practical—I agreed to play in a tabletop game set in the universe, and brushing up on my Xenomorph lore felt like responsible prep. Some of the films hold up beautifully, some… less so. But across all of them, one thing stood out to me in a way that felt oddly refreshing:

The bad guys are just bad.

• No speeches.

• No tragic childhood flashbacks.

• No last-minute redemption arcs.

The Xenomorph doesn’t want justice. It doesn’t want understanding. It wants to reproduce. Facehuggers don’t care about your moral framework—they are doing exactly what they were designed (or evolved) to do. It isn’t personal. It isn’t symbolic. The horror in it is because it’s inevitable.

And after decades of increasingly sympathetic villains, that simplicity felt like a breath of fresh air.

When “Complex” Became Mandatory

In the past, I’ve argued that a strong villain deserves as much narrative attention as the hero. The hero should be reacting to the villain’s actions, not the other way around. That’s still true.

But somewhere along the line, that advice mutated. Instead of depth, we started demanding justification. Instead of threat, we wanted relatability. Instead of antagonists, we got misunderstood protagonists with worse PR.

Villains became “good people with twisted causes.” While that approach can work beautifully when executed with intention, the mental gymnastics required to pull it off have become increasingly extreme—and increasingly fragile.

Too often, the result is a story that feels apologetic. Afraid to let anyone be irredeemable. Afraid to say that a character is wrong and that the harm they cause actually matters.

The outcome is predictable: weak stakes, diluted tension, and a kind of moral mush that leaves stories feeling less sharp than they should.

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The Alien Franchise and the Power of Unreasoning Evil

What Alien does so well is refuse to anthropomorphize its monsters.

The Xenomorph doesn’t need a motive you can empathize with. Its horror comes from the fact that it cannot be reasoned with. It does not negotiate. It does not hesitate. Mofo is gonna eat you unless you can chuck it into space.

Even when the franchise flirts with deeper questions—like David, the android whose evolution becomes genuinely unsettling—the ambiguity is the point. Was he programmed this way? Did cruelty emerge from how he was treated? Or is he simply following curiosity to its most monstrous conclusion?

The story doesn’t stop to absolve him. It lets the audience sit with the discomfort and us nerds get to get into long discussions about it. I mean, I have at least…

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The Patrick Bateman Problem (and Why It Works)

One of the most persistent debates I hear in writing circles is about Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. People want to know why he is the way he is.

They want a cause. A diagnosis. A trauma. Something to explain him.

But Bret Easton Ellis never gives us that—and that’s precisely why the character works. Bateman is horrifying not because we understand him, but because we don’t. The novel doesn’t invite us to sympathize with him. It traps us in his unreliable narration and forces us to witness violence without the comfort of justification. Or makes us wonder if it is happening at all.

The story isn’t about how he became a monster. Although I will argue that the book covers a lot of snippets of what makes everyone a monster in a different way. How folks respond to Bateman, why no one remember anyone’s name, and the hyper focus on clothes and getting those expensive reservations.

Bret Easton did something amazing with this book in a lot of ways. But we are so focused on Bateman that we don’t see all the other monsters around him.

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How Do You Write Villains Who Are Just Bad?

Let’s get practical.

Not every story needs a morally complex antagonist. In fact, some stories are actively harmed by trying to force one in. Below are types of villains who work best when they remain unapologetically bad.

1. The Force of Nature

These villains are disasters with agency. They don’t have ideology. They don’t have emotional arcs. They exist to apply pressure.

Examples:

• Xenomorphs (Alien)

  • Movie: Alien (1979)
    The Xenomorph functions as a perfect organism driven entirely by instinct and biological imperative. It does not negotiate, moralize, or reflect; it simply hunts and reproduces. Its lack of motive beyond survival is what makes it terrifying.

  • Book: Alien: The Cold Forge by Alex White
    This novel reinforces the Xenomorph as an amoral force of nature, resisting attempts to humanize it while exploring how human ambition and arrogance worsen the threat rather than explain it away.

• Zombies in true survival horror

  • Movie: Night of the Living Dead (1968)
    Romero’s zombies are relentless, mindless, and unstoppable. The horror doesn’t come from their intentions but from their inevitability and the way human failures under pressure become just as deadly as the monsters themselves.

  • Book: World War Z by Max Brooks
    The zombies remain fundamentally simple—consume, spread, overwhelm. The depth of the story comes from human responses to the crisis, not from reinterpreting the undead as misunderstood victims.

• Natural disaster analogues with intelligence

  • Movie: Jurassic Park (1993)
    The dinosaurs, particularly the velociraptors, are not villains in a moral sense. They are intelligent, adaptive forces unleashed by human hubris. Their threat comes from capability and instinct, not malice.

  • Book: The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
    The alien microorganism is treated as a thinking, adapting disaster. It has no intent to harm, no ideology to unpack—it simply evolves faster than humanity can react, making it terrifying precisely because it is indifferent.

What makes them effective:

• They remove moral negotiation from the story.

• The conflict becomes about survival, ingenuity, and limits.

• The fear comes from inevitability, not persuasion.

Trying to “humanize” this kind of villain usually deflates them.

2. The Predator

Predators don’t need excuses. They want something—power, control, consumption—and they take it because they can.

Examples:

• Serial killers written without redemptive framing

  • Movie: No Country for Old Men (2007)
    Anton Chigurh is presented as an implacable predator rather than a damaged soul in need of understanding. The film offers no emotional softening or moral justification for his actions; his menace comes from his consistency, not his pain.

  • Book: The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
    While Hannibal Lecter is intelligent and charismatic, the narrative never redeems him. His brutality is not excused by backstory, and his cooperation with law enforcement does not erase the fact that he is a calculating killer.

• Slavers, tyrants, and conquerors in epic fiction

  • Movie: Conan the Barbarian (1982)
    Thulsa Doom is a conqueror and cult leader whose cruelty and manipulation are never softened by sympathy. He exists as an embodiment of domination and control, forcing Conan’s growth through opposition rather than moral debate.

  • Book: The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
    Sauron is the definitive tyrant: a being of pure domination whose motivations are irrelevant compared to the destruction he causes. Tolkien resists humanizing him, allowing the story to focus on the cost of resisting absolute evil.

• Patrick Bateman-ish

  • Movie: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
    Henry is portrayed without psychological justification or narrative mercy. The film refuses to explain why he kills, focusing instead on the banality and escalation of violence. The lack of moral framing makes the horror feel disturbingly real rather than safely fictional.

  • Book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
    Martin Vanger is not softened by trauma or misunderstood motives. He is depicted as a predator enabled by wealth and secrecy, and the story never asks the reader to sympathize with him—only to understand the systems that allowed him to operate unchecked.

What makes them effective:

• Their presence creates constant tension.

• They force characters into reactive, high-stakes decisions.

• They embody the reality that some people cause harm because they choose to.

Backstory is optional. Consequences are not.

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3. The Ideologue Taken Too Far

This is where writers often slip.

An ideologue villain believes they are right—but the story must be clear that they are wrong.

Examples:

• Religious extremists

  • Movie: The Wicker Man (1973)
    The villagers’ belief system is internally coherent and deeply held, but it leads to ritualized murder. The film never validates their actions; their faith becomes the mechanism through which horror is enacted.

  • Book: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
    Gilead’s religious ideology is presented as absolute and totalizing. While individual characters vary in culpability, the system itself is treated as extremist, dehumanizing, and violently oppressive without moral justification.

• Political absolutists

  • Movie: V for Vendetta (2005)
    The Norsefire regime embodies political absolutism taken to its logical extreme. The state’s ideology is rigid, punitive, and self-justifying, and the narrative makes clear that its order is built on fear rather than legitimacy.

  • Book: 1984 by George Orwell
    The Party represents absolute political control, unconcerned with truth or human cost. Its power is maintained not through reasoned argument but through enforced belief, making it a clear example of ideology divorced from morality.

• “Ends justify the means” revolutionaries

  • Movie: Children of Men (2006)
    The Fishes begin as a resistance movement but are shown committing increasingly ruthless acts. The film refuses to sanctify them, portraying their willingness to sacrifice innocents as a moral failure rather than a tragic necessity.

  • Book: Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
    Revolutionary violence is explored with care, showing how noble goals can curdle into cruelty. The story interrogates whether overthrowing tyranny excuses every action taken in the process—without offering easy absolution.

What makes them effective:

• Their logic is internally consistent.

• Their actions are externally devastating.

• The narrative never confuses conviction with correctness.

The danger comes when the story starts arguing on their behalf instead of examining the damage they cause.

Don’t Get Lost in the Weeds

Here’s a hard truth more writers need to hear: Not every villain needs to be a person.

Sometimes, the antagonist’s job is simply to apply pressure so the protagonist can change. When writers obsess over making the villain “relatable,” they often steal oxygen from the actual story. Pages get spent justifying behavior that doesn’t need justification.

If your villain’s role is to be:

• an obstacle,

• a threat,

• a catalyst,

then let them do that job well. Complexity is a tool, not a requirement. Some readers may demand it, but just like there are great discussions about Bateman because we don’t know why he is how he is, we can do that with our own characters.

The Cringe Plot Twist: “They Were Good All Along”

There is one modern trope that consistently undercuts stories when handled poorly: the unearned villain reversal.

You know the one.

Surprise! The bad guy was secretly good.
Surprise! They were misunderstood.
Surprise! The real villain was society, or trauma, or someone else entirely.

This can work—but only if it’s earned. And a lot of times it isn’t. I walk away from these moments feeling like I got cheated in some “gotcha!” moment. It’s reaching a point where it is becoming more and more lame to me.

Done Right: Mistborn

Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn carefully seeds its twist. The revelation recontextualizes what we’ve already seen instead of negating it. The prior harm still matters. The stakes don’t vanish. The story grows deeper rather than collapsing in on itself. And the bad guy? Well, he is still bad.

Done Wrong: Maleficent

Maleficent doesn’t reframe a story—it rewrites it to absolve the villain entirely. Harm is minimized. Accountability disappears. The character becomes a victim-first protagonist wearing the skin of a former antagonist. It reads less like a reinterpretation and more like glorified fan fiction (because it is, but that is a story for another day).

Let Bad Guys Be Bad

Not every story needs moral ambiguity.

Sometimes, the world is dangerous. Sometimes, people are cruel. Sometimes, the monster doesn’t care about your feelings or your growth arc.

And that’s okay. In fact, if you need someone to give you premission, you have it from me right now.

Villains who are just bad give heroes something real to push against. They create contrast. They sharpen themes instead of blurring them. They remind us that not all harm is accidental, and not all violence comes from misunderstanding.

So if you’re writing a villain and you find yourself bending over backward to justify them, pause and ask: Does this story actually need redemption—or does it need resistance?

Because sometimes, the most powerful thing a villain can be…is staying exactly what they are.

But if you want some help with this, worry not! Paid subscribers will get a worksheet to help hash this all out this coming Wednesday! Hope you enjoy it!

Stay jazzy and write on~!