Film Courage: Do villains have defining moments?
Christopher Riley, Screenwriter, Author, and Instructor: I think that they certainly can. Sometimes we get villains who are very cardboard cut out, just gleefully wreaking havoc for the heck of it. I think of a classic film Spider-Man 2 and there Doc Ock has a defining moment. He isn’t evil for the sake of evil, he is a man who is wounded through the death of his wife, that’s the moment that defines him. In Spider-Man 2 written by the same writer who wrote Ordinary People [Alvin Sargent] we get a villain who actually has an arc and who transforms and in the end is able to take a step back from the evil and to actually sacrifice himself to join with Spider-Man and to save the city. So yes, and I think that Spider-Man 2 plays a really important role in the history of superhero action films. We look back and we may not recognize that…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Christopher Riley is a professional screenwriter who co-wrote with his wife Kathy Riley the award-winning German language courtroom thriller After the Truth. The Rileys have written scripts for Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Mandalay Television Pictures, the late Sean Connery’s Fountainbridge Films and Robert Cort Productions. Christopher produced the independent action-thriller Red Line and executive produced the web series Bump+. He is the author of the classic screenplay format guide The Hollywood Standard, now in its third edition, and teaches screenwriting at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The Riley’s latest book is The Defining Moment: How Writers and Actors Build Characters (through Michael Wiese Productions).
BUY THE BOOK – THE DEFINING MOMENT: How Writers and Actors Build Characters (by Christopher and Kathy Riley)
BUY THE BOOK – THE HOLLYWOOD STANDARD: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style
CONNECT WITH CHRISTOPHER RILEY
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