Comradeship // Freechat

I would say for me, it's less about how they're presented and more about the ideology behind it. Like if someone wants to present white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism in fairly binary terms, I kinda feel like, yeah, why not. We don't need to be acting like they deserve their "side of the argument" to be taken seriously. But sometimes this is used in the opposite direction, to simplify and vilify in order to justify those institutions. Like James Bond villains who make his role and judge/jury/executioner style seem necessary because they are like "teehee I want to blow up the world" or something stupid like that.

On the "humanized villain" end, again, it can be interesting if it's not also trying to justify them. Wicked (the movie, have not seen the play) I think does a good job of writing behavior in a way that taps into "where people come from" without making it seem like it's excusing villainy (it's also in general written better than I would have expected and might surprise some people in the direction it goes). But then you have shit like Batman Begins with Ra's al Ghul, where it comes across like he's there to be just human enough to make it seem edgy and surprising, but also so unhinged in his behavior and justifications that it makes Batman look reasonable by comparison; which is a thing capitalist/imperialist movies like that love to do, where they erase actual revolutionary dynamics of class societies and instead represent discontent only as unhinged people who want to destroy.