Antagonists in Movies: The making of Villains, Foils and Obstacles
Watching our protagonist set their mind to a goal, and achieve it without conflict isn’t that compelling. Urgency is low, stakes are low–why should an audience care? That’s where Antagonism comes into play. Great movie antagonists bedevil the beloved protagonist by begetting internal obstacles as well as creating external ones. They raise the stakes, increase the urgency, and put the hero through moral, emotional, and physical turmoil.
Villains in movies have been beguiling audiences for generations, from the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, to the titular Jaws, and Lex Luthor in Superman. The counterpoints to our heroes, the antagonist in movies drives our hero to confront their flaw and to overcome it. Let’s discuss, together, what an antagonist is, myth-bust some misconceptions, and go over practical ways to create an authentic antagonist while looking at some iconic examples.
What Is an Antagonist in Movies?
The role of an antagonist is to contrast and impede the protagonist while providing moral opposition. The main antagonist definition is simply that they/its a character or force that pushes the narrative forward by acting in opposition to and forcing the protagonist to wrestle with choices that will propel their ultimate character arc. An antagonist doesn’t have to be a person or monster. It can be society, an institution, nature, an inner demon, as long as it opposes the protagonist’s goals.
Antagonist and Villain are not completely interchangeable terms. Villain begets a moral component to itself inherently whereas an antagonist doesn’t. The rival baseball team isn’t evil, only trying to win. Foils are often antagonists, but don’t have to be so. They contrast key portions of the protagonist’s being, but don’t necessarily have to impede them. Buddy cops foil each other but they’re oriented toward the same goal.
An antagonistic foil, though, is a great way to highlight the moral dilemma a protagonist faces. If the protagonist makes a few different choices, they could turn into what the antagonist represents. A character foil example: Superman is an alien that strives to embody the best of humanity while Lex Luthor embodies the worst aspects of humanity and can’t stand an alien being a celebrated, morally good embodiment (over him), so he constantly schemes and tries to undermine Superman’s ideals.
Great antagonists in movies create narrative tension by raising story stakes and urgency for our main character while also offering a thematic contrast to the protagonist. Writing an antagonist that is compelling can heighten the weight of your story and push your protagonist to be a deeper, richer character.
Iconic Antagonists and Core Antagonist Types
The best movie antagonists can awe us as well as terrify us. Let’s look at some of famous movie villains as well as other types of antagonist examples
Conventional Villain
A nemesis, the conventional villain is what we, collectively, think of as an antagonist. A malevolent opponent standing in opposition to our hero.
Star Wars | 1977 | Darth Vader | Malevolent Agent of the Empire and the dark mirror of the force Luke is trying to learn
Mad Max: Furiosa | 2024 | Dementus | Charismatic Warlord of a biker horde that kidnaps Furiosa away from her home
Sinners | 2025 | Remmick | Vampire who tries to suck the culture out of his victims as well as their blood
Killers of the Flower Moon | 2023 | William Hale | Oil Tycoon who presents himself as a benefactor to the Osage people, but he orchestrates their murders to secure their inheritance
Anti-Villain
Anti-Villains have heroic intentions, but use questionable-at-best, nefarious-at-worst methods to achieve them.
X-Men | 2000 | Magneto | Endeavors to protect Mutants from Non-mutant bigotry, but will go to extreme measures to protect those he cares about
Princess Mononoke| 1997 | Lady Eboshi | Leader of Irontown, in an effort to protect the townspeople, is destroying the surrounding environment
Internal/Shadow Self
Internal Antagonists are the devils we all face and strive to overcome. Every protagonist has a flaw to overcome throughout the narrative, but these antagonists are extreme flaws, cancerous traits.
Whiplash | 2014 | Andrew’s perfectionism | Andrew’s dogged single goal of becoming an all-time drummer eats away at every aspect of his life
Thunderbolts | 2025| The Void | Bob’s depression manifests into reality by turning into a malignant void after obtaining superpowers
The Holdovers | 2023 | Paul Hunham’s insecurity | Hunham’s insecurity about his own self worth sabotages his interpersonal relationships as well as personal goals
Environmental/Impersonal Force
Environmental antagonists can be any natural non-human antagonist or impersonal, external force affecting the protagonist.
Godzilla Minus 1 | 2023 | Godzilla | A towering Kaiju that acts as a traumatic reminder of the horrors of the second world war
Flow | 2024 | The Great Flood | The great flood forces a cat to fight for their life as their entire world is washed away
The Thing | 1982 | Thing | Shape-shifting alien infiltrates a research team in Antarctica, creating terror as the team don’t know who to trust, what’s happening, or how to survive
Institutional/Systemic
Institutional or systemic antagonists are Man vs Society conflicts. The individual vs the many/state, often in the form of corrupt or systemically biased institutions.
Nickel Boys | 2024 | Nickel Academy | Abusive segregated reform school that uses the black students for labor and beats them at the slightest infraction
The Florida Project | 2017 | Poverty | Poverty and lack of available employment forces young mother Halley into prostitution, putting the well-being of her young daughter at risk
Screenplay Examples for Every Genre: A Guide for Screenwriters
Designing a Compelling Antagonist
Creating compelling antagonist character arcs will help define and strengthen your story’s thematic goals as well as provide structure to drive the narrative conflict.
Motivation & Goal Clarity
Understanding the antagonist’s motivation pushes the audience to engage with the antagonist's actions on multiple levels, potentially paralleling the protagonist's thought process as they deal with the antagonist.
More on this below in structuring conflict.
Power Imbalance & Escalation
Power imbalances raise the stakes of the story pushing the main character to achieve their goals despite the odds. Antagonists can have greater resources, connections, societal and institutional backing to block the protagonist on their journey, and those imbalances endear us to the protagonist. How can they win under such conditions? The imbalance raises the audience's investment.
Mirror & Contrast the Protagonist
Thematic opposites beget the audience to engage directly with the moral dilemma facing the protagonist. The thematic opposite directly mirrors the protagonist's journey in a distorted way. A direct inverse. Societal rot begets both Batman and Joker to their resolve of how to deal with the world, but the directions they take are the exact opposite.
Humanising Your Villain Without Excusing Them
Morally grey and sympathetic antagonists can lend incredible depth to our protagonist's character arc. Providing glimpses into their backstory and seeing relatable wounds set them on their journey can assist in understanding their motivations. Barely any villain is going to see themselves as such. They are on their own journey and use the experiences in their lives to justify and give permission to their actions, no matter how harmful.
Antagonist vs. Protagonist: Structuring Conflict
The arcs of the protagonist and antagonist can interweave in various ways to achieve different story goals. Protagonist antagonist conflict can be structured in parallel, intersecting paths, or diverting ways. Parallel their rising and falling actions, their arcs can cross in intersecting midpoints, and share the culminating act or their respective arcs in a shared climax.
Single point-of-view stories solely follow the protagonist. Dual-pov stories follow both the protagonist and antagonist on their journeys. Dual-pov juxtaposes the arcs of the antagonist vs protagonist and can provide clarity and understanding to a morally complex story, while single-pov can heighten tension. What is the antagonist’s next move? It leads the audience guessing as we only know as much as the protagonist knows.
How to Write a Script in 4 Steps
Screenwriting Techniques for Antagonists
Introduce the Antagonist Early (first 10 pages)
Introducing the antagonist early, around the same time as the inciting incident, reveals to the audience what the story is about to entail, what the stakes are, and why they should care. It helps keep the audience invested early. Note, introducing the antagonist early does not necessarily mean that the protagonist meets them. In the Fifth Element, the protagonist and antagonist never cross paths directly despite spending the entire film acting against each other’s goals.
Show, Don’t Tell: Visual Menace & Signature Actions
Being told someone is threatening and seeing someone be threatening are two different things. One, we feel–have a physical reaction to. The other, we hear and understand, but hearing someone say that person is scary is being scared are different things.
Dialogue, Subtext, and Silence—how speech patterns reveal ideology
Many of cinema’s greatest antagonists have little actual screentime, but they make up for it with their unforgettable screen presence. Using your antagonist’s dialogue is a great way to make sure no matter the amount of screentime they have, their presence will be felt.
Use their dialogue to hint at their ideology and worldview. If they’re talking to a subordinate, use how they talk to that subordinate to show how they callously throw around their power and treat those closest to them cruelly, or how they don’t. Perhaps they treat their companions with grace and compassion to endear followers to them.
Use every ounce of screentime to fill your antagonist with thematic vigor.
Common Pitfalls—and How to Fix Them
Writers can spend an endless amount of time thinking of their hero’s journey, that the antagonist becomes a simple plot device to execute that journey. In doing so, many writers can rely on antagonist tropes to do the heavy lifting while they concentrate on the protagonist. Let’s look at some pitfalls and become cognizant of how to avoid them in order to make a rich antagonist character.
Cartoonishly Evil or Flat Motivation
The antagonist can make an audience check out of a film as easily as they can make an audience lock in. A flat motivation the audience doesn’t buy or being cartoonishly evil when the tone of the story doesn’t match can make the audience lose interest in the conclusion. Tying the motive of the antagonist to the theme adds a guardrail to the antagonists’ character arc. Another question to ask oneself is if the antagonist is being logical to the rules set up inside your story.
Antagonist Overshadows the Hero
Certain types of antagonists in movies want to be the main character–they are the main character in their head, after all. Don’t let them overshadow the protagonist. One common pitfall is the antagonist constantly making choices for the protagonist, leaving the hero to only react. Elevate, in priority, the protagonist’s agency to make their own choices and not be forced into choices at the antagonist’s behest.
Confusing Multi-Antagonist Plot
Some stories try to say too many things and end up muffling the message of everything. The same can be true to antagonists. If there are multiple antagonistic factions, tie them as much as possible to the core obstacle of the story progression.
FAQs About Antagonists in Movies
Can an antagonist be the narrator?
Any character can be the narrator. Even a character not shown in the story (Barbie). Aaron Burr, the antagonist in Hamilton, is the narrator. He sets up the context before multiple songs throughout the narrative.
Can nature count as an antagonist?
Yes, Man vs nature is a core form of storytelling conflict. Any disaster movie is man vs nature. Wild animal antagonists can act as the stand-in for the internal struggle the character is dealing with like in The Grey.
Do all antagonists need redeeming qualities?
No, but depending upon the tone and the theme of the story, they can become more necessary. A drama can demand more redeeming qualities in its antagonist than a thriller.
Does the Antagonist have to be evil?
Remember that antagonists aren’t inherently evil. A rom/com that centers around the compatibility of a relationship has no inherent morality to it, the antagonism comes from the incompatibility and the ability of the couple to work through it.
Is one antagonist enough?
The number of antagonists needed depends upon the story. Mysteries can have multiple potential antagonists that turn out to be red herrings. Antagonists can shift throughout a story like in Parasite where the rich family starts as the antagonists, but another faction of antagonists enters at the midpoint.
Is the antagonist only the main villain?
No, stories can have multiple human antagonists like discussed above, but also multiple types of antagonists, such as environmental, societal, and internal antagonists. In the Revenant, the protagonist faces both the harsh winter as well as the man who left him for dead (and let’s not forget the bear).
Final Thoughts: Elevate Your Story with a Standout Antagonist
Film antagonists force the audience to reckon with the thematic questions the story is telling. They force our protagonists to endure physical hardship and psychological trauma to persevere. Writing the next iconic antagonist will take some experimentation. When plotting out your story, test your antagonist's arc against the protagonist's needs. Play with how they intersect. Find what you like through iterative drafts. Writing is a craft, and crafting your antagonist will take effort, but with the knowledge gained here, you’re well on your way to writing the next great villain in film.
A quick takeaway list:
3 Do’s
Give clear, relatable motives
Mirror the protagonist’s core flaw
Escalate conflict logically
3 Don’ts
Rely on clichés without a twist
Reveal backstory via clunky exposition
Let spectacle trump psychological stakes
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For further reading: Screenplay Format With Examples
