I’m going to be honest with you all here. I am extremely tired of the edginess of a lot of modern stories. Or at least the assumed overabundance of it.

Maybe this is the musing of a person who refuses to grow up or is fighting desperately against the inevitability of growing old, but there seems to be a glut of stories where we have villains that were crafted from some research pulled from the worst parts of popular fiction. I call it the “George R.R. Martin effect.”

What I personally want more of, though, is villains who delight in villainy and make you delight alongside them. Yes, they’re bad, and they might have a shred of something redeemable or even a good explanation for their actions, but they also would just rather do the bad thing because those lack of inhibitions feel good.

Take Ultron from the Avengers film, for example. His origin is pretty cookie cutter creator/created trope stuff and raises the oft-asked question of whether superpowered beings are feeding troughs for supervillains, but he also has some great little quippy moments and some fabulously hammy times in the spotlight. All of which, I’ll admit, was done with the help of some truly fun writing and the delicious James Spader.

Or even look at Dr. Robotnik from the Sonic the Hedgehog movie. Yes, it was Jim Carrey reading lines for Robotnik in the same way Ben Affleck reads lines for pretty much every character he’s played, but boy was it just fun to watch Robotnik do his dastardly thing. And pretty much grin in every moment he was doing it to boot!

What I’m saying is I want more Jafars. I want more Don Karnages. I want more Oogie Boogies and Cruella DeVils. Is it weird that most of these villains come from Disney’s creation processes? Ah well.

Basically, I want villains to be fun and enjoyable to watch as well as a threat to the main hero. Not every single one of them has to be some sort of snarling hard-boiled idea of what strength and fear should be. Sometimes the badnicks just want to delight in their badness, and that’s something that should be done more.