Why is it more common for villains to be considerably cooler than heroes and main characters?

>>212454800 (OP)
Heroes have to be curtailed lest the writer fear the audience might think they’re not heroic enough.
Villains can be whatever the fuck the writer wants.
Obi-Wan Kenobi can’t choke out the annoying, blowhard asshole that everyone has met and hated, but Darth Vader can

>>212454800 (OP)
Because coolness fundamentally and intrinsically is a character trait of a bad person.

heroes work for israel's interest

>>212454800 (OP)
Because most archetypal stories are based on making the MC into someone likeable rather than having them start out likeable. The villains often don't need to develop like that.
>>212454932
Also this.

Villains are the only true escapist power fantasy characters, because deep down, we all want to do whatever the fuck we want with zero consequence. Villains always have an unabashed confidence to them that heroes rarely have, since heroes have to be self-doubting, conflicted, and relatable

Test

>>212455174
kek

>>212455130
It's been a decade and I'm still not sure what this means.

>>212455269
Pretty self explanatory? I'm seeing if posting works correctly.

>>212455243
I don't think anybody saw him as cool. Just a try-hard loser.

>>212455269
people want to see if they are banned or not. They don't know that they can just check here

https://www.4chan.org/banned

>>212454800 (OP)
If the villains aren't cooler than heroes it makes the heroes feel lame by proxy
See disney slop wars as an example

There are also movies where the protagonist is the coolest character in (Like Drive) and also...

>>212455521
..Any James Bond movie

>>212455537
All villians from bond movies are pretty forgettable.

>>212454800 (OP)
because the protagonist is who the audience view the story through.
often times this causes them to be hollow. if they behave too oddly, or too ambitiously, or too differently or too erratically. It risks the audience's immersion breaking.
the villains and antagonists aren't as constrained which almost always allows more characterization and this characterization is what makes them so cool, it's what makes them interesting, it's what makes them memorable.
sometimes the villains become the main drivers of the story. which only adds to the factors that make the audience enamored by them.

>>212455386
This. For the hero to look cool he has to be up against a formidable villain. Smarter, faster, strong, more ruthless, who doesn't play by the rules, or otherwise has the advantage.

Bruce Willis only looks cool because Hans Gruber is so badass. He's intelligent, skilled, cool-headed, organised, in charge, doesn't hesitate to kill people, and has his bitch at literal gunpoint. Meanwhile Bruce is at a disadvantage with bare feet full of glass, running around the building barely dodging bullets trying to figure out what is really going on.

That's why shit works so well whenever they come up against each other. Shooting the glass, talking on the radio, faking the accent, and now I have a machine gun Ho-Ho-Ho.

>>212454800 (OP)
probably because the writers have more fun writing them

>>212456604
I really like it when the villain 'wins' at the end and levels up, then the hero is well and truly super-fucked and taking them down seems suddenly impossible. It was an innovation in the hero story that was one step up from the hero merely getting some kind of second wind or making some desperation move and stopping the ticking clock right before the bad guy blows up the world or whatever.

That way you get to at least see what shit looks like when the villains plan plays out, which is cool if even for a hot minute.

Has the best of both worlds when you compare it to the old myths like Hercules having to do something that seems literally impossible from the start, like killing the hydra, with the gods themselves throwing shit at your mere mortal arse? Even slaying a fire breathing dragon is starting off with get-fucked-impossible task and finding a way. But not the same if the hero has too much time to think about it.

Since they've been doing stories where the villain suddenly wins, and you get to see them happy, enjoying their victory, and at full power, not getting that almost seems like a gyp.

>>212455537
>>212455521
I would unironically call Karl Childers a cooler character than any of the villains in Sling Blade

Villains are usually the ones who make things happen. The same reasons antiheroes are popular.