Villainous Deus Machina

[Devor]

I'm not one to post a rant, but this happened in a show I'm watching and today I'm finding it frustrating.

The show is the anime Levius, about boxers who use steam-powered metal parts to augment their attacks and armor. The enemy doesn't feel pain, so the only way to bring her down is to land a perfect strike and disable the steam parts so she can't move. The MCs come up with a plan, and master clear but difficult techniques, and the fight begins. Everything goes according to plan, the MC breaks her steam part, the villain goes down for the KO.....

Then she just gets back up....!



Is it necessary to find contrived ways to escalate the tension? I know that plan failure is so ingrained into story structure that we're at the point where just letting the good guys' plan work would be a huge (and in this case satisfying) surprise, but still, shouldn't we foreshadow and set up the bad guys' saving graces just like we need to do for the good guys?

They strategized, they trained, they pulled it off. They did all the things we want the good guys to do but never actually do. Can't that just be enough once in a while?

 

[Ban]

Maxima not machina? I don't recall our Dutch queen ever being involved in steam-powered boxing.

As for the question, I don't think it's necessary as long as there have been interesting twists and turns beforehand. A plan can get off-track before a main confrontation, or perhaps even after if this is not the final confrontation, but I feel that that "getting off-track" part is always necessary in high action series, more so than any other genre.

 

[Devor]

Maxima not machina? I don't recall our Dutch queen ever being involved in steam-powered boxing.

I fixed the title.

 

[The Dark One]

I don't recall our Dutch queen ever being involved in steam-powered boxing.

Now who's being naïve?

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

But villains have always been inexplicably super-powered. I mean everyone who's ever seen a horror film knows that a girl running in terror cannot outrun a villain who just walks menacingly. And he will always be there at the end waiting for the hero somehow, despite having been knocked down or left behind or what have you. Lex Luthor will always know things he can't possibly know and despite being only human will always push sup to his limits. And that's before you actually give them super / infinite powers like the Borg.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Villains are the heroes of their own stories, which means that yes, making it too easy on them is bad. It's lazy writing, and lazy writing should be a sin. There has to be risk to maintain tension, and that risk should extend to both sides or how else will the final climax have meaning? It can't just come out of nowhere, it has to be a result of everything that has come before it, that both sides have worked so hard for.

 

[ThinkerX]

I suppose I do have a case of this (sort of) in the 'Empire' series. In book I, the heroes (and others) believed the villains to be mortal sorcerers. At the end of book II, the heroes believe - with excellent justification - that the main villain is dead - because he was killed in their presence. However, said villain was a demon, a spirit that incarnated itself in different bodies - which is what happened in book III. That was also when they realized that both villains were demons. A gradual revelation of what the villains truly are.