I can’t remember who said it, but I’ve often read that Nazis make the perfect villains. They’re easily recognizable and 99.99% of the population views them as the personification of evil.
But World War II ended almost 65 years ago.
And yet, Nazis remain at the forefront of villainy. I just watched The Unborn, a truly terrible horror movie from earlier this year, that featured a ghost drawn to the family of a Holocaust survivor. The heroine’s grandmother was liberated in 1944 when she was 9 and spent the entire movie in an old folk’s home seeing as she is pushing 85.
For another example slightly opposite that, The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro stars Abraham Setrakian, a Holocaust survivor who was in his late teens when he escaped from a concentration camp. 65 years later he continues his work as a very active vampire slayer lopping off their heads with a sword. The man is nearly 90.
These senior examples show that Nazis can’t be used in movies and books forever. But what will happen? Will some new villain rise up to replace them (generic “terrorists” perhaps?)? Will there be more period movies (like Inglorious Basterds) set around World War II so Nazis can play a role? Will something else entirely happen (Commie-Nazis!)?
Personally, I hope the Nazis of that era remain the ultimate symbol of villany, for I don’t want the world to experience whatever tops them. (I know, there HAS been worse, I’m just sayin’.)
The Nazis are still the go-to villains because frankly, people are deathly afraid of pissing anyone off. There are very few groups you can have members of as villains without getting your book or movie protested and boycotted.
If you have “perfect villains” you aren’t going to let something insignificant like a normal lifespan interferewith using them in a story.
Zombie Nazis
Vampire Nazis
Time traveling Nazis
Cloned Nazis
Left in suspended animation by one of Hitler’s experiments Nazis
Historical reenactment Nazis that get out of hand
They saved Hitler’s brain Nazis
Of COURSE Nazis will remain Hollywood’s favorite villains. Even though the war ended 64 years ago, we’ll still see “Law and Order” pinning murders on 90 year old Germans for a while.
And when elderly Germans are no longer plausible? Nazis will STILL be the villains of choice!
Look at the Hollywood treatment of Tom Clancy’s “Sum of All Fears.” The villains were supposed to be Arabs. Hollywood turned them into Eastern European neo-Nazis!
WWII was the first war to be fully captured on film. As long as there’s a History channel showing documentaries of the Nazis, there’ll be new Nazi movies.
And what’s not to like? (in the villain sense) - really, really, cool uniforms, unstoppable war machine, and horrible atrocities. A bunch of Middle Easterners with a truck bomb just can’t compete.
Justin_Bailey, I know this is going to come across as picky, but there’s this thing called arithmetic you should learn something about. You write:
> . . . was liberated in 1944 when she was 9 and spent the entire movie in an old
> folk’s home seeing as she is pushing 85.
1944 was 65 years ago. 65 + 9 = 74. She isn’t pushing 85.
Then you write:
> . . . a Holocaust survivor who was in his late teens when he escaped from a
> concentration camp. 65 years later he continues his work as a very active
> vampire slayer lopping off their heads with a sword. The man is nearly 90.
So he was at most 19 when he left the concentration camp. 65 + 19 = 84. That is pushing 85, but it’s not nearly 90.
The movies will always have Nazis, or "spin offs’ of them. After all, what does almost every supervillain want? Total world domination. It’s taken directly from the Nazi handbook.
While my math was slightly off, the point still stands. Having former Nazis or Holocaust survivors show up in stories set in 2009 and beyond is starting to strain the human lifespan. Especially when one of those characters is battling vampires in hand-to-hand combat.
Also, an exact age was never given for when Setrakian escaped from the concentration camp (he was just called a “young man”). And the novel is actually set in late 2010. So 90 is right.
It’s not just the atrocities: Nazis had evil down to a style. They really dressed the part of storybook villians. Moreover, thet were self-conciously futuristic.
So far, there is no group that comes close to their appeal as the ultimate story villians.
The Nazis were stylishly, interestingly, hissably evil and are almost universally recognized. It might be centuries before their entertainment value diminishes, if ever.
Yeah, the Nazis just had style. The commies are the only group that could plausibly take their place but they were just scruffier, plus they have more public sympathizers in prominent places.
I remember reading a National Review article in 1985 about why the Nazis have remained the standard of evil throughout the atrocity racked 20th century. It pointed out that other groups from Communists to Islamic terrorists have at least cloaked their brutality in some higher religious or philisophical good. The Nazis in contrast were the id released: sheer rage with no real higher purpose (as a historian put it “spitting in the face of the Enlightenment”). It claimed the appeal of Nazi stories is like the appeal of “hero fighting the dragon” stories–it mirrors the struggle we all have between our basest needs and our more civilized nature. I imagine in the future writers looking for this conflict will just imagine revivals of the Nazis because the source material is too strong.
Right, because IN REAL LIFE everyone knows that only young people fight vampires. I have no problem believing think that a vampire can live forever, drink blood, dissolve in sunlight, become a bat, recoil at the sight of a cross and turn others into vampires, but having an 85-year old engaging in hand-to-hand combat is simply out of the question.:rolleyes:
