In D&D parlance, a “lawful evil” character is one who believes an orderly society/hierarchy/organization is the best, most efficient means to achieving his or her nefarious goals.
Some examples include Darth Vader and Magneto, as opposed to, say, The Joker.
In your opinion, do the best villains belong in this category? Are they easier to relate motivations to, or at least rationalize?
LE villains are generally more successful – it’s easier to do the business of Evil when you’ve got discipline and organization. But CE villains (like the Joker) can be just as interesting, in my opinion.
Villain? Yes.
Big Bad? Not necessarily.
IMO, a good villain has to have reasons for the villainy. Otherwise they are just Agent of Chaos (ie The Joker and every slasher/torturer/horror movie killer). Agents of Chaos are seldom interesting.
I agree. Think about the operative in Serenity. He was actually working to bring about a world in which he would have no place, and all for what he thought was the greater good. Kind of tragic in a way.
In D&D and movies I always wondered why henchmen would follow a person like that, during the bank heist while Heath Ledger was busy murdering everyone of his personnel I kept thinking who in their right mind would join up with this organization, much less stay.
Lawful Evil has a lot going for it, including plausibility. Even if bent to any nefarious purpose, many people though out history have chosen ‘order’ over the alternatives.
The other thing is that in many cases a lawful evil person might be working for a goal that many of us would support. Such a character raises the interesting issue of whether the end justifies the means.
With chaotic evil characters, there’s virtually never such a conflict. They’re doing evil for the sake of evil and nobody supports that. The best connection you can hope for with a chaotic evil villain is sympathy for those who we can see were driven insane by past circumstances and are no longer capable of self-control.
I don’t think LE villains are necessarily better, but they have an advantage in that they prevent sloppy thinking by the writer. When we ask the question “Why are they doing these evil things?” writers sometimes have no explanation for the CE characters. “That’s just the way they are” seems to suffice for an explanation. (The Joker is the textbook example. He’s just crazy.) An LE character, on the other hand, has to have an explanation that we can understand.
Of course, there’s no reason why a CE or NE character couldn’t have complex and relatable motivations if they’re written that way. They just usually aren’t.
Another advantage: CE characters are usually driven by things we consider vices. Sex, drugs, money, power, etc. It’s very easy to look down on those people because we see these as character flaws that are not worthy motivations. LE characters almost always have a “higher purpose” in mind. We might disagree with Darth Vader about how to get world peace, but we have to agree that world peace is a worthy goal.
I wouldn’t say the best villains are necessarily Lawful Evil. Neutral Evil villains are perfectly plausible, often even more so than Lawfuls; they tend to present themselves as Lawful, because it’s to their advantage to pay lip service to some sort of order most of the time, but can be expected to break laws/their word/their code if the payoff is greater than that of maintaining the charade. Both LE and NE villains are well-situated to be Affably Evil*–which is a trope I like–and make more adaptable characters across extended works, like a TV or novel series.
CE villains have their place as well, but in a sense, they’re sort of like natural disasters. They have greater scope for causing damage, but it’s hard to get much subtlety or depth out of them. That said, the sheer unpredictability can make them fun antagonists. In my opinion, though, they serve best as occasional foils, or as tools for the Big Bad, than as the Big Bad.
*David Xanatos may still be my favorite villain ever.
I think Lawful Evil is generally successful because it’s a trope we’re well accustomed to and it’s something that most of us can relate to. For the most part, we can understand the motivation of a mob boss or a corrupt politician, because even if we’re not greedy, we’ve all felt those temptations. But we have a much harder time relating to a character that is Chaotic because, in general, we live in a Lawful society. For most villains, it’s important to be able to relate to them in some way, and if most people are generally Good and at least Neutral living in a Lawful society, it’s hard to relate to villains that don’t have at least something in common.
So, by that same notion, I think we’ll see that Lawful Evil works well, but there’s plenty of memorable ones that are Neutral or Chaotic, I think more of them probably aren’t that because they were so different. For instance, part of the reason the Joker works so well is precisely because we can’t relate to him, and he’s the Yin to Batman’s Yang. In fact, I think that’s probably why we see so many Lawful Evil villains, because so often our heroes are Lawful Good.
Personally, though, my favorite types of villains are the ones who can even flip it on it’s head and not be Evil at all. For instance, I’d say that Raz al’Ghul in Batman Begins or General Zod in Man of Steel are not Evil in the D&D alignment sense (probably Lawful Neutral for both). Hell, Batman alone has a villain of virtually every alignment. I’d also make the argument that the one true break out MCU villain, Loki, isn’t Evil, he’s Chaotic Neutral.
The robbers in the opening scene of the movie were obviously duped, but I think there could be an explanation for the subsequent henchmen, that being the sheer charisma of the Joker. Like a personality cult. He’s the baddest man in Gotham and that alone could attract a subset of people, then he can give them his spiel about being agents of chaos (in an organized fashion ironically), and voila! Henchmen. I mean look at all the teenagers and young men that idolize(?) the Joker even as a fictional character. And a lot of his pawns are just straight up nutso as well.
I certainly find LE villains more interesting. Not only are they much more likely to have well-developed motivations and backgrounds, but the motivations and backgrounds they get are likely to be much more interesting. Personal greed or hedonism are perfectly plausible as motivations, but they’re boring.
Nice poster-post content combo. 
Perhaps I don’t fully understand the subtleties of the D&D matrix, but…
Is that really LE, then? I would say that’s more NG. Their end goal is good, and may even have a plausible route for getting there, but as you say they are “the ends justify the means” folk. Not sadistic, but not afraid of getting their hands dirty. Willing to sacrifice a thousand to save a million.
Unfortunately, this type is generally paired with protagonists way out on the LG spectrum (Superman, etc.).
Chaotic Evil can get tiresome, including the parts where the heroes don’t just eliminate the chaotic evil villain, put him down like a mad dog and all.
My current favourite Lawful Evil is The Network from “Utopia”, during Season One anyway.
When the good guys capture one of the bad guys, and he finally spills the details of the horrible conspiracy, and you find yourself thinking “Oh, yeah… shit, they’re probably right to be doing that”, it makes for some damn good villaining.
I’m reminded of one of my favourite moments from Darkman. The main bad guy, Louis Strack, lures Darkman into one of Strack’s partly-completed skyscrapers. Strack is heavily invested in city architecture (and quite at home dancing across girders 600 feet above the pavement) and ruthless in bringing his vision to life, even if it means bribery and murder.
Strack: Look about you. [camera angle moves to show the city skyline behind him] It’s all mine. Because I built it! I built it all!
Finally, a villain with a productive goal!
Quick and Dirty:
Lawful Good: Laws and order are the best way to ensure maximum good and benefit for the people.
Lawful Neutral: Law is paramount and good or evil are secondary to keeping order.
Lawful Evil: Law is the tool of oppression by which complete power is gained.
Neutral Good: Goodness for others is best achieved by finding balance between order and freedom
True Neutral: The Balance is most important, when one side grows too dominant, the benefits of the other are crushed by its weight.
Neutral Evil: Ideologies of law or freedom are shackles against attaining true power for one’s self.
Chaotic Good: Goodness and charity are best achieved when people are free to do whatever they please. Restrictions stifle goodness.
Chaotic Neutral: ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ are distractions from achieving complete freedom
Chaotic Evil: Power is achieved by survival of the fittest. Those who are strongest crush the unworthy however they wish for their strength is their authority.
Someone achieving “world peace” by subjugating the population isn’t trying to bring about good for the people. They’re using totalitarianism as a tool to achieve power with “peace” as a pretext – Lawful Evil. Likewise, someone like Magneto who would kill a bunch of people to force “peace” with the mutants isn’t trying to broadly do good as a LG person would. He would, at best, be Lawful Neutral: Maintaining peace via threat because he legitimately wants peace but it willing to use decisively “non-good” means to force it. In AD&D terms, that’s when you get into alignments like “Lawful Evil (Neutral)”
So what about The Network from Utopia (that 3trew mentioned)?
They see overpopulation as a critical threat to human society. Not exactly controversial and most people could get behind some kind of solution. Their plan is to sterilize a large swath of the human population via bioweapon. Of course they kill a lot of people along the way, but nothing compared to the billions that will die due to war or starvation once things start to get bad. Sterilization solves the problem without actively killing anyone (aside from those that get in the way), and in this case is random in its operation (so you can’t really argue that it’s a power-grab).
I’m spoiler tagging just because you did and I’m not familiar with the story in question to know what I’d be ruining otherwise:
Assuming by the term “bioweapon” that it’s involuntary for those affected, you couldn’t argue that it’s “good”. I’m not familiar with the story but I could potentially see a True Neutral argument if the goal was purely to right the imbalance overpopulation has brought and no other options were available. On the other hand, if there was a “They get what the deserve for ruining the Earth” vibe to it, I’d slant it more towards Neutral Evil for being as much interested in the vengeance angle as the balance angle.
Well, I guess I think of lawful/neutral/chaotic as referring to means, while good/neutral/evil refers to ends. Perhaps I’m separating those too strongly.
I haven’t seen the entire series, but it’s pretty clear they’re convinced this is the only solution and that it isn’t some revenge scenario. It’s just humanity’s best hope for survival.
A pretty common trope in fantasy works is a paladin-like organization that fights witches/sorcerers/etc. The way I see it, these often edge into LE territory: they certainly respect law and order, and generally have their own strong code of ethics as well, but what they advocate is usually pretty close to genocide. I guess I probably have a mismatch in my definitions.