No, Modern Villains Have Not Gone Downhill | Ant vs. The Second Story

Have modern villains run out of steam? Are we too degenerate as a society to have modern evil?

The Second Story seems to think so.

YouTube Critic The Second Story has recently dropped a video about how modern villains have lost their edge, and in it, she draws connections between classical philosophy, post-modernism, and the moral degradation of society. I think, however, that none of her arguments hold any water, despite how articulate her perspective is.

This is my rebuttal to her points, where I argue that modern villains are actually really well-written.

Original Video by The Second Story:
   • Modern Villains are Pitiful and Impotent  

Thumbnail ‪@thecrimsonender‬

Chapters:

0:00 Have You Heard of Second Story and Her Hate of Modern Media?
1:04 The Counter Argument to Second Story’s Villain Video
2:17 What is a Villain and Conflict?
4:03 Villains Have Always Been Multidimensional (Shakespeare, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables)
7:17 Exploring Villains and the Nature of Evil (Grendel, Wicked)
8:36 Is Evil Dead in Modern Movies? (Art the Clown, Nosferatu, Legend of Zelda, Lord of the Rings)
14:37 Evil is Not Skin-Deep (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy
16:38 Sympathy for the Devil (Paradise Lost)
18:44 The Second Story Does Not Understand Hannibal Lector
21:24 The Objective Definition of Evil Does Not Exist?
25:57 The Second Story Has a Weird Issue with Post-Modern
26:55 What is Evil?
33:55 “If You Disagree With Me, You Lack Morality.”
36:38 Is Evil a Social Construct? (Freddy Krueger)
38:34 I Caught The Second Story Making up Stories About College Students
40:36 Are Villains Just Misunderstood? (Punisher)
42:53 The Post-Modern Principals of Modern Villain Writing (According to The Second Story)
46:16 You Shouldn’t Sympathize With Villains? (Fushigi Yugi)
50:44 Are Villains Too Meta? (Scream)
51:48 The Second Story Hates Ambiguity (David Lynch, Hayao Miyazaki, The Wailing)
55:57 Gladiator
1:00:41 The Thanos Imperative
1:05:11 A Villain Doesn’t Need to Be Evil to Be Frightening (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Ju-On, Audition)