How do you decide when to introduce your villain?

[harmonica44]

Some movies will introduce a villain right away, like The Dark Knight, and others will wait till to the third act, like Seven.

Seven did cause they wanted to tell most of the story from the detectives' point of view, and they only had the villain come to meet them, when it was necessarily for his plan. But sometimes I wonder if this was a weakness, cause it gives us less time to invest in his character, before we see what he does in the climax.

In The Dark Knight, Nolan decides to introduce The Joker, right away. But he could have waited if he wanted to. He could have not even been at the opening robbery, and just send others to do it. And we could have first met the character, from Bruce Wayne's point of view, when Joker decided to crash the party he was throwing. They would have to switch some things around to make this work, but they could have if they felt that would have strengthened the movie.

But they didn't. So I need to decide if I should introduce my villain earlier on, or save him for a surprise later. What are some strengths and weaknesses that work for both, leaving plot out of it now? Thanks for the advice!

 

[mad_hatter]

The killer in “Seven” is introduced early on. Once they tie the greed and gluttony murders together, we have the killer. He just remains nameless and faceless until the third act. That serves the story best. It’s a ‘whodunit?’. If they introduced the killer earlier, we’d know whodunit; that kind-of defeats the purpose.

If you think about it, we probably know as much about John Doe in “Seven” as we do about Buffalo Bill in “Silence Of The Lambs”. You may feel you know more about Bill, as you see his face, but we still don’t know who he is or why he does what he does. Both films have their detectives/agents piecing the parts of the puzzle together bit by bit. That’s the way those films work.

In “The Dark Knight”, Batman needs a visible villain. This is an action film; the hero and the villain need to do battle. That’s what we paid to see. If we don’t have the Joker, what’s Batman doing before his introduction? Having said that, even if the Joker weren’t present at the opening bank robbery, he’d still have been introduced. Those robbers we’re working for the Joker and that would’ve been made known during the event. If we weren’t made aware of the Joker, “TDK” would be a completely different movie.

You need to do whatever suits your story best. It’s not something that can be thought about irrespective of the plot. You can do whatever you want to do, just make it work for your story.