We might emotionally understand the revenge in Lady Snowblood, but to take it to those extremes and keep the audience/ reader engaged requires careful planning. In order to become extra-legal, vigilante even, and get the audience on your character’s side, a strong setup based in recognized criteria is necessary. We have a system of justice established centuries ago and that system must be respected – at least initially.
She’s obsessed and we’re fully invested in that obsession.īut how do you get to that blind rage so your character is perceived to be justified in their pursuit? To even talk about revenge in today’s environment can diminish the writer and character. Her anger burns through any common sense we might be applying to the situation. The raging desire for Ashley Judd’s character to kill her husband for what he did to her in Double Jeopardy is palpable. And even earlier, while cave paintings and etchings mostly show hunts, some detail battles and attacks which surely intimate revenge motifs.Īn obsessive character is without a doubt the easiest character to write. Gilgamesh was written 2,000 years before the Christian bible. You guessed it – it’s about a quest to destroy Humbaba, a monster that had devastated both a city and a beautiful singer. In the Gilgamesh trilogy, the second volume is called The Revenge of Ishtar. It really reflects our schizophrenic attitudes toward righting wrongs where we want to both take the higher ground and grind our tormentors into dust. The Bible was filled with smitings for wrongings everywhere. Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:īut I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, The bible features multiple dozens of storylines that deal in revenge – until the New Testament where Jesus said: But it’s no great insight to say that revenge is the basis of many tales from history centuries before film.
Movies, being reflections of the human spirit in all forms both positive and negative, deal a lot in revenge. That’s what makes revenge stories so powerful. Not many of us use violence or extremes toward the wrongdoers, but there is a place we all go to where those remedies are at least internally considered. We’ve all been wronged and considered various responses to that wrong. This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Revenge:įew themes are as relatable as revenge.
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