How do you make your villain {{{Antagonist}}} stand out or be unique, compared to the typical villains in 99% of the other scripts out there? What are a few ways to make a unique villain that will capture the attention of the audience and /or script reader.????
If you think 99% of the villains out there are all the same it should be pretty easy to make something unique! Just make them the opposite. You don't have to make a unique villain, you need to make a good one who fits the story. If s/he turns out to be a stencil of all other villains out there, then change what you don't like from there.
This. When trying to come up with a good idea hasn't worked yet, try to come up with the opposite of a bad idea instead. I personally hate the popular idea that if you're acquainted with somebody of your preferred gender(s), then there will automatically be sexual/romantic tension unless one or both of you are already involved with (or in tension with) other people. The three villain protagonists of my WIP are a lesbian, a straight woman, and a straight man, and all three of them love each other as friends more than any of them have ever loved anybody as boyfriend or girlfriend. This also goes against the popular idea that evil people never care about anybody else. I personally hate the idea that straight white guys (of which I am only 2/3) should be disproportionately given the most important roles in the story. The narrator of my WIP is the straight white guy, and he looks like the main character for the first two chapters or so because he's the only protagonist we see doing anything, but then we meet his black lesbian friend at the end of chapter 2, and it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that she's the one driving the action against the antagonists. He's just the first-person peripheral narrator, she's the evil Sherlock Holmes to his evil John Watson. She's the evil Ahab to his evil Ishmael. She's the evil Mowgli to his evil Bagheera. She's the evil Jay Gatsby to his... Nick Carraway.
As the others have said, sometimes villains can't be what most consider "unique". At their core most are generally the same thing, but that's why us as authors have the duty of "embellishing" them. My best advice is to make a villain that you like, that works in the confines of your plot, and has a proper motivation that people can either relate to or get behind. Really just make something that you are proud of. Not everything that we make will be completely unique, but everything we create we can be proud of. Just remember, even the most generic of villains can stand out if they are written in a way that allows them to.
Give 'im an eyepatch! Wait, no, just give him at least as much depth as your protagonist. A story is only as good as its villain.
Going by my own work, and what I've read, the best "baddies" have their weaknesses. But this weakness also needs to be their driving force to be "bad", rather than just their undoing, like the little hole they left in the Death Star... If I were you I'd ask yourself what do you want them to be memorable for? Being creepy? Being likable? Being sophisticated? I'd recommend reading Carte Blanche, one of the post-Flemming era Bond books. Jeffery Deaver's villain is probably the most complex character in the book. Obsessed with decay and deterioration, borne from a control freak personality, he makes the skin crawl. If nothing else, it's a good lesson in obsessive characterisation, and why it's important to really know your characters. Go on amazon and get it bought, my son!
Firstly, I'd make a nice background story, without that, both villain and his motivation for actions he does seem quite shallow. Secondly, don't make black & white characterisation, make him a bit more complexed, rather than raw force of destruction. Also put some characteristics, special for him, so he stands out.
Not sure what you're looking for when you say "unique" but the mark of a goo villain is one that is three dimensional. There's more to them than, "Haha! I gonna take over the world." They, like the MC, have motivations, goals, character traits, etc. There is a reason why they are who they are and believe what they believe, and for me personally, the best villains are the ones who, while you may not root them, they have the ability to make you see things from their viewpoint. Great villains challenge the idea of morality.
My villain is asexual, has a pet snake he converses with who may be the only friend he really has or cares about, doesn't think much of the idea of right or wrong being absolute concepts, has an object tied to his soul that makes him immortal, unless it's destroyed, in which case he dies, seeks for a group of items that would give him ultimate power if he got all of them together, comes back from the dead, is snakelike with red eyes, wants to kill the protagonist because of a prophecy of his death, and, to top it off, is a dark wizard who can kill people with just two words. Now, I didn't consciously base my villain, Zarakharn, on him, and reading Zarakharn's scenes, you don't get the same vibe because their personalities are different, but Voldemort totally popped into your head after reading that description, didn't he?
It's from the old internet, before there were memes. Oh, btw Harry Potter spoilers ahead, if you haven't already read/watched them. You have to watch it with audio for it to have the desired impact. http://snapegonnagiveittoya.ytmnd.com/
Oh. Well damn. Dunno where the audio is, then. It worked for me. A shame, because that's the punchline.
I think the best way to make a villain is to give him a good reason to be. I mean, he should be trying to achieve something good, but his methods should be wrong. He should be a bit lost in what he is doing. If you do that, you have the villain that not only people can relate to, but the one whose actions might make more sense than those of the hero. That's one way to do it. The other interesting concept is to make him a mad but likeable character. Like Joker from Batman stories.
Give him a split personality, one where he is out to ruin whoever or whatever, and the other one could be charming and charismatic and neutral or good-willed, however they aren't aware of the split personality
Subvert a device from a story you know. Palpatine is evil to the core and always has been, while Vader was manipulated into turning evil and was eventually redeemed. In my story, the master, Fiandarsh, is the one who was turned evil while Zarakharn, his apprentice, was ready to receive evil with open arms. (But had Fiandarsh been good, Zarakharn would not have caused all the evil he did and would just have been an amoral person.)
