An uncomplicatedly bad villain used to feature in every action film worth its salt, but a more globalised industry has made the universally hated figure a tricky character to pull off
Early on in the new Mission Impossible film, a group of sharp-suited intelligence agents gather to discuss a grave new threat to national security. Their nemesis is apparently a “godless, stateless enemy” which is “everywhere and nowhere”, “a self-aware, self-learning, truth-eating digital parasite”. Your heart sinks slightly as you realise that Tom Cruise’s latest adversary is in fact a sentient computer code. An action movie without a real villain? Hans Gruber would be spinning in his grave.
Seasoned Cruise fans, though, will know not to panic. Last summer, Top Gun: Maverick pulled off the same trick, ticking every crowdpleasing action-movie convention except one: it had no bad guy. Instead – as with the original – “the enemy” was a carefully unspecified nation state, its only human representatives a handful of faceless fighter pilots who pop up in our heroes’ crosshairs at the end.
