As many if not all of us know, Avengers Age of Ultron released last week with high expectations that were never met. The premiere of this movie which I have been anticipating since the first Avengers movie and the Sales in the Cinema project has had me thinking a lot lately about villains and sales. I started thinking about the relationships between heroes and their nemesis and realized there are some great selling points in those relationships. These are the positive and negative aspects of Villain’s sales according to The Sandler Rules.
You may be wondering what they’re trying to sell. That is an excellent question, in the interest of this post I have decided that all villains are trying to sell two things. The first is they’re trying to sell the hero on their plan, either to get them to join them or to give up. The second thing the villain is trying to sell is that he cannot be beaten, not all Villains try and sell this, some are pawns and don’t try and really sell anything.
Villains are usually not the best salespeople, this stems from the fact that they’re usually very unlikable and their general lack of skills in anything other than trying to take over the world. Faced with a serious lack of attunement, our fiendish friends have trouble selling their plans and often disintegrate as they fail. They also spill all of their candy in the lobby, not all villains but most. There is no better example of this than Syndrome from The Incredibles. Villains that start with a monologue of the entire evil plan are already defeated. They give up all of their selling points before they even happen and the hero can always come back and beat them because they know exactly what is going to happen. A second Sandler rule that Villains commonly break is they paint seagulls in the prospect’s picture. Evildoers want their superhero counterparts to see how much the world needs them, they try to make the world look like it needs them, this never works for villains.
There are few Sandler Rules that Villains follow well. One of which is Sandler Rule 22, When presenting, go for the “kill”. In this case this rule is slightly more literal than Sandler means for it to be, but it fits the situation. The villain has taken the time to find a good location, find qualified prospects, and find a good target. He has made his plan and is ready, now all he has to do is make his presentation and defeat the villain by making him give up, or defeat him forever. Another common positive of Villain selling is that they’re good at expressing their feelings through third party stories. Villains are almost always telling stories, Ultron does it, The Joker does it, Wilson Fisk does it in Daredevil. They’re always telling stories, trying to move heroes by telling them about something that happened.
As we can see, villains make similar mistakes, and usually share redeeming sales qualities. They will not be able to take over the world until they can figure out how to follow The Sandler Rules and make themselves better salespeople. Salespeople worthy to lift Thor’s sales hammer.
BoweryJE22
Given “every hero needs a villain,” it totally makes sense to me that the latter often bears a few solid sales skills. The greater the villain, the greater the hero to overcome him. And I would say that the villains can’t be blamed for breaking a few sales rules. They are the villains after all. If the producer hadn’t thrown in a few flaws, they might be mistaken for heroes! Interesting perspective. I love the discernment shown in searching out and finding the good among the bad.
A villain’s job is about moving people in different ways, usually to get other criminals involved in the evil antics. Satan, the ultimate villain, is amazing at this. I do things all the time that I shouldn’t do because I choose to be moved by something that I should resist. Villains know their stuff – they have to, since very few are rooting for them as the underdog.