villainous explanations

You know when you watch a movie, and the villain always talks enough to give the hero time to break free? That always struck me as a lame plot device. Why would someone go through all the trouble of catching someone if they were just going to give them time to get away?

I was watching The Pretender today when Sydney turned into that villain with the need to talk. Sydney is the good father figure in the story, but he's also got a dark past. When he finds one of the men from this past, before he kills him, he feels the need to explain to his victim what happened that drove him to want to kill him. Because Sydney is a protagonist on the show, we relate to him and understand this desire in a way that doesn't happen when it's just the regular old villain pulling the same trick.

Maybe this is obvious, but I thought about how most good stories have a back story. There's always a reason behind the action, and if that's well developed, it gives the story that much more depth, even if the audience never actually gets to hear that story. It's just something that I think most writers are aware of (I've definitely heard it before), and I think good writers are able to incorporate it into the story without hitting you over the head with it.

But man, when Sydney did his spiel, it kind of made me stop and think. He's mostly good, but he's made some questionable decisions in the past that have led to some pretty terrible repercussions. Aren't all superheroes like that, in some way? On the other side of that, if the villain were the protagonist, he (or she) wouldn't be a villain anymore. I think that's why I find retellings of familiar stories so interesting. Something like Wicked, where Gregory Maguire tells the story of The Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. It's like they (whoever "they" are) say--there are always two sides to every story. And most of the time, there are more.