Nope, Aftersun, Glass Onion, RRR, Skinamarink, The Banshees of Inisherin, Everything Everywhere All at Once – going through 2022 felt like traversing a minefield of quality cinema with an outdated glasses prescription (even if half the movies released were Pinocchio adaptations). Amidst this sea of smash hits, none surprised me more so than the latest installment in the Shrek franchise, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. I still remember initially brushing off YouTube videos with titles like “Puss in Boots 2 is SO GOOD YOU GUYS OMG,” initially figuring that the praise was ironic in nature à la the public’s semi-recent fascination with Morbius. But no, The Last Wish is that great. The hype is completely deserved. At this point, though, there’s little need for me to review it. Most of the internet has done so already. I’d much rather discuss one of the film’s main villains: Jack Horner. Minor spoilers ahead.
The 2012 YA book The Wishing Spell popularized the quote, “A villain is just a victim whose story hasn’t been told,” and that’s nice. Isn’t it? So, let’s look at how Horner describes his upbringing: “I never had much as a kid. Just loving parents, and stability, and a mansion, and a thriving baked goods enterprise for me to inherit. Useless crap like that…” Keep in mind that this is a man who gleefully abuses dozens without batting an eye, partakes in animal cruelty, and whose endgame is to steal all the world’s magic so that nobody else can have any. The Last Wish takes several cues from classic movies, particularly the 1966 spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Horner, without question, fills the role of the ugly. Literally zero effort goes into making him sympathetic, but that’s what makes him so awesome. The guy is 100% aware of what he’s doing; he just doesn’t give a damn.
Loathsome antagonists aren’t a new concept by any stretch, but it’s rare to see the trope taken to such a hyperbolic extreme. I’ve occasionally heard others direct a level of condescension toward flat villains throughout various media. Sometimes, that criticism is fair, but I think that dismissing flat villains by principle alone spoils a lot of potential narrative fun. Take a look at Quentin Tarantino’s entire filmography, and one will find that his movies tend to adhere to a specific format: find a universally reviled group, build them up as utter scum, then kill the absolute hell out of them in gratuitously ultra-violent ways. For more info, check out Inglorious Basterds (Nazis), Django Unchained (Slaveowners), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (the Manson murderers), et cetera. On a more cerebral level, director Rian Johnson has found success with his Benoit Blanc mystery films wherein a bunch of wealthy, pompous culprits get taken down a peg in gleefully ultra-cathartic fashion. In all these cases, the joy stems from seeing justice meted out against some of the worst human beings imaginable.
While I respect writers who go the extra mile to humanize their villains, I still think it’s important also to acknowledge the reality that, in life, lots of people just kinda suck for no good reason, and it’s good to remember that even the simplest narrative techniques can work the most effectively. Anyway, go see Puss in Boots: The Last Wish if you haven’t already – easy 8.5/10.
Written by: Jack Hawkins