Bounty hunters... I'm seeing lots of bounty hunters. In fact, maybe it should seem to Jordi that the entire population is looking for her, ready to turn her in and become rich. Her face is ALWAYS on tv, usually in the running data stream that fills up the bottom 3rd of every channel in Jordi's world. And almost as big as her face is the word REWARD, followed by a huge figure (a million? 10 million?).
Other than that, I agree with the structure of evil you laid out below, my friend, with maybe a couple of minor changes/revisions:
The Big Bad Guy: He's rotten, all right, and I agree that at least a portion of his motivation is the acquisition of power, but I'm not sure that ascending to the position of CEO is the best way to achieve his aim. Maybe it would be a little more interesting if his ultimate ambition was to be behind the scenes, directing the show. Maybe he's a kingmaker, a Rasputin, a Cardinal Richelieu, a Karl Rove. This gives us a chance to use a little misdirection when we show that the person we've thought was the ultimate evil was actually just putty in the Big Bad's hands. As far as another motivation, I don't know - I think power for it's own sake is pretty good. Why would anyone want to be the most powerful person in the world? Because then they'd be the most powerful person in the world.
But if we wanted, I suppose we could also give him a tiny penis...
The next tier of bad guys, those who use their individual specializations to go after Jordi, can have a variety of motivations, each of which we can use as the foundation for their individual characters. Maybe we can have a money guy, and an ambitious guy, and a guy who just likes playing with all of his cool toys. (Maybe Jordi can use these character keys to her advantage as she knocks these guys down, one by one, during her climb to the top of our little "Pyramid of Evil")
Boot-on-the-ground guys:
I see this going one of two ways:
These guys could be our comic relief, constantly outwitted by Jordi - I'm seeing the Dorfler character in Midnight Run, or Taggert and Rosewood in Beverly Hills Cop. (Interestingly, both Taggert and Dorfler were played by the underrated John Ashton. If we went this route, maybe we could base the look of one of our characters on him...
The other way we could go (and this is, I think, the way I prefer) is to make these guys super scary ultra evil. I'm talking kitten killing, fart in airlock evil. These guys are bad news, and they're not the clowns that terminated Jordi's mother. As pros, they're as far beyond the typical government agent as Peyton Manning is beyond Brett Elliot.
Of course, we'd need to figure out a way to indicate the extent of these guys' badness, and maybe showing them knocking off Jordi's mom would be the way to do it. On the other hand, if we can figure out another way to show how rotten they are we can hammer that point home in the final act when we have them off Jordi's other parent, moments after he gives her the information she needs to continue her journey. Ultimately, I can see these guys killing our Big Bad Guy under orders from someone else, either the Bigger Big Bad Guy (our villain in the sequel), or Jordi, or (if we want to keep Jordi's hands clean) the ambitious military guy. (This would be pretty easy to accomplish if we establish that they receive their directives online. Maybe they don't have any idea, nor do they care, who their boss is - They're simply killing machines, following orders.)
As far as characters I'd add to the dark side, I'd like to see a powerful figure who's entirely misguided - someone who truly believes that the end can justify the means, and I'd like to see this person realize, to his or her ultimate sadness, that they are wrong. And then maybe that person can commit suicide. (Another option - Maybe this suicide can happen in a way that implicates our Big Bad and thus precipitates his inevitable downfall...) Labels: Bounty Hunters, Midnight Run, Pyramid of Evil, The Big Bad
Stumble It!
