TwoCents | The Heroes with Blood on their hands

“Ape not kill ape!”, Caesar breathed deeply as he arrested his rage. Towering over his adversary Koba, he pulled back and gave him a chance to repent. Koba, bloodied and scarred from even before the fight knelt and offered his palm in submission. As Caesar, liberator of the apes, acquiesced to Koba’s insincere remorse, two things occurred to me as I revisited this film. The hero of the story had acknowledged a possible darkness inside of himself and tamed it, and Koba had symbolically bowed to that darkness within. <img src="/media/inline_insight_image/pnk7s8ku.png" alt=""> Caesar left; Koba right. Source: IGN At the end of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Koba dies; falling to his death after a difficult battle with Caesar. Caesar had let him fall; as Koba hanging from a ledge used Caesar's words as a tether to life “Ape not kill ape” The king of the apes, returned from betrayal, responded with conviction: “You are not ape”. My curiosity here is with the handling of this same darkness that, no doubt, had revisited the protagonist as it had consumed his opposite number. It plays out clearly here, but I see this evidently in the story of other complex heroes as well. The heroes and villains perform similar dances with a malevolence within, but the difference is the heroes are able to overcome it even to the extent of employing it only when needed. The villains are all but lost to the abyss of their evil personas. <img src="/media/inline_insight_image/a2651111871_16.jpg" alt=""> Caesar; source: Filmjunk Deep within, each person or fictional character we create is capable of profound good and a great depth of evil. Villainy happens when someone becomes committed to their darkness and can make no return. This happens ironically when the evil-doer believes he can do no wrong. Evil is that which can not glimpse itself as capable of wrong anymore. By marching onward with this in mind, the antagonists can excuse whatever comes in the wake of their actions. Koba for example, attempts to kill his friend, Ceasar; going to any length to start a war against the human race because this cannot possibly be wrong- not to him. It's there in different forms of reality or fiction. Hitler can see only one seemingly good road to “German national liberation” a path observers and victims can see as evil; just like Anakin Skywalker can only see the dark side as the way to save Padmé and his unborn children. Villains are like heroes because they have extraordinary influence on the stories of themselves and others. They see the darkness however and twist it into a cage for their ambitions and the lives of those around them. The hero, on the other hand, is a well-adjusted character; knowing his/her capacity for extreme evil, the protagonist chooses to be better. Knowing the worst within oneself allows one to make a choice for the better. <img src="/media/inline_insight_image/sj3316ka.png" alt=""> Caesar; Kevin Burwick, Movieweb There are problems with denying darkness altogether, however. The hero lives in a world where evil sometimes makes a valid point. The best villains in our stories are those who are on just paths but using methods that are simply too questionable for us to agree with. The cure to galactic resource scarcity is not killing half of life in the universe as Infamous Thanos believed; humans encroaching on the world magic does not warrant their enslavement and eradication as Voldemort tried to achieve. These causes bear, however, a point. It's important then that the hero does not kill the source of the desire for change altogether. When an establishment is where the evil resides, the hero must also acknowledge that some of the tenets of the extreme order benefit the world he is trying to save. The empire in Star Wars still fosters intergalactic trade and a measure of safety and legibility, to call to mind a popular example. If the hero blots his adversary and ideals out completely, believing his creed is the only way, he invites evil in through the back door. This is why the hero symbolically must muddy his hands in some fashion. The knight slays the dragon wearing his scales as armour and Harry Potter destroys the evil book (a part of his nemesis) using the tooth of the basilisk, a giant snake under the ground - the evil symbolism is never more vivid. In this sense, the hero is the one who has made peace with his darkness and even enlisted a part of it in his fight. The hero then becomes a character walking the fine line between a heavy value for good and an appreciation for why the opposition exists. When Caesar defeats Koba he realises he must employ some of the ways of his enemy and see the very real threat of humanity to the apes. He stains his hands just enough to get the job done morally. <img src="/media/inline_insight_image/Jim Kay On Drawing The Boy Who Lived - Google Arts & Culture.jpg" alt="">  Study of Harry Potter and the Basilisk by Jim Kay, for The Chamber of Secrets  The symbolism of the individual who walks the path of good despite a capacity for evil can be seen in different forms in reality or fiction, and I believe a direct application to everyday life is within our reach. If we are to face the challenges of life and the individuals who have been subsumed by their evil, we have to get acquainted with our own demons. Peering within and acknowledging what wicked might we possess, then choosing to be stronger is one way to become a rounded individual who saves themselves and then maybe even one other person.

Other insights from Joshua Omoijiade