Does Every Character need a backstory?

So all this talk of Scott Snyder giving Joker a origin has got me thinking about a trend that rankles me: having to give every important character a backstory, particularly villians.

It seems like fans nowadays want to to every faucet of an important character's life. When you really think about it, Darth Vader didn't really need to have his backstory painfully expained to us over three two and a half hour films. Every single thing we needed to know about him was stated by Obi Wan in the original movie: Jedi Knight, good friend, seduced by the dark side. Thats all that we needed because that is what his character was when you boil it down. In fact, many would agree, that knowing so much about the character takes away from their mystique.

Another example is Freddy Kruger. I recently binge watched all the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. And everything we needed to know was stated in the first movie. Kruger was a child killer. Thats all we needed. The sequels added useless backstory onto the character. Who really cares that his mother was a nun that was raped by a bunch of lunatics or that he was beaten by his foster dad (Alice Cooper-dad). All of it doesn't really matter.

I'm not against backstories. Yes heroes need backstory because we need to sympathize with them and we need to understand where they come from and what pushes them. But, many villians don't need their life story told to us. And, in fact, some of the time we don't even need to know what their motivations are.

And that brings us back to the Joker. What is the Joker's motivations? To cause choas, to mess sh!t up, to topple the order of things. We don't need to sympathize or understand him because he is so divorced from normal humanity that we wouldn't be able to. Can't we just accept that he is a fundamentally broken person who could have lived any amount of different lives and would still have ended up a villain.

Some characters need a backstop look at Gorr his back story perfectly explained why he was butchering gods

@rdclip: Some characters benefit from back story, but characters like Joker I agree need to be left alone. Better the less you know about his life before he was the Joker. Will ruin his image.

For the most part, it helps characters. The backstories of characters like the Joker should be left alone, though.

Naw..that is why we have mutants.

In most cases, yes. It helps the audience to connect with the character more as we now know what they have been through and why they are doing what they are doing. But there are characters that don't need backstories, in fact, backstories could actually damage the character, Joker is a classic example.

Ever y character needs a backstory. But not every backstory needs to be revealed. As long as I can believe that the character has some sort of past that has driven him/her to become whoever he/she is today, I can accept never knowing the backstory or only getting hints/possibilities at it.

The Joker is a good example. I know he has some sort of past/"origin". But I love that nobody - not even he - is certain of what it is.

Some characters should be left, mystery can sometimes fuel a story.

Most benefit from it. We understand the why's and the how's, and it makes their motivations clear. Joker is really the only one I can think of that has benefitted from no defined backstory.

Also, Endgame isn't over so we don't even know if this whole immortalized Joker is a real thing.

Imo, the amount of backstory is directly related to how relatable you want the character to be. Joker is an example of a character you aren't really supposed to get into the head of, and such should get minimal backstory.

If the character is going to be a central figure, then yes.

@rdclip:

yes. lock da thread.

@meatman: Maybe your request to cut the dicussion short would hold more water if your reasoning was more than ONE word.

Yes

Depends the characther, sure all characthers suposed to have story but that kind depends on writer.

Without a back story of some type no character would be complete or coherent. It is their past that makes them the character we read about, whether they are a villain or a hero. Without this back story being developed the character would be hollow and contrived and their actions would have no purpose or sense. However this does not mean that every character needs that story told in depth.

With that said, I must ask why everyone feels Joker's back story should not be told? I do enjoy reading back story for central villains. I often feel it is the villains that have more interesting back stories; their actions are the ones that really drive a story. If their actions are undertaken with a distinct reason then we can be drawn further into the action of the story itself.

I often take Magneto for a good example of this. We can simply take the fact that his parents were killed in concentration camps during the Holocaust and infer that this is what drives his hatred of the human race. However as more about his past gets revealed we learn there is much more depth to his character and actions. His back story also lets us know that he is not purely evil, but actually views himself as a hero, sometimes a savior. It is this view of himself that actually drives Magneto's actions, but this would not be known without the telling of his past. A significant part of his back story is his relationship with Charles Xavier, and learning the pieces of that relationship and how it changed over time develop his character and how the X-Men and Xavier treat Magneto. With this more in depth understanding of who Magneto is we can enjoy the stories more and even sympathize with Magneto.