There are some pretty classic archenemies. Holmes & Moriarity. Superman & Lex Luthor. The Jedi & The Sith. Peter Pan & Captain Hook. Dr Who & The Master. Denis Nayland Smith & Fu Manchu. Not to mention Harry and Lord Voldemort. Classic, meaning definitive, of the highest quality, outstanding example of it’s kind. It’s not just me, you’d be able to come up with all of these and more depending on whether you look in books, TV, comics, toys, or games. It’s not just that these combinations are well known and are the epitome of what archenemies are, but that most of us can probably say the why, what, when, where and how archenemy status was established on almost every one listed.
This is not a picture of archenemy hood. This is one of predator and prey. There’s no feeling of one being good and the other being evil. Except maybe in a Disney movie, where we have the character overlay. Personally, I’d like the goldfish to be the evil. And the cat be the good. Toss the usual up in the air, throw it around a bit, and let it settle down someplace orange. Or purple. Not here. Someplace else.
It’s hard to create an archenemy, someone evil for ever and ever. Because today there’s always the tendency to make the recalcitrant baddie, never to reform, never to know goodness evil, change, have some redeeming qualities. It’s a shame. Evil isn’t like that. Oh, sometimes it can seem like it’s changing, making it’s way from the darkness to the light. But no, a bad to the core would never do that. That’s why I like Harry. Tom Riddle has to go down in a crushing defeat, he will never see the light of goodness or charity, he will never know the love that Harry does. He will never have people around him who want to be there, the only people around him will be terrified of him and what he is capable of doing.
Classic archenemies are hard to come by.