User blog comment:Echo 1/Elements You Should Not Give Your Characters/@comment-5989773-20130511163107/@comment-2026417-20130512163926

Well, good and evil--existentialism aside--are very relative terms in society. And what a villain is to one person can be a hero to another (like Bond said with the Magneto example). The thing is, if a character is wholly unrelatable yet still human, you get something the audience really can't understand. Certain characters, like the Joker, might be full-fledged anarchists, but it fits their personality. With a lot of villains, however, they need more layered motives. And, again to agree with CB and Jareroden, if you can sympathize with the antagonist, you begin to question the hero's motives rather than just accept that character as right and the other as wrong. That's the reason I almost considered the Illusive Man of Mass Effect fame a good guy in ME2--because he had good intentions and rather noble motives. But when he became a radical, pro-human @$$ in ME3, I really started to dislike him because we now saw his true colors.

Also, if I remember correctly, creating a character for the audience to hate is some form of Mary Sue/Gary Stu in its own right. You wind up with a one-sided character with few motives or goals and little real investment from the audience.