Talk:The Cluster/@comment-26005465-20151018035106/@comment-28584561-20151018041353

An antagonist, as what others might have said, is someone who opposes the protagonist. He can either be good or evil, or somewhere in between the grey areas of the black-and-white spectrum of good vs evil, no matter the duration of his/her opposition to the protagonist. (Think of Gary Oak from Pokemon S1. He is the antagonist to the protagonist, Ash Ketchum. He is not evil, he just opposes Ash).

A villain is more of just a straight up bad guy. Someone who is located in or near the extreme end of evil in the spectrum of good vs evil. The villain is quite literally, bad.

An antagonist is a plot role, while a villain is a character archetype. A movie can retell the story of a villain as the main protagonist, which would make the hero the antagonist in that story.