How to make a funny and egotistical character that doesn't annoy the audience
Oh, this one's a classic. You have a character with an ego so large, it's on the verge of collapsing into an intellectual black hole. You want to make it into a comic relief but instead, end up with an irritating pain in the a*** that ruins the mood.
Such character would be Mephistopheles, a shady creature, serving as the quest-giver and a complete rip-off of Christian Weston Chandler. So far, I avoided the main irritating elements of your average narcissist, by replacing them with the weird goals and delusions, like believing that God spoke to him in his dreams and ordered Mephisto to abolish all religions and replace them with atheism in God's name.
Of course, I can't keep that up forever, that would be just too unrealistic, less hilarious traits will crop up and I have zero ideas on how should I handle them.
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Watch Thor: Ragnarok and pay attention to Jeff Goldbum's Grandmaster. I think he's the kind of archetype you're looking for. You want someone who is not actively malicious, but so self-involved as to be capable of hurting others purely because he doesn't recognize that it's painful. If it amuses him, it's good. If it thwarts him, it's bad (but in a "you naughty boy!" kind of way, not in a "you are my sworn enemy now" way). If what thwarts him is stopped, all is sunshine again.
The Grandmaster is powerful, egotistical, and I think even immortal (or at least very long-lived). He has set up the planet of Sakaar to amuse himself. His amusements are violent, possibly fatal, for the participants (Thor), but he's a complete merry goofball about it. The audience enjoys his cartoonish glee even when it's at the expense of the main characters, because he's not malicious or desiring that people suffer. If you can get on his good side, he's capable of lavishing rewards on you (as the Hulk and Loki found out).
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A great example of an egotistical character who the audience warms to is Dr Rodney McKay, who played a short role in Stargate: SG1 and then as one of the lead characters in Stargate: Atlantis. He is the epitome of a genius who is wholly and unsufferably aware of his looming intellect.
Had the character not had a certain charm when he first appeared as a foil to the lead genius-but-not-arrogant-with-it, Major Samantha Carter, I am sure that we would never have seen him again.
I believe the reason we tolerated and even loved McKay's arrogant nature was because there was also a vulnerability behind it. He was a smart person surrounded by smart and capable people. He realized that intellect alone could not solve all of the issues, which gave the character a humility that everyone pretended not to notice as to not damage his towering ego, which in many ways was what made him so effective.
His ego was in many ways also his greatest strength; he knew he could solve each issue. In a few episodes we saw him stumped by a difficult problem; he started doubting himself and then he faltered. We as an audience would will him to use that towering ego of his to believe in himself and save the day.
It was a combination of good acting and good writing and for me a great example of the type of character you are trying to portray.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36273. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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