Screenwriting : Creating an Anti-Hero by Mista Martel

Make the villain worse than the antihero. Example: Scarface is a killer and a drug dealer but he has a moral code he doesn't break like killing women and children. The rival druglord, Sosa, doesn't have any problems killing women and children.

In my eyes. They are a villain to normal societal norms however they are doing these bad things for a good. Either a good as they see it, which may line up with what most people think as good.

To me the important thing is the characters surrounding your anti hero are way worse than the anti hero.It helps if the anti hero has a core motivation that the audience can connect too even if not to their actions.Think of Tony Soprano truly evil but far less evil than the other gangsters etc.And everything he does no matter how evil is done for his family.If you think of John Wick the writer has opened with the dead wife and the puppy she sent him from the grave so everyone empathises with him.Then the puppy gets killed etc he starts kicking arse.The brilliance of the John Wick character is you have an Anti Hero who's actually a hero.Although violent and cold blooded he is never evil so the writer avoided the tight rope walk of how evil do I make the character to make him/her interesting while avoiding going too far and alienating my audience.At the same time the audience gets to live out the revenge fantasy that everyone has about a co-worker boss etc through John Wicks actions all be it an over the top version.John Wick is such a writers character.