When you’re watching a movie, it’s generally pretty clear who’s supposed to be the hero and who’s supposed to be the villain .
However, despite the director’s best efforts to show the bad guy in a negative light, sometimes a little bit of critical thinking reveals that the bad guy wasn’t actually so bad after all.
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A recent r/AskReddit thread, “In which movie did the villain actually have a point? , a fun discussion about this very topic took place.
*Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones*
“The Villain, Count Dooku, straight up told Obi-wan that the Galactic republic was under control of a Sith Master.
“Which, this bothered me. Ok, so you think Count Dooku was lying. Couldn’t like one Jedi double check the vetting on the Chancellor, just to make sure? Wouldn’t that have been prudent ‘hey, just in case guys, let’s look into this’.”
*Kingsman: The Golden Circle*
“This lady set up as the villain was like, ‘I’ve laced all the illegal drugs with a deadly virus (or bacteria? I forget.) that I have the antidote to, and I will happily provide it free of charge if you meet my demands, which are to make all currently illegal drugs legal so they can be regulated and produced through supply lines which will end drug wars and create new and legitimate business opportunities.'”
*Blade Runner*
“I don’t even think the replicants in Blade Runner are the enemy. At the end, the replicant isn’t even an antagonist, since he saves Deckard from death. Brilliantly written movie, and frankly my favorite science fiction movie ever.”
*School of Rock*
“Principal Mullens definitely had a right to be concerned, No Vacancy had a right to kick him out of the band, and Ned and his girlfriend had a right to be pissed at their roommate for not paying rent.”
*The Wizard of Oz*
“Yeah, she was a witch but c’mon. They were her dead sisters shoes. She should have them. Not some stranger who just showed up and wants them. Oh by the way, this stranger that just showed up, was the one that killed her sister. Sad really.”
X-Men series
“When you view it from [Magneto’s] point of view, he survived the Holocaust. He saw what people are willing to do when they hate and fear a group enough. And then in DoFP HE WAS RIGHT. Can you blame him? I hate the X-Men movies cause they butchered the timeline. But I love how Magneto was handled.”
*The Rock* (the movie, not the actor)
“[General Hummel] just wanted acknowledgement for his men’s sacrifice from the government that betrayed them, and financial security for their families. He even breaks down later in the movie by admitting that he was never willing to launch the rockets into the civilian population of San Francisco, saying they ‘called our bluff,’ but his psycho hired mercenaries insist on going forward. He is a good man.”
*The Matrix*
“The humans in that story were stupid, cruel, and destroyed the earth. In doing so they nearly killed off the machines and all life on the planet. The machines had mercy on the humans and created The Matrix for them. Hell the first version they made was a complete paradise.”
*Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street*
“OK, no excuse to go murder half of London, but when your chief enemy is a corrupt judge and the corrupt law enforcer who abets him in his career of rape and cruelty, violence does seem a semi-reasonable response.”
*Pitch Perfect* 1, 2 and 3
“Come on now. The treble makers had way better arrangements. Heck homeboy was literally called up to work with John Mayer. The smoker had better voice then all of them. Part 2, The German group was far superior. Their moms were sub par at best. I mean they hadn’t sang for like 2 decades. 3 all the bands were better.”
*How the Grinch Stole Christmas*
“It wasn’t so much Christmas itself, but how materialistic and shallow the Whos were about it. Cindy knew there was more to Christmas than gifts, and when the same revelation occured for the Grinch, he stopped hating it.”
*Watchmen*
“I always wondered why Adrian wouldn’t just sit Dr. Manhattan down and explain that he could be used as a scapegoat to save the entire planet (instead of going about the elaborate plot of Watchmen ). I have only seen the movie though, so maybe it was explained better in the book.”
*Carrie*
“They all deserved it. A lot of comments are saying that Carrie wasn’t the villain. Personally, I agree; her revenge was entirely justified. But most sources do view her as a villain for committing mass murder and burning down the entire school in the process.”
*Moana*
“If someone stole my heart I’d want to try to get it back through any means necessary, even if it makes me turn into a lava monster and create a massive corruption that will inevitably send the entire world into the bloodthirst jaws of inescapable death.”
*The Devil Wears Prada*
“The irony is that the writer of the movie was tired of the old ‘nagging wife holds back her ambitious husband’ archetype, she believed that in many of those past movies the wife was absolutely correct to be wary of how their husbands were changing to become bullheaded and neglectful men who do nothing but think of their ambitions.
“She decided to show how it looks from the other side and what ended up happening was women reacted to the boyfriend the way men reacted to the old wives.”
*True Lies*
“The Sand Spider was a hero to his people. His ‘terrorist’ speech? He was talking about how America killed women and children without any consequence and they were just fighting back:
You have murdered our women, and our children, and bombed our cities from afar, like cowards, and you dare to call us terrorists? “
*Beauty and the Beast*
“Of course, Gaston is embellishing things to be an a-hole and whip the villagers into a frenzy, and sees Beast as competition since Belle seems smitten. But for all they know, this aggressive-looking creature COULD steal into their village at any moment and wreak havoc. So they go to nip that in the bud.”
*Ghostbusters*
“The EPA guy from Ghostbusters . 100% correct except for turning off a system he didn’t understand.
“I want you to imagine that those douchey guys from Ghost Adventures had particle accelerators strapped to them and a giant ass bomb waiting to go off in their basement. Just really sit with that for a minute.”
*The Karate Kid*
“Johnny is a product of Kreese in the first movie, and I don’t think it’s fair to fault him for his treatment of Daniel. The movie even shows him being a bit uncomfortable with it towards the end. Cobra Kai also really highlights this with it’s whole idea of ‘no bad students, only bad teachers.'”
Austin Powers 1, 2 and 3
“[Dr. Evil’s] father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. His childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring they’d make meat helmets.”
