Your kinda typical anti-hero where they are bad, but kinda doing good.

It struck me while watching Fast Five where Dom, Mia, Brian are really bad guys but that’s who you root for. They have good intentions….

General Hummel (Ed Harris) in The Rock. The mercenaries he hired were bad guys but his cause was noble.

This guy in Hobbs and Shaw.

The Nazis in Return of The Vampire (1943)

Riddick (Vin Diesel) in Pitch Black.

/thread

The Bad Guys (animated)

The EPA in Ghostbusters. Yeah, they wanted to shut down that unlicensed nuclear reactor in downtown New York.

Could Michael Corleone fit that criteria?

He was not bad in the beginning and in Part 3 he does some charitable acts but not enough to forgive his past mistakes.

I was a huge fan as a kid and still like them, but rewatching that as an adult it really hits different.

I mean, yeah, the ghosts were infesting NY but maybe some oversight wouldn't have been a bad thing.


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For me, I'm reminded of the tweet that talks about the X-Men franchise (as a whole) and says it's getting harder and harder to see Magneto as a bad guy.

The guy in Ghostbusters literally turned the machine off and freed all the ghosts.

For X-men I kinda think the opposite, maybe these mutant registration/sentinel guys are right. Yes, we have parallels between mutants and race, but considering mutants can read and manipulate thoughts, as well as all the destructive powers they have, maybe there should be some kind of registration (not camps or what have you but something).

Meanwhile Magneto is (retroactively) a victim of the Holocaust and yet at times is all about "my race is superior, bow down to us."

In both Black Panther movies, you can make an argument for the antagonists.

Man, I saw a sci-fi movie as a kid where a guy thinks a robot is trying to kill the female lead and loses his hand trying to save her, only to find out from her later that the robot was actually helping her. Never discovered the name, though.

So, is this thread about movies where the "villain" of the story has good intentions, like those who believe Darth Vader and the Empire are actually trying to unite the galaxy and the Rebels are breaking up everything, or how Johnny Lawrence is the real "karate kid", trying to reunite with his ex girlfriend and stopping a New Jersey transplant from interfering?

Or is it about bad guys and criminals defeating an even worse enemy?

If it's the latter, I'd propose:
Assault on Precinct 13
From Dusk till Dawn (which openly acknowledges it's Precinct 13 influence)
Attack the Block

So many movies I saw as a kid about high school and college students. Now as an adult professor, I rewatch these movies and can't help thinking how the characters I rooted for before are absolute shits who would drive me nuts if they were in my classes (I'm looking at you Ferris Bueller).

For me, the one that comes to mind is Lawrence Monoson's Gary from The Last American Virgin. Man, I totally identified with that kid back then (movie came out when I was in HS) but now I realize he's a total creeper. Gary (and I) very much deserved the um....lack of action...we received.

The Empire...All they wanted for the galaxy was Peace, Order, and the Freedom to practice their religion. The Jedi weren't havin' it.

Zod in Man of Steel. While the way he wanted to accomplish his goal was "bad guy" stuff, his motive was not "bad".

Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven

If I understand the topic, all the torture and violating of rights on 24. Getting the info is more important, a greater good. Any movie where a good guy CIA agent wants out and the agency tries to kill him. An argument could be made that we can't have people running around loose knowing what he knows. The greater good.

Now you've got me intrigued. Not sure I ever saw anything like that, but I feel I ought to have.

He wanted to terraform the entire planet and kill off the existing populace so that his people could live. Yea I guess you can say that “the way he wanted to accomplish his goal” but that’s a gigantic caveat unless you’re taking the view that humans are like ants or something to Kryptonians.

I'm confused.

Is this thread about movies where the villain has a point, like the principal in Ferris Bueller, or movies where the character who's first presented as the hero turns out to be a monster, like in Unforgiven?

That doesn't get into movies where everybody in the world is vicious, like The Wild Bunch.

Yeah, this is a somewhat confusing thread. Even the two sentences in the OP seem to be contradictory.

There’s anti-heroes like Snake Plisskin who are not nice guys but they’re doing something noble the audience can root for and then there’s good guys doing unethical things, which would account for just about every heist movie ever made.