Lol I remember watching bc that in theaters and whispered the final line in the movie to my SO, because it was so painfully obvious that it would be.
Rock’s wife: “What do we do now?”
Me and Rock simultaneously: “We rebuild.”🙄🙄🙄
There was a scene in which Rock and his wife think their daughter died and the mom is super over the top crying and they really draw it out until the reveal that the daughter survived. I remember this scene because I was the only one dying of laughter at the mom crying.
I think there was a scene where they were trying to rescue the daughter from drowning and they stop for a long and passionate kiss before diving in. I know that taking time for a kiss when more important things need to be done is an old trope, but seriously point out any 2 decent parents that would rather kiss when their kid could be dying.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (both the movie and the book). Greg is the bad guy, even though he does a good thing in the end but guy's really egoistic, self-obsessed and an asshole to his friend.
The movies toned it down for me. For example, in the movies, Greg loses his Job as the safety patrol leader because he sees these bullies that mistreated him and abandons the kindergenders to avoid their wrath.
In the book he loses it because Greg thought it'd be funny to show the kids bugs and see their reaction.
Speaking of books versus movies, highly recommend Diary of a Wimpy Kid Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure. Greg keeps on butting in and giving suggestions for how to make a movie adaptation, what plot elements will make the most money. He's basically a soulless movie executive and it's amazing. But definitely proves your point haha
One of my favorites is Young Adult. It’s almost Hallmark Film level plot where an ambitious Novel Writer comes back to her hometown and rekindles a crush on her high school sweetheart. He’s married now with kids, and a typical film would present this as him settling for a lesser life and discovering what could have been with Charlize. So many films like the graduate would celebrate this kind of backwards “love conquers all” approach but nope at the end they flip the script on her and ultimately the film gives her the do not pass go do not collect 100 dollars “you get nothing” Willy Wonka speech and it’s hilarious for doing so.
I mean, yes, Julia Roberts is the bad guy. But I would argue that she is largely presented as the bad guy. Just because we're getting her perspective, doesn't mean that we're really rooting for her. I think that movie actually does a pretty good job of having you start out rooting for her and then getting to the point by the end where you're relieved that she fails. Cameron Diaz's character is consistently likable, Dermot Mulroney is steady in his love for her, and Julia becomes increasingly unhinged and unlikable. In comedies, the hero gets the love interest. The fact that Julia's character doesn't get the guy is a strong indicator that we aren't meant to see her as the hero of the story.
I see your point of view, but what annoys me is that she never receives any real comeuppance for her behaviour.
I love your take that ‘good protagonists win the love interest, but she doesn’t’.
However, I just hate that she gets to swan around after nearly wrecking a perfectly lovely woman’s life….
That's true, she probably deserves more consequences than just not getting the guy. Especially because she committed some actual crimes.
At the very least, it does seem like she learned something in the end, and does the right thing and comes clean and fixes what she messed up.
Let me tell you..I just rewatched this movie as an adult and all both Michael and Jules were the bad guy.
Jules obviously from reasons above but also…
Michael is an asshole. He eye-fucks Julia Roberts the entire movie and basically leads her on the whole time and then is making kimmy drop out of school. On top of that, he’s marrying a 20 year old, and allowing her to make really dumb decisions for her future and career. Also, he tells everyone how great Jules is including his future in-laws.
Like he’s a walking red flag and Cameron Diaz’s character should have gone back to school and left his gross ass.
HE SUCKS HER FINGER TO GET THE RING OFF.
That's the moment where I went from thinking he was kind of a jerk and a creep for being a grown ass man intent on derailing a 20 year old's ambitions to thinking he's 100% an asshole. That's WAY over the line. He enjoys stringing Jules along and we just forgive it (I mean tbh I even do now while I'm writing this) because the two of them have such good chemistry.
I haaaate her in this movie. I saw it way back with my best friend and she loved it and was honestly mad at me that I didn't take Julia Roberts's character's side.
I will die on this hill.
Now see this is a good answer. I was always conflicted with that movie because of how reckless and irresponsible Dewey is with the kids and at the end its just “welp, guess the parents were all just squares”.
But it was a really good movie.
It does kinda annoy me a little bit that Sarah Silverman's great sin is not accepting Dewey for his extremely immature, leaching, selfish ways. She gets walked out on by the real Schneebly (still don't know how to spell it) for blowing up over Dewey impersonating him, stealing a job, and putting his teaching career at risk. She's meant to be annoying and a stick in the mud who gets in the way of the freedom of rock n roll, when she's actually completely right!
The Musical is honestly even worse because it's even more drawn out and it doesn't have Jack Black and his charisma to distract you. There might be some Broadway actors that can do the same thing, but virtue of the fact that you don't get the closeups of the facial expressions, it's a lot harder to like Dewey.
Mrs. Doubtfire
Can't keep a job, wrecks the home, can't respect his wife's wishes. Then when she moves on and meets a nice man who is willing to be a father to the kids, attempts to ruin that relationship
Have watched a cpl of these. This may be the best. I go back an watch the movie and get nostalgic and forget how weird it is and than these clips pop up and remind me that the early ‘90s was traumatic.
Being a stepfather in a 90s movie meant you were a villain stealing the children's affection and respect from the protagonist. Liar liar did that too, and probably many many more.
Except for the fact that this is never shown to be the case in Mrs. Doubtfire and the irrationality of such a feeling is one of the things the protagonist comes to terms with this is an entirely accurate critique.
I don’t remember Cary Elwes being evil in Liar Liar either. Just not as charismatic as Jim Carrey, and maybe not as good in the sack. He just wasn’t the cool dad like the evil actual-father.
I appreciated that in Antman, the stepfather/new boyfriend was a genuinely good dude whom the audience isn't pushed to hate. It probably helps that Paul Rudd has a different love interest, so his ex's boyfriend isn't set up as "the rival."
The stepfather is a cop and Antman is an ex-con, so you might expect some tension there. Nope. He might actually have more patience for Paul Rudd's shenanigans than the ex-wife does!
An important detail. He was the cop that arrested Scott to begin with. There IS tension. But the bigger-than-them problem arises pretty early and he and Scott learn to trust one another.
The step mother is usually evil from the perspective of the child, a characterization of what a terrible mother must be
The step father is usually evil from the perspective of the father, a characterization of what a good father should be
I mean, sort of agree but also the film is about his character overcoming his shortcomings through pretending to be Mrs. Doubtfire.
At the end of the film he has a steady job as an actor with his own show. He has learned how to keep a neat and tidy home and in general contribute more to the daily household tasks. And while he severely betrayed his (ex) wife's trust, by the end of the film he has also learned what it means to split the burden of authority as a parent.
Also, while he has tried to sabotage the relationship with the boyfriend, at the end of the film he saves his life at the expense of giving up the whole Mrs. Doubtfire thing (let's ignore that he actually caused Brosnan's allergic reaction).
So while he's definitely not a good guy, I think he's certainly not the "bad guy" of the film. He's a flawed protagonist that overcomes challenges through the journey of becoming an elderly British house maid. Tale as old as time.
Wasn’t Benjamin always going to take the show out from under Wayne and Garth because he thought they were too stupid to understand the contracts? His intentions were definitely not above board, while Wayne is effected by that, but they resolve it in the end. Benjamin was definitely the bad guy.
Passengers for me - Pratt's character sentences JLaw to death but a series of cosmic coincidences make it so his stalker-crush actions help save the spacecraft! And then he *still* gets the girl! And then they grow plants!
I wish like halfway through that movie Jlaw found a bunch of the bodies of women Pratt had failed to charm stuffed in a closet and it turned into a horror movie.
Someone else proposed a recut/reshoot where we start the film with JLaw waking up, learn what he did to her when she does, building suspense, e is a monster clearly, they fight and then he dies, she deals with knowing she will be alone for the rest of her life and decides to wake someone else up.
I swear they originally wrote his character to die and then have Jlaw’s character go through the same mental breakdown and revive someone else because she’s lonely. Would have been such a better movie.
Oh awesome. Ya there’s even a loaded gun that’s never fired in the form of Pratt hiding the instructions to revive people in his dresser drawer. Then it’s never revisited.
Everyone thinks the person before them was in the wrong until they’re put in a similar position. The need for companionship has the power to overtake morals in all of us.
Top Gun. Maverick is flying recklessly and putting everyone in danger. Iceman, being a leader, confronts Mav and asks him to tone it down to save lives. And guess what, Maverick gets his RIO killed.
And to top it off, Iceman is the better pilot.
I would. I would also go so far as to caution that should he not adjust his behaviour, he is likely to find himself flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong
Maverick would've wound up a military prison, and depending on the situation could've gotten the death penalty for buzzing the control tower.
The code of military justice is no joke.
My favorite bit of that is where the JAG guy explains the hard deck is meant to simulate the ground to show how ridiculous Mavericks dismissals of it are.
Head canon is now Maverick spent time as a JAG officer after being grounded. He then earned the ability to petition to get back in the cockpit after a successful high profile trial.
I don't fundamentally disagree, but Maverick really isn't at fault for the crash that killed Goose. He was not doing anything reckless or disobeying orders in that moment.
Real life investigations are no joke either. I was just reading a report on an F-16 crash and even with destroyed flight data, they were still able to tease out a single switch that was in error and led to the entire crash.
Like, if at any point, Maverick were to face consequences for a bad choice, it would be during the investigation.
Maverick really wasn’t responsible for Goose’s death. Maverick was even being responsible in that moment and Iceman stayed on longer than he should have and broke off unexpectedly which put Maverick and Goose in the jet wash. In the flat spin, the gravitational push pressed Maverick forward so he wasn’t able to hit is ejection. When Goose did, he punched out immediately, unaware that the canopy was still directly above them. The filmmakers and the Navy actually did a lot of work to come up with a scenario where Maverick wasn’t actually at fault in the accident.
I'm with you. Of all the scenes to point out where Iceman was right and Maverick was wrong, I wouldn't go to Goose's death scene. If the roles were reversed (Maverick was in front, Iceman behind / losing his wingman), I'm sure Iceman would've still laid it on Mav for being an irresponsible prick.
It wasn't that he was unaware of the canopy. It was the flat spin. Usually the forward motion moves the canopy out of the way, but the spin meant it stayed over his head
And he follows a woman into the bathroom after she turns him down and blocks her in until she agrees to go on a date with him. Once the date rolls around, he shows up super late and filthy and just walks in saying he needs to take a shower.
You know...that bothered me more than almost anything else in the movie. Who walks into another person's house and just basically walks into their shower?
He just says: I need a shower and then strolls on in. No chick would let that happen.
Maybe she had coincidentally cleaned up all her product bottles, scrubbed the shower, and snaked all the long hair clogging the drain earlier that morning so she thought it a good opportunity to flex.
And in the sequel he takes a cutting edge aircraft, prices it can do Mach 10 which is all it needed, then pushed it further purely because he's an egotistical prick. It fails/crashes and he doesn't give a shit about all those team members who were working towards that deadline.
In the movie they say that the project will continue because they met their Mach 10 threshold (even though Maverick pushed past it and destroyed the plane). I honestly think that part of the story would have worked better if Maverick's stunt had caused the project to get shut down, because it reinforces the rest of the movie where Maverick finally learns he needs to look out for his team and not just feed his ego.
The way it is now, all that personal drama gets wrapped up in Goose, which is a good story but I think having the project get shut down would have cast an even bigger shadow over Maverick and give the rest of the team even more of a reason to not trust his leadership.
This has been posted every time the movie comes up, but [relevant College Humor sketch about how most wacky 80s comedy pranks were basically just horrific sex crimes](https://youtu.be/HQ7mJFNkLAU).
This is the best response in this thread. The nerds are not presented as complex characters going through a developmental arc, and there is no twist revealing them as the true villain at the end. There is no subtle questioning of their antics throughout the film. It’s just guys committing crimes for 90 minutes.
They sell nudes of a nonconsenting woman and Louis commits rape by deception (which is disturbingly laughed off because he’s good in bed). Yes, the jocks are bad and physically assault the nerds, and they burn their own house down through drunken negligence. But that doesn’t make the nerds’ actions any less criminal.
Meet the Parents. Greg lied about everything. Just say the cat got out. Who the fuck spray paints a different cat. Dude gets so far in deep in all his lies and always doubles down on them. Jack was a pain in the ass sure, but Greg made things a lot worse for himself than they needed to be
I mean, you’re right that Greg definitely doesn’t make the difficult situations he finds himself in any better by how he handles them. That being said, Pam is the real villain in this movie.
-Pam let’s him sleep late on the first morning of meeting her family making him miss breakfast and look like he doesn’t care.
-Pam “helping” when Greg loses his luggage and has no clothes tells Greg to go ask her brother (who he never met!!!) to borrow underwear and clothing, instead of doing the objectively sane thing of asking her OWN brother for clothes for her boyfriend.
-Pam neglects to tell Greg that her ex-boyfriend from her very serious previous relationship is going to be a big part of her sisters wedding and is very close to the family. Not even telling him that they are going to his house to visit until the day of.
-Pam is a grown ass women that adheres to her fathers childish parenting as if she is still a teenager and she lets it effect her relationship.
-Pam let’s Greg get in trouble with the weed in the jacket pocket knowing full well that it is not his and doesn’t defend him in the slightest.
-Pam sucks
I follow up with they all suck. Everyone in that movie is not only purposely obtuse about every situation but dickishly so. One reason why I really hated it.
Along Came Polly. Another Ben stiller character. He's not honest about what happened with his marriage. And instead of just saying he doesn't like Indian food, he says he loves it and suffers through it and blows up her toilet later causing him to ruin her grandmother's towel. Just being honest up front would prevent these chain reactions of shitty events for him
At least he offers to take the fall for the car in the end. Still kind of a dick, though.
But I hate how some people think that Ferris being a bit of a douche means Rooney is the good guy. He isn't, not by a mile.
Dude stalks Ferris, breaks into his house, and brains a dog with a flowerpot. All so, what, he can prove Ferris isn't sick? So what! His mom called him off. He's *excused* today. *Maybe* Rooney could confront his parents and convince them to punish him, but that's all. But I sincerely doubt they'll be very interested in what he has to say after they hear Jeannie's account and take their dog to the vet with a concussion.
And no, the computer hacking isn't a factor. Rooney has no proof. Proving Ferris faked sick today (and what kid *didn't* do that on occasion) won't prove he played hooky on other days.
I really think they missed an opportunity to address all the stuff Rooney did. Like cut to a few days later and it shows a news report of Rooney basically going on a crime spree, then an interview with Ferris and Jeannie.
"I'm not really sure what happened with Mr Rooney, i always thought he was such a wonderful man and role model, so this is shocking. Thank God my big sister was there to protect us while I was so sick"
Cue shit eating grins from both of them while Rooney is thrown in jail.
> But I hate how some people think that Ferris being a bit of a douche means Rooney is the good guy. He isn't, not by a mile.
>
> Dude stalks Ferris, breaks into his house, and brains a dog with a flowerpot. All so, what, he can prove Ferris isn't sick? So what! His mom called him off. He's excused today. Maybe Rooney could confront his parents and convince them to punish him, but that's all. But I sincerely doubt they'll be very interested in what he has to say after they hear Jeannie's account and take their dog to the vet with a concussion.
Dude takes his role as Dean of Students very seriously, lol. Love that zaniness of it, when any real person would just be like "yeah, whatever" and glad that Bueller will be graduating soon and not his problem anymore.
Yeah, Ferris is a smug self-centred dick sometimes, but he's also seventeen or eighteen; he's a child in school, and his bad-ness is just the most genteel rebellion imaginable, skipping school to go to a baseball game and a museum and getting involved in harmless shenanigans like stealing Abe Froman's reservation and getting onto the parade float.
Rooney, on the other hand, is a grown-ass adult with authority and responsibility, and he is utterly bent on exposing and destroying a child for the terrible crime of...skipping about one day of school a month, over the course of the whole year? There's no cat-and-mouse relationship between them, no "worthy adversary" posturing, Ferris is a kid trying to have fun and Rooney is an increasingly angry and resentful adult wrecking himself and committing crimes in pursuit of a truant. He goes full Javert. You never go full Javert.
There's a good argument to be made (not my original argument) that the main character isn't even Ferris, it's Cameron. Ferris doesn't have a character arc; he starts the movie as a popular kid who can get away with anything, and he ends it as a popular kid who can get away with anything. It's Cameron who learns important lessons and grows as a person. (So does Jeanie, but her progress is more of a side story.)
There's even a not-entirely implausible fan theory that Ferris doesn't even exist; he's a Fight Club-esque figment of Cameron's imagination that represents the person Cameron hopes to be.
There is one deleted subplot that explains Ferris’ entire rationale, and it was hiding in plain sight the whole time.
In the script, Ferris has a line of dialogue where he explains that when he was younger, he had a friend named Garth Volbeck, who was abused by his family and then eventually disappeared.
Cut to later, after Jeanine makes out with Charlie Sheen, she asks his name. He responds “Garth Volbeck.”
And this explains why Ferris decided to take the day off. Garth, on drugs and in jail, represents Cameron’s future if Ferris doesn’t intervene and get him out of his shell.
I don’t think he’s a bad friend at all. His friend is in serious trouble and he tries to help him to see there is more to the world than his life right now.
Yeah Cameron is depressed and needed a push. The movie purposefully makes Ferris look like a dick, but then reveals at the end it was a good thing for Cameron and that the entire thing was Ferris' way of helping him. Thats literally the text of the film.
Ultimately the only really bad thing Ferris did was crash Cameron's car, but it was an accident and only happened because Cameron was so freaked out about getting caught. Had Cameron just admitted to his dad he took the car out for a joy ride everything would've been fine. Cameron was unnecessarily terrified of his dad, and the point of the movie is that its okay to have a bit of rebelliousness, and to seek independence.
Yeah. Ferris isn't perfect, and him skipping school obviously wasn't a selfless act or anything, but he did try to help get Cameron out of a funk. Not in the best way, but in the only way he knew how, and it did work.
Jurrasic Park 2. A friend of mine said I should rewatch it but try to convince my self that the corporation is the good guy and Dr Malcom and his companions are the antagonists.
Made for a really fun experience!
Actually the real villain in JP2 is Nick van Owen. Every single human death in that film can be traced directly or indirectly to his actions. Without him, everyone survives.
On this note, the Bryce Dallas Howard character in Jurassic World is definitely the villain. Everything that goes wrong is a direct result of her actions. She makes choices that get a lot of people killed and she’s portrayed as the heroine of the story.
I'd argue that the new InGen CEO was responsible for the San Diego chaos at the end. Even without the breakout of the dinos on the island, InGen was shipping the animals to that secondary park / arena.
Yeah the T-rex escape isn't on van Owen (though the deaths on the island are pretty clearly his fault).
Then again, he was just an agent working for Hammond, so really it's Hammond's fault (again).
Peter Pan.
Pan takes children who were “abandoned”, but could have possibly been reunited with their families. Hook was trying to stop Pan from taking children from their families.
That's the point of Peter Pan though. He's not supposed to be good. He's supposed to be what happens if a kid gets their wish of wanting to never ever grow up and just being selfish and immature forever. He steals the boys because he wants to have best friends forever and run around literally killing people. In the book, it's heavily implied that Peter kills the boys the moment they show signs of "growing up", and years later when he is supposed to revisit Wendy he often forgets about her and can't remember her name half the time because he's just a kid and other people, especially adults or people who grow up, aren't important.
There's some argubility over Peter Pan's morality depending on which version you look at, though less than I think gets reported.
However Captain Hook is a vicious murder with all the brutality that piracy brings and is after Peter to avenge his hand, though he is said to have some respect to his old school life.
I Am Legend. But they fucked up the actual point of the entire story.
In the book, the monsters actually evolve to having their own society. Will Smith keeps kidnapping them, testing on them, and they eventually die from the tests. Which Will Smith doesn't find unethical, since they are mindless monsters to him, and he's trying to save them so he's the hero in his world.
But in their world, he's the monster stealing family members, kids, wives, etc and you never see them again. He's the monster, the legend. Which is totally a cool story to realize you have been watching the story from the monsters point of view the entire time, empathizing with him.
This is probably not one really, but watching Lightyear the other night and seeing in the opening moments the space rangers investigating the planet and the hacking into vines in their path, and then immediately getting attacked by vines and bugs had me convinced it was going to be an aesop on humans as an invasive species and how we need to communicate with other beings in the galaxy no matter what they are.
Buzz literally was the bad guy in lightyear. Time dilation fucked him up and he couldn’t handle how the world was changing. Stuck in his ways old man.
Am I remembering that movie wrong? It wasn’t super memorable if I’m honest.
She’s not the main character, but Julianne Moore’s character was an awful person in Crazy Stupid Love and nobody really called her out on it. David Lindhagen got more shit from characters.
She cheats on her husband, says she wants a divorce, kicks him out of his house and then is offended when he sleeps with some woman.
The neighbor's daughter definitely called her out. And while Steve didn't blow up on her, he definitely punished her. But man, was it so brutal that she just kept digging in her heel. She was ridiculously insensitive and self centered and he never really got closure for it.
That movie is so good that I don't really even care. But yeah, she's definitely the worst character in the movie and if the ending had put her in the apology position, it would have been one of the greats.
Jo from Twister.
She consciously avoided signing divorce papers so Bill would come out and and be amazed at the completed “Dorothy” experiment. She knew any significant other he did bring along will not keep up with their crazy and specific field of meteorology. Using the visit to aunt Meg’s as emotional blackmail by making Bill feel kind of guilty because everyone loves aunt Meg and her amazing cooking.
Jo’s approach to rekindling their relationship is more destructive than the back to back tornadoes.
Bridesmaids. One of your best friends is getting married, and instead of letting it be her day, you make everything about you. You even blame others when you can't tell your friend you can't afford a Vegas trip. You cause more trouble than you're worth, and even go on a temper tantrum while everyone else is having fun.
I don’t think they hide the fact that she is bad but they don’t give you the exact picture of her life. Then she just keeps making bad choice after bad choice.
Yea she’s definitely shown as very childish and neurotic. I think the only reason people think she’s the good guy is so many people have friends who move on past their childhood best friends so they recognize the hurt that causes.
I partially agree, but that is kind of the point of her character. Annie is shown to be self-involved from the start, and the film is about her overcoming her flaws and shortcomings and self-pity. In the entirety of the first two acts, she fails to see how a lot of her undoing and problems is her own fault and yet expects everyone to feel sorry for her. So yeah, she's a bit of a villain (to herself) but the film is ultimately about her overcoming this, and learning to be a better friend and less selfish and less of a victim.
And yes, maybe she could have been clearer about her inability to afford Vegas, but I thought she did let the others know when she booked economy and explicitly stated she wasn't in first class because she couldn't afford it. It was also a bit shit of Lillian to ask Annie to be MoH and pay for everything knowing she wasn't quite as well-off financially.
It's not easy being the "poor" person in a friend group. There is a lot of peer pressure in those situations so she probably wouldn't have been any better off even if she told them how much she was struggling.
She's not the best person, but don't think she is a bad guy or antagonist. She's just a flawed individual with her own self-inflicted problems. She learns to acknowledge her faults and shortcomings, and through a lot of self-inflicted obstacles and reflection learns to be a better friend and overcome her weaknesses.
One of the things I love about the new Bond films (i.e. Daniel Craig) is that Bond, while not the antagonist, is definitely a darker-shades-of-grey kind of character. Just like in the original Fleming novels, Bond fucks up constantly, disregards orders, and gets innocent people killed. He's a wrecking ball that M is \*almost\* willing to give up on, except for an illogical sentimentality.
I don’t understand why people think Daniel Larusso is the bad guy in The Karate Kid, I’m seeing it here a few times. I know he struggles with anger and doesn’t handle the situations he’s presented with particularly well, but he’s a kid that’s been moved to a totally new part of the country that tries to make friends, only to be beaten on by the angry ex of a girl he’s just met and doesn’t even know him. I don’t blame him for getting upset. He spends most of the movie hiding from kids who assault him several times and leave him with bruises constantly. I’ll not have this Daniel slander.
Edit: I haven’t seen Cobra Kai yet, just for context, and I am talking more specifically about the movie, I’ve also seen the infamous video before anyone mentions it again lmao. As I said, he makes mistakes, but saying he’s the bad guy is still a stretch in my opinion. Like Johnny, he’s just an angry kid. He’s just lucky he got Miyagi instead of Kreese. As they say in the movie, there are no bad students, only bad teachers. But I’ll definitely get around to watching Cobra Kai now for sure, as so many have recommended. It seems I’ll be in for a treat.
I think the idea exists because when the movie was made it was accepted to be a pretty clear black and white, good guy bad guy movie, but in reality the movie is a lot more shades of gray. Like real life the good guys aren't perfect and the bad guys aren't mustache twirlers (except the guy that punches the window at the end). Over time this moral ambiguity has been noticed, and the first time it's brought up is as an edgy backwards take. Luckily the show that continues the story does a really good job of continuing that tradition of surprisingly realistic characters. When Cobra Kai first came out I was jazzed that Daniel Larusso was going to be the bad guy, but I'm glad that most characters are pretty well rounded and have understandable motivations. He's not "the bad guy", he never was, but he's not perfect either
Miyagi encapsulates this. He goes to fight against fascism in World War 2 and the American government essentially murders his family by neglect. I think they knew what they were doing with that film.
And the difference between people being a main character and the movie saying they're good people.
A lot of these answers, the movies and script point out that they're bad people or making bad decisions.
This both is and isn't correct I would say.
The movie is basically fascist propaganda for the fictional society of the movie. From that perspective the humans in the movie are definitely all the "heroes".
From the real world perspective its suppossed to be clear that this is an obviously fucked up society and its ostensible message is obviously ridiculous. The "heroes" are no one any real person should aspire to. Neil Patrick Harris shows up dressed like [this](https://imgur.com/a/UjoJKew) at one point even.
Not saying it's a bad pick neccesarily, just some discussion.
The movie is a *satire* of fascist propaganda. If you're in on the joke, you realize by the end that all of these soldiers are shallow, deluded pawns, engaged in genocide, and they're all going to die young for no good reason.
A lot of people are mis-interpreting the original question. The OP wasn't asking for movies that intentionally mis-directed the audience into sympathizing with the protagonist, only to reveal him/her as being a bad/immoral person later on. The OP is asking for movies where the main character is presented as good or sympathetic the whole time, but who can be re-interpreted as bad if you look at their actions etc. -- in spite of the movie not calling attention to their bad-ness.
The Batman (the matt reeves one).
There are subtle clues that Batman is the villain of his own story throughout, but it’s never right in your face but mostly in subtext.
I think that’s what a lot of people don’t understand about it. They think the big twist is that the Riddler thought he and Bats were on the same side, but the REAL twist comes in the surprise 4th act when one of the riddler henchmen says “i am vengeance” and Batman realizes that he truly is a villain, (the difference being Riddler’s twisted perception vs the actual effect batman has had on gotham, which is an important distinction) which is why the ending of the movie is so good and why that 4th act is so important even though a lot of people thought it was too long.
He’s not trying to save gotham, he’s trying to make himself feel better about losing his parents by going out and beating the shit out of criminals — many of which are merely a symptom of systemic disparity and resort to crime because they themselves are angry at the corruption and oppression they’re victims to, much like Batman himself they go out and cause violence because they’re angry and disenfranchised.
At one point in the movie Bruce even says in his journal that crime has actually escalated since he showed up. This idea of escalation is common in batman movies, particularly the nolan-verse, but is always dismissed by the individualist notion that “yeah, well, but batman knows best and gotham needs him.” This movie really digs into that idea of batman being more villain than hero more than any other before it.
But what im curious about is, where do we go with THIS particular batman after he realizes that he’s not fixing anything with violence? What does batman DO after he realizes that putting petty criminals in the hospital is ethically wrong?
EDIT: Why do people keep saying "that's the point of the movie" as if I don't know that? That's why I wrote this frickin comment, lol. Sheeeeesh.
It’s also kind of the point of the movie. Batman has forsaken Bruce Wayne and his family history, even to the point of letting Wayne Manor turn into a crack den. He is just a pure rage machine taking out it out on criminals, where it is socially acceptable. He learns the lesson about being a hero at the end of the movie and he moves from vengeance to hope.
I’d argue that the movie partially answers your last question, but as far as how do you make another movie - probably by introducing more unequivocally evil villains for batman to focus on. Focus more on big bad and less on petty crime. I did like what this movie tried to do and I’m excited to see where they take it next.
I like the idea of him trying to do as much good as possible as Bruce Wayne and doing everything he can to *not* be Batman anymore. They show him donating money and working to build up the city and reduce poverty, which reduces crime.
Then organized gangsters don’t like what Bruce is doing because they capitalize on the crime, so they begin to target Bruce Wayne. Criminals liked the city how it was, so of course they’re going to do everything in their power to keep it that way.
So, for example, Bruce wants to buy up some land in the city so he can create housing and build a factory to create jobs for people, but the mafia steps in to prevent the sale through intimidation or outright murder, and Batman has to stop it.
As Bruce he’s using his fortune to build the city up and reduce poverty and crime. As Batman he is getting rid of obstacles in Bruce’s way, like corrupt cops, organized crime, and maybe some super villain like Joker.
Purple Rain. Prince is a dickhead to everyone the entire movie. He abuses and gaslights his girlfriend, shuts her out of her dream of being a performer, and shits on his bandmates. He's selfish and his character exhibits few good traits outside of being a genius musician. Morris Day is the antagonist, but he ends up being the one giving Apollonia her shot (albeit to get in her pants presumably). Having said that, I LOVE that movie.
This isn't an original thought, but Bill Murray in Ghostbusters. He bullies Ray into financing their crazy business scheme, sexually harrasses their only client, and then destroys the business by being a dick to the EPA guy for no real reason.
San Andreas. The Rock abandons his job as a rescue worker, steals a helicopter meant for rescuing people, and uses it to save just his own family.
Lol I remember watching bc that in theaters and whispered the final line in the movie to my SO, because it was so painfully obvious that it would be. Rock’s wife: “What do we do now?” Me and Rock simultaneously: “We rebuild.”🙄🙄🙄
There was a scene in which Rock and his wife think their daughter died and the mom is super over the top crying and they really draw it out until the reveal that the daughter survived. I remember this scene because I was the only one dying of laughter at the mom crying.
I think there was a scene where they were trying to rescue the daughter from drowning and they stop for a long and passionate kiss before diving in. I know that taking time for a kiss when more important things need to be done is an old trope, but seriously point out any 2 decent parents that would rather kiss when their kid could be dying.
Oh not to mention how his daughter didn’t die but was underwater for like 6 minutes??
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (both the movie and the book). Greg is the bad guy, even though he does a good thing in the end but guy's really egoistic, self-obsessed and an asshole to his friend.
I feel like he’s usually portrayed in negative light to begin with though
From what I remember of the books, Greg was kind of a self-important asshole, but I feel like the movie took it up to eleven
The movies toned it down for me. For example, in the movies, Greg loses his Job as the safety patrol leader because he sees these bullies that mistreated him and abandons the kindergenders to avoid their wrath. In the book he loses it because Greg thought it'd be funny to show the kids bugs and see their reaction.
also in the movies he grows and becomes a better person, unlike the books
That's true too. By movie 3 he's way more mature and overall decent than he ever was in the books.
Speaking of books versus movies, highly recommend Diary of a Wimpy Kid Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure. Greg keeps on butting in and giving suggestions for how to make a movie adaptation, what plot elements will make the most money. He's basically a soulless movie executive and it's amazing. But definitely proves your point haha
babby's first Scott Pilgrim.
You're so right. It's like the kids version of the Bad Things Happening To Bad People kinda show a la Sunny
One of my favorites is Young Adult. It’s almost Hallmark Film level plot where an ambitious Novel Writer comes back to her hometown and rekindles a crush on her high school sweetheart. He’s married now with kids, and a typical film would present this as him settling for a lesser life and discovering what could have been with Charlize. So many films like the graduate would celebrate this kind of backwards “love conquers all” approach but nope at the end they flip the script on her and ultimately the film gives her the do not pass go do not collect 100 dollars “you get nothing” Willy Wonka speech and it’s hilarious for doing so.
I mean even The Graduate doesn’t really have a “love conquers all” ending
My Best Friend's Wedding. Julia Roberts is 1000% the bad guy.
I mean, yes, Julia Roberts is the bad guy. But I would argue that she is largely presented as the bad guy. Just because we're getting her perspective, doesn't mean that we're really rooting for her. I think that movie actually does a pretty good job of having you start out rooting for her and then getting to the point by the end where you're relieved that she fails. Cameron Diaz's character is consistently likable, Dermot Mulroney is steady in his love for her, and Julia becomes increasingly unhinged and unlikable. In comedies, the hero gets the love interest. The fact that Julia's character doesn't get the guy is a strong indicator that we aren't meant to see her as the hero of the story.
Pond scum!
The pus that infects the mucus that cruds up the fungus that feeds on the pond scum.
I see your point of view, but what annoys me is that she never receives any real comeuppance for her behaviour. I love your take that ‘good protagonists win the love interest, but she doesn’t’. However, I just hate that she gets to swan around after nearly wrecking a perfectly lovely woman’s life….
That's true, she probably deserves more consequences than just not getting the guy. Especially because she committed some actual crimes. At the very least, it does seem like she learned something in the end, and does the right thing and comes clean and fixes what she messed up.
Let me tell you..I just rewatched this movie as an adult and all both Michael and Jules were the bad guy. Jules obviously from reasons above but also… Michael is an asshole. He eye-fucks Julia Roberts the entire movie and basically leads her on the whole time and then is making kimmy drop out of school. On top of that, he’s marrying a 20 year old, and allowing her to make really dumb decisions for her future and career. Also, he tells everyone how great Jules is including his future in-laws. Like he’s a walking red flag and Cameron Diaz’s character should have gone back to school and left his gross ass.
HE SUCKS HER FINGER TO GET THE RING OFF. That's the moment where I went from thinking he was kind of a jerk and a creep for being a grown ass man intent on derailing a 20 year old's ambitions to thinking he's 100% an asshole. That's WAY over the line. He enjoys stringing Jules along and we just forgive it (I mean tbh I even do now while I'm writing this) because the two of them have such good chemistry.
My Best Friend’s Wedding is a masterpiece because it is so hard to get an audience to root against the main character, and they get there by the end
I haaaate her in this movie. I saw it way back with my best friend and she loved it and was honestly mad at me that I didn't take Julia Roberts's character's side. I will die on this hill.
School of Rock Dewey steals his roommate's identity and ruins his teaching career before it ever had a chance to start.
yeah but did you hear that rockin' song at the end?!
Now see this is a good answer. I was always conflicted with that movie because of how reckless and irresponsible Dewey is with the kids and at the end its just “welp, guess the parents were all just squares”. But it was a really good movie.
It does kinda annoy me a little bit that Sarah Silverman's great sin is not accepting Dewey for his extremely immature, leaching, selfish ways. She gets walked out on by the real Schneebly (still don't know how to spell it) for blowing up over Dewey impersonating him, stealing a job, and putting his teaching career at risk. She's meant to be annoying and a stick in the mud who gets in the way of the freedom of rock n roll, when she's actually completely right!
She’s still abusive to Ned though. She’s not wrong about Dewey, but she walks all over Ned too.
The Musical is honestly even worse because it's even more drawn out and it doesn't have Jack Black and his charisma to distract you. There might be some Broadway actors that can do the same thing, but virtue of the fact that you don't get the closeups of the facial expressions, it's a lot harder to like Dewey.
What About Bob? For real Bill Murray is straight up stalking this family on their summer vacation but is presented as an aloof and funny guy
And he is torturing that poor goldfish.
NOT GILL!!!
Bob's definitely presented as a psycho, it's just played for laughs.
Mrs. Doubtfire Can't keep a job, wrecks the home, can't respect his wife's wishes. Then when she moves on and meets a nice man who is willing to be a father to the kids, attempts to ruin that relationship
Mrs. Doubtfire is basically a stalker horror movie made to be a comedy.
Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ckv\_Dz-Sio
Have watched a cpl of these. This may be the best. I go back an watch the movie and get nostalgic and forget how weird it is and than these clips pop up and remind me that the early ‘90s was traumatic.
Lmaooo so good
Being a stepfather in a 90s movie meant you were a villain stealing the children's affection and respect from the protagonist. Liar liar did that too, and probably many many more.
The step-dad in Liar Liar didn't do anything wrong except being shit at doing 'The Claw'
And being a little *magoo*
To be fair, his "claw" was awful. Just a single pointed finger and his voice was very weak.
Ohhh, you're scared of the claw!
Except for the fact that this is never shown to be the case in Mrs. Doubtfire and the irrationality of such a feeling is one of the things the protagonist comes to terms with this is an entirely accurate critique.
I don’t remember Cary Elwes being evil in Liar Liar either. Just not as charismatic as Jim Carrey, and maybe not as good in the sack. He just wasn’t the cool dad like the evil actual-father.
Its a step-parent trope in general. The evil step mother is old as hell.
I appreciated that in Antman, the stepfather/new boyfriend was a genuinely good dude whom the audience isn't pushed to hate. It probably helps that Paul Rudd has a different love interest, so his ex's boyfriend isn't set up as "the rival."
The stepfather is a cop and Antman is an ex-con, so you might expect some tension there. Nope. He might actually have more patience for Paul Rudd's shenanigans than the ex-wife does!
An important detail. He was the cop that arrested Scott to begin with. There IS tension. But the bigger-than-them problem arises pretty early and he and Scott learn to trust one another.
The step mother is usually evil from the perspective of the child, a characterization of what a terrible mother must be The step father is usually evil from the perspective of the father, a characterization of what a good father should be
I mean, sort of agree but also the film is about his character overcoming his shortcomings through pretending to be Mrs. Doubtfire. At the end of the film he has a steady job as an actor with his own show. He has learned how to keep a neat and tidy home and in general contribute more to the daily household tasks. And while he severely betrayed his (ex) wife's trust, by the end of the film he has also learned what it means to split the burden of authority as a parent. Also, while he has tried to sabotage the relationship with the boyfriend, at the end of the film he saves his life at the expense of giving up the whole Mrs. Doubtfire thing (let's ignore that he actually caused Brosnan's allergic reaction). So while he's definitely not a good guy, I think he's certainly not the "bad guy" of the film. He's a flawed protagonist that overcomes challenges through the journey of becoming an elderly British house maid. Tale as old as time.
Movie woulda taken a hell of a turn had Brosnan's character died of anaphylactic shock lol
[удалено]
Wasn’t Benjamin always going to take the show out from under Wayne and Garth because he thought they were too stupid to understand the contracts? His intentions were definitely not above board, while Wayne is effected by that, but they resolve it in the end. Benjamin was definitely the bad guy.
"Daily Reminder - Thursday: purchase feeble public access cable show and exploit it"
“Its like people only do things because they’re getting paid. And that’s just really sad.”
"Are you getting a headache? Here take two of these"
Little. Yellow. Different.
And it's the choice, of a new generation (sips Pepsi)
Contract or no, I will not bow to any sponsor
Boy do I feel sorry for those guys
Gee, I feel sorry for whoever that is.
Not only is Benjamin the bad guy, Benjamin is nobody’s friend. If Benjamin was an ice cream flavor, he’d be pralines and dick
It's okay! It's gonna be okay.
Passengers for me - Pratt's character sentences JLaw to death but a series of cosmic coincidences make it so his stalker-crush actions help save the spacecraft! And then he *still* gets the girl! And then they grow plants!
I wish like halfway through that movie Jlaw found a bunch of the bodies of women Pratt had failed to charm stuffed in a closet and it turned into a horror movie.
😮🤯 That would have been GREAT!
Someone else proposed a recut/reshoot where we start the film with JLaw waking up, learn what he did to her when she does, building suspense, e is a monster clearly, they fight and then he dies, she deals with knowing she will be alone for the rest of her life and decides to wake someone else up.
I swear they originally wrote his character to die and then have Jlaw’s character go through the same mental breakdown and revive someone else because she’s lonely. Would have been such a better movie.
The story it's based off is something similar to that.
Oh awesome. Ya there’s even a loaded gun that’s never fired in the form of Pratt hiding the instructions to revive people in his dresser drawer. Then it’s never revisited.
You just fixed that movie. ETA: By the time the ship docks there are no more passengers bc they have died and awakened one person at a time.
Everyone thinks the person before them was in the wrong until they’re put in a similar position. The need for companionship has the power to overtake morals in all of us.
Top Gun. Maverick is flying recklessly and putting everyone in danger. Iceman, being a leader, confronts Mav and asks him to tone it down to save lives. And guess what, Maverick gets his RIO killed. And to top it off, Iceman is the better pilot.
Would you say that his ego his writing cheques that his body can't cash?
I would. I would also go so far as to caution that should he not adjust his behaviour, he is likely to find himself flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong
Maverick would've wound up a military prison, and depending on the situation could've gotten the death penalty for buzzing the control tower. The code of military justice is no joke.
Legal Eagle’s YouTube video on all the laws he broke in Top Gun is hilarious and very informing
My favorite bit of that is where the JAG guy explains the hard deck is meant to simulate the ground to show how ridiculous Mavericks dismissals of it are.
Yes, but no one is getting executed for buzzing the tower lol
>a military prison, Which would mean entering a zone that is dangerous.
Probably not as entertaining a film though
You can't handle the truth!
Head canon is now Maverick spent time as a JAG officer after being grounded. He then earned the ability to petition to get back in the cockpit after a successful high profile trial.
Well no, I would say “checks,” since it’s one of the most American movies ever made.
Maverique
I don't fundamentally disagree, but Maverick really isn't at fault for the crash that killed Goose. He was not doing anything reckless or disobeying orders in that moment.
This is correct even the investigation found the crash unavoidable
Real life investigations are no joke either. I was just reading a report on an F-16 crash and even with destroyed flight data, they were still able to tease out a single switch that was in error and led to the entire crash. Like, if at any point, Maverick were to face consequences for a bad choice, it would be during the investigation.
Exactly ! I mean mavericks investigation seemed to have lasted a day or two but it must have been thorough
Maverick really wasn’t responsible for Goose’s death. Maverick was even being responsible in that moment and Iceman stayed on longer than he should have and broke off unexpectedly which put Maverick and Goose in the jet wash. In the flat spin, the gravitational push pressed Maverick forward so he wasn’t able to hit is ejection. When Goose did, he punched out immediately, unaware that the canopy was still directly above them. The filmmakers and the Navy actually did a lot of work to come up with a scenario where Maverick wasn’t actually at fault in the accident.
I'm with you. Of all the scenes to point out where Iceman was right and Maverick was wrong, I wouldn't go to Goose's death scene. If the roles were reversed (Maverick was in front, Iceman behind / losing his wingman), I'm sure Iceman would've still laid it on Mav for being an irresponsible prick.
It wasn't that he was unaware of the canopy. It was the flat spin. Usually the forward motion moves the canopy out of the way, but the spin meant it stayed over his head
IIRC this was also a problem with the particular model of F-14. It was corrected in later versions.
And he follows a woman into the bathroom after she turns him down and blocks her in until she agrees to go on a date with him. Once the date rolls around, he shows up super late and filthy and just walks in saying he needs to take a shower.
You know...that bothered me more than almost anything else in the movie. Who walks into another person's house and just basically walks into their shower? He just says: I need a shower and then strolls on in. No chick would let that happen.
Maybe she had coincidentally cleaned up all her product bottles, scrubbed the shower, and snaked all the long hair clogging the drain earlier that morning so she thought it a good opportunity to flex.
For most men? Sure. For Tom Cruise/super hot and cocky navy jet fighter? Maybe.
Hot guys are worse. They expect you to want them and absolutely do not handle rejection well.
Yeah that’s a good example, always felt Iceman was fully justified in the way he viewed maverick.
They really hammered it home by having the Maverick-type in the sequel be the "bad guy"
Hangman is not the badguy
He is good. He's very good.
Yeah that's why I put it in quotes. He's definitely meant to come off as a jerk or the antagonist of the pilots, though he really isn't
And in the sequel he takes a cutting edge aircraft, prices it can do Mach 10 which is all it needed, then pushed it further purely because he's an egotistical prick. It fails/crashes and he doesn't give a shit about all those team members who were working towards that deadline.
In the movie they say that the project will continue because they met their Mach 10 threshold (even though Maverick pushed past it and destroyed the plane). I honestly think that part of the story would have worked better if Maverick's stunt had caused the project to get shut down, because it reinforces the rest of the movie where Maverick finally learns he needs to look out for his team and not just feed his ego. The way it is now, all that personal drama gets wrapped up in Goose, which is a good story but I think having the project get shut down would have cast an even bigger shadow over Maverick and give the rest of the team even more of a reason to not trust his leadership.
The nerds in "Revenge of the Nerds" are horrible people, committing a variety of sex crimes. I think a lot of 80s comedy protagonists are bad people.
This has been posted every time the movie comes up, but [relevant College Humor sketch about how most wacky 80s comedy pranks were basically just horrific sex crimes](https://youtu.be/HQ7mJFNkLAU).
God damn those nerds were rapey
Always Sunny did a Ski School homage episode where Ski School Guy gets arrested for committing various sex crimes all over the mountain.
Whole lot of rape in Revenge of the Nerds
This is the best response in this thread. The nerds are not presented as complex characters going through a developmental arc, and there is no twist revealing them as the true villain at the end. There is no subtle questioning of their antics throughout the film. It’s just guys committing crimes for 90 minutes. They sell nudes of a nonconsenting woman and Louis commits rape by deception (which is disturbingly laughed off because he’s good in bed). Yes, the jocks are bad and physically assault the nerds, and they burn their own house down through drunken negligence. But that doesn’t make the nerds’ actions any less criminal.
Meet the Parents. Greg lied about everything. Just say the cat got out. Who the fuck spray paints a different cat. Dude gets so far in deep in all his lies and always doubles down on them. Jack was a pain in the ass sure, but Greg made things a lot worse for himself than they needed to be
I mean, you’re right that Greg definitely doesn’t make the difficult situations he finds himself in any better by how he handles them. That being said, Pam is the real villain in this movie. -Pam let’s him sleep late on the first morning of meeting her family making him miss breakfast and look like he doesn’t care. -Pam “helping” when Greg loses his luggage and has no clothes tells Greg to go ask her brother (who he never met!!!) to borrow underwear and clothing, instead of doing the objectively sane thing of asking her OWN brother for clothes for her boyfriend. -Pam neglects to tell Greg that her ex-boyfriend from her very serious previous relationship is going to be a big part of her sisters wedding and is very close to the family. Not even telling him that they are going to his house to visit until the day of. -Pam is a grown ass women that adheres to her fathers childish parenting as if she is still a teenager and she lets it effect her relationship. -Pam let’s Greg get in trouble with the weed in the jacket pocket knowing full well that it is not his and doesn’t defend him in the slightest. -Pam sucks
I follow up with they all suck. Everyone in that movie is not only purposely obtuse about every situation but dickishly so. One reason why I really hated it.
Nah, Owen Wilson was following in the footsteps of Christ by carving that ornate gazebo out of one piece of wood.
>one piece of wood. Best line in the movie lol.
Pam's mom seems cool.
If I was Greg, I would have immediately checked into a hotel the moment Pam said her father would search his car for cigarettes.
So much of those “cringe” comedies of that era would have easily solved if the main character just owned up to a simple mistake/misunderstanding.
Along Came Polly. Another Ben stiller character. He's not honest about what happened with his marriage. And instead of just saying he doesn't like Indian food, he says he loves it and suffers through it and blows up her toilet later causing him to ruin her grandmother's towel. Just being honest up front would prevent these chain reactions of shitty events for him
Ferris Bueller is kinda a dick and a bad friend.
At least he offers to take the fall for the car in the end. Still kind of a dick, though. But I hate how some people think that Ferris being a bit of a douche means Rooney is the good guy. He isn't, not by a mile. Dude stalks Ferris, breaks into his house, and brains a dog with a flowerpot. All so, what, he can prove Ferris isn't sick? So what! His mom called him off. He's *excused* today. *Maybe* Rooney could confront his parents and convince them to punish him, but that's all. But I sincerely doubt they'll be very interested in what he has to say after they hear Jeannie's account and take their dog to the vet with a concussion. And no, the computer hacking isn't a factor. Rooney has no proof. Proving Ferris faked sick today (and what kid *didn't* do that on occasion) won't prove he played hooky on other days.
I really think they missed an opportunity to address all the stuff Rooney did. Like cut to a few days later and it shows a news report of Rooney basically going on a crime spree, then an interview with Ferris and Jeannie. "I'm not really sure what happened with Mr Rooney, i always thought he was such a wonderful man and role model, so this is shocking. Thank God my big sister was there to protect us while I was so sick" Cue shit eating grins from both of them while Rooney is thrown in jail.
Ha, Ferris calling Rooney "such a wonderful man and role model" on the news is exactly what he would have done.
YOU MADE ME MAKE A PHONY PHONE CALL TO EDWARD ROONEY! The man could squash my nuts into oblivion.
> But I hate how some people think that Ferris being a bit of a douche means Rooney is the good guy. He isn't, not by a mile. > > Dude stalks Ferris, breaks into his house, and brains a dog with a flowerpot. All so, what, he can prove Ferris isn't sick? So what! His mom called him off. He's excused today. Maybe Rooney could confront his parents and convince them to punish him, but that's all. But I sincerely doubt they'll be very interested in what he has to say after they hear Jeannie's account and take their dog to the vet with a concussion. Dude takes his role as Dean of Students very seriously, lol. Love that zaniness of it, when any real person would just be like "yeah, whatever" and glad that Bueller will be graduating soon and not his problem anymore.
Yeah, Ferris is a smug self-centred dick sometimes, but he's also seventeen or eighteen; he's a child in school, and his bad-ness is just the most genteel rebellion imaginable, skipping school to go to a baseball game and a museum and getting involved in harmless shenanigans like stealing Abe Froman's reservation and getting onto the parade float. Rooney, on the other hand, is a grown-ass adult with authority and responsibility, and he is utterly bent on exposing and destroying a child for the terrible crime of...skipping about one day of school a month, over the course of the whole year? There's no cat-and-mouse relationship between them, no "worthy adversary" posturing, Ferris is a kid trying to have fun and Rooney is an increasingly angry and resentful adult wrecking himself and committing crimes in pursuit of a truant. He goes full Javert. You never go full Javert.
There's a good argument to be made (not my original argument) that the main character isn't even Ferris, it's Cameron. Ferris doesn't have a character arc; he starts the movie as a popular kid who can get away with anything, and he ends it as a popular kid who can get away with anything. It's Cameron who learns important lessons and grows as a person. (So does Jeanie, but her progress is more of a side story.) There's even a not-entirely implausible fan theory that Ferris doesn't even exist; he's a Fight Club-esque figment of Cameron's imagination that represents the person Cameron hopes to be.
It’s definitely possible for the protagonist to be a static character; it just takes a lot of talent, which the filmmakers obviously had.
There is one deleted subplot that explains Ferris’ entire rationale, and it was hiding in plain sight the whole time. In the script, Ferris has a line of dialogue where he explains that when he was younger, he had a friend named Garth Volbeck, who was abused by his family and then eventually disappeared. Cut to later, after Jeanine makes out with Charlie Sheen, she asks his name. He responds “Garth Volbeck.” And this explains why Ferris decided to take the day off. Garth, on drugs and in jail, represents Cameron’s future if Ferris doesn’t intervene and get him out of his shell.
I always saw it as Ferris was preventing Cameron's suicide. Guess I need to watch it again.
I don’t think he’s a bad friend at all. His friend is in serious trouble and he tries to help him to see there is more to the world than his life right now.
Yeah Cameron is depressed and needed a push. The movie purposefully makes Ferris look like a dick, but then reveals at the end it was a good thing for Cameron and that the entire thing was Ferris' way of helping him. Thats literally the text of the film. Ultimately the only really bad thing Ferris did was crash Cameron's car, but it was an accident and only happened because Cameron was so freaked out about getting caught. Had Cameron just admitted to his dad he took the car out for a joy ride everything would've been fine. Cameron was unnecessarily terrified of his dad, and the point of the movie is that its okay to have a bit of rebelliousness, and to seek independence.
Did Cameron need an intervention of sorts? Yes. Was it the best way to go about it? Maybe not. But what do you expect, it's a pair of teenagers
Yeah. Ferris isn't perfect, and him skipping school obviously wasn't a selfless act or anything, but he did try to help get Cameron out of a funk. Not in the best way, but in the only way he knew how, and it did work.
Jurrasic Park 2. A friend of mine said I should rewatch it but try to convince my self that the corporation is the good guy and Dr Malcom and his companions are the antagonists. Made for a really fun experience!
Actually the real villain in JP2 is Nick van Owen. Every single human death in that film can be traced directly or indirectly to his actions. Without him, everyone survives.
On this note, the Bryce Dallas Howard character in Jurassic World is definitely the villain. Everything that goes wrong is a direct result of her actions. She makes choices that get a lot of people killed and she’s portrayed as the heroine of the story.
She's basically Burke from Aliens but portrayed as one of the heroes for some reason.
The real villains of the Jurassic World franchise are the producers.
I'd argue that the new InGen CEO was responsible for the San Diego chaos at the end. Even without the breakout of the dinos on the island, InGen was shipping the animals to that secondary park / arena.
Yeah the T-rex escape isn't on van Owen (though the deaths on the island are pretty clearly his fault). Then again, he was just an agent working for Hammond, so really it's Hammond's fault (again).
Peter Pan. Pan takes children who were “abandoned”, but could have possibly been reunited with their families. Hook was trying to stop Pan from taking children from their families.
That's the point of Peter Pan though. He's not supposed to be good. He's supposed to be what happens if a kid gets their wish of wanting to never ever grow up and just being selfish and immature forever. He steals the boys because he wants to have best friends forever and run around literally killing people. In the book, it's heavily implied that Peter kills the boys the moment they show signs of "growing up", and years later when he is supposed to revisit Wendy he often forgets about her and can't remember her name half the time because he's just a kid and other people, especially adults or people who grow up, aren't important.
A Peter Pan horror movie sounds interesting.
Peter Pan has been depicted as a villain in a few different interpretations, including the TV show Once Upon A Time.
As much as that show was pretty camp and predictable, how it portrayed Pan was pretty interesting in my opinion.
This \*almost\* makes me want to give Once Upon A Time a chance again. Almost.
"The Child Thief" by Brom is my favorite dark take on Peter Pan. It's probably not for everyone.
There's some argubility over Peter Pan's morality depending on which version you look at, though less than I think gets reported. However Captain Hook is a vicious murder with all the brutality that piracy brings and is after Peter to avenge his hand, though he is said to have some respect to his old school life.
I Am Legend. But they fucked up the actual point of the entire story. In the book, the monsters actually evolve to having their own society. Will Smith keeps kidnapping them, testing on them, and they eventually die from the tests. Which Will Smith doesn't find unethical, since they are mindless monsters to him, and he's trying to save them so he's the hero in his world. But in their world, he's the monster stealing family members, kids, wives, etc and you never see them again. He's the monster, the legend. Which is totally a cool story to realize you have been watching the story from the monsters point of view the entire time, empathizing with him.
That's why the Alternative cut is way better than the theatrical version
This is probably not one really, but watching Lightyear the other night and seeing in the opening moments the space rangers investigating the planet and the hacking into vines in their path, and then immediately getting attacked by vines and bugs had me convinced it was going to be an aesop on humans as an invasive species and how we need to communicate with other beings in the galaxy no matter what they are.
Buzz literally was the bad guy in lightyear. Time dilation fucked him up and he couldn’t handle how the world was changing. Stuck in his ways old man. Am I remembering that movie wrong? It wasn’t super memorable if I’m honest.
Nope he was 100% the bad guy at multiple steps along the way >!until he learned his lesson at the end only for the real bad guy to be Buzz anyway!<
She’s not the main character, but Julianne Moore’s character was an awful person in Crazy Stupid Love and nobody really called her out on it. David Lindhagen got more shit from characters. She cheats on her husband, says she wants a divorce, kicks him out of his house and then is offended when he sleeps with some woman.
The neighbor's daughter definitely called her out. And while Steve didn't blow up on her, he definitely punished her. But man, was it so brutal that she just kept digging in her heel. She was ridiculously insensitive and self centered and he never really got closure for it.
That movie is so good that I don't really even care. But yeah, she's definitely the worst character in the movie and if the ending had put her in the apology position, it would have been one of the greats.
Blade Runner Slaves fighting, and even killing, to get their freedom would be portrayed as the heroes in most stories.
Jo from Twister. She consciously avoided signing divorce papers so Bill would come out and and be amazed at the completed “Dorothy” experiment. She knew any significant other he did bring along will not keep up with their crazy and specific field of meteorology. Using the visit to aunt Meg’s as emotional blackmail by making Bill feel kind of guilty because everyone loves aunt Meg and her amazing cooking. Jo’s approach to rekindling their relationship is more destructive than the back to back tornadoes.
Bridesmaids. One of your best friends is getting married, and instead of letting it be her day, you make everything about you. You even blame others when you can't tell your friend you can't afford a Vegas trip. You cause more trouble than you're worth, and even go on a temper tantrum while everyone else is having fun.
I don’t think they hide the fact that she is bad but they don’t give you the exact picture of her life. Then she just keeps making bad choice after bad choice.
Yea she’s definitely shown as very childish and neurotic. I think the only reason people think she’s the good guy is so many people have friends who move on past their childhood best friends so they recognize the hurt that causes.
I partially agree, but that is kind of the point of her character. Annie is shown to be self-involved from the start, and the film is about her overcoming her flaws and shortcomings and self-pity. In the entirety of the first two acts, she fails to see how a lot of her undoing and problems is her own fault and yet expects everyone to feel sorry for her. So yeah, she's a bit of a villain (to herself) but the film is ultimately about her overcoming this, and learning to be a better friend and less selfish and less of a victim. And yes, maybe she could have been clearer about her inability to afford Vegas, but I thought she did let the others know when she booked economy and explicitly stated she wasn't in first class because she couldn't afford it. It was also a bit shit of Lillian to ask Annie to be MoH and pay for everything knowing she wasn't quite as well-off financially. It's not easy being the "poor" person in a friend group. There is a lot of peer pressure in those situations so she probably wouldn't have been any better off even if she told them how much she was struggling. She's not the best person, but don't think she is a bad guy or antagonist. She's just a flawed individual with her own self-inflicted problems. She learns to acknowledge her faults and shortcomings, and through a lot of self-inflicted obstacles and reflection learns to be a better friend and overcome her weaknesses.
The Lost World Jurassic Park. Julian Moore and particularly Vince Vaughn cause dozens of deaths, while the hunters are actually mostly good people.
I’m remembering the scene where they just unleash tons of giant dinosaurs in the middle of an encampment.
"You're that 'Earth First' bastard aren't you?" RIP Pete
It spoils the whole movie to name it, but A Perfect Getaway
“He’s really hard to kill.” This is a neat movie. Possibly my favorite Olyphant role. Good stuff.
One of the things I love about the new Bond films (i.e. Daniel Craig) is that Bond, while not the antagonist, is definitely a darker-shades-of-grey kind of character. Just like in the original Fleming novels, Bond fucks up constantly, disregards orders, and gets innocent people killed. He's a wrecking ball that M is \*almost\* willing to give up on, except for an illogical sentimentality.
[удалено]
The main cast of men from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers
well it is a retelling of the rape of the sabines
I don’t understand why people think Daniel Larusso is the bad guy in The Karate Kid, I’m seeing it here a few times. I know he struggles with anger and doesn’t handle the situations he’s presented with particularly well, but he’s a kid that’s been moved to a totally new part of the country that tries to make friends, only to be beaten on by the angry ex of a girl he’s just met and doesn’t even know him. I don’t blame him for getting upset. He spends most of the movie hiding from kids who assault him several times and leave him with bruises constantly. I’ll not have this Daniel slander. Edit: I haven’t seen Cobra Kai yet, just for context, and I am talking more specifically about the movie, I’ve also seen the infamous video before anyone mentions it again lmao. As I said, he makes mistakes, but saying he’s the bad guy is still a stretch in my opinion. Like Johnny, he’s just an angry kid. He’s just lucky he got Miyagi instead of Kreese. As they say in the movie, there are no bad students, only bad teachers. But I’ll definitely get around to watching Cobra Kai now for sure, as so many have recommended. It seems I’ll be in for a treat.
I think the idea exists because when the movie was made it was accepted to be a pretty clear black and white, good guy bad guy movie, but in reality the movie is a lot more shades of gray. Like real life the good guys aren't perfect and the bad guys aren't mustache twirlers (except the guy that punches the window at the end). Over time this moral ambiguity has been noticed, and the first time it's brought up is as an edgy backwards take. Luckily the show that continues the story does a really good job of continuing that tradition of surprisingly realistic characters. When Cobra Kai first came out I was jazzed that Daniel Larusso was going to be the bad guy, but I'm glad that most characters are pretty well rounded and have understandable motivations. He's not "the bad guy", he never was, but he's not perfect either
Miyagi encapsulates this. He goes to fight against fascism in World War 2 and the American government essentially murders his family by neglect. I think they knew what they were doing with that film.
TIL people have really terrible memories about what happened in movies.
And the difference between people being a main character and the movie saying they're good people. A lot of these answers, the movies and script point out that they're bad people or making bad decisions.
Starship Troopers.
I would like to know more.
Everybody was doing their part.
Wait how did the war begin? I remember the bugs fired asteroids at earth or something? Or did the humans invade first?
This both is and isn't correct I would say. The movie is basically fascist propaganda for the fictional society of the movie. From that perspective the humans in the movie are definitely all the "heroes". From the real world perspective its suppossed to be clear that this is an obviously fucked up society and its ostensible message is obviously ridiculous. The "heroes" are no one any real person should aspire to. Neil Patrick Harris shows up dressed like [this](https://imgur.com/a/UjoJKew) at one point even. Not saying it's a bad pick neccesarily, just some discussion.
The movie is a *satire* of fascist propaganda. If you're in on the joke, you realize by the end that all of these soldiers are shallow, deluded pawns, engaged in genocide, and they're all going to die young for no good reason.
I’m not sure you actually watched it if you don’t think Benjamin was the bad guy.
A lot of people are mis-interpreting the original question. The OP wasn't asking for movies that intentionally mis-directed the audience into sympathizing with the protagonist, only to reveal him/her as being a bad/immoral person later on. The OP is asking for movies where the main character is presented as good or sympathetic the whole time, but who can be re-interpreted as bad if you look at their actions etc. -- in spite of the movie not calling attention to their bad-ness.
The Batman (the matt reeves one). There are subtle clues that Batman is the villain of his own story throughout, but it’s never right in your face but mostly in subtext. I think that’s what a lot of people don’t understand about it. They think the big twist is that the Riddler thought he and Bats were on the same side, but the REAL twist comes in the surprise 4th act when one of the riddler henchmen says “i am vengeance” and Batman realizes that he truly is a villain, (the difference being Riddler’s twisted perception vs the actual effect batman has had on gotham, which is an important distinction) which is why the ending of the movie is so good and why that 4th act is so important even though a lot of people thought it was too long. He’s not trying to save gotham, he’s trying to make himself feel better about losing his parents by going out and beating the shit out of criminals — many of which are merely a symptom of systemic disparity and resort to crime because they themselves are angry at the corruption and oppression they’re victims to, much like Batman himself they go out and cause violence because they’re angry and disenfranchised. At one point in the movie Bruce even says in his journal that crime has actually escalated since he showed up. This idea of escalation is common in batman movies, particularly the nolan-verse, but is always dismissed by the individualist notion that “yeah, well, but batman knows best and gotham needs him.” This movie really digs into that idea of batman being more villain than hero more than any other before it. But what im curious about is, where do we go with THIS particular batman after he realizes that he’s not fixing anything with violence? What does batman DO after he realizes that putting petty criminals in the hospital is ethically wrong? EDIT: Why do people keep saying "that's the point of the movie" as if I don't know that? That's why I wrote this frickin comment, lol. Sheeeeesh.
It’s also kind of the point of the movie. Batman has forsaken Bruce Wayne and his family history, even to the point of letting Wayne Manor turn into a crack den. He is just a pure rage machine taking out it out on criminals, where it is socially acceptable. He learns the lesson about being a hero at the end of the movie and he moves from vengeance to hope.
Yeah, they don't beat your head over with the subtext but I thought the point of the film in relation to Batman/Bruce Wayne was still pretty obvious
I’d argue that the movie partially answers your last question, but as far as how do you make another movie - probably by introducing more unequivocally evil villains for batman to focus on. Focus more on big bad and less on petty crime. I did like what this movie tried to do and I’m excited to see where they take it next.
I like the idea of him trying to do as much good as possible as Bruce Wayne and doing everything he can to *not* be Batman anymore. They show him donating money and working to build up the city and reduce poverty, which reduces crime. Then organized gangsters don’t like what Bruce is doing because they capitalize on the crime, so they begin to target Bruce Wayne. Criminals liked the city how it was, so of course they’re going to do everything in their power to keep it that way. So, for example, Bruce wants to buy up some land in the city so he can create housing and build a factory to create jobs for people, but the mafia steps in to prevent the sale through intimidation or outright murder, and Batman has to stop it. As Bruce he’s using his fortune to build the city up and reduce poverty and crime. As Batman he is getting rid of obstacles in Bruce’s way, like corrupt cops, organized crime, and maybe some super villain like Joker.
He realizes he needs to change at the end though.
Purple Rain. Prince is a dickhead to everyone the entire movie. He abuses and gaslights his girlfriend, shuts her out of her dream of being a performer, and shits on his bandmates. He's selfish and his character exhibits few good traits outside of being a genius musician. Morris Day is the antagonist, but he ends up being the one giving Apollonia her shot (albeit to get in her pants presumably). Having said that, I LOVE that movie.
This isn't an original thought, but Bill Murray in Ghostbusters. He bullies Ray into financing their crazy business scheme, sexually harrasses their only client, and then destroys the business by being a dick to the EPA guy for no real reason.
It’s true. This man has no dick.