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Times You’ve Sided with the Villain

Started by Armed Traffic Warden, July 01, 2022, 01:55:35 AM

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mr. logic

I can't remember Hank being racist at all

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I remember him saying dodgy things to Gomez, but I think it was just (ugh) banter. I'm aware that to members of minority groups, the difference may seem immaterial.

BritishHobo

Quote from: DrGreggles on July 01, 2022, 08:26:13 AMLost - I wanted Smokey to leave the island

I know that it's meant to be a metaphor about faith, but that final season really did just leave me feeling that our heroes had been manipulated by an uncaring cunt into stopping a nice guy from doing something totally understandable. The show going "well he can't do it because the world will end" is such a weird conflict which never really bothers to acknowledge how horrible that is for the smokey boy to be cursed with. Odd for a show with so much to say about philosophy and helping people. They end up helping to perpetuate a cosmic injustice.

gmoney

Quote from: phantom_power on July 01, 2022, 11:43:24 AMI don't think people were on board with the solution so much as sympathised with the problem


Aye, but if you had the power he wields, you'd double recourses, not half the population.

ProvanFan


Mr Vegetables

Thanos having a really stupid plan made it very difficult for me to get invested in that movie, but that doesn't seem to be a common experience. It's because none of the genius heroes ever say "this is a really stupid plan," and I get the sense you're not supposed to think that. I decided halfway through the movie that maybe he just didn't know that sex was a thing, and if someone had told him that it would have resolved everything without needing to go and have an Infinity War.

Anyway, that's not what the thread's about. I'm kind of sympathetic to the Valeyard from Doctor Who. "There IS no escaping the catharsis of spurious morality!" I think to myself sometimes.

DrGreggles

Quote from: BritishHobo on July 01, 2022, 02:33:42 PMI know that it's meant to be a metaphor about faith, but that final season really did just leave me feeling that our heroes had been manipulated by an uncaring cunt into stopping a nice guy from doing something totally understandable. The show going "well he can't do it because the world will end" is such a weird conflict which never really bothers to acknowledge how horrible that is for the smokey boy to be cursed with. Odd for a show with so much to say about philosophy and helping people. They end up helping to perpetuate a cosmic injustice.

Not to mention the potential Smokey In The City spin-off sitcom

BritishHobo

I never felt like the Avengers film bothered to establish or flesh out the problem Thanos intends to solve. It's so vague it allows people to read into it, but in such an enormous multi-film franchise, it's completely piss-weak and basically has nothing to do with anything else that's gone on in those films. Just a big purple bloke going 'things aren't very good so I'll kill half of everyone'.

Shaxberd

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on July 01, 2022, 12:21:16 PMI could certainly stand to see Homelander kill most of the good guys in The Boys. That show has a massively compelling villain and frequently annoying heroes.

If you didn't want Skeletor to beat He-Man you're inhuman. There's a lot of kids' shows and films that pit insipid children or young adults against entertaining villains, like the 90s Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Thundermans, Casper, most versions of Robin Hood and King Arthur, Torchwood, etc. And The Dark Knight Rises, in which locking policemen in a dungeon is meant to be a bad thing?

You've reminded me of how desperately I wanted Dick Dastardly to win the Wacky Races, just once, even though the whole point was that he could have probably won easily if he had just played by the rules instead of wasting all his time on elaborate attempts to cheat.

I also very much wanted Gargamel to successfully catch and eat the Smurfs but did at least accept the cartoon probably wasn't going to go there, whereas I could just about convince myself there was a Wacky Races episode I hadn't seen where Dastardly won.

Brundle-Fly


phantom_power

Quote from: gmoney on July 01, 2022, 02:38:34 PMAye, but if you had the power he wields, you'd double recourses, not half the population.

I think he mentions this in one of the films. If you double resources it is just kicking the problem down the road as the population will just grow unmanageable again. At least having half the population wiped out might make people reflect more on the finite nature of things.

Of course he didn't address the biggest flaw in the plan; the fact that there isn't a resource shortage. It is just being hogged by a minority of the wealthy. I don't really expect Marist doctrine in a Marvel film though

H-O-W-L

I think in the comics he was doing it to impress Death because he wanted to fuck her, wasn't he? He wasn't really doing it to solve any problems.

Quote from: Shaxberd on July 01, 2022, 03:18:16 PMYou've reminded me of how desperately I wanted Dick Dastardly to win the Wacky Races, just once, even though the whole point was that he could have probably won easily if he had just played by the rules instead of wasting all his time on elaborate attempts to cheat.

I also very much wanted Gargamel to successfully catch and eat the Smurfs but did at least accept the cartoon probably wasn't going to go there, whereas I could just about convince myself there was a Wacky Races episode I hadn't seen where Dastardly won.


bakabaka

Quote from: A Hat Like That on July 01, 2022, 08:20:50 PM
You think Roadrunner wasn't the villain? Watch them again. You'll be amazed! or amused, whichever.

Small Man Big Horse

I've got quite a few of these, in the 1957 horror Night of the Demon, Karswell is an incredibly charismatic villain, and I wish he'd been on screen far more and ultimately defeated the bland hero, and the same applies with The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr T., the lead kid is fine and I didn't hate him, but Dr. Terwilliker is absolutely batshit mental and a delight whenever he's rambling away, so I wish he'd succeeded and had forced all of the kids to play the piano at the same time for the rest of their lives.

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: Dark Sexy Dangerous on July 01, 2022, 11:45:23 AM
I've found myself wanting to buck the writers' intent when you get a villain like Hannibal Lecter - the TV version, who, among other things, cuts a teenager's lungs out while she's still alive - and the writers clearly can't get enough of him and want to push him and our protagonist/anti-hero as gay icons. Hannibal is an incredibly compelling villain, but I'm not the sort of reprobate whose idea of escapism is going "Ah yes, quite right" at someone very brutally torturing, killing and eating 'rude' people.
I think the idea there is to make him utterly alluring to practically everyone he meets - a renaissance man who knows everything there is to know about everything; from cooking to the arts and sciences - and who is presumably a splendid shagger an' all. This is what helps him avoid too much suspicion (even though it should be blatantly obvious he's involved in the murders), since everyone just wants to be in his orbit, and it's also what keeps Will and others under his spell, despite what they know about him.

It helps that the universe of that show is surreal (or at least hyperrealistic), so it's acceptable to root for/want to see more of a character like that. By the end, it's playing closer to mythology than anything grounded in the real world.

holdover

The first 5 or so minutes of The Quiet Place had me siding with the invading aliens. Terrible parenting, annoying kids. Cheered at the tv when that family member got munched.

grainger

#47
Another one is Buck in American Gothic. After the very early episodes, he's arguably the main character, and you're meant to dislike him. He's literally the devil (or it's implied as such) and he uses his worldly power as town sheriff and supernatural power to terrorise the inhabitants. However, the actor portraying him gives him a certain charisma.

In one episode, you were definitely meant to side with him, neatly inverting the premise of the show. Some totally rephrensible men came to town and started victimising the inhabitants. Buck brutally took them down one by one because it's "his town" - in his mind, he's the only one who gets to do such stuff. So the viewer is invited to side with the usual protagonist/antagonist of the show as he takes down some one-episode villains.

Kankurette

Quote from: Pink Gregory on July 01, 2022, 11:45:38 AMI still think Warren is the most hateable antagonist in all of Buffy.

The Master/Drusilla/The Mayor/Glory/The First are supernatural beings, fine, those are the stakes but you expect ancient supernatural beings to be evil.

Adam is just terrible all round, so he doesn't count.

But Warren is just a creepy little manipulative misogynist who gets a few breaks and thinks he's a master criminal and shows little if any remorse.  They sort of try to do the 'evil misogynist' thing again with Caleb but I just found that tedious.

Plus he sort of gets extra credit for the whole Andrew/Jonathan thing, even though it's not technically him.
You've nailed it as to why Warren's so gruesome. He's human, not a cyborg, a demon, a hellgod, a vampire or whatever. There are a lot of guys like him in real life (without the building sex bots bit obviously), just as loads of Naruto fans hate Danzo because there are a lot of politicians like him out there, and Harry Potter fans hate Umbridge because there are a lot of people in positions of power like her out there. I mean, there's that awful scene with Katrina - loads of geeky men have fetishes involving women being their brainwashed sex slaves (look up a badass female character on Deviantart and I guarantee you will see loads of art of her being brainwashed into being a walking sex doll) and Buffy showed that actually, brainwashing a woman into sucking you off is a form of rape.

And Buffy herself can't kill humans because it goes against her moral code, but the other Scoobies can. I know Willow's storyline was 'Willow is off her tits on magic and it's a metaphor for drugs and DRUGS ARE BAD' but I can't really blame her for what she did to the guy who not only shot her girlfriend dead, but wasn't even remorseful because Tara was collateral and he was going for Buffy. Who is also Willow's mate.

ETA: and Caleb was possessed by the First or had some kind of connection with it, wasn't he? So not exactly an ordinary human himself.

Endicott

Al Swearengen in Deadwood. Sends Dan to murder a child in the 2nd (or is it 3rd?) episode, and yet. And yet.

Sebastian Cobb

Donald Pleasance as the the wine collector in Columbo.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Endicott on July 01, 2022, 10:15:32 PMAl Swearengen in Deadwood. Sends Dan to murder a child in the 2nd (or is it 3rd?) episode, and yet. And yet.

See Also: Lovejoy. He's ostensibly a crooked antiques dealer, but really he's only fleecing toffs and he redistributes to the wealth to his employees, a simpleton and a pensioner with an alcohol dependency, both of whom would've struggled to find work elsewhere.

Sebastian Cobb

Hetty Wainthropp but then she's basically a live-action Meddlesome Ratbag.

Pink Gregory

Quote from: Kankurette on July 01, 2022, 10:08:28 PMETA: and Caleb was possessed by the First or had some kind of connection with it, wasn't he? So not exactly an ordinary human himself.

That's why I don't find him that compelling.  He's just a magic bastard who calls women 1950s slurs or whatever.  Not really much to work with.

Sebastian Cobb


Sonny_Jim

Data is a prick, though.

Picard is down on the local planet with his best tunic on and is chatting up a sexy alien lady

Picard:  You see baby, I'm kinda a big deal around here.  Anything you need and I can make it so.  And I mean anything
Data (via communicator):  Captain, your phimosis medication has finally been synthesised, would you like me to beam it to your location?
Picard:  Fucks sake, Data.  Why don't you go cockblock Riker for a change?

Deliciousbass

Really like and respect hannibal lecter in silence of the lambs.

Have forever wanted Tom to catch and kill/eat/dowhateverhewantedtodowith Jerry.

Zero Gravitas

Sean Connery was a traitor to the Soviet Union, Skarsgard's mission was legitimate and his conduct heroic.

paddy72

Quote from: bakabaka on July 01, 2022, 07:09:07 AMThe most obvious one is Michelle Gomez whenever she's the villain, from The Green Wing onwards. She stole the show from the very start when she was Missy in Doctor Who and proceeded to strut around with an air of "well, take it off me if you're big enough" for the rest of the series.

I've always found Michelle Gomez incredibly attractive, largely for this reason.

Pink Gregory

Quote from: Deliciousbass on July 02, 2022, 03:00:21 AMReally like and respect hannibal lecter in silence of the lambs.

Have forever wanted Tom to catch and kill/eat/dowhateverhewantedtodowith Jerry.
My favourites were always when they teamed up against a greater foe.

I also love the idea of a cat and a mouse having a 'greater foe'