Avatar: The Last Airbender
Alright, I’m intrigued. Could you explain why?
Zuko, maybe?
AHH I see, I thought of the firelord as the main villain. But I agree with you.
Zuka was never the villain, it was always Ozai, or maybe Azula.
It definitely starts out with Zuko being the villain
I mean it’s a bit spoiler-y to do so, but this also came to my mind.
Zuko is the villain in the beginning. By the end, he has completed a redemption arc and is a good guy.
One could argue that he was always a good guy and was just clouded by his father’s ambition and the loss of his mother.
That’s basically what I meant, he was the main villain in the beginning, after all. Didn’t think about that this would kinda spoil it tho.
The Good Place, season 2.
The French version of La Femme Nikita, although it’s more of a redemption arc than “villain turning out to be a good guy.” She starts out as a junkie petty crook who murders a cop in cold blood, spends most of the film assassinating people for the government, and in the end seems to have gotten her life together.
But she starts out as a very not-nice person.
Assuming you’re counting stories where the villain did very bad things for the purpose of a doing something good, there is an anime from 2005 called Speed Grapher.
Oof that was a hard one to watch sometimes
Can’t believe it’s not mentioned yet, but Alan Moore’s Watchmen
I cant see Ozymandias as a good guy. At all. None of the “heroes” are, but Oz was the worst of them.
I should re-read it, but the impression I got was that Oz was the epitome of this thread’s topic. A real “ends justify the means” villain, where his end goal is to save the world from itself by giving it a common enemy to vanquish. And he does it. In terms of the classical trolley problem, he pulled the lever to kill 1 instead of doing nothing and allowing 5 to die. Am I misremembering?
Veidt asked the precognitive being if his plans for utopia would come to be, and if it was all worth it in the end. Osterman cryptically responded by saying “Nothing ever ends”, and teleported away leaving Veidt once again in doubt as to whether or not his plan was successful.
From what I understood, he spent the whole story acting super-sure about what would happen if he did nothing, and how he alone could fix it. But in the end of the comic, this showed he had doubts. Veidt didnt have precognition, just very good prediction. But also an over-inflated ego. He killed a lot of people for a “maybe”.
Man, such great writing. Yeah, definitely going to have to reread it.
That’s roughly right, but that doesn’t make him in any meaningful way “good”. Of course I also don’t think anyone who decided to drop the bombs on Japan was a “good guy”. But maybe that’s why I’m not a pure utilitarian.
In the movie the only one I would’ve considered good was Rorschach. He was the only one who only made personal sacrifices to save people.
I mean dude legit let himself be killed because he couldn’t live with not telling the world what Ozymandius actually did.
Rorschach being good is debatable, he’s a Batman like vigilante who hasn’t the ‘no killing’ rule, which is dubious.
But the reason he chose death was (in my humble opinion) that he realized Veidt had found the solution, that would bring peace and create a world he would be useless in.
This point is made by the ultra nationalist frontiersman publication he sent his diary to. They complain that they have nothing to write about as the world was united in boring peace, this is when the burger munching intern gets the assignment to pull something out of the loonie pile.
Veidt would never consider himself the good guy for what he did, but I think that’s what makes the writing so excellent.
Nah ozymandies was kind of an ass regardless . Did he solve a big problem ? Yes . Was he a good guy ? Far from it.
And as dr manhatten warned him, nothing would change in the end.
I bought the book just this weekend. Until now I only watched the movie. Looking forward to reading it!
There’s some key differences, so keep an open mind!
If you never say the HBO series, I would watch that after reading the book.
Sophia, Garden of Eden, Genesis
Alex in A Clockwork Orange? 🤔
I haven’t seen the movie, but in the book, absolutely fucking not. At one point he abuses two 10 year-olds and from that point there was precisely 0 empathy from me. Bad shit happened to him while incarcerated which is unfortunate, but a lot of other things that happened to him before the incarceration and after he was released were completely deserved.
Edit: To be clear, he did plenty of other bad shit, and I’m not comparing the things he did between themselves, that was just the tipping point for him becoming irredeemable to me. His age doesn’t make a difference to me.
I haven’t read the book, but yeah, that is pretty fucked up.
Expanding a little on your point, I feel like a lot of people miss one of the themes of the book being “does forcing someone to be a good person by stripping them of their free will actually make them a good person?” I don’t think Alex ever really regretted what he did, it’s just for a short time he couldn’t do it anymore. Even after they reverse his treatment, he goes and forms another gang. iirc The only reason he even thinks about stopping is because the violence isn’t “fun” anymore. So yeah, not really a good guy.
Exactly. Alex is a bad person to the core. He whines not that he did bad things but that he no longer enjoys the bad things.
Alex isn’t a ‘good guy.’ He’s the price you pay to liver in a free society where people are allowed to make their own choices, no matter how stupid they are.
Despicable Me?
Not exactly a story. I just watched Babylon 5, and it’s fascinating how the good guys are the bad guys are the good guys are the bad guys…
Who are you?
What do you want?
Also, I think good and bad is a bit fluid there. It’s just people with different agendas. Well, except emperor Cartagia. And perhaps Bester.
What bad guys are good guys? The reverse is obviously Vorlons.
No bad guys are good guys. And most good guys are not good guys, either.
The Shadows, the Centauri and the PSI Corps are introduced as “bad guys” but gain a lot of positive aspects during the show without becoming “good guys”. The Nightwatch and the Earth Governement under president Clark are “bad guys” – but quite a few of there supporters/members become important “good” characters, like Zach Allan, Elizabeth Lochley or Susanna Luchenko.
That’s my point about the Babylon 5 series – they deconstruct the good guy/bad guy meme. Mostly.
Gru in Despicable Me.
Zangief in Wreck-it Ralph: “You are bad guy but this does not mean you are bad guy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”
The bible
Who’s the ‘main villain’ in the Bible?
Humanity.
If you were asked that on family fued, the top answer would be satan for sure. Though I like the other persons answer of humanity too.
Uhh…Satan?
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Damn… I thought I had a unique thought
Does Snape count?
What about Loki(marvel)?
Snape was never a good guy though. Very brave, yes and he had some good qualities. He was also vindictive and a bully - willing to put his petty dislikes above the quality of his teaching.
Snape was a good guy, in a sense of oposing the bad guy.
He was however not a good guy in a sense of being at least a decent human being.
He was also vindictive and a bully
I formed the impression that James Potter and his gang were the real bullies, and Snape is a tragic character traumatized by their bullying.
Yes, but then he went on to be an adult bullying children.
Do you honestly think hed be able to keep undercover if he didnt act like a slytherin asshole?
The book strongly implies that Snape turns into a horrible person as a direct consequence of James Potter’s bullying. He seems to be a nice kid before that.
Tragic and also an asshole.
Maybe it was an act he had to play
In the scheme of the books, yes. He was a main antagonist for a while. In terms of his character, to what end did he have to act like a total dick to a child? No, he’s just a salty bitch.
Oh wow, you found my epitaph.
Watch ‘The Wire’ - the good guys are bad guys, bad guys are good guys. It’s all mixed up!
You have the most appropiate username.
Game of Thrones, everyone is basically a villain but some of them are actually alright (like the Hound and Jamie).
I think Jaime becomes a good guy. He starts out as a bad guy but he had a redemption arc.
He starts out as a nepo-baby and then has to actually do shit throughout the show.
Stannis was right but an asshole.
Ned was right but an idiot. As were Robb and John.
Sandor had a decent conscience he never fucking listened to.
Brienne always listened to hers and never made a good decision.
Jaime was only an anti-hero.
Mance… probably could’ve left out the cannibals.
Robb was such a fucking idiot… political marriages are a thing and affairs are so common that each region has a specific name for bastards. The series running up to the red wedding read like a Greek tragedy - just one person having a modicum of sense would’ve derailed the whole thing. Lust let loose.
Stannis was wrong first. He was bitter that he was passed over and could never resolve that - if he had he’d be living on easy street. Stubborn fucking pride.
My favorite part about aGoT is just how fucking obviously everyone gets fucked over by their flaws… the only real exception here is Jamie and Sansa - Jamie owes a karmic debt and Sansa was legitimately just “wrong place wrong timed”
Sansa wanted a fairy-tale life and GRRM asked, “Have you read many fairy tales?”
Not everyone i thought jon, robert, ned, arya,hoddor and tyrrion was good and thats from the top of my head.
Did they make Jamie less of a tool in the show or something? Cause in the books he basically just goes back to doing what he was doing before, minus one hand and plus lots of moping.
In the third season of the legend of korra, a group of people try to get rid of a monarchy (which is long established as especially unequal and oppressive) in favor of self government. They also try to get rid of the avatar, because she is an infallible being with incredibly outsized power. I love the avatar universe and get how they needed to fight them, but the group wasn’t wrong
I think what made that group such good villains is that you could definitely see their point of view. That said, they left behind a TON of collateral damage, and they didn’t seem to care that innocent people, including children, died in their wake everywhere they went. They were terrorists that happened to have a noble cause.
I’ve been meaning to re-watch Korra, but I remember even the first time I watched it being a bit disappointed in the “enlightened centrism” where they are trying to paint every conflict as pacifists vs extremists.
I think it’s similar to looking at BioShock 1 and BioShock Infinite. There’s a lot of writers out there who just use politics and ideology as a setting for the conflict rather than actually being central to their message. It’s simply a solid formula to make a villain: take any sort of stance and push it to violent extremes. Comstock is a religious zealot, Andrew Ryan I don’t think ever even mentions spirituality if I remember. Ken Levine’s message in the two games is not about religion, but extremes.
There are benefits. It makes the villains more nuanced and relatable. It gives the protagonist room for doubt and allows for some of the “good” guys to take on antagonistic roles. But Korra also ends up supporting an oppressive regime, and Booker DeWitt gets shoehorned into fights against the people rebelling against his enemy because… Reasons?
No they definitely were bad guys. You cant try to murder someone just because they were born as a specific person you dont like and be good guys. And they didnt differentiate between the Earth queen and any other ruler. Their ideology when it came down to it, was indefensible trash.
Even the first season had Amon, the guy that wanted equality between benders and non-benders. At one point we’re even shown that power was cut to a predominantly non-bender neighborhood, and when people went outside to protest to get their power turned back on, they were all rounded up and arrested. Afterwards, when Korra goes and tries to get the people that were arrested set free, she’s told
All equalist suspects are being detained indefinitely. They’ll be freed if and when the task force deems them no longer a threat.
Just in case it wasn’t clear enough by that point that non-benders were treated as second class citizens.
All of the LoK villains were basically correct, and had to be caricatures of their stated beliefs in order to be villains. Amon was one of the better ones IMO though. Zaheer is too unrealistic
If you’re talking about Kuvira you should read the comics that take place after the show. My feelings on Kuvira became much more mixed as I ended up sympathizing with her after finishing them.
Its about Zaheer and his gang
Oh. In my defense I haven’t watched Korra for years and thought it was only 3 seasons.
He’s talking about Zaheer and the Red Lotus. They were extremely well intentioned, but set about their goals with violence.
Mate. I already got corrected, what’s the point of telling me the same thing twice? Unless you just want attention. Blocking you.
Even in the first season, I was siding with the equalists :s
The formula for a good villain is “legitimate grievance, insane solution.”
They also try to get rid of the avatar, because she is an infallible being with incredibly outsized power.
Did autocorrect change “fallible”? Because otherwise it makes the opposite point.
Probably a brain fart, thanks s
