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Which movie was it for you? (where the actions of the bad guys were actually relatable?)
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this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Any good movie will have you empathizing with "the bad guys".
Emphasizing is a much lower bar than thinking they’re justified, though. I emphasize with Lex Luthor, but don’t actually think he’s right.
As opposed to, say, Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, who was totally correct that something needed to be done about the evil mutated aristocrat kidnapping and imprisoning people from the village.
he was right, he was also an asshole though.
those ain't mutually exclusive
Absolutely. Whether someone is an asshole is a third question, alongside whether they’re justified and whether I can emphasize with them. Each answer can be very different.
His motivation wasn't to free the townspeople from a horrible autocratic aristocrat, it was to prove to the townspeople that he was a worthwhile individual by indiscriminately killing something.
And sexually harass Belle.
maybe a hot take, but especially today I disagree with this premise. Thanks to Marvel, I'd say the misunderstood villain trope is at an all time high, to the point where I now prefer media that just has bastards who are evil for the love of the game.
The Pure Evil Villain does have a lot to recommend to it.
Did Marvel really have a lot of those? I think the main issue is they had too many villains, period. Most of which aren't misunderstood, merely forgettable. Hero's Journey + Scary Villainous Antagonist is not the only story template out there.
The problem is most marvel movies aren't trying to tell a meaningful story with (inter)personal conflict and character growth, but to move their characters along from hijink to hijink using rote storytelling techniques.
There's nothing wrong with having a BBEG, or a nuanced villain, or even a morally correct antagonist that is only pitted against the protagonist through happenstance. There are Great stories that use all of those tropes. The only relevant question is what story is being told and which antagonist best helps move it forward.
Disagree. Some antagonists are bastards, and you can obviously make a good movie where people oppose them.
The bad guys in Star Wars are Nazis. "You do not, under any circumstances, 'gotta hand it to them.'"
I think you forget about the whole scene where Luke empathizes with his father at the end where he's about to die. Not to mention the entire of the prequels where it shows how Anakin was a good dude who had suffered so much, and that's what eventually drew him to "the dark side".
The question stands. Was A New Hope not a good movie, when absolutely nothing was done to empathize with the bad guys?
So the original movie wasn't good?
While the original movie was called Star Wars, many people refer to the series of movies as Star Wars.
Being pedantic isnt gonna help your argument here.
The whole fucking argument is that you don't need relatable villains for a good movie.
Acknowledging that woobifying Vader happened later isn't pedantic, it is the point.
You don't have to empathize with Palpatine. He's a manipulative dictator. You don't have to empathize with Tarkin. You don't really need to empathize with any of the generals Vader chokes in the original trilogy. You are not expected to wonder about the inner life and emotional state of the bounty hunters who must be told, "no disintegrations."
It is fine for a movie to have bad guys who are just fucking bad guys. Sometimes - that's how it is in real life.
You completely miss the point of my comment.
Im sure you feel liberated by the upvotes.
Further sneering projection won't help anyone.
Not even if you do it again about this comment. Can you imagine what it would be like if you're just plain wrong about my internal state? Like maybe steering the conversation back to the other guy's chosen topic isn't right-or-wrong based on some numbers above each comment?