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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.