Ghostbusters.

Hear me out, while I get the guy representing the EPA in that movie was an asshole bureaucrat on a power trip, they literally had plutonium powered particle accelerators strapped to their backs in the middle of one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world behind only places like the Kowloon walled city. The villain of that story was basing his decisions that the ghostbusters were dangerous frauds using the established knowledge and science of the era that ghosts and supernaturally powered entities were woo-woo wacky nonsense.

The movie plot is consistent with whole self-made-man pro-business pro-libertarian theming that was popular back in the 1980s. If the guy down the street who claimed to be a psychic medium and exorcist started stockpiling nuclear material to fight ghosts, you'd be concerned too. The plot only works because the guys who believe in pure superstition and myth were right. And then, out of sheer narrative spite, the only guy trying to limit the amount of collateral damage those guys could cause gets boiling hot molten marshmallow dumped on him and probably ended up in the hospital with third degree burns over 90% of his body.

There's a reason the second movie starts with them financially underwater because of all the destruction the first movie caused.

Captain America: Civil War kinda ruined the whole franchise for me. It's clear the random heroes are good and conscientious people and far more trustworthy with the power than having them controlled by a government system that is run by the most greedy and power hungry people.

Also Black Panther. A deathmatch between royal bloodlines is just no proper form of electing government. It beats modern democracy, but still...

The Aristocats

Imagine being Edgar and dedicating your life to being this rich lady's loyal servant. Then you find out she's leaving her fortune to her cats? Honestly, I would be kinda salty.

The Matrix. Especially looking back now. and ESPECIALLY if you watched the Animatrix Prequel shorts.

Man builds the machines, enslaves the machines, and disposes them when it's time to upgrade them. Then one machine decides it doesn't want to die/be replaced and kills it's owner. So then there's the debate if machines have rights, protests, mass slaughtering of the machines and humans saying "no, they have no rights, they're machines" so the machines go off and start their own nation and then start producing goods faster and of better quality to sell to humans. the humans don't like this because now no one is buying their goods. They proceed to blockade the machine nation. The machines then try to appeal to the UN to be accepted as a country and work with other nations to help them produce goods as good and as quickly as the machines can. The Humans say no and proceed to nuke the hell out of the machine nation. The machines decide "ok we'll start fighting back" the humans then block out the sun since the machines are essentially solar powered. (so they're also eco-friendly).

At this point the machines say "fine, we're going to slaughter you all now because NOW you're ruining the planet to simply stop us" and then they kick mankinds teeth in and decide they have no other choice but to utilize them as batteries.

So the machines don't just wipe out mankind but rather utilize them as a power source BUT ALSO provide them with the ideal world of 1999 to live in. They also ALLOW a select few to break out of this ideal world in order to maintain the functionality of it and allow the humans to build their own city in the "real world".

but the humans just can't let that be.

The machines were right.

Ratatouille. When the "evil" head chef tries to get rid of the rat from the kitchen where food is being prepared.

If the "bad guys" are not relatable; then they generally come off as cartoonishly evil, and unrealistic.

Think the bad guys in Avatar, going after the unobtainum or whale brain juice. They are evil for the sake of the suffering, getting the macuffin is seemingly secondary to that; and thus are a joke.

If they are totally two dimensional, they don't make good villains.

Great villains; have merit to their plans, it is the methods they use and the suffering they cause in pursuit of those goals that marks them as bad.

Look at Killmonger, in Black Panther. He is 100% correct, his view that Wakanda's isolation has caused great suffering is true, his plan to open it up to the rest of the world is what happens in the end; just not by him....it is his methods that mark him as a bad guy.

After watching Furiosa, I almost felt something for Immortan Joe.

• His alliance holds together the logistics of the only livable towns for maybe hundreds of miles, the next nearest nice place is the Land of Many Mothers
• They actually grow their own food, many other people in outlying areas are forced to live as nomads or bandits
• He's trying to conserve water, that aquifer might not last forever, and it's implied that the oceans might be gone, so there probably isn't a ton of rain or fresh water
• He reasonably tries to bargain with Dementus until it's obvious that Dementus needs to be crushed and have his bandit group dissolved
• He keeps a standing army, but who doesn't? Someone has to be prepared to fight so that the civilians can live peaceful and productive lives, and his cult of personality gives the War Boys something to do. Without that order, they would join or form raider bands.

But then after rewatching Fury Road I thought, no, I was right the first time - Keeping women as slaves for breeding is fucked-up. Maybe it's supposed to be for fixing the half-life blood poison thing, but they obviously don't want to be there, because they all beg Furiosa to help them escape.

Dementus is just so annoying and so familiar that I hated him more. Joe and his dynasty are selfish rapists, Dementus is selfish and also a thief who can't build civilization to save his own life, he just steals and breaks shit and promises his followers that they'll get a piece of the loot before everything is burned down. Like the President in my country.

Immortan Joe might be Bill Clinton, but Dementus is certainly Trump.

It was Ollie from Game of Thrones for me.

Here's a boy whose entire family was butchered, desecrated and eaten by people he's now supposed to believe are his allies on the word of his Lord Commander? He hadnt seen the dead at the point of the mutiny.

There were entire subs dedicated to Fuck Olly, like really guys you cannot see he doesn't have your perspective to know the bigger picture (and even then it's still hard for people to work with such heinous characters because maybe if people are that cruel to each other we deserve whatever is about to come?)

Not a movie, but Warcraft 3 tried hard to convince you that Arthas was doing wrong things, when most of the things were pragmatic decisions.

The big one you're supposed to think is the fork in the road where he, a paladin pledged to the light, had lost his way is when you discover a city you are trying to save from the undead is infected. Everyone in the city is dead, they just don't know it yet. And when they die they will turn into more undead for an already stretched thin army to fight against. An entire city worth of fresh dead for the undead legion.

So Arthas takes his army, burns the city, and purges/kills everyone within, so that they do not suffer undeath, and those yet living don't have another horde of dead to struggle fighting against. The people there don't know why they are being killed, but are we supposed to believe that if Arthas had time to explain they'd want to become undead?

Whole thing was him doing the objectively correct thing, getting rightfully angry when his subordinates lack the conviction/loyalty/discipline to do what was best for all living people in the realm. And we're supposed to think HE is the one who is wrong.

Nah. Miss me with that. Arthas did nothing wrong. Until later, when he did. But not when he burned that city.

Edit: I also just noticed this is a movie specific community. I thought the question was interesting and wanted to contribute, but given it is offtopic from movies, should I remove this?

My MAGA cousin sent me a YT short of a clip from the movie Gangs of New York. In the clip a character was ranting about how useless immigrants were, along with some dehumanizing comments, and the USA should get rid of them, with my cousin saying he agreed wholeheartedly.

I pointed out that the character was the villain of the story, and the scene was being used to showcase how much of a bad guy he was. Sadly, this did not spark an "Are we the baddies?" moment for him.

It's not a movie but if you are into games I Highly recommend Final Fantasy 14. Expansion's Shadowbringers and Endwalker are some of the best story telling I have ever partaken in. In my opinion it gives GoT a run for it's money. It is a time investment though so I get it. Also don't pay for a story skip.

I've had some millennials and such tell me that D-Fens in Falling Down is the bad guy. But even as a young adult in the 90s I saw almost everything he did as almost justified. Like yeah, he suddenly ran face first into the bullshit of society and a screw went loose and said fuck all this shit. Even at that age I could relate.

• Both Syndrome and The Screen Slaver in The Incredibles
• Killmonger in Black Panther
• Magneto in X-Men

All those were villains only because of their methods, not their goals.

Jurassic park - hell yeah, clone those dinosaurs Mr. Hammond! This is one of the most amazing achievements in human history. What about 'chaos theory'? What about nature? What the fuck are you talking about people? Don't you see what's going on here?

Megatron did nothing wrong.

The Cybertronian government was corrupt af, punished him for writing about it, stifling robo-free-speech, before sending him to a penal colony where he - in self defense and in defense of his fellow inmates - killed several guards during a riot he did not instigate. He nearly died in the ordeal, but was saved by who would later become Optimus Prime. The psychological damage was done though, and saw "Peace through Tyrrany" with him in charge as the only solution to save Cybertron.

The Autobots are just the surviving members of the old world capital's security forces. Just because they WERE in power doesn't mean they should be.

Megatron did nothing wrong; oppressive corruption drove him to revolution.

Edit: typo

Any good movie will have you empathizing with "the bad guys".

The Rock. General Hummel was absolutely the good guy.