21 Complex Movie Villains That Were Right
The Epic of Gilgamesh. Hamlet. The Tale of the Heike.
These and other stories have stood the test of time. They have gone on to define human civilization and contain insights that inspire readers still today.
And yet, for all of their value, they and others come down to a basic binary between a good guy and a bad guy. So the fundamental is that we use the words “protagonist” and “antagonist” to describe a main character and their obstacle. The Greek root word “agon” means struggle, underscoring that most stories feature a struggle between two people.
Yet, viewers don’t always agree with the stakes of that struggle. In some cases, the movie supports the worldview of the protagonist, but viewers agree with the antagonist. Instead of disrupting a viewing experience, these instances make the movie richer, drawing attention to a complex morality that goes beyond good guys and bad guys.
1. Starship Troopers (1997)
Throughout Starship Troopers, a quartet of good-looking young people fight an onslaught of disgusting bug aliens. Although the soldiers of the United Citizen Federation suffer some horrific and graphic losses, the movie underscores the heroes’ victories with flashy set-pieces and stirring music.
However, anyone paying even a little attention to Starship Troopers will notice how the United Citizen Federation treats soldiers like grist ground up in its conquests. They’ll notice the way the supposed good guys delight in the fear and suffering of their enemies. And they might even notice that the humans invaded the bugs, not the other way around. That’s because Dutch director Paul Verhoeven and screenwriter Edward Neumeier’s adaptation of the Robert A. Heinlein novel Starship Troopers operates as a satire on fascism, daring the viewer to cheer a totalitarian force.
2. Ghostbusters (1984)
The success of the 1984 sensation Ghostbusters owes in part to its grounded premise. The Ghostbusters act more like everyday exterminators than they do mystical warriors, just regular schlubs trying to clean up the city. From that perspective, the audience pulls for the Ghostbusters not just when they’re stopping the interdimensional conqueror Gozer the Gozerian from invading, but also when they’re befuddling EPA official Walter Peck, played with oozing smugness by William Atherton.
But even blue-collar folks need to avoid poisoning the environment, especially when running a business. Peck may not be as smart as Egon (Harold Ramis) or funny as Venkman (Bill Murray), but he has a point. The Ghostbusters’ operation poses a hazard to the environment and thus needs regulation. Insults about the guy’s anatomy won’t change that fact.
3. X-Men (2000)
The first X-Men movie opens with an audacious sequence in which the young Erik Lehnsherr’s powers develop as Nazis drag him away from his mother in a death camp. As the boy (Brett Morris) reaches for his family, his ability to control metal kicks in and tears an iron gate down. Of course, that boy grows into Magneto (Ian McKellan), the mutant who leads a campaign against humanity, which must be stopped by Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and the X-Men.
As in the comics that inspired it, X-Men often presents Magneto as a type of tyrant, a man who wants to conquer the world and rule as its mutant leader. But the Auschwitz opening proves Magneto’s basic point, that humans will try to ostracize and eradicate anything they consider different. Even if that fact doesn’t support mutant supremacy, it does suggest that, at least to a certain degree, Magneto is right.
4. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
The mind-bending multiversal adventure tale Everything Everywhere All at Once puts nondescript laundromat operator Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) and her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) on a mission against a cosmic omnivore called Jobu Tupaki. Jobu Tupaki, they’re told, wants to reduce existence to nothingness, to devour reality until meaning cannot exist. So imagine her surprise when Evelyn discovers that Jobu Tupaki is, in fact, her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu).
Within all of the kung-fu and absurdity, Everything Everywhere All at Once has a human heart at its core. Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert use Jobu Tupaki and her black hole/everything bagel as a symbol of the nihilism that any young adult would feel when setting out in a world with so many problems. Although most would support the more upbeat perspective that Evelyn and Waymond take when combatting Jobu Tupaki, no honest person can take exception with Joy’s pessimism about her life.
5. Blade Runner (1982)
Despite its neon streets and android-hunting plot, Blade Runner borrows heavily from film noir. With noir comes a moral ambiguity that doesn’t lend itself to easy binaries between good and evil. However, director Ridley Scott and screenwriters Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, adapting the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, do build to a confrontation between the blade runner Deckard (Harrison Ford) and the replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer).
Roy does some nasty things on the way to getting what he wants, as does Deckard. But the difference lies in their ultimate motivation. Deckard looks for replicants like Roy to retire them (kill them) because that’s his job. Roy just wants to live, making most of his behavior an act of self-defense.
6. Princess Mononoke (1997)
Anime titan Hayao Miyazaki has never dabbled in noir, but he also rejects simple good and evil binaries, even in a fantasy adventure like Princess Mononoke. The fierce-looking San featured in the movie’s promotional material looks like a hero, and the demon-corrupted boar god Okkoto looks like a villain. But Miyazaki’s tender, thoughtful script adds moral complexity.
San and her sometimes ally Ashitaka do try to stop the corrupted Okkoto from spreading filth further around the land. But neither Okkoto itself nor even the demon, are evil entities. Rather, they are victims, responding to the way people have made use of nature.
7. Die Hard (1988)
Another ‘80s classic, another chance for William Atherton to play a slimeball who has a point.
Most of Die Hard follows New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis), who tries to free the Nakatami Plaza from criminal Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). Secrecy gives John his one edge over Gruber’s men, who outman and outgun him. But when sleazy reporter Richard Thornburg (Atherton) learns about the events, he’ll share every piece of information he can get his hands on.
As with Ghostbusters, Atherton does nothing to make his character likable. Furthermore, director John McTiernan and screenwriters Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, who adapt the novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp, give Thornburg the most selfish and reckless motivations. However, he’s not wrong in thinking that the public deserves to know about a policeman shooting people, even bad people, to say nothing of the effect on public services. He might go about it in the worst possible manner, but that doesn’t mean Thornburg’s off base.
8. Black Panther (2018)
A good portion of Black Panther consists of the titular hero (Chadwick Boseman) learning that he’s wrong. He begins by messing up a mission conducted by his love interest, Nakia (Lupita Nyongo). Later, he fails to acknowledge the words of his advisor and friend W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya). Worst of all, he at first accepts his predecessors’ treatment of his cousin N’Jadaka (Michael B. Jordan), who suffered exile from the advanced nation of Wakanda and saw firsthand global racism.
According to the viewpoint of Black Panther, N’Jadaka, who earns the name Killmonger, goes too far in his plans. After all, he does want to use Wakanda’s resources to set up an empire, not unlike the one that colonized and subjugated people like him. However, director Ryan Coogler and his co-writer Joe Robert Cole also let Black Panther see the validity of Killmonger’s argument, making it just one more lesson the hero has to learn.
9. ParaNorman (2012)
The Lakia stop-motion animated film ParaNorman features a weird kid who doesn’t care that he gets rejected by society because he can talk to ghosts. Voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee, Norman is a sweet kid who becomes the most important guy in town when zombies invade the city, driven by a powerful witch.
Writer Chris Butler, who co-directs ParaNorman with Chris Fell, puts Norman and his cohorts through some terrifying ordeals. But once Norman talks with the zombies, he realizes that the twisted looks on their faces come from regret, not rage, as they express sorrow for the bigotry and self-righteousness they embraced when they lived.
In life, they directed that abuse at little Agatha Prenderghast (Jodelle Ferland), who has returned as a vengeful ghost after the town elders drove her to her death in the 1700s. More than a wry reversal of motivations, this sympathy for the villain makes ParaNorman a powerful call for empathy.
10. King Kong (1933)
King Kong just wants to be worshiped. Okay, that might seem like a tall order, on the scale of the most maniacal baddy. But the inhabitants of Skull Island worshiped Kong his whole life. When movie maker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) captures Kong and brings the beast to America, he’s taken a wild animal out of his habitat and subjected him to a strange new world. Is it any wonder that Kong responds by terrorizing the city?
At times, directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack seem to understand that fact and portray Kong as a trapped animal. Animator Willis H. O’Brien puts vulnerability into Kong, which reveals more than a rampaging monster. However, the script by James Creelman and Ruth Rose also sees Kong as the Eight Wonder of the World, something terrible and frightening, whose beauty-induced death is ironic and just.
11. Cobra (1986)
When the movie that would become Beverley Hills Cop went into production, Paramount Pictures signed Sylvester Stallone to star. As part of his deal, Stallone had the right to rewrite the script and transform the action comedy into a hyper-violent bit of gun-fest. Paramount balked at the changes, so Stallone took his script and left the project, changing it into the mean-spirited thriller Cobra.
In Cobra, Stallone’s Detective Cobretti, aka “the Cobra,” hunts down an axe-wielding killer cult, a group that deserves no defense. However, along the way, Cobretti’s supervisor Detective Monte (Andrew Robinson) tries to get him off the streets. Cobretti insists that the extreme nature of the crimes requires a hostile response, but it’s hard to disagree with Monte.
Some versions of the script made Monte the cult’s secret leader, but in the movie that hit theaters, he’s the one guy who knows that his fellow officer is a menace.
12. Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2018)
Based on the comic book series by Mike Mignola, Hellboy and its sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, make all manner of surprising reversals. Hellboy (Ron Perlman) might be a demon from the depths, but he’s also a hero, who fights to defend humanity from evil forces, be they humans or monsters.
In The Golden Army, written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, Hellboy faces the Elf Prince Nuada Silverlance (Luke Goss) seeks a legendary group of soldiers to restore his people’s rule over the Earth. Throughout the movie, Prince Nuada points out all of the times that humans have destroyed the environment, thus proving that they don’t deserve to rule. Not even Hellboy can disagree.
13. Maleficent (2014)
The animated movie Shrek set off a run of postmodern fairy tales, which offered a new look at these oft-told stories. The most moving of them came with 2014’s Maleficent, directed by Robert Stromberg and written by Linda Woolverton. Maleficent stars Angelina Jolie as the titular fantasy figure, best known as the witch who curses the princess in Sleeping Beauty, portrayed here by Elle Fanning.
The same plot plays out in Maleficent, but the movie puts her actions in a different context. Before walking into the palace to send Aurora into a deep slumber, the king betrays Maleficent, who uses his influence to torment her. Jolie makes Maleficent’s anger just, even when directed toward the innocent Aurora, a strike against an evil empire instead of a cruel trick on an infant.
14. Frankenstein (1931)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus as a warning against scientific hubris. The Universal Pictures version, directed by James Whale with a screenplay credited to Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh, makes Victor Frankenstein’s creation (Colin Clive) more of a frightening beast, taking away the Monster’s ability to speak and diminishing his intelligence.
Even under layers of impressive makeup by Jack Pierce, Boris Karloff builds pathos for the Monster. That sympathy even continues when the Monster drowns a child after a misunderstanding, which sends angry villagers after him. The villagers managed to take down Frankenstein, the true villain who dabbled in the domain of the Almighty.
15. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
Audiences love Tony Stark, but that’s because he’s played by the handsome and charming Robert Downey Jr. If a real Tony Stark existed, he would be an arrogant man who uses all of his company’s creations as part of his superhero dreams. So although most viewers boo Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), the special effects artist who takes the name Mysterio and vexes Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Far From Home, he has good reason to hate Tony Stark.
Mysterio came into existence when Beck and other disgruntled Stark employees wanted to take their inventions back from the industrialist who coopted them. Of course, director Jon Watts and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers have Mysterio go too far, treating his fellow Stark-haters like garbage and trying to kill Spider-Man. But Beck started down that dark path because Stark gets whatever he wants.
16. Saw VI (2009)
No bad guy thinks of themselves as a villain, but few killers share the delusions of John Kramer (Tobin Bell), the killer known as Jigsaw. When Kramer finds people who, in his opinion, do not appreciate their lives, he kidnaps them and puts them through gruesome puzzles to teach them a lesson. In Saw VI, directed by Kevin Greutert and written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, Kramer turns his attention to insurance agent William (Peter Outerbridge).
William uses an algorithm to decide who does or does not get coverage, which can have disastrous outcomes for patients such as Kramer, who could not try the cancer treatment he wanted. Furthermore, not only does Kramer torture several other innocent people while teaching William a lesson, including a janitor and a secretary, but he also puts far too much pressure on just one man.
William did not create the horrible medical industry, nor did his death change it. Instead, Kramer takes out all of his anger on a small cog in a huge machine to make himself feel righteous.
17. The Rock (1996)
Nobody goes to a rock ‘em, sock ‘em Michael Bay movie for deep thoughts and philosophical conflict. But even the least engaged viewer of The Rock has to sympathize with General Francis X. Hummel (Ed Harris), who leads a small platoon to occupy Alkatraz. Hummel threatens to attack the country with chemical weapons, but that’s just a bluff. Instead, Hummel wants the country to pay his soldiers what they’re owed, as the military abandoned them after deeming them worthless.
Director Bay and writers David Weisberg, Douglas S. Cook, and Mark Rosner don’t spend too much time fleshing out Hummel. Instead, they focus the viewers’ attention on the mismatched heroes Stanley Godspeed (Nicolas Cage) and John Patrick Mason (Sean Connery). However, even within all the explosions and gunshots, The Rock acknowledges the dignity of Hummel’s mission.
18. The Matrix (1999)
“I’d like to share a revelation during my time here,” the program Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) tells his captive enemy Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne). Smith goes on to remind Morpheus that humans spread and occupy every space available to them, consuming the resources and moving on. “Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.”
Given that argument, Smith doesn’t seem like the villain of The Matrix, written and directed by Lily and Lana Wachowski. The fact that Smith and the other machines gave humanity a world to enjoy, even in one instance a utopia, seems kind. Instead of wiping out the humans, the Machines contain them and give them a happy existence. Why would Neo (Keanu Reeves) want to ruin that?
19. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Among legendary director Stanley Kubrick’s many achievements, one of the most impressive occurs in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he co-wrote with Arthur C. Clarke. In 2001, Kubrick made the super-computer HAL 9000 a terrifying presence, even though it appears as little more than a single red light. When HAL apologizes for locking out Doctors. David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), it sure seems like the machine has gone bad.
However, that perspective does not take into account the movie’s evolutionary perspective. The monolith that appears throughout the film signals each next step in human development. Thus, HAL calculated that Bowman and Poole were not yet ready to advance, a calculation proven right by David’s strange fate at the end of the film.
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
Nurse Ratched might be the most surprising inclusion on this list. It’s not just the way that she clashes with patient Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson). It’s also the even condescending tone that Louise Fletcher adopts when playing the character. Miloš Forman’s take on the Ken Kesey novel, written by Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman, questionable behavior from Ratched. But in her interactions with McMurphy, the nurse has the moral high ground.
Ratched’s emotionless treatment aggravates viewers, but she’s still a medical professional trying to treat a group of disturbed individuals. Furthermore, as much as Kesey resented Forman’s interpretation of his novel, the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest does have an individualist, anti-conformity ethos, which made anyone who tries to exert control over McMurphy, especially a woman, suspect. Viewers who don’t have the same distrust of institutions see Ratched as a far more sympathetic character.
21. Hannibal (2001)
When Thomas Harris released Hannibal, his follow-up novel to The Silence of the Lambs, readers recoiled at its excesses and bleak tone. When Ridley Scott brought Hannibal to the screen, he kept things within an R-rated range but still retained many of the book’s over-the-top unpleasantries. Chief among them is the principal antagonist, Mason Verger, a disfigured former victim of Hannibal Lecter who plots his revenge.
Brought to life by Gary Oldman under mounds of prosthetics, Mason Verger lives to disgust. Harris, and screenwriters David Mamet and Steven Zaillian, fill the script with all sorts of nasty details, such as his predilection for drinking martinis made from the tears of children. But as much as Hannibal wants the viewers to cheer for the dashing Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), it doesn’t quite work. Even at his most charming, Lecter remains a horrible man who deserves a horrible death.
