4 Movie Villains Who Weren’t So Evil

Last night I got home from work and figured:

“Hey, it’s been a few days since you’ve checked up on WordPress Maybe you’re lazy ass should do something more productive than watch reruns of CSI.”

So I logged on and was shell shocked at the ridiculous amount of views per hour. Holy fuck, THANK YOU. Most of you had the nicest things to say but sleep won out and I couldn’t answer everyone but THANK YOU!

Now the pressure is on. This week already has my stats so disproportionate and now there are all these people reading it! It was different when there were around 30 people following, if I wrote something terrible I could only disappoint and misinform a few dozen people. Like a teacher. But now I have principle level responsibility. You know if I ran one of those schools in a small town where any parent who really cared about their child’s education would send them to the next county over. Suddenly my next planned article doesn’t seem like enough so instead I’m doing a follow up of sorts.

Just like some of our heroes have a bit of a jerk streak, some villains aren’t evil to their core. Some bad guys really think they’re doing what’s best even if a little misguided. Some are even, dare I say, justified in their fiendish plots? They do say the road to hell is paved with children’s bones, lung tar, and good intentions.

Here Are 5 Movie Villains Who Meant Well:

4. MAGNETO

The X-Men series really doesn’t have a problem playing with the notion of an ethically grey area. Depending on the circumstance characters on either side of the “mutant problem” could be set up as villains or heroes.

It would be easy to make the case that Senator Kelly from the first movie wasn’t actually a bad guy. He was a human living in a world with mutants some of whom are retardedly powerful and menacing. Wanting to have these people registered with the government seems relatively fair.

Relatively.

The case for Erik Lencher is a little more complicated. I don’t think anyone could disagree he’s a sympathetic bad guy. Magneto’s been persecuted his whole life and made to hide and he’s sick of it. He wants his kind to be able to live out in the open without fear of homo sapiens. Unfortunately he lacks his old friend Charles Xavier’s optimism for the human race and you can’t really blame him. The guy is a holocaust survivor for fuck sakes. He knows what evils and hatred humanity is capable of.

So much evil…

He doesn’t see society ever getting to a place where humans and mutants can peacefully coincide and the humans really haven’t given him any reason to change his mind. Mutant hate crimes, mutant experiments, a cure! The world is decades, maybe centuries away from co-existance. And that’s on top of all the other fucked up shit the human race is responsible for, wars: genocides, mass pollution. Humans have had their shot running the world and maybe now it’s time they gave it up to the Mutants. They are the next stage in evolution after all, history tells us it’s only natural for them to inherit the earth.

Sure, it’d be cool if humans were pushed out of the population naturally instead of you know, being straight up destroyed. Sure, death to all humans is a little harsh but what else are they supposed to do? Sit around and wait to be nuked by the army? All the species tension kind of makes for a kill or be killed environment.

Also, Fucking Gandalf.

3. NURSE RATCHED

For the record, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest‘s Nurse Ratched is a bitch but that doesn’t change the fact that she is just trying to do her job. As far as she’s concerned she’s done everything necessary in order to make her job working with mental patients manageable. Nurse at a mental heath facility: that’s gotta be a hard fucking job. And yeah she IS kind of a tyrant but doesn’t that kind of go along with any position of authority? If not it definitely comes with being in a position where you take care of people likely to throw poop at you.  She’s a tight ass. She isn’t cuddly. But that doesn’t necessarily make her a bad person.

Maybe the extent of physical restraint and manhandling from the orderlies is extreme but Ratched is a woman working in a place where potentially dangerous patients out number her grossly. I can’t blame her for being cautious. I’d be scared shitless. During a lot of the group scenes she maintains a pretty even temper and seems to take the groups antics in stride.

She runs her group like a well oiled machine. Under her watch there are no violent outbursts or episodes. Not until McMurphy is sent in anyway. Think about it. Everything is fine until he comes along and decides things aren’t right. Is she supposed to let him sneak in prostitutes and run a gambling ring from the hospital?

Oh you silly psychologically disturbed boys! Who wants another valium!

He’s practically taking advantage of these maladjusted men. He encourages these guys to act out just making her difficult job that much harder. And lets not forget what he’s in for, Randle is in the asylum to avoid doing a stint in jail for having sex with a 15 year old girl.

She told me she was ALMOST 18.

She should be uncomfortable around him and he deserves to have to put up with some of her shit. Did he deserve a lobotomy? I’m gonna say no, but after attacking a nurse he probably deserved more than a slap on the wrist.

Maybe these guys are over medicated and maybe they don’t have enough freedom but psychology had only existed for what 30-40 years at that point? Electroshock therapy? That was just something they did. They hadn’t come very far is what I’m saying.  They didn’t know any better.

2. SID

Sid is the sadistic little bastard from Toy Story who gets off on taking apart his toys and putting them back together in disturbing manners. I have to argue so what?

Who wasn’t rough with their toys. It’s not like he knows they’re alive. As far as Sid is concerned they’re inanimate pieces of plastic. Yeah, his definition of “playing” may be a little unorthodox but who knows maybe all his weird toy experiments will lead to him becoming some kind of ground breaking engineer when he grows up.

Maybe a rocket scientist?

If he knew they could feel pain and didn’t give a shit or worse yet relished in it that would be a different matter and he’d probably be more likely to be the next Jeffery Dahmer than the next Seymour Cray, but he’s not killing neighbourhood cats he’s tinkering with his toys. From what I’ve witnessed most little boys like to take shit apart and rebuild them better like home made transformers they largely turn out to be relatively well adjusted adults. Even what at the time seems like unhealthy interest in burning things eventually subsides.

Pictured: perfectly innocent.

Maybe some of the toys he’s fucking with are his neighbour’s toys but he is after all just a kid. A kid who’s been subjected to all that sharing is caring bullshit.

1. RA’S AL GHUL

Leader of the League of Shadows Ra’s Al Ghul is out to cleanse the world of corruption by any means necessary. Does that sound so bad? Yes, the guy is in the business of levelling cities and by extension killing thousands to millions of people some of which are bound to be innocent. I’ll agree that’s bad but what would you have them do? Issue a notice saying “Hey, we’re destroying the city in four days. If you’re a decent human being get the fuck out ASAP” so that all the corrupt cops, judges, politicians, and gangsters can relocate? Fat chance.

If we could get everyone to evacuate the city the exit is to your left. Except you shady looking guys, you can stay right there.

And in all fairness to Batman I get that this place is your home. You’ve lived in Gotham all your life, well except when you were training with the League of Shadows. You believe Gotham can be saved but Ra’s has been doing this a lot longer than you have and the League has been around even longer. Don’t you think they can spot a lost cause when they see one? I mean they left Detroit alone isn’t that saying something? Gotham is worst off than Detroit.

Better than Gotham.

Still better that Gotham.

Gotham is a cesspool of corruption and greed, they’ve had decades to clean up their act from the time they showed up on the League’s radar and things have only gotten worse. Just Look at where Gotham is at the end of the trilogy. In shambles. Yeah, things got better for a while but they only managed that through more lies and deceit. Hiding the truth about Harvey Dent that is ultimately what comes back to bite them in the ass, that and Ra’s Al Ghul’s death.