It’s hard to admit when the bad guy in a movie is absolutely right, but it does happen. We deny it since the methods they use are often pretty terrible and the results they want are hard to deal with, but the reasoning behind their actions is usually quite sound. The road they use to get to the result they want is normally horrific though, which is why so many people want to stand with the heroes, no matter that the outcome is going to be hard to bear in either way. Those that stand with the villains know that the bad guy is going to be vilified and they understand that one way or another they’re going to lose. But looking at things from a rational and logical standpoint, while suspending feelings and emotions, is sometimes important to understand motives. The saying that we’re all villains in someone else’s story is unerringly accurate since from any given perspective, one can be a hero or a villain depending on how they choose to live and what their end goal is. But every now and then the villains aren’t just out for sheer chaos and destruction. Sometimes they want order, but the way they go about making it happen is so horrible that trying to make it fit into the old logic circuits is nearly impossible for some folks.
Here are a few villains that were, like it or not, absolutely right in their thinking.
5. Thanos – Avengers: Infinity War
It’s absolutely true that negating the lives of trillions with a single snap of your fingers is a horrific way to bring about balance, but the reason behind Thanos’ actions was actually quite sound from a neutral perspective. His reasoning was that the universe was out of balance and that resources being as limited as they were, people were going die as consumption levels continued to rise and what was left wasn’t nearly enough for those that remained. By eliminating half of all life he planned to balance things out, which is where his idea kind of falls apart since after the general idea the actions to follow become mass murder on a galactic scale. The idea was true without any doubt, but the following method was absolutely horrific.
4. Shere Khan – The Jungle Book
So to put it out there, Shere Khan is not a prophet or a misunderstood individual. He’s a villain, through and through, but he was right about Mowgli using the ‘red flower’ if he had the chance, since Mowgli did just that when he had to fight Shere Khan. Obviously a man-cub couldn’t fight a tiger on his own, so he needed an edge. But in the process of bringing the red flower into the jungle, he caused more harm just by accident than if he would have left the fire alone and relied upon those around him. It’s possible that Shere Khan would have killed him, but the tiger’s words were proven right all the same.
3. General Francis X. Hummel – The Rock
This is a touchy subject really since many people in real life would feel the same way that General Hummel did, but it’s likely that many of them wouldn’t take it this far since in order to honor the soldiers he lost under his command he stole several rockets filled with a highly poisonous gas that could kill thousands of people when launched. The soldiers he had operating under him for the movie were fully committed to the mass murders that would come, but Hummel, ever the soldier, was bluffing the whole time. He did prove his point that the USA had forgotten and abused its soldiers for too long, but he just committed to something he wasn’t ready for.
2. Magneto – X-Men: Days of Future Past
Professor X and Magneto have had this conversation many times throughout the years and to be fair, Magneto has been a bit monstrous at times. But he’s also been right when it comes to Charles placing his faith in humanity, as almost every future that’s been seen for mutants has been one in which they’re subjugated, killed off, or otherwise humiliated and tortured just for being different. While Magneto has often tried to go on the offensive in order to combat the humans and their insane desire to keep the mutants from multiplying, while Charles has attempted to work with people to help them understand. Unfortunately, Magneto has been right more than Charles.
1. William ‘D-Fens’ Foster – Falling Down
It’s extremely easy to sympathize with William since he’s the working man that a lot of us feel like and he feels absolutely forgotten and abused by the system and those that supposedly live outside of it but are still a part of that system. All he wants is to go home and be with his family, but thanks to his own efforts he’s ruined that, and thanks to a system that grinds people up and spits them out as useless when their done and over with, we get people such as William who are just trying to get by.
Sometimes the bad guy is right, no matter how much people don’t want to hear it.
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