Rooting for the bad guys

[standokan]

I did in each and everyone one of those Home Alone movies, god I hate those smug little bastards.

 

[Rowan93]

Since everybody's already mentioned Avatar, I'll just add Die Hard 3 - the bad guy basically won, and got away with it, and the scene at the end where he gets his comeuppance feels completely tacked on.

 

[Insanity72]

I've had a recent love for the Sith in Star wars for some reason.

 

[York_Beckett]

Have you ever seen The River Wild? I have, and I routed for Kevin Bacon's character most of the time. I don't really know why.

 

[370999]

LoTR. I do not root for the good guys or the bad guys. I find the entire series fun to watch or read but utterly retarded at the same time. Hundreds of years of constant war? HOW HAVE YOU NOT INVENTED ANYTHING MORE COMPLEX THAN A CROSSBOW.

To be fair, it took us 1600 years of constant war in Europe to develop anything more complex than a crossbow.

Ok, fair point. However the situation is slightly different. The wars in Europe were not wars of survival. I mean, the states involved were fighting for power, glory and the continuation of the lineage. Gondor is fighting for THE SURVIVAL OF HUMANITY.

Finally...

I cannot find the exact amount of time LoTR has been in technology stasis. Aragorn is part of the 39th generation following Isildurs death. The war has been going on for that long, without a break, in Gondor. We started the first world war with tanks. We ended it with nukes. That was within 4 years. Ok, different times, Technology was already advancing at a rather alarming rate.

But in 39 generations of war, 39 generations of a war for your very SURVIVAL, they have not made a single discovery. Not one.

Although my main problem with the films and books is the amount of times they are being shot at but get lucky. Seriously. Not one of them thinks to carry a shield. And, bar Boromir, NONE OF THEM PAY FOR IT.

You do have a fair point with your second paragraph. As in, a very fair point. I remember, when reading the Lord of the Rings, being completely unable to comprehend the vast time differences between historic events and current ones. If the Second Era had ended with more primitive weaponry (as in, chainmail and iron swords) it'd be more believable. But the fact that Anduril is as valid a sword in Aragorn's time as it was in Isildur's time makes absolutely no sense.

It's not even as if they were totally broke and unable to afford weapon-development. Maybe they just trusted in magic? By the time of LOTR, at least, Denethor was pretty delusional, so maybe he would have forbidden it?

I don't know why I'm trying to rationalise it. Put simply, it doesn't actually make much sense. But it DOES explain why the shambolic hordes of Mordor were so effective. THEY made advancements in weaponry and armour, and even machinery. Saruman's Uruk-hai employed explosive devices when assaulting Helm's Deep. They wore plate armour and carried specialised blades.

But...then...Isengard was destroyed by the trees. THAT must be why. Every time they try to get anywhere significant, the bloody environmentalists fight back.

And...I don't think we employed nuclear weaponry in the First World War. Tanks and fighter aircraft were the major advancements back then - and not even 'tank' tanks. No cannons...well, no turret. The male tanks had two cannons, two machine-guns. The females four machineguns. What was I talking about?

Oh. One last thing. Boromir was the only person to carry a shield. And he was the only one taken down by arrows.
Though it makes sense in context. Four Hobbits - the shield is about their height. That is not a sensible piece of equipment to be carrying. Legolas and Aragorn are archers. The only reasonable shield for them would be a buckler, which wouldn't be much help against arrows. Gimli's a heavily armoured dwarf. Shield is pretty much unnecessary. Boromir, as we know, carried a shield. I'm missing somebody. Who the hell am I missing?
Gandalf? Was he part of the Fellowship? Yes. I suppose he was. For a while, anyway. Gandalf is a wizard. He don't need no shield.

In fairness isn't that a deliberate chocie, that only is technology not getting betteer, it's getting worse. Think of it from the viewpoint of Someone in Dark Ages Europe, the Roman Empire has gone and all this stuff from aqeducts and roads are not being built anymore, heck most people don't know how to build them.

Noww Lord of the rings does this throw the idea of the civiilisations of Numernor and the various elfen ones. Society seems to be in regressionf or these people because it is. Noone has the wealth to make these huge giant statues, refine steel and the like.

 

[ToMegaTherion]

Star Wars(Emperor Palpatine is Awesome, and the Jedi's are just... The sith is more humane to me. They don't try to supress emotion, and I hate supression of emotion

Friday the 13th: Jason is the most likable charachter in those movies. Poor thing just misses his mommy

Saw. Jigsaw makes some good points

All Excorsism movies ever. I just want Satan to win over GodxD

Bram Stokers Dracula: Van Helsing is awesome in that movie, but he's sort of a maniac

Hellraiser: The cenobites just trying to do their work

Hercules: Hades is a better charachter than hercules, and he is the god of death. Which is awesome

Allmost every movie ever actaully...

 

[Racecar1994]

A game example for me would probably be Gears of War 3 more than any other. Mainly for the end sequence, which strangely made the locust seem more sympathetic than the humans (which is a colossal failure in the writing department). Seriously, the only likeable humans for me after that were Baird, Anya, and Adam Fenix. They were the only ones seriously considering the ramifications of their actions...

But who seriously plays Gear of War for the story, anyway?

 

[Furyaki12]

Off the top of my head, I liked Ghirahim from Skyward Sword, simply because he's the most hilarious and, it must be said, FABULOUS character I've seen from a Zelda game.

Pirates of the Caribbean (any of them,except possibly the 4th) - I don't know, the officers were kinda stuffy while the pirates were colorful and funny, but...they're pirates. Looting, plundering, killing, and all that. I guess I'd be lying if I said I didn't want Jack Sparrow to walk, though.

 

[Alex Tom]

I wanted the humans in Avatar to win so badly. Mainly because I was sick of the "white guilt" stuff and Stephen Lang was hilariously badass.

Don't worry... with the massive amount of money to be made from Pandora the humans will be back with more than just a handful of mercenaries. The blue monkeys will get bombarded from orbit

I actually hated that it is getting a sequel. That was my own ending I made for it. The humans come back with an army and blow them to hell from orbit, the end.

Its good to know im not the only one who wanted the humans to win in Avatar.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

I know this doesn't really count, but I cannot fucking stand the ATF woman agent in the first season of Sons of Anarchy. Her attitude where she thinks she's charismatic but really just fucking annoying makes me hate her.

Otto just smashed her face in the last episode I saw, and it was awesome

Edit:

Spoiler: Spoilerrifick for Boardwalk Empire

When Nucky throws basically any chance of becoming a good guy and kills Darmody and becomes full on evil. Which is weird for me to say, because I actually thought the Darmody had made a pretty sweet transformation after his wife was killed. (and the fact that Micheal Pitt would have played a very good drug addict)

He became perfectly evil. "I never asked for your forgiveness Jimmy....". Nucky is a piece of shit in the very best way, and now it's gonna leave room for other characters. I have a feeling that Richard (two face guy), is gonna get some serious character development this next season

I don't know. That whole 4 or 5 minute scene was intense. You saw them all get out and it dawned on you that there was no way out of this.

 

[Muspelheim]

I tend to root for the communists in all the classic post-WW2 war-flicks. While Red Dawn was more like a comedy for me, being as silly as it is, I must say that I felt rather bad for the Russians getting their butts kicked by some children in an unusually militant kids-club.

I imagined it was their "special" battalion that were sent to pacify that area. It's more like the scenes in Downfall when the Hitlerjugend-kids and Volksturm-pensioners are all pwned en masse to no avail. You just feel sorry for them.

 

[The_Waspman]

Its easier to root for the bad guy because he is under THREAT. The Hero is essentially immortal. No matter what the bad guy has at his disposal he is still the underdog. Because he does not have magic bullet/arrow/sword dodging abilities.

This. If you look at most films of this nature (good vs bad) then the protagonist/antagonist roles are actually reversed. The protagonist is actually the bad guy. Because it is the bad guy who has a goal that they are striving for, and it is the good guy who is always providing the obstacle for that goal, which makes him the antagonist.

Personally, I'm not someone who always gets behind the bad guy in films, what bothers me more is that we live in a culture where we demand that the bad guy always loses. There's no surprise any more. You go to a film/play a game/read a book whatever, and 99% of the time you know that the good guys are going to win. Sure, there may be sacrifices along the way, some losses, but white hats get their victory, black hats see their lives/empires crumble around them.

We need to redress this balance! We need more media where the black hats win for a change!

 

[wooty]

The two fims that spring to mind are Death Note and Collateral.

Light was right in saying that criminals and scumbags deserve to die, while Vincent had some very good points in Collateral.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

LoTR. I do not root for the good guys or the bad guys. I find the entire series fun to watch or read but utterly retarded at the same time. Hundreds of years of constant war? HOW HAVE YOU NOT INVENTED ANYTHING MORE COMPLEX THAN A CROSSBOW.

To be fair, it took us 1600 years of constant war in Europe to develop anything more complex than a crossbow.

Ok, fair point. However the situation is slightly different. The wars in Europe were not wars of survival. I mean, the states involved were fighting for power, glory and the continuation of the lineage. Gondor is fighting for THE SURVIVAL OF HUMANITY.

Finally...

I cannot find the exact amount of time LoTR has been in technology stasis. Aragorn is part of the 39th generation following Isildurs death. The war has been going on for that long, without a break, in Gondor. We started the first world war with tanks. We ended it with nukes. That was within 4 years. Ok, different times, Technology was already advancing at a rather alarming rate.

But in 39 generations of war, 39 generations of a war for your very SURVIVAL, they have not made a single discovery. Not one.

Although my main problem with the films and books is the amount of times they are being shot at but get lucky. Seriously. Not one of them thinks to carry a shield. And, bar Boromir, NONE OF THEM PAY FOR IT.

Because in High fantasy, technology and industry is shunned. You may have noticed the Orcs using explosives on the attack on Helms Deep, that was a technological innovation that almost turned the up-to-that point successful defence into a smouldering pile of man flesh. Also, the conversion of Isengard into an industrial warmachine is meant to portrayed as the worst possible thing they could possibly do... then the trees kill everybody. That's hippy dreams right there.

Also note that it's the Orcs who are desperate, not the humans and the elves. Granted in timeline of the LotR films and books, things look desperate for humanity, but that's after centuries of complacency and internal dispute. After all, the biggest threat to the mortal realms fell millenia ago and most knowledge from that time fell into legends and myths... even the ring that could destroy all.

Ergo, after humanity had convinced themselves they had won and after a long period of decadence and ignorance, suddenly found themselves been spit roasted by the forces of Mordor and exiled/evil races of men on a scale unseen for centuries. The only race aware of this movement were the stuck up and pompous elves, which most of the mortal races hate.

EDIT: Speaking for aragorn on the shield part... he is a ranger, who wields a bastard sword and prefers boiled leather to heavy plate. Why? Because he relies on speed and agility to get through a fight. Is that practical? No... but fucking magic and wyverns and immortal gobshites aren't particularly feasible either.

 

[kasperbbs]

Out of boredom i started watching '24' and during the first season i got so annoyed by the protagonists family i hoped someone would finally kill them, my wish almost came true, at least one of them is out of the picture.

 

[TheKruzdawg]

I wanted the humans in Avatar to win so badly. Mainly because I was sick of the "white guilt" stuff and Stephen Lang was hilariously badass.

He's the head military guy with the scars right? He was pretty awesome. I loved how somewhere between 1/4-1/3 of his screen time is spent being badass while refusing to breathe. Like purposefully chasing their ship without a gas mask just so he can shoot at them some more.

 

[Vrex360]

Not sure if this counts but:
Sherrif Wydell from The Devil's Rejects.
I'm not really sure if he is actually the villain in this story or not but the trio of psychotic killers who are the movie's namesake certainly seemed to be pushed into the 'protagonist' role as they flee from law enforcement while Wydell the revenge seeking Sherrif becoming ever more crazy himself was the 'antagonist'.
But the thing is, honestly, the trio of killers are evil heartless sick twisted monsters. They kill innocent people in horrific and gruesome ways essentially for kicks and while it's true that Wydell does end up giving up on lawful solutions and enters the realm of vigilante and goes to amoral lengths to catch them... again they kill people for fun.
They kill them, they cut off their faces, they make their family members watch and they sexually assault them as well. Frankly I don't care how amoral someone gets, they will never be as evil as that and I would support any effort to stop them.
Even then his amorality only extends to members of the family of killers and people who knowingly assist them, so again it's hard to really be that bothered by the things he does. Hell the final scene:

Spoiler

Where he had them all tied up in their own farmhouse and tortured them for hours in the same manner with which they did their victims

Had me cheering. Because you know, f*ck them. Between two evils I'll pick the kind of crazy sherrif out for the blood of criminals over depraved sadistic killers and rapists out for fun. Like I said, it's a weird movie because I honestly don't know who the director intended as the antagonist or as the protagonist or maybe if the ultimate message is that neither of them are the good guy and both sides are evil.
But all I'm saying is if Wydell was supposed to the be 'bad guy' for daring to want the murderous family who have killed over 75 innocent people to be tortured and killed themselves, I have difficulty aruging with him.

 

[Megawat22]

I was rooting for the bad guys in Dead Island and The Rock.
The Rock because I liked the "bad guys" motives (although if memory serves the leader who was pretty decent gets overthrown and replaced by some generic psycho). Also because the bad guys had John C. McGinley.
Dead Island because... well because just everything. There's just so much in that the "good guys" screw up that me and my friends just grew to resent them (if it wasn't for the fact that I was playing through it with my friends I'd have dropped that game like a live 'nade). I think I can best sum up why I was rooting for the "bad guy" with just one spoiler.

SPOILERS (I'm not sure how to do spoiler tags, sorry)

At the end of the game the guy who was helping you betrays you. He asks for the only cure in the world for the zombie plague and says he will take it to civilisation. You do not give him the cure. He tells you that he has to leave on the only helicopter as the army are going to basically nuke the island. Why? Because he and about 6 other people are the only people left on the island alive, the rest are zombies.
Your characters take offence at this and then something, something, something he gets bit by a zombie. Then he is forced to use the only cure on the planet on himself. It backfires and turns him into a super zombie and then you kill him.
After he's dead the crew fly off into the sunset with a person who consumed the flesh of zombies and could apparently change at any moment. The end.

 

[LordFisheh]

As someone above said, a major point of LOTR is that culture and technology is regressing. Numenor, which I imagine would have developed advanced technology some day, is gone, humanity is fractured, etc, etc. The lands across the sea have been physically split off from the rest of the world. And now the elves, the most civilised and advanced race, are leaving. They're meant to be regressing from the golden age of Numenor in culture and technology.

 

[Thyunda]

snip

Yes, tower shields ARE designed to cover the entire body, but then, have you seen the kind of person who'd hold a tower shield? Yeah. He's not likely to be a hobbit. Hobbits are the most physically inept of all the races, hence their almost pacifistic nature.

And I can only think of one other wizard, and that's Radagast the Brown. Though it is hinted at (a lot) that there used to be a lot more of them.

LoTR. I do not root for the good guys or the bad guys. I find the entire series fun to watch or read but utterly retarded at the same time. Hundreds of years of constant war? HOW HAVE YOU NOT INVENTED ANYTHING MORE COMPLEX THAN A CROSSBOW.

To be fair, it took us 1600 years of constant war in Europe to develop anything more complex than a crossbow.

Ok, fair point. However the situation is slightly different. The wars in Europe were not wars of survival. I mean, the states involved were fighting for power, glory and the continuation of the lineage. Gondor is fighting for THE SURVIVAL OF HUMANITY.

Finally...

I cannot find the exact amount of time LoTR has been in technology stasis. Aragorn is part of the 39th generation following Isildurs death. The war has been going on for that long, without a break, in Gondor. We started the first world war with tanks. We ended it with nukes. That was within 4 years. Ok, different times, Technology was already advancing at a rather alarming rate.

But in 39 generations of war, 39 generations of a war for your very SURVIVAL, they have not made a single discovery. Not one.

Although my main problem with the films and books is the amount of times they are being shot at but get lucky. Seriously. Not one of them thinks to carry a shield. And, bar Boromir, NONE OF THEM PAY FOR IT.

You do have a fair point with your second paragraph. As in, a very fair point. I remember, when reading the Lord of the Rings, being completely unable to comprehend the vast time differences between historic events and current ones. If the Second Era had ended with more primitive weaponry (as in, chainmail and iron swords) it'd be more believable. But the fact that Anduril is as valid a sword in Aragorn's time as it was in Isildur's time makes absolutely no sense.

It's not even as if they were totally broke and unable to afford weapon-development. Maybe they just trusted in magic? By the time of LOTR, at least, Denethor was pretty delusional, so maybe he would have forbidden it?

I don't know why I'm trying to rationalise it. Put simply, it doesn't actually make much sense. But it DOES explain why the shambolic hordes of Mordor were so effective. THEY made advancements in weaponry and armour, and even machinery. Saruman's Uruk-hai employed explosive devices when assaulting Helm's Deep. They wore plate armour and carried specialised blades.

But...then...Isengard was destroyed by the trees. THAT must be why. Every time they try to get anywhere significant, the bloody environmentalists fight back.

And...I don't think we employed nuclear weaponry in the First World War. Tanks and fighter aircraft were the major advancements back then - and not even 'tank' tanks. No cannons...well, no turret. The male tanks had two cannons, two machine-guns. The females four machineguns. What was I talking about?

Oh. One last thing. Boromir was the only person to carry a shield. And he was the only one taken down by arrows.
Though it makes sense in context. Four Hobbits - the shield is about their height. That is not a sensible piece of equipment to be carrying. Legolas and Aragorn are archers. The only reasonable shield for them would be a buckler, which wouldn't be much help against arrows. Gimli's a heavily armoured dwarf. Shield is pretty much unnecessary. Boromir, as we know, carried a shield. I'm missing somebody. Who the hell am I missing?
Gandalf? Was he part of the Fellowship? Yes. I suppose he was. For a while, anyway. Gandalf is a wizard. He don't need no shield.

In fairness isn't that a deliberate chocie, that only is technology not getting betteer, it's getting worse. Think of it from the viewpoint of Someone in Dark Ages Europe, the Roman Empire has gone and all this stuff from aqeducts and roads are not being built anymore, heck most people don't know how to build them.

Noww Lord of the rings does this throw the idea of the civiilisations of Numernor and the various elfen ones. Society seems to be in regressionf or these people because it is. Noone has the wealth to make these huge giant statues, refine steel and the like.

I don't know...Gondor seems fairly wealthy, at least until the Orcs start streaming out again. Rohan is the only one with an excuse, and that's because the Rohirrim have their horses and shortbows, and if Genghis and Kubilai Khan could conquer the everything between Baghdad and Paris with that, the Rohirrim really had no need to advance. Crossbows might be easier to aim, but they're harder to reload, especially on horseback. Their armour has no reason to be anything heavier than leather, and they don't appear to have the nearby resources to go about inventing gunpowder.

Also - take a look at Gondor's military. Look at their swords. There is no way they're anything less than perfectly refined steel. But, you know what else was perfectly refined steel? Isildur's blade. And the Elven blades. AND the Gondorian swords back then, too. They're technologically static in an era of war. Complacency, perhaps? Confident in the power of Man and the protection of the Elves? Sauron's gone, therefore we don't need to arm ourselves for war anymore.

Course not. All the disputes were pretty much diplomatic and within Gondor. The only people keeping up any semblance of martial culture was Rohan, and that's because they're essentially Scandinavian.
Ooh, though there is one faction that intrigued me beyond all else. The Easterlings. And the Corsairs. Is it ironic that the most mysterious and interesting of the factions present in the whole Lord of the Rings universe are the two antagonistic human groups?