Times where the hero seems like the villain

[Elfgore]

As far as Batman goes, he's at most a grey area, he always works with the intention of fighting evil, and in my opinion the selection of villains being some for their own criminal reasons and some specifically to fuck with Batman is one of the more interesting things about the franchise. I wouldn't call him appearing to be a villain at any point, although he may indirectly be causing harm (that he is also dealing with, however).

Lelough from Code Geass is a pretty easy choice. I mean he leads a terrorist group, he does some very questionable things, and he seems very egotistical. As I watched the series, I truly thought of him as a selfish man who was doing all of this not for his sister. But to fulfill his own desire for power. Then the last episode happened and all of that doubt was blown away.

I've often wondered if the events of the last episode excuse all of his actions up to that point. My tendency is towards that they do, but at the same time he did indirectly kill a LOT of people. This is compounded by Euphemia, who is sort of a foil for Lelouch, working towards peace, and you wonder if Lelouch hadn't intervened if it would have been better.

Spoiler: Code Geass Spoilers

It's a perfect example of "does the end justify the means?" And you can't blame him for Euphemia's action at all. His geass was acting up and he wanted to end the war then and there, even going as far to allow Euphemia to kill him. The end of season one was actually when I started to like him, because I realized he was building a better world. Not one under his control. I also think nothing would have changed if Lelough hadn't taken up arms. The first leader would still be in power and Euphemia and her sister would have never been sent.

 

[Nielas]

Why has noone said breaking bad yet? Walter white is the epitome of this. He is the hero of the story yet hes so evil. As he gets more and more into the path of villainy I still found myself rooting for him.

I could say wolf of wall street is the reverse. He was an absolutely horrible evil man but I liked him. He was incredibly charming and charismatic and he had the lifestyle we ALL want

Walter White is not supposed to be a hero. He is a villain. The show goes to extreme lengths to make his decent not even slightly justifiable. He is an evil bastard.

IMO the beauty of the show is that it initially fools you into thinking that Walt is a hero who made some very bad decisions out of desperation. By the time the final season rolls around it is clear that Walt has always been a villain but he fooled himself into thinking that he was a good guy. When he finally is given a proper chance to 'break bad', he promptly embraces his villainy.

 

[DrOswald]

Why has noone said breaking bad yet? Walter white is the epitome of this. He is the hero of the story yet hes so evil. As he gets more and more into the path of villainy I still found myself rooting for him.

I could say wolf of wall street is the reverse. He was an absolutely horrible evil man but I liked him. He was incredibly charming and charismatic and he had the lifestyle we ALL want

Walter White is not supposed to be a hero. He is a villain. The show goes to extreme lengths to make his decent not even slightly justifiable. He is an evil bastard.

IMO the beauty of the show is that it initially fools you into thinking that Walt is a hero who made some very bad decisions out of desperation. By the time the final season rolls around it is clear that Walt has always been a villain but he fooled himself into thinking that he was a good guy. When he finally is given a proper chance to 'break bad', he promptly embraces his villainy.

Oh yes, they totally make Walt relatable. You want to like him. His actions, while not justified in any way, are reasonable in that you could see someone making that decision. It is a great show.

 

[Linksmash]

Both of the GI Joe films. Wading into other countries who have not declared any kind of malice against the USA without invitation and slaughtering their troops, then being pissed because some of your squad was killed? Er yeah no. And then allowing the bad guys to nuke London and kill thousands even though you were stood right there in the room and could have stopped them at any point? Oh yeah, totally heroic guys. Eff the lot of you.

100% agreement. In fact in the 2nd one it seemed like the only people in the right were the french, which was an odd aspect of such a jingoistic film.

 

[Rariow]

As much as Columbia is a terrible racist dystopian society, Booker DeWitt of Bioshock Infinite fame came across as a bit of a mass-murdering asshole who goes around killing law enforcers for his own personal gain. I still loved the game, but I had a bit of trouble reconciling the Booker who's struggling with the ghost of his past with the murder machine you play as. I guess it's a bit of the ol' Ludonarrative Dissonance (capitalized, of course). Look at me, using big words like a smartypants.

The people you help in the main quest of Fallout 3 also came across as villains, but not because of any malicious intent. All of the sides in the conflict just seemed to be fighting over being the ones to push a button that'd solve the water problems in the wasteland, with no one really gaining anything from being the one to push it. The "good guys" in that seemed like dicks because they were also fighting and killing over a pointless thing, and at one point made the button nigh-on unpushable to prevent the other guys from pushing it.

Also, I'm not sure if he's supposed to be viewed as a hero or not, though I certainly got that impression, in 999

Spoiler

it turns out that Zero, the person who set up the Nonary Game, this death game that you've been playing that in multiple timelines has led to everyone dying, is actually June, your love interest, to prevent herself from dying in the past through a series of consciousness time-travelling shenanigans and take revenge on the men who would have otherwise killed her. I mean, those guys deserve everything they get, but about 6 people who in a series of alternate universes have now died horribly, and in the best-case scenario have now gone through a Saw-style death game that will have left them scarred for life are shown to be good people who most certainly do not.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

snip

I was trying to think of a series that perfectly encapsulated the OP's question and you just took the cake. I remember reading this on the recommendations of a libertarian friend of mine and after I finished I asked him if he actually believed this stuff. Never have I read a book filled with such vile, hateful characters that I was supposed to sympathize with. This book more than anything, is a testament to how shit of a writer Ayn Rand is. The only characters who have any actual depth are Taggart and Rearden, while the rest of the world is filled with one dimensional, straw man dumbasses. And even then they are portrayed as anything but likable. When I actually made it to that godawful speech, I made it about a third of the way through before realizing how long, boring, and preachy it is and ended up skipping the rest of it. Never have I read a book with so much contempt for others and never have I held such contempt for a novel.

Fun fact: The Atlas Shrugged Part 3 movie actually took to Kickstarter to ask for funding. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atlasshrugged/atlas-shrugged-movie-who-is-john-galt

 

[sonofliber]

Avengers vs X-men springs to mind

OK basic premise is the Phoenix is coming to Earth looking for a host and it's extremely obvious to every hero who that host is going to be, which is a young mutant named Hope. Now the Phoenix is a all powerful comic entity, so it's not all that surprising that the Avengers is scared about that thing coming to Earth so they want to take Hope into custody, (despite doing nothing wrong, common theme of this story) and........hide her somewhere....Anyway obviously the X-men aren't too keen on that idea since Hope is supposed to be their answer to their dying species, so to war!

Back to the topic at hand, the Avengers plan like I said above, was to take Hope from the X-men home, by force if necessary. To be fair they did try asking nicely for the X-men to hand her over, and by nicely I mean bring about 95% of everyone that was ever a Avenger along in case the X-men said no.

Now some of you might be asking: Um, what did the Avengers plan to do if they actually got what they wanted? I honestly have no idea, it feels like one of those ????? Profit!! sort of things. Maybe they were hoping if they stuck in a basement and kept reaaaaally quiet the super powerful being that can find whatever it wants would just fly away. *SMH*

The funny part is the Avengers end up looking even worse later. Through some craziness instead of Hope the Phoenix picked 5 different X-men and split it's power 5 ways. And from there they used their new powers to make the world a better place. From the wiki they gave "free energy, food and water to all humanity as well as ending armed conflicts around the globe." Wow, that sounds pretty sweet. But the Avengers has to stop them from going to far, so they kidnapped Hope since they think she's the key to taking the Phoenix-powered X-men down, which of course gets the X-Men all POed so they start fighting again, you know instead of the whole make the world a better place thing they were doing before. I bet if they left them alone for a few days longer and they probably would've found the cure for cancer,

Now here's the thing that grinds my gears, the X-men didn't do anything wrong at this point in the story or even look like they were going in that direction, all their actions were great and really beneficial to the entire world. But the Avengers took action to take down anyway despite them doing nothing wrong. Which in turn restarted their war(the fighting stopped once the 5 X-men go their new powers) and of course destruction and mayhem followed.

I'm not saying that the Avengers should have done absolutely nothing, the story was obviously going the "ultimate power corrupts" route so eventually they needed to do something. But if they've waited until that actually happened they would at least have good reason to take action, where instead they just jump in and start kicking ass with "They have to be stopped before they do something!" as their reasoning. Like seriously, imagine how screwed up the world would be if the cops acted like that? (I'm sure there's cases where they do but there's differences between those and what happened here)

Overall the writing was pretty bad for this mini-series, but man did they make the Avengers look terrible. It was even sadder when they tried to make the X-men look worse by comparison so the Avengers would still look good, but really that felt like they realized how badly they screwed up and tried to cover it up. So while I'm sure seeing Avengers fight the X-men sound great on paper, in reality it was garbage.

god that miniseries made me so fucking mad, they made the avengers go into retard and then asshole mode

related

 

[Gottesstrafe]

In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance the main character, Marche, is a total twat. The characters are transported to the world of Ivalice through a magic book, where they get to start over but without all the problems of the real world. They are all happy. One kid had a really shitty home life and was picked on to the point of physical harm in school, and here he's the prince, his mom is alive and his dad has great power rather than being a bum. Hell, Marche's own brother is in a WHEELCHAIR in the real world, completely incapable of walking, but in Ivalice he can walk. Despite everyone being happy, the main character takes it on himself to take them all back to the main world. Despite the fact that he is hurting his best friends, and without their consent, he begins killing the anchors to the fantasy world. He even has a speech to his little brother about how "it's hard for him too". HE CANNOT WALK BACK HOME YOU FUCKING TWIT. Due to the power of plot convenience he convinces everyone else eventually, but early on before he talked to them he came off as a major prick for trying to ruin his friends' happiness.

The book doesn't transport the main cast to an alternate world, it transforms the entire town into Mewt's video game fantasy. Everything, citizens included. People are transformed into monsters to pad out the number of enemies in the game and because Mewt's a vindictive SOB (some of them are alluded to be Mewt's former bullies). Families and friends are split up (Mewt knew about Marche and his brother's mother and still split them apart, what chance do the other random people Mewt doesn't even know have?). Mewt's essentially holding everyone in St. Ivalice hostage to play out the roles of disposable adversaries and background characters against their knowledge, will, or consent indefinitely so he can LARP. Even his own father realizes how wrong this is without much provocation.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah I do not think Frank Miller really gets Batman.

I think it's more that he loves the character too much. Miller's Batman is often "Batman is awesome because HE'S BATMAAAAAAAN!" I'm not sure he gets the character or not, but he thinks the ends justify the Batman. And it's not just Miller. He's written like this often enough, though Miller is prominent enough he's the only name I remember. Though honestly, the Dark Knight movie wasn't much better.

On a similar note, it struck me when I was reading Extremis that without a scorecard, it really is hard to tell which side Tony Stark is on. And, honestly, I know that's part of the point of Extremis, but prior storylines were like that without Tony's self-awareness. And they've probably dropped the self-awareness again by now. Maybe even four or five times.

Every playable character in the Borderlands games.

Although...are they really pushed as heroes? Or are they just held up as less dickish than the actual bad guys?

Hmmm...

I love how Handsome Jack pegs himself as the hero of the story. And the funny thing is, his actions are less monstrous than a lot of heroes we're expected to root for. And given what he does, that's still saying a bit.

Not sure if this counts - but Ferris Bueller.

What a monumental cockhead he was. Deceitful, lying, lazy, manipulative, egotistical, superficial, and overall a douche icon. I understand it's a comedy and that I wasn't supposed to take him too seriously, but holy crap, I hoped and hoped that he would be punished in some way, but nothing of the sort happened.

Just curious: have you seen Spoony's bit (as Doctor Insano) regarding it?

Spoiler: Video within

Anytime a movie has an excess of collateral damage in the middle of a city. It can be Transformers, Avengers, Pacific Rim, or the most notorious, Man of Steel. Ya know, when you punch a guy through two buildings and there happen to be people hiding somewhere within those buildings, you're no longer the hero.

There was an issue of Spider-Man where he "dies" and sees Lady Death and Thanos. During this scene, Thanos tells Spider-Man that the only reason heroes are allowed to live as long as they do is the amount of chaos they cause. I don't remember if this was supposed to be a real death and resurrection or if it was an hallucination, but either way....

 

[Thyunda]

I read a book once called "The Last Templar". It was about modern day templars trying to find the diary of Jesus Christ. The story was pretty decent adventure romp, until the very end when they discover actual proof that Christ was just a mortal man. And then the main characters throw it into the sea. This was supposed to be some turning point for the main character, who was an atheist who didn't like organized religion. After spending time in a village of christians who weren't assholes, she decides that believing in Christ is too important for people, and it's what allows them to be good. It pissed me the hell off when I read it, because it assumes that the only reason people are decent is because God expects it of them. Fuck that.

Is...is that what you took from that? I would have thought that the action was down to the fact that a lot of decent people are Christians and there's literally no reason to tear their lives up just for the sake of being 'correct'.

A lot of people used to comfortable that the world was flat and the sun revolved around us. That doesn't mean we bury and ignore truth in the name of stability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

No they didn't.

 

[Loonyyy]

snip

I was trying to think of a series that perfectly encapsulated the OP's question and you just took the cake. I remember reading this on the recommendations of a libertarian friend of mine and after I finished I asked him if he actually believed this stuff. Never have I read a book filled with such vile, hateful characters that I was supposed to sympathize with. This book more than anything, is a testament to how shit of a writer Ayn Rand is. The only characters who have any actual depth are Taggart and Rearden, while the rest of the world is filled with one dimensional, straw man dumbasses. And even then they are portrayed as anything but likable. When I actually made it to that godawful speech, I made it about a third of the way through before realizing how long, boring, and preachy it is and ended up skipping the rest of it. Never have I read a book with so much contempt for others and never have I held such contempt for a novel.

Fun fact: The Atlas Shrugged Part 3 movie actually took to Kickstarter to ask for funding. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atlasshrugged/atlas-shrugged-movie-who-is-john-galt

Oh wow. Next thing they'll be applying for a government arts grant. Can't they just work hard, make something that'll survive in a free market, and pull their film up by it's bootstraps?

 

[Dango]

Uncharted's Nathan Drake (as well as the rest of the cast)is a pretty god damned terrible person, they even bring it up at the end of the second game, followed by pretending it didn't happen. All in all he's killed more and done way worse than any of his villains without much moral justification.

 

[theNater]

The book doesn't transport the main cast to an alternate world, it transforms the entire town into Mewt's video game fantasy. Everything, citizens included.

That's an interesting theory, but even if it's true, Marche is still a jerk. He either doesn't know this(in which case every objection raised by the other posters stands) or he does know it but decides to beat up his friends rather than explaining it to them.

 

[King Billi]

Uncharted's Nathan Drake (as well as the rest of the cast)is a pretty god damned terrible person, they even bring it up at the end of the second game, followed by pretending it didn't happen. All in all he's killed more and done way worse than any of his villains without much moral justification.

In what way has he done way worse than any of the villians? Seriously? Sure he's killed a load of people but no one that wasn't trying to kill him first.

I really don't get where this argument that Nathan Drake is supposed to be some kind of mass murderer comes from. The people he kills are no different than Storm Troopers or the Nazis in Indiana Jones, hell in the first game he's literally just killing the same five guys over and over again.

The fact that Uncharted is a video game does make the body count a bit ridiculous I will grant but to be honest when I first played 'Drakes Fortune' and I realised just how many guys I was mowing down my first thought wasn't how this made Nathan Drake a mass murderer it was why the hell did these pirates bring so many damn reinforcements? Were they seriously planning on splitting the treasure 10,000 ways?

 

[themyrmidon]

Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones/ASoIaF.

Next to the Starks she's obviously being set up as the "good guy" on the show, but I can't help but hate her guts.
- She thinks she has the right to rule the 7 kingdoms, even though she has no memory of being there.
- The Targaryens had only been there 300 years, enough to be a dynasty but hardly that well established.
- The only reason she can even be in contention is her dragons, which she can no longer control.
- Even if she does take back the kingdoms she is cursed and unable to produce an heir, her line would end in ~50 years.
- All of her decision making has been knee-jerk reaction to what she felt was right, after she conquers her third city the first two fall into ruin again.
- She is building an army of foreign former slaves to take Westeros.
- She has a good thing going across the narrow sea, but is thinking about throwing it all away for a land she doesn't really have any tie to.
- It is still not for certain that she's not just as insane as her brother.

Spoiler

Through 1/4 of ADwD: I hate that my favorite major house, the Martells, will side with her, and that my least favorite house, the Greyjoys, have the most potential to stop her.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

The book doesn't transport the main cast to an alternate world, it transforms the entire town into Mewt's video game fantasy. Everything, citizens included.

That's an interesting theory, but even if it's true, Marche is still a jerk. He either doesn't know this(in which case every objection raised by the other posters stands) or he does know it but decides to beat up his friends rather than explaining it to them.

Theory? It's on the back of the box art and in the instruction booklet. Even the opening cut scene establishes this when it shows people transforming into monsters/otherkin, if the name of the land wasn't a big enough hint. And "beat up his friends rather than explaining it to them"? He doesn't lie in wait for them in a dark alley and bash them over the head with a lead pipe, he's constantly trying to explain to them the situation. He doesn't even fight them unless it's out of self-defense, all the while still trying to talk them out of it. Besides, he's flat out told that the world won't change as long as someone still wants it to exist the way it is (in other words convince them otherwise). He's not some Frank Underwood-level manipulator and grand schemer, nor does he attempt to torture them into submission or shiv them in a Jagd. He basically asserts to them that they know it's wrong, and they agree. The world wouldn't change back unless they no longer desired to be apart of it, and he wouldn't have been able to convince them of that unless they acknowledged it on some level. And that's the key to it, isn't it? Deep down they knew it was wrong, that's why they stopped trying to oppose him. Some of them even took on an active role in helping him out.

And honestly, how is Marche more of a jerk than the entitled shit Mewt turned into in the span of five minutes from the opening cut scene? One of the main villains you fight is even the embodiment of his dark side for christ's sake.

 

[Lupine]

As far as Batman goes, he's at most a grey area, he always works with the intention of fighting evil, and in my opinion the selection of villains being some for their own criminal reasons and some specifically to fuck with Batman is one of the more interesting things about the franchise. I wouldn't call him appearing to be a villain at any point, although he may indirectly be causing harm (that he is also dealing with, however).

Lelough from Code Geass is a pretty easy choice. I mean he leads a terrorist group, he does some very questionable things, and he seems very egotistical. As I watched the series, I truly thought of him as a selfish man who was doing all of this not for his sister. But to fulfill his own desire for power. Then the last episode happened and all of that doubt was blown away.

I've often wondered if the events of the last episode excuse all of his actions up to that point. My tendency is towards that they do, but at the same time he did indirectly kill a LOT of people. This is compounded by Euphemia, who is sort of a foil for Lelouch, working towards peace, and you wonder if Lelouch hadn't intervened if it would have been better.

That was my feeling on the entire series. When and how Euphemia died. Yeah, I was done with Lelough in any shape or form. I get that he didn't believe in her approach and it is revealed that he sort of has a point when we finally understand what the Emperor was up to all this time, but that doesn't in the least excuse what he did (even if it wasn't intentional) and pretty much from that point I wanted Suzaku to put a bullet in him.

As for not being able to blame him...oh, no I was totally able to blame him...he was being an ass to her because she didn't totally agree with his point of view. So instead of explaining to her, why what she was doing wouldn't have the effect that she was hoping for, he instead goes into "I can make you do anything..." Still his fault.

 

[Grace_Omega]

I'm reading the first Sword of Truth book by Terry Goodkind (Wizard's First Rule) and holy shit are the protagonists awful.

They seem to spend more time discussing hypothetical scenarios in which they might have to murder each other than they do confronting the Evil Overlord. At one point the main love interest befriends a young boy and mopes a bit because if there was some reason why killing him in cold blood would advance their goal of saving the world she would totally be prepared to do it. Keep in mind there is absolutely no suggestion that such a scenario would ever happen, but she still clenches her jaw and thinks "yes, I would brutally slaughter this cute little boy if I had to". Who the fuck thinks like that? It makes her seem like a violent sociopath.

Richard, the main character, is even worse. The magic of his sword regularly sends him into bouts of murderous rage, supposedly so he can kill whoever he needs to without suffering from mental damage. "Whoever he needs to" at one point includes a group of old men who wouldn't give him information he needed, although he just about manages to stop himself from decapitating them.

This is one of those giant fantasy bricks that's padded to fuck, but instead of rambling travel scenes or pointless world-building it's stuffed with endless conversations in which the characters talk about what steely-eyed badasses they are and how they would totally murder each other in a heartbeat if any of them showed the slightest sign of treachery and they'll kill absolutely anyone they need to save the world. AND THEN NONE OF THAT EVER ACTUALLY BECOMES RELEVANT, at least at the point I'm at 75% of the way through the book. Instead there's a ton of mushy conversations about what great friends everyone is and how oh so in love Richard and Kahlan are, which makes it sound as if they just enjoy fantasizing about senseless violence.

And this is just the first book. Apparently later on there's an infamous scene where Richard kills a group of "evil pacifists".

 

[TakerFoxx]

snip

It gets worse. The evil pacifist scene was the worst low, but not at all the only one.

 

[Animyr]

I was hoping the Sword of Truth would be here, and I'm so glad it is. I actually really like it for the unintentional comedy.

I'm reading the first Sword of Truth book by Terry Goodkind (Wizard's First Rule) and holy shit are the protagonists awful.

And it gets so, so, so much worse from there. Or better, depending on how you look at it. Honestly, in retrospect the First Book was, though uneven, a somewhat promising start.

The objectivist themes are only in the subtext at this point, they are not yet being crammed down the readers throat.

Actually, it felt shoehorned in. I remember the characters mentioning out of nowhere how the evil wizard king believes that "nothing should grow higher then the shortest stalk" or something, when the evil kingdom is a hereditary monarchy that is arguably a meritocracy too (the powerful wizards are in charge because of their power) and the king is revered as a demigod, so what made them think the evil wizard was some sort of militant marxist?

Rhetorical question; it's because the author says he is.