Villains who had a point
- Thread starter Auron225
- Start date
I just came back to say that this is really disturbing.Urgh76 said:Any good villain should have this kind of trait, where you can emphasize with why their position sounds like a good idea.
I've been extremely conflicted over Griffith from Berserk.
Berserk is a world filled with war and all the fun things that go along with it. Griffith lead a group called the Band of the Hawk that our main character Guts and others have a huge bond with. Griffith's main goal is to get a kingdom for himself. Along the way war happens as war happens, and a ton of people fall on Griffith's behalf.
Shit happens, Griffith is captured. After a full year they're able to go and get him back, but he's been tortured severely all this while. His tongue was removed, the tendons in his arms and legs were cut so he could never walk again on his own, and other things.
As they're bringing Griffith back to the rest of the gang, stuff happens and an item in the world called a Behelit activates, enveloping everyone in this other dimension. It resounded with Griffith, and demonic beings tell him that his body could be reborn as an incredible power. He has to make a sacrifice however, and that sacrifice is the rest of his men, the entire Band of the Hawk.
He agrees, and the entire band except for two people thanks to an intervention are mercilessly slaughtered. Now this is terrible, but he'd reasoned it out this way:
Griffith was already standing on a mountain of corpses to reach his dream. The entire time he'd been fighting to achieve his dream kingdom, an immeasurable amount of his friends and allies had laid down their life in order to help him reach it. All of those sacrifices and effort would seem like they'd have gone to waste if he didn't accept. That or he might have thought "What's a few more sacrifices?" Everyone technically already lived for the sake of that dream, so if their lives served to further it, then...?
He's done a ton of bad shit in causing suffering to literally all of his friends until he was reborn. After his rebirth though, I've seen nothing but 'good deeds' from him so far. So whether or not those sacrifices were inexcusable is the main question.
Griffith is a good villain.
Never read or watched any Berserk, but sounds to me like it's more of an "everything is miserable" kind of story rather than a good vs evil one. I guess this is how I would take it, anyway.
The villain I most commonly feel sorry for (to the extent that I sometimes don't kill him because he's not really a villain) is Detlaff from Witcher 3: Blood and Wine.
Detlaff is basically a vampire who falls in love with a human woman, he's not super good with other people of any species and doesn't really get social situations but he cares deeply for those he considers friends. He's shown to be very selfless in that regard.
Well, long story short someone kidnaps his girlfriend and sends him a note telling him to kill five people or she'll be tortured to death. He sets to it without any joy and feels loathing for himself when he comes to befriend a man who is named as a target. He kills the man but hates himself for doing it and this builds his rage at the kidnappers.
Later on in the story Detlaff finds out his girlfriend is fine, the kidnapping is fake, she wasn't who she pretended to be, he's been used as her political weapon and she's been manipulating him the entire time. He tries to kill her for obvious reasons, i.e. that she's the queen of all shitheads and made him kill a man he liked, but he's stopped when the duchess takes her (Syanna) prisoner.
Detlaff is 200% angry at this point and unleashes a swarm of vampires on the capital city after issuing an ultimatum to get them to give him Syanna, they refuse and he feels guilt at each death and a loathing for what he's doing, but he can't in good conscience let Syanna go.
At this stage you take him Syanna and either let him kill her, stop him or accidentally whisk her away magically at the last moment. In any situation except where you let him kill her as revenge, he is beyond angry and turns on you despite at least one of those options being pure fluke. That's when he dies at the hands of his friend who he gave a portion of his blood to to save their life.
What Detlaff does to the city is wrong by any measure but at that stage he's just hurt, angry and confused. All he wants is his revenge and to then go, its only the happenstance of the game that stops you allowing him that, his desire for revenge itself is perfectly reasonable. He's a man with few friends who finds out the love of his life has never loved him and is using him for a purpose that disgusts him, his massive overreaction aside Detlaff is shown to be a genuinely good character.
Well, long story short someone kidnaps his girlfriend and sends him a note telling him to kill five people or she'll be tortured to death. He sets to it without any joy and feels loathing for himself when he comes to befriend a man who is named as a target. He kills the man but hates himself for doing it and this builds his rage at the kidnappers.
Later on in the story Detlaff finds out his girlfriend is fine, the kidnapping is fake, she wasn't who she pretended to be, he's been used as her political weapon and she's been manipulating him the entire time. He tries to kill her for obvious reasons, i.e. that she's the queen of all shitheads and made him kill a man he liked, but he's stopped when the duchess takes her (Syanna) prisoner.
Detlaff is 200% angry at this point and unleashes a swarm of vampires on the capital city after issuing an ultimatum to get them to give him Syanna, they refuse and he feels guilt at each death and a loathing for what he's doing, but he can't in good conscience let Syanna go.
At this stage you take him Syanna and either let him kill her, stop him or accidentally whisk her away magically at the last moment. In any situation except where you let him kill her as revenge, he is beyond angry and turns on you despite at least one of those options being pure fluke. That's when he dies at the hands of his friend who he gave a portion of his blood to to save their life.
What Detlaff does to the city is wrong by any measure but at that stage he's just hurt, angry and confused. All he wants is his revenge and to then go, its only the happenstance of the game that stops you allowing him that, his desire for revenge itself is perfectly reasonable. He's a man with few friends who finds out the love of his life has never loved him and is using him for a purpose that disgusts him, his massive overreaction aside Detlaff is shown to be a genuinely good character.
Yeah, that whole mess was pretty cringey. Odin is looking more and more like a villain with good PR than somebody actually admirable.Callate said:
I also found it pretty bizarre that Loki is given one chance after another to redeem himself after demonstrating himself faithless on countless occasions, but Hela doesn't even get one. Seriously; bring her back to Asgard, treat her like the royalty that she is, and see if she can be talked around. If the whole point is that Asgard is all about friendship and negotiating and what-not now, than that stuff should at least be tried before flinging hammers around. In any case, Thanatos is out there and a threat to Asgard; she could at least be pointed at a useful target.
I'm also going to throw in another one..
Petyr Baelish (Littlefinger) from A Song of Ice and Fire.
I'm ignoring the TV show here because in my opinion they completely got his character wrong there (I mean, why would anyone ever trust TV Littlefinger?)
So let's tell a story . There's a young boy who is short and not very strong but very clever and good at making friends, and who comes from a very minor noble house, barely landed nobility at all. Through pure chance, this boys father made enough of an impression on someone powerful that he was able to be sent to a much bigger and grander estate to be fostered. While there, he falls deeply in love with the daughter of his highborn host. Unfortunately, her father arranges for her to be married to another highborn lord's son. Despite his youth, lack of physical prowess and inability to afford decent armour or weapons, our protagonist challenges his rival to a duel.
We've heard this story before, right, and we know how it ends because it's the standard courtly love inspired romantic fantasy story. Love conquers all, our underdog hero somehow rises to the challenge and defeats his much stronger rival and he and his beloved live happily ever after. But this is George RR Martin, so that doesn't happen. Our protagonist is easily defeated, publicly humiliated and only survives because the woman he loves begs her new finance to spare his life. He is sent away and loses contact with everyone who grew up with him.
Petyr Baelish (Littlefinger) from A Song of Ice and Fire.
I'm ignoring the TV show here because in my opinion they completely got his character wrong there (I mean, why would anyone ever trust TV Littlefinger?)
So let's tell a story . There's a young boy who is short and not very strong but very clever and good at making friends, and who comes from a very minor noble house, barely landed nobility at all. Through pure chance, this boys father made enough of an impression on someone powerful that he was able to be sent to a much bigger and grander estate to be fostered. While there, he falls deeply in love with the daughter of his highborn host. Unfortunately, her father arranges for her to be married to another highborn lord's son. Despite his youth, lack of physical prowess and inability to afford decent armour or weapons, our protagonist challenges his rival to a duel.
We've heard this story before, right, and we know how it ends because it's the standard courtly love inspired romantic fantasy story. Love conquers all, our underdog hero somehow rises to the challenge and defeats his much stronger rival and he and his beloved live happily ever after. But this is George RR Martin, so that doesn't happen. Our protagonist is easily defeated, publicly humiliated and only survives because the woman he loves begs her new finance to spare his life. He is sent away and loses contact with everyone who grew up with him.
Obviously, our young boy grows up to be Littlefinger who, let's not beat around, is a pretty bad dude. He deliberately manipulates people into starting a massive, realm-wide war in order to further his own advancement, he outright murders people in cold blood, he betrays his "friends" with impunity and he generally plays the game of thrones to win. The war actually ends up killing or hurting most of the people he supposedly cares about, and he doesn't seem remotely bothered. Also, creepy creepy relationship with women (although that doesn't really make you a villain in these books, Tyrion is a lot worse and he's apparently a fan favourite who can do no wrong).
But here's the thing. The feudal medieval-style world of ASOIAF is fundamentally, fundamentally broken. It's a world where certain people get to be important and wealthy, regardless of their personal qualities or complete shittiness, because they were born into the right family (or failing that because they're really good at hitting people with a sword, because it's a feudal nobility where martial prowess is important). The people who we think of as the "good guys" of this story are for the most part, at the end of the day, the people who were born to the right families. Even when they shit on people, we're encouraged to excuse it because the setting does. They're allowed to shit on those people because they're fundamentally better than them by right of birth. Almost all of our POV characters believe or understand this and thus, as readers, we absorb their prejudices. Perhaps we even start excusing them when they do shit on people.
Littlefinger is a person whose family name doesn't mean anything and who can't fight, in a world where the only important things about a person are your family name and whether you can fight. He's the person whom everyone should by rights be allowed to shit on. All his horrible actions are ultimately aimed at escaping that fate of being a nobody who gets shat on, and because he's actually smart and competent whereas all the highborn nobles are products of a system which considers hitting things with swords to be an important leadership quality he's wildly successful. The cost to everyone else is terrible, but hey, let's not pretend that the status quo is good. Let's not pretend that the people at the top got there by virtue of merit.
But here's the thing. The feudal medieval-style world of ASOIAF is fundamentally, fundamentally broken. It's a world where certain people get to be important and wealthy, regardless of their personal qualities or complete shittiness, because they were born into the right family (or failing that because they're really good at hitting people with a sword, because it's a feudal nobility where martial prowess is important). The people who we think of as the "good guys" of this story are for the most part, at the end of the day, the people who were born to the right families. Even when they shit on people, we're encouraged to excuse it because the setting does. They're allowed to shit on those people because they're fundamentally better than them by right of birth. Almost all of our POV characters believe or understand this and thus, as readers, we absorb their prejudices. Perhaps we even start excusing them when they do shit on people.
Littlefinger is a person whose family name doesn't mean anything and who can't fight, in a world where the only important things about a person are your family name and whether you can fight. He's the person whom everyone should by rights be allowed to shit on. All his horrible actions are ultimately aimed at escaping that fate of being a nobody who gets shat on, and because he's actually smart and competent whereas all the highborn nobles are products of a system which considers hitting things with swords to be an important leadership quality he's wildly successful. The cost to everyone else is terrible, but hey, let's not pretend that the status quo is good. Let's not pretend that the people at the top got there by virtue of merit.
Poetic Nova said:
Too bad everything the Helghast suffered was entirely self inflicted. To my knowledge they weren't even FORCED off of Vekta, they voluntarily exiled themselves after the ISA stopped them from being assholes and fucking everyone over. After I read the Helghast's backstory I completely thought everything done to them was entirely justified.
Lets start at the beginning, the Helghast corporation is given control of a planet to colonize. Unfortunately Earth made a mistake and put them in the only crossroad to the outer systems. Do the Helghast Corporation treat this fairly and NOT abuse this unexpected boon ? Lol! Of course not, they proceed to tax everything and everyone to ludicrous degrees and tell Earth to fuck off cause its their world and space, they'll do what they want!
So when Earth does the only thing its left to do and kicks the corporation off the planet they put up a big hissyfit, flip earth the bird and go into unexplored space on their own volition to find another world. Which is Helghan. Now sure they suffer great hardship, suffer mutation, all of that. So now they think "You know what? Fuck Vekta and those totally innocent people who had nothing to do with our current situation. Lets kill them all and retake the planet, committing genocide at the same time." Oh and now they're fascist, because apparently no one bothered to read a fucking history book.
And so they start a war of aggression, commit genocide and war crimes, and are only stopped when Captain Templar and his squad stop the traitor General Adams from using the Planetary Defense Stations to blow up their reinforcements.
Now Helghast refuses to negotiate and says to the effect "Fight me scrub" to the ISA, who, logically, fight them because this is a war.
Scholar Visari then engineers a situation where he dies, blows up a nuke in his own capital, and then try to commit genocide on earth by using a terracide bomb. And then the Helghast have the audacity to cry foul when the ISA is forced to destroy the ship the bomb is on, accidentally detonating the weapon on Helghan.
Yeah, real villain who had a point.
Lets start at the beginning, the Helghast corporation is given control of a planet to colonize. Unfortunately Earth made a mistake and put them in the only crossroad to the outer systems. Do the Helghast Corporation treat this fairly and NOT abuse this unexpected boon ? Lol! Of course not, they proceed to tax everything and everyone to ludicrous degrees and tell Earth to fuck off cause its their world and space, they'll do what they want!
So when Earth does the only thing its left to do and kicks the corporation off the planet they put up a big hissyfit, flip earth the bird and go into unexplored space on their own volition to find another world. Which is Helghan. Now sure they suffer great hardship, suffer mutation, all of that. So now they think "You know what? Fuck Vekta and those totally innocent people who had nothing to do with our current situation. Lets kill them all and retake the planet, committing genocide at the same time." Oh and now they're fascist, because apparently no one bothered to read a fucking history book.
And so they start a war of aggression, commit genocide and war crimes, and are only stopped when Captain Templar and his squad stop the traitor General Adams from using the Planetary Defense Stations to blow up their reinforcements.
Now Helghast refuses to negotiate and says to the effect "Fight me scrub" to the ISA, who, logically, fight them because this is a war.
Scholar Visari then engineers a situation where he dies, blows up a nuke in his own capital, and then try to commit genocide on earth by using a terracide bomb. And then the Helghast have the audacity to cry foul when the ISA is forced to destroy the ship the bomb is on, accidentally detonating the weapon on Helghan.
Yeah, real villain who had a point.
Sorry, I'm tired of people who keep saying that when the Helghast were in the wrong at every turn. All of their wounds were self inflicted. Its like saying Nazi Germany was the victim of World War 2, when 1, they started it, 2, they were the closest thing to stupid evil possible, and 3 had next to no redeeming qualities in history.
Again, sorry.
On topic, In Darkest of Days, the Opposition leader's reasons for trying to change the timeline make SENSE, as otherwise two billion people would die as the result of terrorists using a gene sequenced virus to kill everyone of European descent.
He could have used the Time travelling abilities to avert it in a more recent period, but I can understand his reasons, perhaps the only way to stop the disease with the fewest lives lost possible was the death of those two men. Who knows, it a time travelling game.
Not really.Poetic Nova said:
The Helghast were the survivors of a massive planetary mining company that tried to secede from Earth and take over Vekta by force. The survivors of the resulting war ended up exiled on Helghan.
Fast forward a bit and the Helghast have used Helghan's massive resources to build a fleet, they have the express intention of taking Vekta by force (again) and subjugating or killing everyone who isn't Helghan. Then they intend to nuke Earth from orbit. They lose this second war when their own atomic weapons are used against them.
Fast forward to the last game and the ISA have given them a chunk of Vekta to live on, but they're still busy building a massive army and planning to invade then exterminate the rest of Vekta.
The Helghans are very definitely the bad guys in Killzone, they're moustache twirlingly unredeemably evil. The issue I have with the series is that the ISA are so impossibly stupid. Faced with repeated invasion by the Helghast the ISA keep giving them second chances, really they should have glassed Helghan from orbit at the first opportunity (as the Helghast intended to do to Earth). Of course it wouldn't be much of a series if Killzone 2 was just a cutscene of the Earth/Vektan fleet launching a massive nuclear bombardment then flying home for beer and burgers.
Agreed. The Third game would have redeemed a lot in my heart if they had lined up Rico and that other guy and executed them both in the opening cutscene for incompetence and disobeying a direct order.fix-the-spade said:
Hey thanks for reading! Just to shill Berserk a little more, it's never really a good vs evil sort of thing. Perspective matters a lot in the story, and the whole notion of what's "evil" shifts around even though there's clear antagonists in arcs.spacemutant IV said:I just came back to say that this is really disturbing.Urgh76 said:Any good villain should have this kind of trait, where you can emphasize with why their position sounds like a good idea.
I've been extremely conflicted over Griffith from Berserk.
Berserk is a world filled with war and all the fun things that go along with it. Griffith lead a group called the Band of the Hawk that our main character Guts and others have a huge bond with. Griffith's main goal is to get a kingdom for himself. Along the way war happens as war happens, and a ton of people fall on Griffith's behalf.
Shit happens, Griffith is captured. After a full year they're able to go and get him back, but he's been tortured severely all this while. His tongue was removed, the tendons in his arms and legs were cut so he could never walk again on his own, and other things.
As they're bringing Griffith back to the rest of the gang, stuff happens and an item in the world called a Behelit activates, enveloping everyone in this other dimension. It resounded with Griffith, and demonic beings tell him that his body could be reborn as an incredible power. He has to make a sacrifice however, and that sacrifice is the rest of his men, the entire Band of the Hawk.
He agrees, and the entire band except for two people thanks to an intervention are mercilessly slaughtered. Now this is terrible, but he'd reasoned it out this way:
Griffith was already standing on a mountain of corpses to reach his dream. The entire time he'd been fighting to achieve his dream kingdom, an immeasurable amount of his friends and allies had laid down their life in order to help him reach it. All of those sacrifices and effort would seem like they'd have gone to waste if he didn't accept. That or he might have thought "What's a few more sacrifices?" Everyone technically already lived for the sake of that dream, so if their lives served to further it, then...?
He's done a ton of bad shit in causing suffering to literally all of his friends until he was reborn. After his rebirth though, I've seen nothing but 'good deeds' from him so far. So whether or not those sacrifices were inexcusable is the main question.
Griffith is a good villain.
Never read or watched any Berserk, but sounds to me like it's more of an "everything is miserable" kind of story rather than a good vs evil one. I guess this is how I would take it, anyway.
(Bad crop, but mobile ah well)
Again thanks for reading though! I thought the same thing when I started, that it was all just watching a ton of people suffer.
Timedraven 117 said:
Apparently I've been living a lie for a while now, I always thought the Higs were the ones to root for...fix-the-spade said:
Hell, I'd still think they're cool honestly, mostly cause the ISA are boring as hell when compared to cockney space nazis...
I mostly just think they look cool, their ideology is dumpster fire trash floating down a sewage river.
They certainly have coolness factor going with them, I mean how awesome can you get with glowing red eyes, gas masks, and a British accent?EMWISE94 said:
Most of these villain explanations seem to have a common thread to them. That the ends always justify the means.
Well, guess what. They don't. I'm gonna start cutting through the bullshit here and say that if your actions are causing more harm than good then no, you ARE the villain. It's simple math. 5-3=2 which is a net gain. Good. 5-6=-1 is a net loss. Evil. This isn't complicated... Well, OK, it is a little complicated but the reasoning for some of these villains is literally insane.
As to the ebb and flow of civilization and what's needed, the answer here actually isn't what you think. We need to reestablish the family and keep pride in check as a whole. It won't solve every single little thing, but as long as humans have free will (And they should. That's a separate topic.) there will always be outliers. If pride is rampant and the family unit is destroyed, the only thing that will rein in the chaos, the only thing that can, is an iron fist.
Well, guess what. They don't. I'm gonna start cutting through the bullshit here and say that if your actions are causing more harm than good then no, you ARE the villain. It's simple math. 5-3=2 which is a net gain. Good. 5-6=-1 is a net loss. Evil. This isn't complicated... Well, OK, it is a little complicated but the reasoning for some of these villains is literally insane.
As to the ebb and flow of civilization and what's needed, the answer here actually isn't what you think. We need to reestablish the family and keep pride in check as a whole. It won't solve every single little thing, but as long as humans have free will (And they should. That's a separate topic.) there will always be outliers. If pride is rampant and the family unit is destroyed, the only thing that will rein in the chaos, the only thing that can, is an iron fist.
Dean Wormer
He is just trying to maintain a prestigious college and he is trying to get rid of a disruptive and self destructive fraternity.
Plus if that kind of fraternity was in operation today they would be responsible for so many sexual harassment/assault cases along with negligent homicide (from the pledges and the alcohol)
Oh and one of the pledge members had sex with a 13 year old girl so there's that as well.
He is just trying to maintain a prestigious college and he is trying to get rid of a disruptive and self destructive fraternity.
Plus if that kind of fraternity was in operation today they would be responsible for so many sexual harassment/assault cases along with negligent homicide (from the pledges and the alcohol)
Oh and one of the pledge members had sex with a 13 year old girl so there's that as well.
Excuse me? The guy who wanted to end the corrupt control of the republic by a Death Cult more concerned with their own power than the suffering of the common people around them? That Emperor Palpatine?Casual Shinji said:
The Jedi were raised in a life of luxury and comfort, trained from a young age to follow the teachings that would without fail lead to more death and destruction, and also would result in more infants being kidnapped from their rightful parents to further the membership of this cult of people obsessed with death and imposing their own views of right and wrong on the rest of the galaxy. The Jedi even proceeded to start a war using highly specialized slave-labor to enforce their views on the galaxy, proving that they didn't care about how they fought, or why, as long as their own best interests continued to be served. Even as it became apparent to them that the path they were following was the wrong one they continued on as before, never stopping to question whether there was an alternative to fighting.
Order 66 freed the galaxy from the oppression of the Jedi, but the senate's corruption and greed would undoubtedly still mire the political process with issues, so the senate had to be disbanded, especially once it became known that there was a group of traitors plotting a rebellion to attack the legitimate government and eventually assassinate the leader of the legitimate government, Emperor Palpatine.
Alderaan was a well known supporter and funder of these terrorists, in addition to being a primary instigator of the rebellion. With Palpatine desiring nothing more than to put an end to the constant fighting and in-fighting between various systems and peoples, it became necessary to build a massive war-engine the likes of which could not be stopped by just a few people with some guns. The Death Star was the ultimate expression of this power, its ability to destroy a planet enough to silence any manufacturing or military headquarters with a single shot. Long protracted battles were not the goal, as they were anathema to what Palpatine really wanted; Peace, Justice, Prosperity, and Security.
Destroying Alderaan was a simple execution of that plan, take out the financiers of terror, and you strike directly at the terrorists themselves by taking out their supply lines. Take out the recruiting and training headquarters and you strike directly at their ability to assemble more troops and keep them adequately trained. While the scale of death caused by the destruction of Alderaan was unprecedented, it was basically a surgical strike at a terrorist leader cell, with minimal collateral damage, in the scale of the galaxy.
The fleet battle at Endor was a final trap, meant to draw out the last surviving members of the largest terrorist cell, and smash them for the last time, ensuring that peace would be achieved at last.
Surely it was Tarkin that decided to kill Alderaan as a symbolic strike, knowing there was no military justification.Spade Lead said:
He's a good villain, but I'm not sure that he exactly has a point. It's pretty hard empathizing with a rapist to be fair.Urgh76 said:
The Egg of the Perfect World comes off as a better conflicted antagonist than Griffith does, if you ask me.
On topic:
Yeah, sadly most villians don't even have a high minded goal to fall back on. It's often something petty or greedy. Why does umbrella make zombies? Because PROFIT!(it's never explained how zombies leads to profit though).Arnoxthe1 said:
I remember some thread a while back where someone tried to argue that Cauis was FF13-2 was a well written villian because reasons, because there was apparently more to his motivation of "Destroy Space-time and doom the entire universe because my not-quite-girlfriend is doomed to die over and over again. My plan won't prevent that, but it'll kill everything else in the universe as well so I guess it's for the greater good" that I somehow overlooked. Also, the fact that all he literally had to do to achieve this was to stab himself in the heart and there is literally nothing preventing him from doing this at any point except....look over there! SMOKEBOMB!
Yeah.
Well, there's a fun example in the old Justice League cartoon. If you remember the Justice Lords episodes, there was a point where Batman faced off against his alternate self and they started arguing about how their philosophies diverged. Now the story goes that originally League!Batman was supposed to win the argument. But when they actually started figuring out the dialogue and Lord!Batman pointed out that their in their world "no 8 year old boy will have to lose his parents because of some punk with a gun"...and they couldn't come up with a good counterargument.
And honestly, it's not not wrong. The argument more or less centered on the trade-off between freedom and safety. How much of one you're willing to sacrifice for the other is ultimately subjective and how much is practically ideal is a moving target defined by culture and familiarity as much as surrounding circumstances. All else being equal, if your hometown adopted martial law tomorrow you'd probably see protests and maybe riots. If you were in your second month of almost daily violent riots, however, martial law would be considerably more welcome.
Now the Justice Lords were wrong on the whole, but they did have a point that trading freedom for safety resulted in...well, greater safety. Our system is intended to minimize the risk of Type 1 errors (false positives), theirs was intended to minimize the risk of Type 2 errors (false negatives). Where our justice system was built around the idea that it was better for 10 criminals to go free than 1 innocent be convicted[footnote]Difference between theory and practice notwithstanding[/footnote], theirs was that it was better for 10 innocents to be convicted than for 1 criminal to go free. The two philosophies are naturally at odds with each other, but neither is strictly wrong. It's just a question of where your priorities lie.
---
And while not "villains" per se, Christmas With the Kranks makes no secret of the fact that we're supposed to view Mr. and Mrs. Krank as we view the Grinch and Ebeneezer Scrooge[footnote]For pete's sake, the name is pronounced cranks, as in bah-humbug cranky, and the movie doesn't present them remotely favorable enough for that to be an intentionally ironic name[/footnote], and that it is to be a story which caps off with them seeing the error of their ways and learning the true meaning of Christmas...because in light of their daughter being with the Peace Corps this year they decide to spend $3000 on a romantic cruise instead of $6000 on Christmas pageantry. And we're apparently supposed to empathize with the neighbors who flat out harass them over the decision. As the late Mr. Ebert so aptly put it:
And honestly, it's not not wrong. The argument more or less centered on the trade-off between freedom and safety. How much of one you're willing to sacrifice for the other is ultimately subjective and how much is practically ideal is a moving target defined by culture and familiarity as much as surrounding circumstances. All else being equal, if your hometown adopted martial law tomorrow you'd probably see protests and maybe riots. If you were in your second month of almost daily violent riots, however, martial law would be considerably more welcome.
Now the Justice Lords were wrong on the whole, but they did have a point that trading freedom for safety resulted in...well, greater safety. Our system is intended to minimize the risk of Type 1 errors (false positives), theirs was intended to minimize the risk of Type 2 errors (false negatives). Where our justice system was built around the idea that it was better for 10 criminals to go free than 1 innocent be convicted[footnote]Difference between theory and practice notwithstanding[/footnote], theirs was that it was better for 10 innocents to be convicted than for 1 criminal to go free. The two philosophies are naturally at odds with each other, but neither is strictly wrong. It's just a question of where your priorities lie.
---
And while not "villains" per se, Christmas With the Kranks makes no secret of the fact that we're supposed to view Mr. and Mrs. Krank as we view the Grinch and Ebeneezer Scrooge[footnote]For pete's sake, the name is pronounced cranks, as in bah-humbug cranky, and the movie doesn't present them remotely favorable enough for that to be an intentionally ironic name[/footnote], and that it is to be a story which caps off with them seeing the error of their ways and learning the true meaning of Christmas...because in light of their daughter being with the Peace Corps this year they decide to spend $3000 on a romantic cruise instead of $6000 on Christmas pageantry. And we're apparently supposed to empathize with the neighbors who flat out harass them over the decision. As the late Mr. Ebert so aptly put it:
Zombies and other monstrosities weren't Umbrella's main goal originally. They were just bi-products of whatever virus they were making. The original goal for 2/3 founders of Umbrella was immortality; Spencer and Ashford. The third guy, whose name I can't remember, just wanted to do what a pharmaceutical company is supposed to do. The other founders killed him, because they knew he would not go along with the plan.Dalisclock said:
Damn straight! Griffith never had a point. Even before going full evil, the fucker was always a huge control freak.Sonmi said: