Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen. My husband and I watched it and towards the end, it tries to make Hagen this honorable man despite being a child murderer and a traitor. I was on Kriemhilds side the entire time, and the Attila and his Huns were way cooler than the Nibelungen.
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Read the book Hagen von Tronje or watch the movie.
I couldn't think of any movie in particular, but I did end up because of this post find out one of my favorite animated donghua films Legend of Hei got a sequel that released this month and now I absolutely need to see it! Legend of Hei II is real!
Ratatouille. When the "evil" head chef tries to get rid of the rat from the kitchen where food is being prepared.
Attempting to fuck over the rightful heir to the restaurant he ran wasn't evil?
Also turning the legacy of the former head chef into commercialized slop.
Given the current state of the world, I would say his greedy capitalistic mindset that puts profit over integrity makes him pretty evil, imo.
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Not a movie, but Warcraft 3 tried hard to convince you that Arthas was doing wrong things, when most of the things were pragmatic decisions.
The big one you're supposed to think is the fork in the road where he, a paladin pledged to the light, had lost his way is when you discover a city you are trying to save from the undead is infected. Everyone in the city is dead, they just don't know it yet. And when they die they will turn into more undead for an already stretched thin army to fight against. An entire city worth of fresh dead for the undead legion.
So Arthas takes his army, burns the city, and purges/kills everyone within, so that they do not suffer undeath, and those yet living don't have another horde of dead to struggle fighting against. The people there don't know why they are being killed, but are we supposed to believe that if Arthas had time to explain they'd want to become undead?
Whole thing was him doing the objectively correct thing, getting rightfully angry when his subordinates lack the conviction/loyalty/discipline to do what was best for all living people in the realm. And we're supposed to think HE is the one who is wrong.
Nah. Miss me with that. Arthas did nothing wrong. Until later, when he did. But not when he burned that city.
Edit: I also just noticed this is a movie specific community. I thought the question was interesting and wanted to contribute, but given it is offtopic from movies, should I remove this?
It's a moraly gray situation, but he is a Paladin. His duty is to uphold a certain standard, no matter what. He should have let the knights do the genociding.
Someone needs to be there for you, to guarantee your rights. You need to be able to say: "our hero is here! He will never hurt us!".
Same reason the US army had a no one left behind policy. Less sodiers deserting, more fighting bravely, because they know their comrades would save them, even at a loss!
You know, the paladin code of ideals that are supposed to be embodied by those sworn to the light IS antithetical to Arthas' actions. I had not considered that.
So perhaps one could say that the cold pragmatism of his choice would not have been wrong for an ordinary general to make, but was against his code, and betrayed a weakening or abandoning of his faith.
I still don't think he was wrong broadly, but I think I agree with you that he was wrong with regards to being a paladin and a representative of what they are supposed to stand for.
As a guy who felt the same way what 20 years ago when I played that game.
Keep it up. World needs to know.
But he did fuck up in the next campaign when he grabbed frostmourne. That was objectively a bad move.
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Jurassic park - hell yeah, clone those dinosaurs Mr. Hammond! This is one of the most amazing achievements in human history. What about 'chaos theory'? What about nature? What the fuck are you talking about people? Don't you see what's going on here?
The mistake Hammond made in Jurassic Park wasn't cloning dinosaurs, it was mismanaging the park due to greed.
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I still maintain that Jurassic Park is a lesson on why you need to treat your IT people nicely. Hammond is even worse to Nedry in the book.
He should have first recreated the carboniferous era so that the O2 levels in the atmosphere were as high as they used to be. What happened to sparing no expense?
What happened to sparing no expense?
That's the irony, he cut tons of corners.
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Ultron in avengers age of Ultron. Took him like 5 seconds to figure out humanity was a swell destroying virus
Sounds like collective punishment
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Any good movie will have you empathizing with "the bad guys".
Emphasizing is a much lower bar than thinking they’re justified, though. I emphasize with Lex Luthor, but don’t actually think he’s right.
As opposed to, say, Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, who was totally correct that something needed to be done about the evil mutated aristocrat kidnapping and imprisoning people from the village.
His motivation wasn't to free the townspeople from a horrible autocratic aristocrat, it was to prove to the townspeople that he was a worthwhile individual by indiscriminately killing something.
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Probably a lukewarm take but Negan in walking dead. He was a brutal asshole, but a strong leader whose group had incredible success in surviving the zombie apocalypse. Rick on the other hand was a wishy washy bitch that ostensibly wanted to live in some kind of peaceful society but always acted on his own or stirred shit against the status quo, resulting in the destruction of a community of survivors.