The other day, Redditor u/armedshutter asked the internet, "What villain was actually the good guy?" People shared tons of notorious TV and movie villains who ~may~ not be so bad after all. Here are the results:
🚨 Warning: Some spoilers ahead! 🚨
1. "Iceman from Top Gun. He was portrayed as the antagonist against Maverick, but he was just calling Mav out as being reckless, which he was."
2. "Ken, the boyfriend from Bee Movie. In what world is a woman falling in love with a bee normal? He’s completely within his rights to act the way he did. Falling in love with a bee and breaking up with your boyfriend to date said bee is a clear hint of insanity."
3. "James Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean. He was doing his job and trying to defend people against pirates — trying to bring pirates to justice, people who routinely robbed people blind and murdered almost as a routine."
4. "Roy Batty from Blade Runner. He's basically a cyborg built to act and think like a human and decides he wants to live longer when people are trying to kill him. He gets violent in order to keep himself alive. Understandable reaction."
5. "Stu from Mrs. Doubtfire. I actually appreciate the movie's portrayal of him as a villain, because even though he's an antagonist, he's never portrayed as a bad person. He's a good partner to Miranda and a supportive father figure to her kids. He's just the antagonist because he's working against the interests of the main character."
6. "Captain Harris from Police Academy. He was trying to get a bunch of morons, liars, petty criminals, and psychopaths removed from the force; he was doing the public a favor."
7. "Jerry from Liar Liar. The dude just wanted to be a good husband and stepfather and build a good life for his new family."
8. "Tom from Tom and Jerry. Tom is doing his job as a housecat patrolling his family's home. He's a natural predator filling the niche cats fit in nature. His work is a service to his humans keeping their food safe from contamination and keeping them safe from rodent-borne illnesses such as hantavirus."
9. "Cole Turner from Charmed. He laid down his life to save his fiancée and her family, then got tricked into being possessed by the evil they were trying to destroy, the evil overtook him, and he tried to fight it as best he could. His sister-in-law declared him evil and never once tried to help him, even when he'd saved her multiple times. He had to be killed to destroy the evil possessing him — and there was hope for him when he was still in between planes — but he outright said he was missing out on an afterlife if he stayed in the wasteland for too long. Phoebe refused to help him knowing all this, and just leaves him."
10. "Benny from Rent. He was willing to do a lot for the main characters (including letting them skate on the titular rent for a pretty long time), and while he certainly wasn't a saint, I don't think redeveloping an empty lot into an arts center where he would let poor artists live and work for free is a damnable goal."
11. "Captain Hook from Peter Pan. The guy was just trying to get revenge on the douchebag who got his hand cut off, while also dealing with trauma from the crocodile that actually did it."
12. "Sharpay Evans from High School Musical. Everything she does, she does upfront and without trickery. In all three movies, Chad and Taylor do more villainous things than Sharpay, but they're never called out."
13. "Clyde Shelton from Law Abiding Citizen. Gerard. He's only the 'bad guy' because of the movie's POV choice. There are plenty of 'revenge movies' where the protagonist had less of a motive to kill than Clyde had."
14. "Inspector Jamal from The Chipmunk Adventure. We're led to believe that Jamal is a rival smuggler. Claus and Claudia despise him; he's ruined business arrangements for them in the past and the music is spooky whenever he's on-screen in the first act. But the climax reveals that Jamal is no smuggler — he's an Inspector for Interpol, and when he hears that a child is in danger, he immediately leaps into action to help."
15. The Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. As we learned in Wicked, so many things went wrong for Elphaba (The Wicked Witch). Being green, she was marginalized simply because of the color of her skin. After defending the lives of the animals of Oz from the Wizard, an army of munchkins was sent to take Elphaba for thwarting the Wizard's plan. Desperate to break free, Elphaba sings her famous 'Defying Gravity' and leaves her world of pain and loneliness behind in pursuit of her own freedom in her solitude. Elphaba never really despised Dorthy. Yes, Dorthy killed her sister and she was quite upset. But what human wouldn't be if you killed their sister? This doesn't make Elphaba evil for being angry at Dorthy."
16. "Zaheer from The Legend Of Korra. He was validated by how awful all the world's governments, including/especially Republic City's, were. If they wanted to make the agent of chaos the villain, they should have made the world's order more effective."
And finally...
17. "Sid from Toy Story. Poor dude didn't know the toys were sentient. While it seems like a creepy thing to do, it's really just a kid expressing his creativity in an unconventional yet harmless way. Well, he thought it was harmless."
Who are some other fictional villains you think were actually "good"? Let us know in the comments below.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.