Have you ever wanted the bad guy to win?

[DefunctTheory]

The biggest problem I had with Zod's motivations in that movie was that the film's canonical universe has established that there are other star systems that have planets that can support life, and that they have the ability to scan planets and travel faster than the speed of light, and yet Zod is determined to terraform (completely alter the planetary structure) of a planet that already has sentient life on it. Why couldn't he simply go to a different star system that at this point only has a few single celled organisms or something? OR why couldn't he just terraform mars? The only answer I could come up with was "Because then we wouldn't have a movie" When your plot hole is THAT big, you are a bad writer. Just saying....

Zod is a vat grown soldier who's been raised from birth to hit problems square in the face, as fast as possible. That's why he tries to overthrow Krypton's government without having a solid plan to save Krypton or its people, and that's why he instantly starts terraforming the closest planet that can receive it as soon as all the pieces for a reborn Krypton are within his grasp (The birthing chamber and the Codex). Also note that at no time did he actually have the Codex, which was what he needed to remake a Kryptonian Society.

Also remember that, according to the movie, the strict caste system and genetic engineering of its population is what really killed Krypton. So its unsurprising that it's finally generation got a bit spastic.

It was not even the Na'vi as a people I had a problem with as much as it was Jake Sully in particular. It was that line in the epilogue where he refers to the humans being packed away back to earth as "the aliens" that clinched it for me. I wanted to shout "you self-entitled douchnozzle, these are the people you were raised with. They vat-grew you a whole other fucking surrogate-body and are the reason you can walk again. Right or wrong, they were your people, you betrayed them hardcore and the whole thing should've ended like Farcry 3. Either ending"

Why does it matter that he was raised with them, or that they did him a solid in the past? They were in the wrong. Surely that matters more (of course, only if we're discussing this in moral terms, rather than fun-story terms).


OT: I wish victory for the villains of James Bond and Doctor Who all the time, simply because those heroes get away with so much bullshit. They are armoured with so much plot it's unreasonable. I also sympathise with the Separatists in Star Wars (though certainly not the Empire).

It's not so much that he should have stuck with his species no matter what, but the ease at which he transitions over, and how little effort he puts into bridging the gap between the species. And I get the distinct impression that you could probably bring him back to human society by separating him from the Na'vi and offering him a candy bar and a sweet drink.

I dunno. As a whole, I disliked Avatar, so I guess i'm a bit biased on the subject to begin with.

 

[Silvanus]

It's not so much that he should have stuck with his species no matter what, but the ease at which he transitions over, and how little effort he puts into bridging the gap between the species. And I get the distinct impression that you could probably bring him back to human society by separating him from the Na'vi and offering him a candy bar and a sweet drink.

I dunno. As a whole, I disliked Avatar, so I guess i'm a bit biased on the subject to begin with.

Actually, I can agree with that. Switching loyalties is treated as an obvious, almost easy decision to make, which is weak.

I'm one of the few[footnote]Well, one of the few of the sci-fi-loving, somewhat nerdy ilk, who tend to dislike it. I know that legions of average moviegoers enjoyed it.[/footnote] that genuinely enjoyed that movie, and is unapologetic of the fact, but I'll certainly concede the above.

 

[Pikey Mikey]

Phaere, the Underdark, Baldur's Gate 2 - I'd have liked to help her claim control of the city and destroy Suldenessalar. If I could have defeated Irenicus in subordination to Phaere as a sort of Sith Option, that'd have been excellent.

Irenicus, Baldur's Gate 2 - Failing the above, I'd kind have liked it if Irenicus had just plain won. I found Elessime(sp?) so despicable and fucking high-handed that I actually wanted her and her people to choke on the fruits of her own curse.

Baldur's Gate? Hell yeah, now we're talking :3

I agree with you on both points (wouldn't have gone with Phaere because Viconia but the option would have been awesome)
And those fucking elves! =P

I've tried to describe what happens where this should be, but a summary would be better. So high-and-mightyness aside:
*They threaten my character and his party (I don't take no shit from no-one)
*They extra-threaten Viconia, who is my favorite character (and all-playthrough lover/relationship-woman (can't stand Aerie (and Jaheira kind of bothers me a lot (where Aerie won't shut up about her wings, Jaheira won't shut up about balance and dead people) in that I find it weird that for a True Neutral "preserve balance" Druid, she never suggests an action that isn't Lawful Good (that I can remember anyways))))
*They make her take a Geas (magic pinky-swear-promise) when I should be able to say "I trust her, if you don't, then fuck off and call me when you holy city is a smoldering ruin."
*And they're such morons (plot-stuff, so I won't put it in detail here)

I gotta stop writing about this game, every time I do the wall of text just grows beyond what I though I'd write =P


Edit: Shit, I forgot to answer the thread-question xD
Most of the time, yeah. I like villains because I find them more interesting/entertaining... If done properly, anyway, not just "he's evil because it's fun". However, I play as the good guy (Chaotic Good anyway) in most games. Mass Effect 1 stands out because back then, Renegade actually meant "guy who gets the job done and is an asshole" and not "space racist" so you weren't technically evil. But that all got buggered to oblivion by ME 3 (and some chunks of 2 (any conversation about Cerberus).
For some reason I now began to think of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and while Frollo IS an amazing villain, I don't cheer for him. (Love his voice though)

Double-edit: also, Warhammer 40k, Chaos Gods for the Win =P (except Slaanesh because look at him)

 

[vid87]

I would have to more or less agree with this.
Despite the fact that the military guy was a massive douche along with that other business guy, I don't think the morality was quite as clear cut as they played it. Sure, invading an alien planet and destroying their way of life (the abysmally transparent allegory for imperialism) is certainly a terrible thing. But the earth is completely fucked, are the humans just supposed to lay down and die? Obviously this goes both ways, the Na'vi are perfectly within their rights to fight for their planet too, but i just don't believe the ending was the grand, happy finally of the heroes defeating the villains that it seemed to be played as.

Yeah, pretty-much this.

It was not even the Na'vi as a people I had a problem with as much as it was Jake Sully in particular. It was that line in the epilogue where he refers to the humans being packed away back to earth as "the aliens" that clinched it for me. I wanted to shout "you self-entitled douchnozzle, these are the people you were raised with. They vat-grew you a whole other fucking surrogate-body and are the reason you can walk again. Right or wrong, they were your people, you betrayed them hardcore and the whole thing should've ended like Farcry 3. Either ending"

It's not even so much that I specifically wanted the bad guys to win, though the whole "piss off back to your dying Earth" thing was pretty mean-spirited however justified as a warning, but I could not for the life of me understand how the Navi defeated giant mechs and rocket launchers with just the power of nature, not to mention the Navi's wildly inconsistent battle tactics and weaponry - stealth gets traded for charging straight into gunfire and arrows that bounced harmlessly off plexi-glass a few scenes ago suddenly pierce both the glass and human flesh with ease.

 

[Pikey Mikey]

*snips here and there*
Syndicate (the FPS version): I was totally hoping that the game would give you the choice of saying "I know this Corporation killed my parents, but fuck it, they turned me into this insanely bad-ass super soldier, I'm gonna keep fighting for them".

That was how I reasoned while playing System Shock 2 xD
Especially the line that went "It is my will that gave you your cybernetic implants (the only beauty in that meat you call a body. If you value that meat, you will do as I say)" and I just thought "yeah, fair enough". I had no problems working for Shodan as long as she didn't betray me and kept the upgrades flowing... Is that a problem? =P

 

[jademunky]

Why does it matter that he was raised with them, or that they did him a solid in the past? They were in the wrong. Surely that matters more (of course, only if we're discussing this in moral terms, rather than fun-story terms).

Well, it does not detract from the cause he was fighting for, but it makes him much less likeable as a character. It makes him seem unstable and unreliable. Not someone you would want to welcome with open arms into your blue-skinned-cat-person society.

 

[EvilMaggot]

Law Abiding Citizen. A film which inexplicably tried to paint Gerard Butler as the bad guy, when in reality, Jamie Foxx (especially that fucker) and all of the authority characters were a bunch of self-serving, smug, arrogant arseholes, who really should have been killed off.

What they had there, was a brilliant revenge flick, only to ruin it in the last 20 minutes. Easy enough to remedy, just don't watch the last 20-minutes. But it's the movie equivalent of a denied orgasm!

Yeeess... soo much this...

Also Star Wars movies/Games... if i can pick a evil side in a game.. i will do it, because im tired of the good guys winning.

 

[Drake the Dragonheart]

Chronicles of Narnia. Not necessarily because I liked the villain(s), but I could not stand the protagonists, and I was so hoping Repecheep would get smashed.

 

[Guy_of_wonder]

Any villain from any 007 movie. I just want that smug, womanizing 007 to die. How people think that 007 is a character that should be looked upon in awe is beyond me. I, personally have only seen Goldeneye and parts of Goldfinger, but i hate 007 so much.

 

[Callate]

Well, sort of. The heroes of Spider Robinson's novel Mindkiller decide very late in the game that the big over-plot is actually a great idea and totally worth doing, and sort of screw over everyone who thinks otherwise. Meanwhile, the reader (or at least, me, but from what I've read, I'm far from alone) responds, "Excuse me, what? Have you completely forgotten that the heroine's situation in the opening chapter completely invalidates a large portion of your premise?"

Sigh. Ah, Mindkiller. Way to turn an amazingly good short story (God is an Iron) into a wretched hatchet job of a novel.

 

[slacker09]

Star Trek Insurrection. I think the potential medical advancements that the Federation and the bad guys wanted was more important then letting 600 people be immortal. Had the villains got their way it would have meant that 600 people would have to live normal human lifespans, but the villain's people get to survive and who how many billions could have been helped by what they developed there. Especially as the Federation was at war with the Dominion at the time and it really could have helped them.

 

[DaWaffledude]

The Cabin in the Woods.

Jesus fucking Christ Marty, is eight more minutes of living really worth (and I quote) "The agonizing death of every human soul on the planet"?

 

[T8B95]

Most of the Templars in the later Assassin's Creed games. As a guy with a pretty Hobbsian view of humanity, the idea that everyone deserved complete, absolute freedom was always pretty laughable to me. And generally the assassins did a terrible job of implementing any kind of grand scheme, seemingly content to be a mostly reactionary force and just kill Templars whenever they got too "uppity." Contrast this with the later Templar characters, who are actively shaping systems of government in a sincere effort to bring the best standard of living to as many people as possible, who are effectively indoctrinating slavers, gaining control of their estates, and freeing their slaves.

In no game is this better illustrated than. Black Flag, you play a pirate, a motherfucking mass murdering, innocent killing, looting and marauding pirate (he was actually my favorite assassin for the very reason that he wasn't originally one).

Anyway I don't really want to get into a discussion about the nature of humans, or the advantages of one governmental system over another. I just thought the (later) Templars had some good points and that the assassins didn't really do much beyond murdering people.

I find it ironic that the only Assassin's Creed that actually had proper moral ambiguity was the first one, where the conflict was ultimately between two well-meaning but fundamentally flawed sides. Whereas the second one was basically James Bond in Renaissance Italy, and in the third one the protagonist was MUCH less sympathetic than the Templars he was killing.

Seriously, I hated Connor so much as a protagonist. Haytham was my favourite character in the game.

 

[LaughingAtlas]

I actually can't bring myself to play Zelda games anymore because I looked up Ganondorf's wiki page (and then that of Demise) and felt less like the Hero of Time/Wind/Bagpipes/Whatever, more like an asshole who lucked into the best draw. From what I can tell, the whole of Zelda is just an endless, meaningless cycle of the 'gods' sending one little prick to deal with a bigger prick who is a prick in the first place because a lovecraftian-horror-type-thing has a grudge against the gods (seeing their approach to determining 'worthiness' of their own, hand-picked fucking champion, I sympathize) and keeps reincarnating the same prick over and over in the hopes that that prick will destroy the world for him. The gods always respond by doing the exact same thing, but with saving the world so it can all happen again.
And again.
And again.
And again.

I'm sick of jumping through their goddamn hoops to get the goddamn weapons to kill goddamn Ganon's goddamn minions to get the goddamn triforce and using it to kill goddamn Ganon again, not because I'm opposed to all the violence, but because I feel bad for the guy. Sure, he probably means to wipe out all life that doesn't serve him sometimes, but I think after all he's been through, I'd be doing just that, were I in his shoes instead of whichever Magical Hero Slippers I need to get through the current goddamn dungeon.

Luckily, I can imagine Ganondorf wins and the cycle is ended by just not playing anymore.

 

[Rahkshi500]

Anti-Spiral from Gurren Lagann. All it wanted was to prevent Spiral Nemesis from happening, while Team Dai-Gurren was being a bunch of arrogant, reckless morons with no real plan of how to effectively stop Spiral Nemesis, and so may have pretty much may have set the universe's path towards destruction.

Schneizel Britannia from Code Geass. Say what you will about his plan, but his logic and reasoning behind it made more sense than Lelouch's, who by the end had thrown out just about every last ounce of sympathy I may have had for him, on top of his own plan being far more likely to backfire than achieve the goal he wanted.

The Forces of Chaos, Orks, Tyranids, Necrons and Dark Eldar from Warhammer 40K. Personally, I would've taken the Eldar or Tau's side over the Imperium, but since this is about villains, then all of the more villainous factions will do, because at least they're not so BSing about their evil.

 

[chikusho]

Yeah, Hard Candy. That movie made me side with the pedophile, which is quite a feat.

 

[EyeReaper]

I've got a few.
Cabin in the woods. Full stop. I mean, I get what they were going for, with the satirizing and the deconstruction and all that, but I still wanted the gov't conspiracy guys to win over some potheads who were completely fine with destroying the entire earth.
Amon is the reason I stopped watching Korra. I mean, I never really liked Korra when it was starting anyways, but I don't see Amon as the bad guy, It's kinda like the Magneto problem, only worse. Seriously, the non-benders are pretty much second class citizens. Benders ran the police, the Avatar, The Mafia, and all the government positions (I think) and the muggles have pretty much no way of defending themselves.

Also, who at this point doesn't want that rabbit to get some trix?

 

[Qwurty2.0]

Kane (and by extension the Brotherhood) from Command and Conquer.

They want to bring forth a new era for mankind by harnessing the power of Tiberium, a virtually limitless and easily harvestable source of every mineral on earth that regenerates.

GDI created Blue zones for the rich and wealthy and shunted the unlucky ones to Yellow or Red zones, and then contented to play politics within their borders rather than help the people who were being transformed or dying.

Kane is (implied) to be an immortal alien who has been pulling humanity's strings for decades and has been alluded to being Kane from the tale of Kane and Abel (also implying he's been around since the beginning of humanity). It's hinted that Kane is an alien exile who manipulated an entire species in order to build a gate to get back to the stars.

 

[Something Amyss]

I think it'd be a generally better thing if the bad guys won more often. Not all the time, but more often.

It adds spice.

I can't think of a particular example, but yes, I do root for specific bad guys sometimes.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Any villain from any 007 movie. I just want that smug, womanizing 007 to die. How people think that 007 is a character that should be looked upon in awe is beyond me. I, personally have only seen Goldeneye and parts of Goldfinger, but i hate 007 so much.

That's a bit unfair. I'm not necessarily criticizing you for your view of the movies you've seen, but painting all of the Bond villains the same way, and all interpretations of Bond the same way, when you have only seen 1 and some of his movies is a bit unfair.

That said, it's odd you picked Goldeneye as an example, as that movie is rather blatant about the fact that Bond is NOT someone to be admired. The speech he receives from M calling him a relic of the Cold War, the speech he receives from Natalya about being cold, even the villain speeches, all serve to show Bond's flaws quite well.

...Sorry. Bit of a Bond fan. Have and have watched every movie. Carry on.