History StrawmanHasAPoint / LiveActionFilms

* ''Film/HomeAlone2'':

* ''Film/{{Night of the Living Dead|1968}}: 30th Anniversary Edition'': Reverend Hicks miraculously survives being bitten by a zombie, and at the end goes on a deranged rant that the zombies are demons from hell. He is supposed to come across as TheFundamentalist, but his fanatical belief that the zombie plague is supernatural in origin isn't really any more preposterous than it being some sort of virus. First, he is in fact spared, which does come across as miraculous, and second, it takes WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief for HollywoodScience to explain movie zombies with a virus; even undergraduate level biology would reveal it's a scientifically silly (if fun) idea. Science-based zombie explanations are invariably TechnoBabble, but magic or divine intervention has no such constraint.

* ''Film/JamesBond'':
** The unofficial film ''Film/NeverSayNeverAgain'' introduces us to a new M who orders Bond to go to a health farm after he fails a training exercise -- an act which we the viewers are clearly meant to believe makes him some kind of tinpot dictator or ObstructiveBureaucrat that is unable to register just how badass Bond is. But if you take off your fan hat for a second and analyze the situation from his point of view, you suddenly realize that he is absolutely correct. He has an ageing senior field agent of the elite 00 unit who failed an exercise because he wasn't being careful enough, drinks heavily, smokes like a chimney, frequently gambles, is open to all sorts of S.T.D.s thanks to his womanizing, is not a team-player and has a diet rich in fatty heavily salted foods. Even by the standards of the 80's you simply cannot let an active agent licensed to kill anyone he pleases behind enemy lines carry on like this.
** In ''Film/{{Skyfall}}'', Bond is cleared by M to go back on active duty, despite having failed his physical re-evaluation (and her hiding the fact from him). When he's informed that he's been approved, Gareth Mallory points out that "it's a young man's game" and that there's no shame in admitting that he's too old for the job. It seems as though the audience is supposed to take the side of Bond (who is the main character), but Mallory isn't exactly far off the mark. An agent with a previous injury (that, by his own words, nearly killed him) and borderline-inadequate physical health shouldn't be the sole resource for a mission, even when Bond's machinations play into Raoul Silva's plan to attempt an assassination on M. By the end of the film, however, it is reaffirmed that sometimes, old dogs have to learn new tricks to stay relevant in the modern age.
* In ''Film/{{Jaws}}'', Mayor Vaughn dismisses the concern of the protagonists and refuses to close the beaches when terrorized by the shark. However, Amity is a beach town dependent on seasonal beachgoers for its economy. Then again, a mix of AdaptationalHeroism and ScienceMarchesOn lead some fans to side with the mayor since he lacks the corruption of his novel counterpart, and modern science has shown that shark attack fatalities are greatly exaggerated.
* ''Film/JohnnyEnglish'' has pegasus, the M stand-in for the film and clearly designed to be either an ObstructiveBureaucrat or just blind to what's in front of him. Johnny is obviously right about Sauvage from the word go. The problem is that his evidence is entirely circumstantial. The fact that two of his employees turned out to be assassins for example is no more an example of Sauvage being behind anything than the head of any other company would be if two people working for him turned out to be criminals. And then of course we have the obvious: an aged James Bond is still James Bond, whereas Johnny English in his prime is an agent of [[IdiotHero dubious competence]] with an obvious dislike of the French who only got the job because there was no one else left. It's not unfair for Pegasus to subject him to higher scrutiny than he might have done to anyone else.

* In the Killer Bee movie ''Film/TheSwarm'', Creator/MichaelCaine's character, Dr Bradford Crane, is clearly supposed to be the hero and Richard Widmark's General Slater the villain. The trouble is that all of the schemes for dealing with the bees suggested by Slater all seem eminently sensible but are shot down by Crane on the grounds of the "environmental damage" (even after the bees have already [[ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics blown up a nuclear reactor]], killing upwards of 30,000 people) whilst none of Crane's schemes actually work until the end. On top of that, Crane defeats the swarm of bees by setting an oil slick on fire, even though that is not exactly great for the environment.

* In the dystopian film ''Film/TheCondemned'', main villain Ian Breckel has a surprisingly convincing argument against ThinkOfTheChildren. Since he's the villain, he's in the wrong (although he loses points for taking it [[Main/MurderDotCom too far in the other direction]]).

* In ''Film/DayAfterTomorrow'', has a scientist who is a lone dissident among the scientific community that global warming will happen at a very immediate pace. His peers disagree with him. The vice president (an expy for then-Vice-President Dick Cheney) rejects the claim of the lone scientist. However, if one scientist is rejected by his peers, it could be argued that it's sound scientific policy to allow for peer review.

** Walter Peck is portrayed as an ObstructiveBureaucrat, and his recklessness ultimately triggers the film's climax when he orders the Ghostbusters' containment turned off. But he has a point: the Ghostbusters' technology poses considerable risk to the public, as it uses dangerous technology and is untested and poorly understood by anyone but them. Indeed, Venkman lampshades this earlier in the film when he notes that the three of them are carrying ''unlicensed nuclear accelerators'' on their backs. The Ghostbusters certainly should be subject to ''some'' sort of government oversight.

** ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'': The film does portray the WellIntentionedExtremist [[spoiler:Emma Russell]], who wants to set all the dormant Titans loose on the world (so that the creatures can reclaim their dominance of the planet and heal the manmade damage done by GlobalWarming, whilst coexisting with what humans aren't killed during their awakening instead of destroying them) as a case of VillainHasAPoint and TheExtremistWasRight, with their plan only going horribly wrong because she released Ghidorah; who [[spoiler:is actually an alien Titan]] and threatens life on Earth instead of replenishing it. However, what the film scarcely addresses as anything more than a momentary afterthought is how [[CovertGroup Monarch]] debatably lose quite ''a lot'' of their moral highground against [[spoiler:Emma]] when she points out that Monarch have done practically nothing to address the impending situation in the five years since [[Film/Godzilla2014 the previous film]] even though the fate of all humanity hangs in the balance. Between the prejudiced government who are only interested in trying to kill all the Titans without any regard for how that will most likely backfire on an apocalyptic scale, and the eco-terrorists whose concerns about the government being on the verge of taking over Monarch by the time of the film's start are valid, Monarch are doing ''the least'' about addressing the Titans' impending awakening (or the threat of the government screwing the human race over) at the start of the film. The only time Monarch are seen doing squat about how the Titans' awakening will affect humanity is when they attend a senate hearing at the film's start, a hearing which Drs. Graham and Serizawa clearly aren't taking all that seriously.

* ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'': Miss Gulch is understandably annoyed that Dorothy continually walks home past her house, with Toto "one or twice a week" running into her yard and chasing her beloved pet cat. Miss Gulch is also right to be angry about Toto biting her. Sure, Miss Gulch ''does'' go wrong in demanding that Toto be destroyed, in one of the most famous cases of DisproportionateRetribution in film which has forever earned the enmity of generations of children. But the movie tries to treat her complaints as entirely unjustified, when the fact of the matter is, after all, Dorothy ''really'' should have put her dog on a leash after the first or second time. Not helping is Dorothy's refusal to even ''try'' and reason with her, instead threatening to bite her too.

* ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'': This is a common criticism of the film, as Picard and his crew ''mutiny'' rather than remove people who aren't even native to a planet, number less than 1000, who're sitting on a literal fountain of youth that could save the lives of millions... all during the Dominion War, a conflict the Federation is badly losing at this point, where it could turn the tide in their favor. What's even worse is that if the Federation and its allies ''lose'' the war, they predict that over a hundred billion people will ''die''. Strawman villains are used to shore up Picard's side as being right -- the bad guys are [[KickTheDog dog-kickers]] who want revenge on the pacifist Baku (plus [[BeautyEqualsGoodness they're ugly]]), so by the movie's logic this makes it okay. Even many cast members (including the ''director'', Jonathan Frakes), felt that in this case removing the Baku would have been acceptable. The sad part is that this could have been easily avoided by having the reveal be that the slaving drug-dealing
Dominion allies they were working with were ''lying'' about the benefits. This is never so much as suggested.

* In ''Film/MaidInManhattan'', DesignatedVillain Caroline files a complaint with hotel management when she discovers that Marisa, the maid in question, had been wearing her clothes and using her identity. The audience knows that Marisa doesn't have any ill intentions, but Caroline doesn't and has every right to be upset. What's more, such an action is an offense worthy of termination, precisely what happens.

* ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'': This is a common criticism of the film, as Picard and his crew ''mutiny'' rather than remove people who aren't even native to a planet, number less than 1000, who're sitting on a literal fountain of youth that could save the lives of millions... all during the Dominion War, a conflict the Federation is badly losing at this point, where it could turn the tide in their favor. What's even worse is that if the Federation and its allies ''lose'' the war, they predict that over a hundred billion people will ''die''. Strawman villains are used to shore up Picard's side as being right -- the bad guys are [[KickTheDog dog-kickers]] who want revenge on the pacifist Baku (plus [[BeautyEqualsGoodness they're ugly]]), so by the movie's logic this makes it okay. Even many cast members (including the ''director'', Jonathan Frakes), felt that in this case removing the Baku would have been acceptable. The sad part is that this could have been easily avoided by having the reveal be that the slaving drug-dealing Dominion allies they were working with were ''lying'' about the benefits. This is never so much as suggested.

* The villain of the 1978 film ''Film/{{FM}}'', now remembered primarily for the Music/SteelyDan theme song, are the [[ExecutiveMeddling executives who want to run more ads]] and run ads by certain advertisers (like the military) that the station's DJs consider so objectionable they barricade themselves in the station in protest. But early in the film one of them makes the perfectly valid complaint that even though the station has the second largest listenership in the ''Los Angeles'' market, it's not making much money, if any. ''No one'' who has ever been involved in running a for-profit business would disagree that that's a problem that must be addressed.

** Even in the ''first'' movie, [[UnbuiltTrope Harry isn't portrayed as completely in the right]]. Everyone seems to forget (probably because the sequels {{retcon}}ned it) that at the end of the movie, he ''quits the force'' because things just don't work. Also that the killer goes free because of Harry's misconduct (though see the HollywoodLaw entry about this-legally, his apprehension of Scorpio was perfectly legal except for the coerced confession, which wouldn't be necessary for a conviction). It's certainly not the case that Harry's methods get things done in spite of being unconventional and illegal.
** The creators seem to be at least aware of this, as a common feature of the sort of CowboyCop movie like ''Film/DirtyHarry'' and ''Film/{{Cobra}}'' is to [[BlackAndGrayMorality make the villains so over-the-top evil]] (baby-killers, mass murderers, etc) that the political strawmen do end up looking like callous enablers allowing them to game the system. As a result, it's not the politicians but ''the villains themselves'' who become strawmen to justify the movie's aesop that the cops were [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight doing what they felt was right to prevent greater evils]].
** This is pointedly invoked in ''Film/{{Zodiac|2007}}'', where Inspector Toschi (on whom Harry is ostensibly based) walks out of a screening of ''Dirty Harry''. He's clearly disgusted by the film and comments to Robert Graysmith afterwards, "So much for due process."

* Edward Rooney in ''Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff''. It's his job to prevent truancy among his students and ensure attendance. While he clearly oversteps his authority by the end of the film, and although Ferris had a parentally excused absence, that doesn't change the fact that Ferris was skipping school, has done so at least nine times prior (he hacks into the school computer to change the records), does so by blatantly exploiting the good will of everyone, including his parents (he tricked them into excusing him from school, so even though he's excused it's just more proof of Rooney's accusations), and was also taking other students out of school while they were under Rooney's care. And Ferris's sister Jeane is also treated as an obstructive stick-in-the-mud who just wants to catch Ferris out of spite, even though she never does anything immoral -- rather, she counters several of Ferris' immoral acts.

* Walter Peck, ''[[Film/Ghostbusters1984 Ghostbusters]]''' ObstructiveBureaucrat, triggers the film's climax when he orders the titular organization's containment turned off, releasing all their captured ghosts to terrorize Manhattan (amusingly, as this is a comedy). But although the film makes him obnoxious and annoying, it can't disguise that he has a point: the Ghostbusters' technology poses considerable risk as it uses dangerous technology and is untested and poorly understood by anyone but them; indeed Venkman lampshades this earlier in the film when he notes that the three of them are carrying ''unlicensed nuclear accelerators'' on their backs.
** Additionally, Peck's dismissal of the group's objections to his shutdown order is supposed to make him look unreasonable, but he's absolutely correct that he gave them every opportunity to address the issues he was raising in a civil manner multiple times earlier in the movie. Instead Venkman took all those opportunities to mock and belittle Peck for his own amusement and not take any of the warnings seriously.
** Peck never shows his I.D. to Venkman (which is never addressed but is still unprofessional and against protocol for a government agent). Venkman is also correct he needs a court order to look at the Ghostbusters technology. The next time he appears he has a warrant to shut the grid down, rather than for a safety inspection, a dramatic over reaction. Furthermore, the technician he brings with him quickly realizes this is unfamiliar technology and that shutting it down without a further look is ''very'' unwise. Peck's KnightTemplar attitude leads to him ignoring the warning and forcing the shutdown, which of course backfires as predicted. Ultimately, while Peck does raise some good points he also abuses his power and makes things worse simply because Venkman was rude to him and his ego couldn't handle it.
** While not entirely excusable, Venkman’s treatment of Peck is somewhat justified. In their first meeting, Venkman is not all that rude to Peck until Peck refers to him as “Mister”, despite the fact that Venkman has TWO doctorates (something he himself reveals in dialogue, and his degrees are shown on the wall). For all his childishness and immaturity, Venkman has every right to be proud of his doctor title, and no doctor would take kindly to someone referring to them as mister. While he may not be the “brain” of the team, he is shown to be very good at reading people and picking up on certain behaviors and cues. It’s entirely possible he read Peck like a book right away and could tell the man was just putting on airs and looking for a reason to go snooping in their business, and as the movie revealed, Venkman (for all his goofiness and lackadaisical persona) does NOT suffer fools lightly, and would have no problem dishing it out to Walter Peck. The fact that Peck showed very little patience at the slightest bit of resistance proved Venkman right.

*** Forget has a point. The strawman is wrong because he was too easy on Venkman! Venkman manipulates the test, so the study's entire validity is gone, he shocks people in an experiment that almost certainly would never clear an ethics panel, he shocks the nerdy man when he gets it right, he does while clearly enjoying himself, and he manipulates the experiment to try to convince an attractive test subject that she has psychic powers in order to sleep with her. At this point, the University is protecting the public from a dangerous man who has no business being in the sciences. Merely firing Venkman is going way too easy on him; criminal charges likely would be warranted, stripping him of his doctorate is certainly reasonable, and any academic body he belongs to should be censuring and blacklisting him at the least.

* The closest thing that ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve'' has to a villain is Oliver Platt's heartless presidential adviser, who's an obvious TakeThat to UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush and Dick Cheney -- note that his surname is Anheuser, presumably as a reference to Anheuser-''Busch'' breweries. However, after the fifth or sixth argument where his level-headed pragmatism is contrasted with the HonorBeforeReason [[ChronicHeroSyndrome Save Everyone]] bleeding-heart attitude of the rest of the cast, you kind of have to wonder if maybe the writers did not secretly agree with him. Some examples:

* ''Film/AmericanBeauty'' makes the uptight Carolyn seem like another one of Lester's problems we are to sympathize with him for having. Yet she is absolutely right when she criticizes him for abruptly quitting his job and putting the burden of supporting the household on her; later, when the two seem about to reconcile and have afternoon sex on the living room couch, she stops when she realizes he's holding an open beer bottle. Would it have been too much to ask for him to put it down so they don't spill it over expensive upholstery, which would require some extensive cleaning to get the smell out?

* In ''Film/CapeFear'', Bowden gets the chief of police to try to drive Cady out of town before Cady has done anything illegal. Cady hires a lawyer who is portrayed as fussy and over-liberal, but who makes the entirely legitimate point that Cady is being harassed for no reason. Of course, Cady doesn't stay innocent for long, but the lawyer had no way of knowing that would happen.

* ''Film/ChairmanOfTheBoard'' combines this with HarsherInHindsight: Bradford, the antagonist, blasts Edison's management of the company while the latter is shown driving up the stock price and getting magazine covers amid his antics running the company. The only problem? He was running the company in almost exactly the same manner as a lot of dotcom startups at the same time, almost all of which went broke. Had Bradford not violated numerous laws in forcing Edison out, his fight for control of the company would have been justified to save it from Edison's "interesting" management style. In the meantime, Bradford would arguably have managed the company competently even if he was only looking to sell... one presumes he would have gotten more for a functional company than an asset-stripped wreck, after all.

* In the dystopian film ''Film/TheCondemned'', main villain Ian Breckel has a surprisingly convincing argument against ThinkOfTheChildren. Of course, since he's the villain, he's in the wrong (although he loses points for taking it [[Main/MurderDotCom too far in the other direction]]).

** The humans are lambasted for "striking first". But after the alien spacecraft landed with little warning in a capital city, Klaatu walks directly at the humans wearing a face-obscuring (and unnecessary) helmet with an object that snaps open unexpectedly within melee range. Did Klaatu really expect the humans wouldn't so much as ''flinch'' when that happened? While the soldiers are still in error for shooting, their error is entirely understandable, because making sudden moves during a very tense situation where people are already pointing weapons is not going to end well.

** [[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/-em-dead-poets-society-em-is-a-terrible-defense-of-the-humanities/283853/ This essay by a literature PHD]] sympathizes more with the rigid administration than heroic BlitheSpirit John Keating. Keatings tells the class to ignore actual literary study and just enjoy the feeling of the poems, basically telling them to act as ''fans'' instead of ''scholars'', which kind of defeats the purpose of a literature class. Also, he quotes a number of poems out of context [[MisaimedFandom in ways that completely change the message of the poem]], and all his talk about learning to think for yourself really means learning to think like ''he'' does, and his classes really are disruptive to the school.

* A frequent problem in CowboyCop type movies, particularly ''Film/DirtyHarry'', where the wishy-washy liberal superiors chastise Harry for his flagrant abuse of the rights of the suspect and disregard for police procedure. But the thing is, they are right, and Harry would be a terrifyingly dangerous person in real life. This whole issue was deliberately acknowledged in the first film, ''Film/DirtyHarry'', where [[UnbuiltTrope the superior turns out to be completely right: it's not good to be a loose cannon]]. Its sequel ''Film/MagnumForce'' acknowledged this with the primary antagonists being a group of loose-cannon cops who crossed lines Harry wouldn't. It is instructive to note that despite all the other rules he breaks, Harry never actually killed anyone outside standard law enforcement rules of engagement.

* In ''Film/FantasticFour2015'', after the teleporter to Planet Zero is perfected, a scientist announces that he's going to call NASA to get some astronauts to go explore. Victor and Reed protest this because ''they'' want to be the ones known for being the first to explore the new planet. Victor even goes on a drunken rant about how everyone remembers the astronauts of the Apollo missions and not the engineers who made it possible. We're clearly supposed to sympathize with them, but given how they do pretty much ''everything'' wrong on their drunken exploration trip (wandering off, touching weird rivers of energy, and suchlike), it obviously would have been much better to send ''trained professionals'' on this important and likely dangerous mission. Also, as the inventors of the technology, they're too valuable to risk sending on dangerous missions and would be needed to perfect any errors during the tech's first use.

** On the other hand, Peck never shows his I.D. to Venkman (which is never addressed but is still unprofessional and against protocol for a government agent). Venkman is also correct he needs a court order to look at the Ghostbusters technology. The next time he appears he has a warrant to shut the grid down, rather than for a safety inspection, a dramatic over reaction. Furthermore, the technician he brings with him quickly realizes this is unfamiliar technology and that shutting it down without a further look is ''very'' unwise. Peck's KnightTemplar attitude leads to him ignoring the warning and forcing the shutdown, which of course backfires as predicted. Ultimately, while Peck does raise some good points he also abuses his power and makes things worse simply because Venkman was rude to him and his ego couldn't handle it.
** While not entirely excusable, Venkman’s treatment of Peck is somewhat justified. In their first meeting, Venkman is not all that rude to Peck until Peck refers to him as “Mister”, despite the fact that Venkman has TWO doctorates (something he himself reveals in dialogue, and his degrees are shown on the wall). For all his childishness and immaturity, Venkman has every right to be proud of his doctor title, and no doctor would take kindly to someone referring to them as mister. Also, while he may not be the “brain” of the team, he is shown to be very good at reading people and picking up on certain behaviors and cues. It’s entirely possible he read Peck like a book right away and could tell the man was just putting on airs and looking for a reason to go snooping in their business, and as the movie revealed, Venkman (for all his goofiness and lackadaisical persona) does NOT suffer fools lightly, and would have no problem dishing it out to Walter Peck. The fact that Peck showed very little patience at the slightest bit of resistance proved Venkman right.

* At the end of ''Film/GodsNotDead'', despite Josh getting Radisson to admit he hates God, Radisson tells Josh that this doesn't prove anything and Josh hasn't proven God exists. Radisson is correct; Josh hasn't proven anything. Everything Josh has stated over the course of the lecture has not given any actual proof. One could say he simply sought to put on a good case for God's existence, a.k.a. the God-in-Gap Defense [[note]] [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps Essentially science can't be sure, therefore God]] [[/note]], which was arguably his actual intent. But this is negated as they treat it as fact that God does exist (which is a UsefulNotes/{{logical fallac|ies}}y called "Begging the Question" -- essentially, Josh is assuming that his premise of God's existence has already been proven, when it hasn't). Radisson also makes a fair point by noting that free will can't explain natural evil (e.g. disasters caused by weather events), a standard counterargument to this, which goes unanswered by Josh.

** In the Creator/RolandEmmerich ''Film/{{Godzilla|1998}}'', Mayor Ebert is already intended to be a character the audience should hate [[TakeThatCritics because he's clearly based on]] Creator/RogerEbert, who criticized some of Emmerich's previous films. Therefore, he's set up as a whiny moron who constantly badgers the military and makes terrible decisions in light of a mass panic. However, most of them are dead on -- at one point he chastises the commander for doing more damage than the lizard himself (at which point he is comically thrown a bag of chocolates because HE'S FAT). He's ''dead right'' though -- at the time he shouts that line, the military's blundering, clumsy efforts and lack of regard for life and property in containing Godzilla have caused far more on-camera casualties than Godzilla himself has. One of the highlights being the military's destruction of the Chrysler building when they miss Godzilla... No doubt there were still people inside given how many people were still trapped inside the city (and not to mention a building of that size going down would cause a lot of collateral damage...), which prompted the outburst in the first place.
** ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'': The film does portray the WellIntentionedExtremist [[spoiler:Emma Russell]], who wants to set all the dormant Titans loose on the world (so that the creatures can reclaim their dominance of the planet and heal the manmade damage done by GlobalWarming, whilst coexisting with what humans aren't killed during their awakening instead of destroying them) as a case of VillainHasAPoint and even TheExtremistWasRight, with their plan only going horribly wrong because she released Ghidorah; who [[spoiler:is actually an alien Titan]] and threatens life on Earth instead of replenishing it. However, what the film scarcely addresses as anything more than a momentary afterthought is how [[CovertGroup Monarch]] debatably lose quite ''a lot'' of their moral highground against [[spoiler:Emma]] when she points out that Monarch have done practically nothing to address the impending situation in the five years since [[Film/Godzilla2014 the previous film]] even though the fate of all humanity hangs in the balance. Between the prejudiced government who are only interested in trying to kill all the Titans without any regard for how that will most likely backfire on an apocalyptic scale, and the eco-terrorists whose concerns about the government being on the verge of taking over Monarch by the time of the film's start are valid, Monarch are doing ''the least'' about addressing the Titans' impending awakening (or the threat of the government screwing the human race over) at the start of the film. The only time Monarch are seen doing squat about how the Titans' awakening will affect humanity is when they attend a senate hearing at the film's start, a hearing which Drs. Graham and Serizawa clearly aren't taking all that seriously.

* In ''Film/GrossAnatomy'', the protagonist, Joe Slovak, lambastes the administration of the medical school where he is a student after his roommate and best friend is "invited to leave"; that is, informally expelled. The problem is that said roommate was caught using amphetamines. The protagonist objects that medical students are only human, not superhuman, and that the school's expectations of them are too high, and that the school should be more understanding and compassionate toward a student who needed speed to get through his classes. We're clearly meant to side with Slovak and his roommate -- but here's the thing: would ''you'' want to be the patient of a doctor who needed amphetamines just to pass his ''first'' year of medical school? Moreover, most doctors passed their first years without speed, and if the school did decide to allow him to stay, there's no indication that Slovak's roommate will be able to manage his second year either, and they'll just be repeating all this a few months down the line. Finally, the school is arguably being compassionate by washing out a student who can't hack it as a first-year, rather than waiting for him to accrue tens of thousands of dollars more in student-loan debt when they have to expel him later. A doctor who washes out as an intern after graduating from medical school doesn't get all his student loans magically forgiven. He still has to pay them back, but without the income of a full-fledged licensed physician.
* In ''Film/{{Heavyweights}}'', the villain is Tony Perkins, a fitness guru (played by Creator/BenStiller) who buys a weight loss camp and subjects the campers to rather cruel and extreme measures that would get the camp shut down and him arrested in real life. The movie tries to imply that not only are Tony's measures pointlessly cruel, they're also ineffective as illustrated in one scene with the campers doing a weigh-in, and Tony discovers most have actually 'gained' weight. He has a breakdown and starts screaming about how his system is not what failed but the campers are the failures, and accusing one of being a cheater. The thing is though, Tony's rant is basically correct. The campers earlier discovered their stashes of confiscated junk food and have continued to engorge on that throughout the film and aren't showing any real commitment to weight loss. While nothing can justify Tony's extreme and abusive measures, he's not wrong in that the campers themselves are the ones primarily to blame for their failure to lose weight.

* In ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'', two government agents angrily interrogate Indy after Russian spies kidnap him and an old partner of his, murder several American soldiers at a top secret test facility and make off with an alien corpse. Considering what just happened and that Indy's old partner was working with the Russians, the interrogation doesn't seem that unnecessary. Bear in mind this is set during the Cold War.

* In ''Film/LandOfTheLost'', Rick states that he doesn't want Cha-Ka sleeping in the cave with them and, when his friends take offense to this (implying FantasticRacism), Rick points out that Cha-Ka was about to be executed when they found him and may have done something to actually deserve it. While Rick basically ''is'' being fantastically racist, his claim is a valid concern. [[spoiler:''Especially'' when later in the film when the BigBad takes advantage of their trust to escape and nearly TakeOverTheWorld.]]

* Many critics who disliked ''Film/LionsForLambs'' felt this way about Creator/TomCruise's character. A senator with presidential ambitions, his role in the film is an interview with anti-war journalist played by Creator/MerylStreep discussing his new plan for Afghanistan. The Senator outlines a reasonable plan and makes some good points, but the film basically expects us to side exclusively with Streep's character simply due to her being anti-war and it being an anti-war film.

** In what is likely a nod to this, ''Film/{{Skyfall}}'' features a similar scenario. Bond is cleared by M to go back on active duty, despite having failed his physical re-evaluation (and her hiding the fact from him). When he's informed that he's been approved, Gareth Mallory points out that "it's a young man's game" and that there's no shame in admitting that he's too old for the job. It seems as though the audience is supposed to take the side of Bond (who is the main character), but Mallory isn't exactly far off the mark. An agent with a previous injury (that, by his own words, nearly killed him) and borderline-inadequate physical health shouldn't be the sole resource for a mission, even when Bond's machinations play into Raoul Silva's plan to attempt an assassination on M. By the end of the film, however, it is reaffirmed that sometimes, old dogs have to learn new tricks to stay relevant in the modern age.

* ''Film/JohnnyEnglish'': Very similar to the James Bond example above, we have Pegasus, the M stand in for the film and clearly designed to be either an ObstructiveBureaucrat or just blind to what is in front of him. Johnny is obviously right about Sauvage from the word go. The problem is that his evidence is entirely circumstantial. The fact that two of his employees turned out to be assassins for example is no more an example of Sauvage being behind anything than the head of any other company would be if two people working for him turned out to be criminals. And then of course we have the obvious: an aged James Bond is still James Bond, whereas Johnny English in his prime is an agent of [[IdiotHero dubious competence]] with an obvious dislike of the French who only got the job because there was no one else left. It is not unfair for Pegasus to subject him to higher scrutiny than he might have done to anyone else.

* ''Film/NineMonths'' is all about a man (Samuel) who finds out his girlfriend (Rebecca) is pregnant; needless to say, it's a surprise pregnancy and neither of them are really sure if they want to go through with it at first. Samuel himself doesn't really accept it until close to the end of the pregnancy, but Rebecca accepts it pretty early on and starts preparing for motherhood. Great pains are taken to paint Samuel as wrong for being reluctant to have a kid, veering into Strawman territory at several points, but the kicker has to be early on when Rebecca gets worried that the cat Samuel owns might be a problem, as a cat can lie on a baby's face and smother it. She tries to convince Samuel to get rid of the cat, and we're supposed to side with her and think Samuel is an uncaring jerk for putting his pet ahead of his baby...except that, as Samuel says, the cat is fifteen years old, so it would be a surprise if it lived long enough to see the baby born, the cat has no teeth left, and the poor thing hardly moves. No vet would agree to put down an otherwise healthy pet that's just old, and giving it up to a shelter would be heartless because a cat that old is unadoptable, so it would be put down after a few months anyway instead of living its final days in comfort with a loving owner. Not to mention, the very idea that a cat would lie down on a baby's face and smother it to death is, at best, implausible. Samuel point-blank refuses to get rid of the cat, and the matter is dropped for the rest of the movie.
* The heroine in ''Film/OneMagicChristmas'' is not sufficiently excited about celebrating Christmas, so she's made to go through a TraumaCongaLine to make her thankful for what she has and get her in the holiday spirit. The thing is, she's depressed because her husband is out of work and out of money and their landlord is preparing to foreclose on their home -- who ''would'' be feeling merry and festive in those circumstances? And how is putting her through a barrage of [[CrapsackWorld terribly traumatic life experiences]] supposed to make her feel better?

* In ''Film/RoboCop2'', the titular hero has been given a massive reprogramming effort, including such gems as "discourage feelings of negativity and hostility" and "don't run through puddles and splash pedestrians or other cars". This is the same titular hero who previously wound up blowing up an entire multi-million-dollar gas station in order to stop an armed robbery that would have taken the cash in the register (and, depending on your level of analysis, even did so because he had a ''personal vendetta'' against the perpetrator). Although of course the movie is a send-up of the excesses of the U.S. in the 80s, OCP was actually trying to make him behave a little more like a real police officer instead of a reckless gung-ho killing machine devoid of emotion or remorse (which is played with a lot in the ''Film/RoboCop2014'' remake). The two directives listed above, for instance, are basic common sense that ''every'' real police officer ''is'' supposed to do. On-screen, however, the programmers insist "they screwed him up!" At least they've already proven that he was, indeed, screwed up by the additional programming -- but that's because he was already certifiable to begin with. The only saving grace is that the future was so dystopian that it ''needed'' him to be a loose cannon.

* ''Film/SpaceMutiny'' tries to present the mutineers as evil, but look at it from their perspective. They didn't choose to spend their entire life on a ship -- that decision was made for them. Space is clearly inhabited beyond the Southern Sun, so why aren't people who want to leave allowed to just leave? It's not hard to see the mutineers as simply trying to escape the flying jail they were unlucky enough to be born in, even if they are going about it in a bad way. The best the movie can muster against them is that the mutineers are wrong because their plans go against some nebulous, ill-defined "law of the universe."

** [[spoiler:Muir finally saves Bishop by faking a written order and sending a navy SEAL team to retrieve him and Hadley by force. Considering the relations between the US and China at the moment are far from an open military conflict, this is an '''act of war'''. (And it's against a major economic and military power, that is...) It's rather unlikely that Muir began World War III, but still, some more or less nasty international repercussions will follow.]]

* ''Film/StarTrekInsurrection'': This is a common criticism of the film, as Picard and his crew ''mutiny'' rather than remove people who aren't even native to a planet, number less than 1000, who're sitting on a literal fountain of youth that could save the lives of millions... all during the Dominion War, a conflict the Federation is badly losing at this point, where it could turn the tide in their favor. What's even worse is that if the Federation and its allies ''lose'' the war, they predict that over a hundred billion people will ''die''. Of course, strawman villains are used to shore up Picard's side as being right -- the bad guys are [[KickTheDog dog-kickers]] who want revenge on the pacifist Baku (plus [[BeautyEqualsGoodness they're ugly]]), so by the movie's logic this makes it okay. Even many cast members (including the ''director'', Jonathan Frakes), felt that in this case removing the Baku would have been acceptable. The sad part is that this could have been easily avoided by having the reveal be that the slaving drug-dealing Dominion allies they were working with were ''lying'' about the benefits. This is never so much as suggested.

* In ''Film/TheTimeMachine2002'', the Uber-Morlock is ostensibly heartless for justifying his clan preying on the human Eloi as "800,000 years of evolution," but his arguments come off as far more convincing than those of the protagonist. Alexander simply claims that it's a perversion of natural law, only based on the standards of his time and ignoring what went on for those 800 millennia. On the other hand, the Uber-Morlock retorts that his Time Machine is just as much a perversion, made as an attempt for Alexander to control the world around him, and he goes into detail explaining how fate has led to his current state just as it had led to the Uber-Morlock's existence.
* Nobody has to ''like'' the villain of ''Film/WallStreet'', but Gordon Gekko's infamous "greed is good, greed works" speech is tougher to refute than it's comfortable admitting. Within the limits of the character's context, human greed very much ''does'' end up resulting in certain benign outcomes--some of the time, and for some people. And quite a lot of the time human greed takes an easy-to-predict course that makes it a useful tool to achieve one's desired ends, which ends might or might not be villainous. That's not an inherently comfortable or welcome message, of course, but Oliver Stone is arguably asking us to shoot the messenger here.

* ''Film/ChairmanOfTheBoard'' combines this with FunnyAneurysmMoment: Bradford, the antagonist, blasts Edison's management of the company while the latter is shown driving up the stock price and getting magazine covers amid his antics running the company. The only problem? He was running the company in almost exactly the same manner as a lot of dotcom startups at the same time, almost all of which went broke. Had Bradford not violated numerous laws in forcing Edison out, his fight for control of the company would have been justified to save it from Edison's "interesting" management style. In the meantime, Bradford would arguably have managed the company competently even if he was only looking to sell... one presumes he would have gotten more for a functional company than an asset-stripped wreck, after all.

** This is pointedly invoked in ''Film/{{Zodiac}}'', where Inspector Toschi (on whom Harry is ostensibly based) walks out of a screening of ''Dirty Harry''. He's clearly disgusted by the film and comments to Robert Graysmith afterwards, "So much for due process."

** Dr. Adrian complains that "only rich people" are being let onto the Arks, to which Anheuser responds that the money they spent buying tickets is what funded the Arks in the first place. That and [[DeadpanSnarker snarking]] "Oh, you mean life ''isn't fair?!''" No one seems to point out that those "rich people" won't be rich after the catastrophe. Even if they could take all their money with them, [[MoneyForNothing it'll be worthless in a world without an economy to back it up]]. They'll have to work just like everyone else, and will find it significantly harder than those who have developed skills that might actually apply in rebuilding society, such as construction, science, logistics, or agriculture. Also, it's not like any debt accumulated from building them would actually ''matter'' when the world ends. The countries could have spent themselves into bankruptcy ten times over.

* ''Film/{{Species}}'': Dr. Xavier Fitch says they made the alien female because they assumed she'd be more docile, which is [[YouNeedToGetLaid seen as funny]] by Preston and [[CriticalResearchFailure it's actually untrue]] as female members in Earthly predatory species tend to be more aggressive than males (it's mostly mammals who buck the trend). But by doing so they actually may have bought themselves more time, considering a female can only have one partner at a time and reproduce more or less one by one while a male can have multiple partners at once and impregnate all of them. And considering what we see of the clearly more dangerous male hybrid in ''Film/SpeciesII'', he turns out to be pretty close to being entirely accurate. Basically, RightForTheWrongReasons.

* In ''Film/OneHundredAndOneDalmatians1996'', the evil fashion exec Cruella Deville is dismissive of the idea that Anita, her employee, should leave her job in the event of marriage. This is meant to show Deville as callous and cynical, but her observation that marriage tends to deal a massive blow to a woman's career was unfortunately true leading up to the 1990s, when the film was made, and continues to have some weight even in the decades afterwards.

* In ''Film/{{Accepted}}'', a high school senior rejected by every college ends up inventing one out of thin air. The thing spins out of control and becomes an actual, factual school set out of an old mental institution. The DeanBitterman at the nearby traditional college wages an accreditation jihad against the upstart. The guy's a {{Jerkass}}, and the new school (with its emphasis on the students) is presented as a brave bastion of new educational methods. But as Dean Dick points out, the new place doesn't have a health center, more than one faculty member, or even a ''library''. One doesn't have to be a crusty old academic to argue that a college should at least have a library.

* ''Film/ChairmanOfTheBoard'' combines this with FunnyAneurysmMoment: Bradford, the antagonist, blasts Edison's management of the company while the latter is shown driving up the stock price and getting magazine covers amid his antics running the company. The only problem? He was running the company in almost exactly the same manner as a lot of dotcom startups at the same time, almost all of which went broke. Had Bradford not violated numerous laws in forcing Edison out, his fight for control of the company would have been justified to save it from Edison's "interesting" management style. In the meantime, Bradford would arguably have managed the company competently even if he was only looking to sell...one presumes he would have gotten more for a functional company than an asset-stripped wreck, after all.

* In the hilariously {{anvilicious}} and {{Narm}}y LifetimeMovieOfTheWeek ''Film/CyberSeductionHisSecretLife'', the mother of the protagonist freaks and panics upon learning that her son is [[FelonyMisdemeanor looking at Internet porn]]. The father is very unconcerned and does not think there is anything abnormal about a teenage boy looking at porn, and the viewer is expected to consider the father an oafish buffoon. Admittedly there are some types of porn ''no-one'' should be looking at, but the film treats the protagonist looking at pictures of scantily-dressed models (who were still ''fully-clothed'', mind you) as some kind of grievous moral failing that inexplicably ruins his whole life.

** [[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/-em-dead-poets-society-em-is-a-terrible-defense-of-the-humanities/283853/ This essay by a literature PHD]] sympathizes more with the rigid administration than heroic BlitheSpirit Keating. Keatings tells the class to ignore actual literary study and just enjoy the feeling of the poems, basically telling them to act as ''fans'' instead of ''scholars'', which kind of defeats the purpose of a literature class. Also, he quotes a number of poems out of context [[MisaimedFandom in ways that completely change the message of the poem]], and all his talk about learning to think for yourself really means learning to think like he does, and his classes really are disruptive to the school.

* Edward Rooney in ''Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff''. It's his job to prevent truancy among his students and ensure attendance. While he clearly oversteps his authority by the end of the film, and although Ferris had a parentally excused absence, that doesn't change the fact that Ferris was skipping school, has done so at least nine times prior (he hacks into the school computer to change the records), does so by blatantly exploiting the good will of everyone, including his parents (he tricked them into excusing him from school, so even though he's excused it's just more proof of Rooney's accusations), and was also taking other students out of school while they were under Rooney's care. And Ferris's sister Jeane is also treated as a villain who just wants to catch Ferris out of spite, even though she never does anything immoral -- rather, she counters several of Ferris' immoral acts.

** While not entirely excusable, Venkman’s treatment of Peck is somewhat justified. In their first meeting, Venkman is not all that rude to Peck until Peck refers to him as “Mister”, despite the fact that Venkman has TWO doctorates (something he himself reveals in dialogue, and his degrees are shown on the wall). For all his childishness and immaturity, Venkman has every right to be proud of his doctor title, and no doctor would take kindly to someone referring to them as mister. Also, while he may be the “brain” of the team, he is shown to be very good at reading people and picking up on certain behaviors and cues. It’s entirely possible he read Peck like a book right away and could tell the man was just putting on airs and looking for a reason to go snooping in their business, and as the movie revealed, Venkman (for all his goofiness and lackadaisical persona) does NOT suffer fools lightly, and would have no problem dishing it out to Walter Peck. The fact that Peck showed very little patience at the slightest bit of resistance proved Venkman right.