Anti Villain / Live-Action Films

aka: Film

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• William Ford from 12 Years a Slave treats his black slaves with kindness and shows concern about their wellbeing, but still clearly only sees them as property and justifies his keeping them with the financial ruin he would face otherwise. Director Steve McQueen has gone on record for saying that he actually considers him the worst of the three slavers, as unlike the other two he is under no illusion and knows that slavery is monstrous, and yet partakes in it anyway. Solomon actually has a rather positive opinion of Ford, as a "decent man under the circumstances", but Eliza does not.
• The villains of The Adjustment Bureau aren't really very evil. In fact, they're trying as hard as they can to save humanity from its own evil. They just have a heavy-handed way of doing it.
• Dean Vernon Wormer from Animal House. He's the primary antagonist, and he has a short temper and some definite sinister moments, but he's only doing what any reasonable college administrator would when confronted with Delta house's reign of property damage, terrifying pranks, and occasional sexual harassment. He gets bonus points for his clear disgust with the brothers of Omega house, whose violence, racism, and abuse of their power within Faber University make them much more straightforwardly villainous.
• Blade Runner: Roy Batty. All he wants is a way for himself and his fellow Replicants to live longer than the four years allowed to them.
• The Bravados: Lujan rides with a group of murderers (and at least one rapist) but shows some distaste for the worst actions of the others, is a caring Family Man, and doesn't hold Douglas's pursuit of the gang against him after Douglas explains his past and motives.
• Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai, who is not too different from our heroes.
• Chip Douglas from The Cable Guy. His creepy and obsessive stalking of the main character is driven by the fact that he's been socially isolated for his entire life and is desperate for somebody to be his friend.
• The titular freak from Castle Freak (1995) isn't actually evil. After his mothers disgrace she locked her him up up deep in the castle. It didn't matter that he was five and had nothing to do with his father leaving her, she would go on to deny him all human contact for the rest of her life. Only visiting for the sole purpose of silently whipping him senseless. After 30 years of constant abuse and neglect, never even telling him why, he is simply too unhinged to know right from wrong.
• Vaako, the Noble Demon from The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), comes off this way at times. He's surprisingly competent, genuinely believes in the Religion of Evil, shows signs of Honor Before Reason, and, to the surprise of everyone, doesn't attempt a Klingon Promotion on the Lord Marshall (well, not until his wife convinces him that the Lord Marshall has violated the Religion of Evil).
• Ben Russell from Cold in July is a Type II. He is only looking to avenge his son's death. Then it turns out his son isn't dead at all and he joins forces with his son's supposed killer to find out what happened.
• In the Holocaust film Conspiracy (2001), there are two such characters:
  • Dr. Kritzinger is the only Nazi official present at the conference who feels that the wholesale extermination of the Jews is wrong. He feels legitimately betrayed when he figures out that he has been kept in the dark with false promises that they would be spared by the regime. Heydrich deconstructs this for Kritzinger by noting that he's only barely better than the rest of them because he never had any problems with terrorizing, enslaving and sterilizing the Jewish populations in Europe so long as they weren't immediately being killed.
  • Rudolf Lange is an SS officer who has personally seen the horrors of war in the east. He actively hates the Jews he has ordered to be killed but even he is disturbed by the ad hoc mass murders in Latvia. He gets pissed off at Heydrich for the casual way in which he couches the ensuing genocide with euphemisms and has become quite introspective about his station.
• In Creed III the film's villain, Damian Anderson, has the laudable goal of attaining the success in boxing his life circumstances denied him, and is right that those circumstances were at least tragic and arguably unjust. Nevertheless he remains the villain because his grudge against the protagonist forces the movie to its climax, and he uses underhanded methods to attain his goals, fighting dirty to defeat one contender and arranging an assault on another.
• Elysium:
  • President Patel, Elysium's board of directors, and even Delacourt and her assistants are trying to ensure a future for the children of Elysium after ecological disaster on Earth. It helps that the main protagonist is, at least initially, only acting against them out of pure self-interest (getting a cure for his radiation exposure).
• Major König in Enemy at the Gates is hunting down Vasily and killing his friends, but he's involved in a brutal war which naturally requires him to kill, doesn't engage in atrocities himself until he hangs Sacha (and that's for being a spy), disapproves of torture as shown when he's told of Volodya's capture, and has only come to Stalingrad to avenge the death of his son.
• Mr. Snowcone from Freaks (2018) is more along the lines of a supervillain, even down to the name, thanks to the hardships he's experienced with prejudice, but his goal is merely to rescue his daughter.
• Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Remirez from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the most morally ambiguous of the trio. He has an extensive rap list of crimes including rape, murder and embezzlement, but he's also the most likable and sympathetic character in the entire movie, and is sort of an underdog loser, who's Laughably Evil to boot. He also has a strong love for family, shown in the scene where he gets into a fight with his brother after finding out about the deaths of his parents, whom he supposedly turned to a life of crime to care for and whose passing he was genuinely thunderstruck by. It's shown that while he's a bad man, he's also terribly misguided, which is what makes him so "Ugly" inside.
• Prince Nuada in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Nuada is striking back at humanity because it is destroying his world. Nuada insists, and the film supports, that the world will be a worse place without his kind. Director Guillermo del Toro notes that Nuada has more morals than most of the heroes, notably Abe and Liz, who both place their own love before the fate of the world... Although Nuada is also a hypocrite and somewhat Ax-Crazy, such that you shouldn't be outright rooting for him to win.
• The Hunt for Red October is full of antagonistic characters whose only real crime is choosing the wrong country to be patriotic towards. To wit:
  • Dr. Petrov is a genuinely decent man who looks out for the people in his care, and is only a villain because he, unlike the rest of the officers on Red October, actually takes his oath of loyalty to the Soviet Union seriously.
  • Viktor Tupolev is an arrogant asshole, but his actions, even when seen in the worst possible light, are nothing but the actions of a patriotic officer trying to prevent a state-of-the-art submarine, a non-trivial portion of his nation's nuclear arsenal and encyclopedic knowledge of his country's submarine operations from falling into enemy hands.
  • The infiltrator is another patriot like Tupolev, on top of being a frightened young man who is nevertheless prepared to die in order to keep Red October out of enemy hands.
• In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Elsa Schneider was basically a foil for Indiana Jones. She was an ambitious scholar who wanted the Holy Grail even more than Indiana’s father. Her intentions are mostly selfish in nature, but she sees the grail as a priceless artifact to be preserved. Unfortunately, she sides with the Nazis to achieve her goals. In the end, she cannot be spared a Karmic Death. Despite Indiana’s efforts to save her, Elsa attempts to reach for the grail while hanging over an abyss. Her hand suddenly slips from his hold and she falls to her death.
• Fredrick Zoller is almost the most conventionally heroic character in Inglourious Basterds until his very last lines. He's brave, humble, seems like a Dogged Nice Guy Romantic Comedy protagonist while courting Shoshanna, and actually seems to have some remorse and trauma from his war service. But on the other hand...he's a Nazi (albeit a reluctant one), and then it turns out that he doesn't like to take "No" for an answer.
• The bank robbers in Inside Man are doing it to get even with a former Nazi Collaborator. They have scruples that involve not hurting or killing anyone, and not stealing cash from the bank but only some diamonds from a man guilty of war crimes.
• Another WWII biopic, Into the Storm (2009), has a lighter example: Lord Halifax is something of an antagonist in the first half of the movie (as he seeks peace with Hitler, opposite to Churchill), but he's portrayed as simply a misguided man. He's shown as wise, calm, well-mannered and respectful. Churchill himself notes Halifax is no enemy of his.
• Jug Face: Sustin leads the town in worshipping an Eldritch Abomination and making sacrifices to it, but he only does it so his town can use the aforementioned Abomination's healing properties.
• Jurassic Park:
  • Roland, the big game hunter from the second film. Yes, he's the one who injured and captured the T. rex baby to use it as bait but he clearly isn't an evil man, just a hired Blood Knight who works for a shady corporate master he has no real loyalty to. He expresses concern for Kelly and for the men under him. In the end he gets what he signed up for but he lost his best friend and hunting partner of many years and feels robbed of any sense of triumph, and he then realizes the futility of InGen's vision and refuses to have anything else to do with them.
  • Also from the second film, the two Tyrannosaurus who hunt down the heroes across the island because their baby was stolen.
• Knockaround Guys: Deputy Ward, who is reluctant to take the money with his boss in the first place and suggests they hand it over to the mob guys rather than risk a fight, but ultimately goes along with his boss.
• The zombies from Land of the Dead. They're horrifying undead predators, of course, but a few of them seem to be regaining a semblance of sentience, and their attack on Fiddler's Garden seems to be motivated by revenge. Amazingly, they're more sympathetic than the human characters of the film (Humans Are Bastards is in full effect).
• The Last Rites of Ransom Pride: Early Pride is a drunk asshole and an abusive father, but he pursues Juliette and Champ because he blames her for what happened to Ransom and believes she is leading Champ to his death, and wants to protect his only remaining son.
• M starred Peter Lorre in the role of Hans Beckert, the first Serial Killer in all of film and an implied pedophile, and one of the most pitiable villains ever portrayed. When a group of vigilante career criminals finally apprehends him, he delivers a "Reason You Suck" Speech, painting himself as a victim of compulsion while accusing them of being criminals by choice.
• Aunty Entity from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome is an iron-fisted dictator and ruthless in keeping power, but she probably does more to rebuild a functioning society than anyone else in the franchise. She's fair as possible, recruits Max to ensure that her takeover of Master's methane works is done according to the rules, adheres very rigidly to I Gave My Word, and when Max busts a deal, punishes him strictly according to the rules (which seem arbitrary and random, but are designed to be easily understood by the people). In the end, having Max at her mercy, she lets him go because there's no point in killing him by that point. All together, though antagonistic, she's only very loosely villainous, making her stand heavily in contrast with the other three Big Bads of the series, particularly her successor villain who shares many characteristics, but none of her redeeming qualities.
• MonsterVerse:
  • The MUTOs, not really apparent until near the end of Godzilla (2014). Their goal is merely to reunite with one another, have offspring, and ensue the resurgence of their species. Even with the amount of destruction they cause, they are at least sympathetic in this regard. In addition, they usually only cause destruction solely because they're so large and through the movie they act like actual animals. The only time we see them act out of any sort of malice is after the nest is destroyed and the male MUTO is killed by Godzilla, at which the enraged female goes full-on Omnicidal Maniac on every single human she finds.
  • Depending on your point of view, Reasonable Authority Figure and Commander Contrarian Reconstruction Admiral William Stenz zigzags this trope. His initial approaches to dealing with the Titans in both films — which involve crossing the Godzilla Threshold — make a bad problem worse before he and Monarch are fully in the same boat.
  • Godzilla himself becomes one in Godzilla vs. Kong. It's revealed that he's been targeting and destroying Apex facilities (and naturally causing damage to the civilian-inhabited population centers where they're based) not because he's turned against humanity, so much as because he can sense Mechagodzilla's components at those locations emitting a signal which he recognizes as a rival alpha and/or because he can sense Ghidorah's remains are still alive; and he's actively trying to hunt and eliminate this threat. Considering the nature of this threat, and the fact Apex Cybernetics were obscenely stupid enough to do such a thing after the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), it's very understandable why Godzilla is so pissed (if anything, it's impressive that he doesn't get more pissed at humanity than he is).
• Robert from Mystery Team. He didn't want Brianna's parents to be killed, and took her and her sister in. He didn't even interfere with the Mystery Team. That said, his motives are rather sinister, risking the lives of thousands of employees and customers to save money.
• Teddy from Neighbors (2014) goes way too far with the feud but the film establishes he's not not really a bad guy, just an immature one who is desperately afraid of his limited prospects after college. By the end of the film he and Mac make up as friends.
• Never Cry Wolf: Tyler's closing narration describes the story as having no real heroes or villains, but some people border on being villains.
  • Rosie the bush pilot somewhat callously leaves Tyler out in the middle of nowhere without knowing how to find him again and brings out hunters and real estate developers who are detrimental to the tundra. Still, he's a somewhat friendly man who offers to bring Tyler back home when he stumbles across him again.
  • Ooetok's son Mike admits to hunting wolves to combat his poverty even as he has a sense of respect and awe for them and can see that they don't deserve it. He's pretty nice to Tyler throughout the movie. He also apparently kills the wolf parents Tyler's been studying, even after becoming close friends with Tyler and seeing how it would hurt him, and is fairly unapologetic about it. Still, it's not hard to sympathize with his desire to buy a bridge of false teeth, given his description of the bad impact his missing teeth have on him.
• In Now You See Me, The Horsemen never harm any innocents, and the people they're stealing from have wronged many others in the past and indirectly caused the death of one man as well as cheating the family out of his inheritance.
• Mr. Morton in Once Upon a Time in the West. A powerful Railroad Baron, he's crippled, terminally ill and just wants to complete his transcontinental railroad before dying. His biggest failure is hiring the clearly psychotic Frank, who doesn't share his scruples about murdering anyone (regardless of age or gender) who gets in Morton's way. Morton chews Frank out for this several times, and even gains some audience sympathy when Frank usurps his power and tries to kill him. Morton even gets a tragically ironic death scene, crawling towards a puddle.
• Planet of the Apes (1968): Dr. Zaius, although ruthless and even evil in his actions, is working to make sure that ape society doesn't suffer the same fate as human society. He is one of the very few apes who know the truth about the origins of the ape society, and in the end it's shown that his hatred of humankind isn't necessarily unwarranted. In contrast to the blind optimism of Zira or Cornelius or the ignorant violence of the gorilla soldiers, Zaius can be seen as an official who's willing to get his hands dirty to keep society functioning. He is also willing to talk personally with Taylor, going so far as to call him by name, to find out the truth of Taylor's origin. Also shown in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, in which it's said that although he insisted on bringing Zira and Cornelius to trial for heresy, he asked for clemency on their behalf.
  Dr. Zaius: What I do, I do with no pleasure.
• Lestat in the film adaptation of Queen of the Damned: he's a remorseless, amoral killer, but he has an incredible capacity for compassion and empathy. And, as he'd point out, he's just obeying his nature when he kills.
• Boss Johns in the third Riddick is after Riddick, but his grudge is quite personal, since he wants to know what happenened to his son on M6-117 and if Riddick killed him. He also views Riddick as a dangerous, murdering savage. After learning that his son was a child-killing junkie, he keeps his promise to Riddick and they leave on good terms.
• Samara in The Ring Two. Sure, she killed a bunch of people, but she just wanted to be loved. This is different from how she is in The Ring.
  Doctor: You don't want to hurt anyone, Samara.
  Samara: But I do.
• In Robin Hood (1991), Baron Daguerre is against Robin due more to the law than to malice, though he does allow acts of cruelty in the course of enforcing the law. At the start, he's Robert's friend and tries to be fair to all sides when Sir Miles Folcanet demands that Robert be tried for aiding a poacher. He orders just one stroke of the lash, but this is too much for Robert who insults them both and gets outlawed. And he and Robin basically agree that Saxons and Normans ought to get along, unlike Folcanet and Prince John.
• In The Rock, General Hummel (Ed Harris) is an American Vietnam War hero who is motivated to get the government to acknowledge the sacrifices of soldiers who died during black ops...even if he has to hold an entire city hostage to do it. Furthermore, late in the movie it's revealed that he had no intention of ever letting innocents die, and gets killed trying to stop his Ax-Crazy subordinates from launching nerve gas at San Francisco.
• Short Circuit: Howard is in charge of the efforts to recapture or destroy Number Five, but he doesn't understand Johnny Five is truly sentient, gets along fairly well with Crosby, is only bluffing when he holds Newton and Ben at gunpoint in one scene, and shows a sense of depression and sadness when it looks as if Johnny Five has been destroyed, and eventually fires Skroeder (The Heavy).
• Sin City:
  • Becky betrays her friends in Old Town to the mob, but is clearly miserable being a sex worker, claims that Manute threatened to kill her mother, and gets caught in a somewhat harsh Contempt Crossfire from Gail and Manute.
  • Dirty Cop Bob covers up the crimes of pedophile and Serial Killer Roark Jr. and shoots his own partner. However, he claims that he's only doing so out of fear that the Roarks will kill him, and tries to convince Hartigan to lay down his gun for several seconds before shooting him again. He claims to hate himself afterward and tries to make amends to Hartigan. In A Dame to Kill For, he's quick to believe that Dwight was set up and shows concern for his new partner.
• Claudia in Snow White: A Tale of Terror. She is only really a villain once the miscarriage drives her mad and the enchanted mirror starts manipulating her. And then what does she want? A living child and the love of her husband.
• Sybok from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier uses his powerful telepathic abilities to cure people of their deepest emotional pain in order to win them over to his side and help him achieve his goals. It's unclear whether he's more motivated by altruism or selfish ends...though he achieves both either way.
• Star Wars: Darth Vader, who in the end of the original series turns out to be something of a Tragic Monster. In the prequels we see him as an anti-villain, someone with noble ideals who is manipulated into evil means. Eventually he's consumed by self-loathing.
• Stonehearst Asylum: Lamb. While he is a little insane and does some pretty nasty things, his methods are much more humane than those of Salt's.
• The Street Fighter: Sue Shiomi and Junjo Shikenbaru.
• King Yeongjo from The Throne is a corrupt and despotic ruler who didn't even want to be king in the first place, and who treats his son like crap, eventually punishing him by locking him in a rice chest for eight days. However, he deeply regrets everything when he finds the posthumously named Sado dead, admitting he wouldn't have abused him so much if he hadn't been the king, and Sado the crown prince.
• Elijah Price, of Unbreakable and Glass (2019), believes that superheroes — specifically, people with superhuman abilities and the instinct to fight evil and protect others — are real, and that by finding and nurturing one of these superheroes, he can make the world a better place and bring meaning to his own tragic life. How does he accomplish this? By becoming a full-on supervillain of the Diabolical Mastermind variety, known as "Mister Glass". In Unbreakable, Mister Glass engineers disasters and causes hundreds of deaths in order to find David Dunn and guide him into becoming a superhero, while in Glass, he teams up with a superpowered villain called "the Horde" to force Dunn's hand and prove to the world that superheroes exist.
• Designated Villain Lucian in Underworld (2003) — while employing some rather dubious tactics — was a former slave who led an uprising after his lover and unborn child were brutally killed, and is only trying to prevent his people from being exterminated. If his plan in the first film had succeeded, the end result would have been peace between the two sides.
• Gorgon from the Walking with Dinosaurs film. He's supposed to be the main antagonist of the film and also kills the father of The Hero, but it's only because he is a predator and only trying to survive and feed his pack. He even unintentionally delivers Laser-Guided Karma to the movie's resident Jerkass.
• Warrior: Both Brendan and Tommy are treated sympathetically throughout the film, but Tommy fulfills the role of the villain. He's a complete jerk to both his brother and father throughout the film, refusing to help them reconcile their old family demons (although not without reason). He also fights like a classic screen villain, curb-stomping his foes with anger and brutality.
• The vampires in We Are the Night are bloodthirsty killers, but are deeply tragic characters.
• In We Were Soldiers, the North Vietnamese soldiers can be seen as anti-villains. Although they clearly are the antagonists of the story, fighting and often killing American soldiers, they are not portrayed as monstrously evil, or even as devout Communists. The North Vietnamese general shows sadness for all the soldiers under his command who die in the battle, is depressed at the end of the battle because he knows that the war will only grow from that point, and even shows respect for the American soldiers by replacing a small American flag placed on a post. Likewise, North Vietnamese soldiers are shown to largely be scared young men fighting for their country, writing thoughts in a diary and keeping pictures of wives and girlfriends, much like their American counterparts.
• Aberline from The Wolfman (2010). He antagonizes Lawrence, but is technically one of the good guys.
• Captain Alan Langford in the 1959 war film Yesterday's Enemy. In World War II Burma, Langford discovers Japanese plans of attack but cannot interpret them. When a Burmese collaborator refuses to explain the plans, Langford gets his men to shoot two innocent Burmese in order to show the collaborator what he is in for if he fails to talk. Langford justifies this war crime on the grounds that thwarting the Japanese plan will save hundreds of Allied lives.

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