Jerkass Has A Point / Film

Jerkass Has a Point in Live Action Film.

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• About the Little Red Riding Hood: The old women of the village forbid one of Little Red Riding Hood’s friends to go with her to the forest mainly because they are bad-tempered, bitter and envious. However, they say that she might as well go with a wolf right away and that the wolves probably haven’t forgiven Little Red Riding Hood for the original fairytale's events — and they are perfectly right: The Big Bad Wolf’s mother wants revenge on Red Riding Hood and has sent two wolves to kidnap the girl; the latter is in company of said wolves for most of the time in the woods.
• In Alien³, Mr. Andrews (the nominal Warden of the prison) is a pretty big Jerkass, but he has very legitimate grounds for not wanting Ripley to walk around the prison freely. He has to keep a population of convicted murderers and rapists in check, who are still very dangerous even if they have found religion. Ripley almost gets raped and perhaps even killed when she wanders off alone. Also, her story about the Alien (which has never been seen on any other planet than LV-426) is admittedly a little hard to believe, when from his perspective the more likely scenario is that Murphy's death was just an accident, and that Golic (who was already an insane multiple-murderer) simply killed the other two inmates.
• Animal House: Dean Wormer and the Mayor are, respectively, a jerk and a crook... and their dislike of and desire to be rid of Delta Tau Chi Fraternity are perfectly understandable and reasonable since, as lovable and hilarious as they are, they're a bunch of hooligans who bring havoc and destruction to the college campus and town.
  Wormer: Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
• Army of Thieves: Inspector Delacroix is an irritable man who doesn't shy away from Police Brutality, but he's right to point out that people are still committing crimes during the zombie outbreak and are relying on European authorities caring more about zombies on another continent than doing their jobs. He also has a right to be annoyed at his team for not reading his briefing notes.
• In Back to the Future, as much as a Jerkass Biff is, he isn't wrong for saying that it shouldn't be his insurance that covers the damages to George's car but George's. After all, George did lend Biff his car and it does fall on George that he gave permission for someone as careless as Biff to drive his car.
• In The Bad News Bears, Roy striking his son, Joey, on the mound after he had nearly beaned Engelberg is treated in this fashion. He justified it to his wife and Joey's mother by saying the pitch could've "killed" Engelberg, and it was disobeying his signals to pitch him low-and-outside anyway. Likely part of the issue his wife had was how cold and business-like Roy was about it. While their team, the Yankees, ultimately beat the Bears, Roy was immediately hit with Laser-Guided Karma: Engelberg hit a soft grounder to Joey, and Joey held onto the ball, allowing Engelberg to score an inside-the-park home run and bring the Bears another run closer. He then silently dropped the ball at Roy's feet, and left the game with his mother.
• Barton Fink:
  • Jack Lipnick, the executive of Capitol Pictures, was initially very enthusiastic about having Barton Fink working for him as a screenwriter and has assigned him to write a wrestling picture. The moment he receives Fink's screenplay, his disposition sours significantly; he harshly tells Barton off for writing some "fruity movie about suffering" and places him under a contract that will not produce anything he writes until he learns to fall in line. That said, Barton was ordered specifically to write a wrestling picture, not a drama about a wrestler.
  • Geisler is hostile and obnoxious to Barton from the get-go, but his attitude becomes more justified when Barton hasn't written anything after being employed for weeks.
  • Detectives Mastrionotti and Deutsch may be hostile to Barton when they asked him if he knows anything about Karl "Madman" Mundt, aka Charlie Meadows, even giving an air of antisemitism, but when Barton says that Mundt "liked Jack Oakie pictures", the detectives rightly point out that it is too vague a description and not helpful for them.
• Batman Film Series:
  • Batman Forever features Fred Stickley, Edward Nygma's Mean Boss at WayneTech who goes out of his way to put him down every chance he gets. As dickish as he is to Nygma, he has a leg to stand on regarding his treatment. Aside from Nygma inventing an ethically questionable device that operates through Mind Manipulation, Nygma comes off as incredibly pushy, even to Bruce Wayne, the CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Edward's first scene alone has him barge into a conversation with Bruce and Fred to push his device, ignoring repeated direct orders from Fred himself to go back to his work station, and rebuffing Bruce's polite and very reasonable request for Nygma to make an appointment with his secretary to discuss his device on the grounds that he deserves a direct answer from Bruce himself right then and there; all of this is grounds for termination in most corporations.
  • Batman & Robin has Robin complaining about Batman constantly interfering when the two have a close grip on Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy during confrontations. Even though most of Robin's actions are out of selfishness and carelessness, he reminds Batman at one point that counting on each other and trusting each other is what being partners is all about. In an ironic twist of this trope, Bruce reminds Robin of this when he tries to get Robin to snap out of Poison Ivy's influence.
• C.P. Ellis in The Best of Enemies is the leader of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan who's actively working to stop school integration. Thing is, a lot of the practical objections he throws out are valid, such as the white schools not being equipped for an influx of new students and the black students not being at the same point in the curriculum. The pro-integrationist faction doesn't appear to have considered the mechanicss before that point. (Notes seen on the chalkboard later on suggest that the committee took his objections seriously and started actively working on solutions).
• Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski. He turns out to be completely right that Bunny Lebowski's kidnapping was faked, despite causing so many problems for the Dude throughout the film.
  The Dude: No, Walter, you're not wrong, you're just an asshole!
• In Billy Madison, Eric is a Corrupt Corporate Executive and sleazy Jerkass conspiring to put himself in charge of Madison Hotels. However, he is right when he points out that the company's fifty-thousand employees are not likely to have jobs for very long if the president turns the position over to his drunkard son (who only graduated because his father bribed his teachers), and that before Billy makes a deal to prove his capability by re-doing his education, this actually does temporarily convince Mr. Madison to turn it over to Eric. By the end, after some Character Development, Billy himself concludes that he's not cut out to run the business and turns it over to Carl, who is both competent and not a Jerkass.
• Bird Box: Douglas is your usual hard-ass among the survivors in this film, yet he likewise ends up being entirely right about a majority of the situations the survivors run into (including about letting Gary into the house, who ultimately ends up killing everyone save Malorie, Tom and the newborns).
• Blade: Trinity While it may look like Blade was being an ungrateful jerk to the Nightstalkers, despite being resuced by them, he rightfully points out that they are just a bunch of kids who are not taking this vampire hunting job seriously.
• The Bounty: Bligh is legally and probably ethically in the right throughout the film - he's correct that the men are neglecting their duties as sailors and that the junior officers are setting a bad example, and much of his discipline is aimed at ensuring the crew are fit and healthy because he is haunted by his experience on previous voyages of losing men to sickness. It's not his logic that turns everyone against him, it's his manner
• Brewster McCloud: Captain Crandall is a grouchy and often disrespectful cop, but he is right to denounce the late Officer Breen as a Dirty Cop who doesn't deserve a hero's funeral.
• Brightburn. Noah's anger towards Brandon when finding him in the bathroom's walk-in closet and then threatening to report to his parents for this troublemaking against the unapologetic Brandon's requests not to are justified considering Brandon was trespassing into his and his wife's home uninvited, thereby committing the crime of breaking and entering and the fact he was found hiding in the closet inside the bathroom doubles as an invasion of privacy which further justified Noah's anger. Noah did not deserved getting killed for that understandable and relatable reaction towards Brandon's misdeeds.
• Brooklyn. Miss Kelly is a self-righteous busybody and a thoroughly unlikeable person. But she's right when she calls out the heroine for seeing a young man from her village, given that she's married to a young man back in New York.
• In Calvary, the Dr. Jerk Dr. Harte relishes in telling Father James about a horrible medical incident that happened to a young girl and likens it to the misery felt by victims of sexual abuse who were brushed under the carpet by the Catholic Church. While Harte is clearly just trying to cause Father James pain, he does have a point about the need for justice.
• Though not a jerk, Eva Rodriguez is vaguely arrogant (and a rebel, to boot!), particularly early on in Center Stage (2000). At one point, when she calls Sergei on looking at the mirror and uses a certain four-letter word to highlight her irritation at his alleged vanity, the ballet instructor has this to say to both of them:
  Instructor: If people want to hear profanity, Miss Rodriguez, they can take a subway. They don't have to spend $60 on a ballet ticket... although she has a point.
• Templeton in Charlotte's Web is crass, anti-social and totally obnoxious. But even so, he did a lot for Wilbur and Charlotte and was never thanked properly.
• Clerks: At the peak of Dante moaning over how badly his day's gone ("I'm not even supposed to be here today!") and how Randal's the one to blame for it, Randal snaps, noting that (A) Dante came to work of his own free will on his day off ^note  Although given the tenuous status of casual employees in the modern labor market, refusing to take an unscheduled shift at short notice can be detrimental to an employee's standing in the eyes of managers (in other words, it's an order posed as a request). This could have also been the condition for some employers back in the '90s, such as Dante's unseen boss, but it's only reached noticeable levels since the late '00s and (B) most of the bad things that happened were his own fault, such as closing the store multiple times to pursue his own interests, and trying to vainly rekindle his relationship with an ex by cheating on his current girlfriend. He then criticizes Dante's attitude, noting that he constantly talks down to and belittles others while working at a Soul-Sucking Retail Job, and pointing out that although Jay and Silent Bob are stupid, at least they don't try to overcompensate for having what's essentially a monkey's job.
  Randal: We like to make ourselves seem so much more important than the people that come in here to buy a paper, or, God forbid... cigarettes. We look down on them as if we're so advanced. Well, if we're so fucking advanced, what are we doing working here?
  • While Randal was totally correct, that's not to say that Dante doesn't have some legitimate gripes. He was pressured in to coming in on his day off, and Randal's irresponsibility had caused several issues that Dante was stuck in the middle of. From Randal being hours late (and Dante having to deal with a disgruntled video store customer); to offending a customer while talking about sexual acts and flashing porn at him; to selling cigarettes to a minor (which Dante was blamed and fined for); to spitting water at a customer who annoyed him. If anything, Randal's soliloquy served as a good reminder to Dante to get off of his high horse, and take responsibility as well.
• In Colette, Willy is a selfish wannabe Manipulative Bastard and not half as clever as he thinks he is, but he has a working talent for publicity — and he’s a competent editor who seems to be genuinely important to Colette’s early development as a writer.
• In The Colony (2013), Mason opposes the mission to Colony 5 on the grounds that they're unlikely to be able to help and that the resources would be better spent preserving themselves. He's proven right on both counts. Mason also criticizes Sam for leaving a trail that brings the cannibals back to Colony 7. Sam knew the cannibals were following his footprints and that there was another way across the river, so he knew coming home would directly endanger the colony.
• In Contagion (2011):
  • Dr Orantes is horrified when her associate tells her that they gave her kidnapper's village placebo vaccinations instead of the actual vaccination like they had bargained to get her released. He fairly points out that governments around the world can't be seen as rewarding or encouraging abductions, especially by organized crime groups to ransom vaccines.
  • Krumwilde initially makes some good points about the dangers of the virus and how pharmaceutical can make profit ahead of people's lives, even if his later response is to do the same thing. And despite being an online scam artist, he accurately points out that those in higher position will abuse their power and positions, such as Dr Cheever to get their loved ones out of danger.
• Cop: Hopkins views Da Chief with contempt for being an uptight By-the-Book Cop who doesn't understand the realities that his detectives have to deal with, but it turns out Da Chief is absolutely correct to view Hopkins with suspicion. Not only is Hopkins pretty corrupt, he is guilty of multiple wrongful shootings that amount to little more than vigilante justice.
• In Crazy Rich Asians, Eddie was generally a crass Jerkass but he brings up good points during the bachelor party. Namely, that no matter how Nick spins it, he and Rachel have an unequal relationship, that their relationship will be scrutinized and criticized by the rest of the family, seeing how they gave Eddie grief for marrying Fiona despite the fact Fiona's family is also immensely rich. Eddie also points out that Colin's dad is only paying millions for his wedding to Araminta because her family owns a billion dollar resort chain, not because he particularly cares if they love each other.
• Bouc's mother in Death on the Nile (2022) disapproves of her son's relationship with Rosalie at every turn as she believes that marriage or love in general will only end in disappointment and mocks the idea that love is always sweet or kind. She isn't entirely wrong as love drives one couple to fake a marriage so they could kill and steal the money from a wealthy heiress, while Bouc himself decides to commit theft and lie about the above murder so he wouldn't be caught.
• Dirty Harry defends himself early in the movie from killing a guy by claiming he was a rapist. When asked how could he know that he replies "When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn't out collecting for The Red Cross". Mayor admits he has a point.
• Dogma: Bartleby was very bitter, and an absolute menace that was willing to unmake all of existence due to feeling spurned by God. But his feelings weren't entirely unwarranted. He correctly said that angels were never given the free will to accept God, and the ones who rebelled against him were shunned from heaven. Meanwhile, humans had the free will to accept, reject, or otherwise be dismissive of God. And despite humanity's repeated negative traits such as war, genocide, etc; God still granted them unconditional love. Love that wasn't granted to the angels. Hence why he and Loki were shunned from heaven forever, with no foreseeable way to get back in. And their mere quest to get back in would unmake existence, as it proved God wrong.
• Downfall: Hermann Fegelein is a self-centered opportunist and smug prick who nobody likes, but his lack of commitment to Nazism makes him an Only Sane Man who realizes that the Nazi party is completely doomed and their only option is to run while they still can (even his boss Himmler remains convinced that the Allies will allow him to negotiate a conditional surrender), but everyone else is too deep in either fanaticism or butt-kissing to listen.
• In Draft Day, Coach Penn often acts like a jerk ass, but he's right when he points out the Browns made a draft analysis and created a playbook with the current quarterback in mind. Months or maybe even years of work has become worthless because of a rash decision by the general manager.
• Deadtimestories Volume 1: In "Valley of the Shadow", the obnoxious money man who is funding the expedition insists that they return down river after two members vanish following an ominously cut off radio message. Angela ignores him and insists they head upriver to search for them. If she had listened to him, everyone would have survived.
• Roger Clifford in Pokémon Detective Pikachu may be abrasive and rude at times but he did bring up good points.
  • He calls out his father for calling himself the "visionary founder" for Ryme City during a broadcast and snarking if "savior of the world" was taken yet. Roger turns out to be right as Howard had a god complex.
  • When Lucy comes to him with rumors about the R drug, Roger quickly shuts her down because he can't run any story that doesn't have any solid evidence and sources to back it up.
• In The English Teacher, Jason's father Dr. Sherwood is initially presented as unsupportive of his son's dream of being a playwright for pressuring him to go to law school instead. It's not until the end of the movie that Linda acknowledges she misjudged him and didn't consider that 1) Jason tried to become a playwright without success for seven years, and 2) While Dr. Sherwood is the father in Jason's play, it's a dramatically over-exaggerated account of Jason's life. Overall, Dr. Sherwood is vindicated as a tough but reasonable father who doesn't want his son to waste his life chasing an unattainable dream.
• Enola Holmes:
  • For all his abrasiveness and misogyny, Mycroft's disdain and anger towards Eudoria is partially justified. He financially supported her based off her letters that she needed to maintain the estate, pay staff and educate Enola. So when he discovers that the estate was unkempt, there were almost no staff and Enola did not have a proper education, he was infuriated. Not to mention, it's strongly implied that Eudoria used his money towards her secret revolutionary activities, which would have caused Mycroft serious trouble if it were discovered. In his eyes, no only did his mother swindled him, she also left him the responsibility of looking after his sixteen-year-old sister after their mother abandoned her.
    • Mycroft also considers Eudoria dangerous among other things. When Enola discovers that Eudoria was prepared to use terroristic methods to change the world, she conceded that Mycroft was right.
  • Several characters, including Mycroft and Ms Harrison, point out that if Eudoria cared for Enola so much, then why abandon her, leave her in Mycroft's care on her birthday no less?
  • When Sherlock implies his disapproval towards Mycroft's way of taking care of their family, Mycroft fires back that Sherlock has no right to judge him since Sherlock himself has taken no part of it. Several other characters point out how little Sherlock's family matters seem to interest him and Sherlock does appear bothered by their accusations.
• Fatal Attraction With all of Alex's crazed behavior, it's easy to overlook that she's 100% right in that Dan has a legal and moral obligation to the child she's carrying.
• From Beyond: Dr. Bloch is a cold Jerkass who constantly criticizes and berates Dr. Katherine McMichaels for using patients mainly for her experiments, and for unethical behavior. Bloch is entirely correct despite her abrasiveness. Of course, it's undermined by the fact that Bloch doesn't care about her patients where Katherine does, and that when Katherine is Mistaken for Insane and remanded to Bloch's custody, Bloch subjects her to torturous electroshock therapy out of spite.
• Fury (2014): After Norman has had sex with Emma and promised to write her, the apartment she and her aunt are in is caught in the crossfire of a German artillery strike. Norman attempts to reach her body but is roughly dragged away by Grady, who mocks him for a) believing that he would have a fairy tale-style romance with that girl and b) acting like he could still save her. The thing is that Grady, while shockingly heartless, was also absolutely right. Their relationship consisted of an hour or two together, in the middle of a war zone and under very ambiguous conditions. They were unlikely to end up together anyway, and she was now dead. Grady likely saved Norman's life by not letting him try to dig her out when more artillery could come down on the town at any time.
• Ghostbusters (1984):
  • Walter Peck is entirely justified in his concerns, many of which were shared by Ray and Egon. Weird supernatural occurrences starting exactly at the same time three disgraced scientists start up a supernatural elimination business, using equipment they refuse to talk about, including, by their own admission to each other, unlicensed nuclear accelerators. And when he does originally show up, he's reasonably polite and professional (though one may notice he still addresses Venkman as "Mr." even after looking over his two doctorates hanging on the wall). Only after Venkman takes issue with being questioned by some government stooge and responds with mockery does Peck become unreasonable.
    • When Peck returns as Mayor of New York forty years later, he again raises valid concerns about the new Ghostbusters team- including Egon's daughter Callie and grandchildren Trevor and Phoebe- using Phoebe as a member of the team when she's fifteen years old and not getting paid, meaning the Ghostbusters are essentially violating child labour laws. However, once again Peck's potential validity is undermined by his attitude, ignoring how Phoebe is far from a regular teen and had already proven herself against Gozer back in Somerville.
  • Doctor Yeager, Dean of the Psychology Department sneers down his nose at Venkman, Spengler, and Stanz, make some snarky comments about them, and toss them off of the university's campus, saying, "The thing is Doctor... Venkman. We believe that the purpose of science is to serve mankind. You, however, seem to regard science as some kind of dodge... or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman!" His criticism is 100% true of Venkman, whose Establishing Character Moment is using an experiment as a means to get laid, causing him to miss an actual breakthrough. Ray and Egon are far more professional, but that just makes their obsession with the paranormal — and their association with Venkman in particular — seem especially questionable.^note A deleted scene reveals that Venkman was the only one who bothered to go the department meetings, and therefore became the group's spokesman, which explains the dean's misgivings. This also foreshadows what happened with Peck later. Not the dean's fault that these three weirdos finally found evidence to support their theories less than an hour earlier.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019):
  • Despite acting like an angry, high-horsed dick and despite his vengeance-fueled insistence that all the Titans should be indiscriminately killed in their sleep (which clashes with this film's Green Aesop), Mark Russell is proven quite right that Monarch's containment measures won't be nearly enough to stop the Titans from breaking free and causing devastation if they awaken. When King Ghidorah's call enslaves all the Titans at once, they have no problem tearing apart the containment facilities Monarch have built around them.
  • Alan Jonah may be a murderous Misanthrope Supreme who engineers most of the film's events and is willing to let the Titans kill the whole world under King Ghidorah's command, but he's 100% right when he loudly and harshly chides Madison for being a Wide-Eyed Idealist, who bought every word her deranged and manipulative mother spoon-fed her without listening to her own heart and conscience sooner; and when he criticizes Emma for not indoctrinating Madison into their plan properly before she made her daughter a part of an Eco-Terrorist plot to kill millions of people that their team now has to lag around on their every delicate mission.
• Good Will Hunting: Clark, the snotty grad student Will upstages at the bar, is absolutely correct that while he might not be the brightest bulb in the box, a degree from Harvard will set him on the path to success, while Will's intelligence means nothing as long as he insists on not doing anything with it. This sentiment is shared by everyone in the movie, except the people who think Will is actively self-sabotaging.
• Used in-universe in Gremlins 2: The New Batch with this exchange:
  Clamp: That thing that was in here a minute ago, that's dangerous! This guy's from the art department.
  Forster: Well, ask him how he knows so much about these "green things".
  Clamp: That's a good question Bill -– how do you know so much about them?
• In The Hobbit:
  • It wasn't very smart of Thorin to turn down Thranduil's deal without a second thought, especially since it was the dwarves' only chance to get out of Mirkwood alive, but Thorin does have a valid reason for not trusting Thranduil. He rightly points out that Thranduil did not aid them against Smaug or even assist the refugees afterwards. Thranduil betrayed their trust then, why should Thorin trust him now?
  • Later, Thorin refuses to honor the deal with Laketown while Thranduil's army is present and with Bilbo trying to get him to help out of compassion. Thorin points out it wasn't compassion that motivated most of the people of Laketown to help the dwarves, it was a selfish desire for wealth. When Bard, one of the few not motivated by greed, points out Thorin had given his word, Thorin reminds Bard that he had no choice but to bargain with the promise of wealth or else Laketown would have locked all the dwarves up.
  • Thranduil is perfectly correct that Gandalf's decision to encourage Thorin to take back Erebor and try to kill Smaug will bring many people injured and killed.
    • He scoffs at Bard's desire to reason with Thorin first, even if he lets Bard at least try. He is proven right when Thorin, out of his mind with gold sickness, tries to kill Bilbo during negotiations. It isn't until an army of orcs shows up and Thorin's cousin Dain is near death that Thorin finally snaps out of it.
• 1960's Home From The Hill focuses on a dysfunctional southern family, the Hunnicutts, in which the mother, Hannah (Eleanor Parker), has hated her husband, Wade (Robert Mitchum) for his womanizing (resulting in one known illegitimate son, played by the A-Team's George Peppard) and has spent the last 18 years making their son, Theron (George Hamilton), dependent upon her. When Wade decides it's time to help Theron "man up" and stop being such a borderline Manchild, Hannah reveals the truth of Wade's infidelities to Theron — which causes him to hate both his parents (Wade for being a jerk and Hannah for not having the strength to do anything about it and both for lying to him). Following some very epic angst for all involved Wade finally seems to realize what a jerk he is and calls Hannah out on playing the victim card for so long and refusing to acknowledging her own Jerkass behavior. After the big reveal he taunts Hannah by saying: "You finally got the revenge you've been waiting for all these years, but what good is it gonna do ya now? He hates me alright, but he hates you too for telling him." He sums it up again rather nicely later on: "We're rotten parents Hannah. This is a rotten home."
• Home Alone: Uncle Frank is a jerk who treats Kevin poorly but he wasn't wrong about how Kevin shouldn't watch a violent gangster movie. Later, Kevin watches it while he is home alone and ends up getting frightened by what he sees.
• Horrible Bosses: As much of a Jerkass as he is to everyone, Harken is right about calling out Nick Dale and Kurt on being losers who can't do anything right.
  • In the sequel, he points out that however much of a Bad Boss he was, Nick, (after taking over his company and being a Benevolent Boss,) being naive enough to make a good-faith agreement with somebody who turned out to be dishonest, running the company into the ground and ruining the livelihoods of his employees, is actually even worse. Nick concedes that it's a fair point, and while he was trying to butter Harken up to get advice on dealing with the mess, he does seem to mean it.
• In the Polish Film Interrogation, the UB torture Tonia for information about Col. Olcha's Spying Ring, despite her claims of innocence(and assuming the ring even existed in the first place.) However, both Major Zawada and Czesiek are correct that Tonia not only lied, repeatedly, about her relationship with Olcha, but lied to their faces about some of the various crimes she actually is guilty of^note  She had American foreign currency and destroyed an Army Latrine by drunkenly firing a tank shell at it. As such, they have no reason to believe her cries of innocence. This becomes averted later in the film when after she is proven innocent of spying they keep her locked up anyway because the State doesn't make mistakes, so she must be guilty.
• Used in How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) when the Grinch calls the Whos out on their constant worrying about gifts.
  Grinch: That's what it's all about, isn't it? That's what it's always been about! Gifts, gifts, giftsgiftsgiftsgiftsgiftsgifts! You wanna know what happens to your gifts? They all come to me. In your garbage. You see what I'm saying? In your GARBAGE! I could hang myself with all the bad Christmas neckties I found at the dump. And the avarice. THE AVARICE NEVER ENDS! "I want golf clubs!" "I want diamonds!" "I want a pony so I can ride it twice, get bored with it and sell it to make glue!" Look, I don't wanna make waves, but this whole Christmas season is stupid! Stupid! STUPID! There is, however, one teeny-tiny Christmas tradition that I find quite... meaningful. Mistletoe. Now pucker up and KISS IT, Whoville!
• Interstellar:
  • Brand keeps a secret that the gravity formula is supposedly unsolvable, and that therefore the humans on earth can not be rescued. He justifies this by reasoning that nobody would try hard enough to find humanity a new home if they knew they were only working towards saving humanity as a whole, rather than themselves. If you think about it, this does actually carry merit. If the humans on earth are supposedly doomed anyway, why not try to save humanity by all means possible?
  • Mann tries to murder Cooper in order to prevent him from returning to earth, because he knows that his planet is inhabitable, and that they will therefore need the fuel to reach Edmund's planet, rather than Cooper 'wasting' it. Downplayed, since they are only in this situation at all because he mislead them into coming to his planet.
• Lavona in I, Tonya is a genuinely terrible mother who shows up at Tonya's wedding just to tell her she's stupid for getting married. As rude as that is, it's also true that the marriage was a bad idea from the start, and ends up being an absolute train wreck of violence and mutual animosity and leads directly to the plot that ruins Tonya's career and life.
• In It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Mrs. Marcus is the one who suggests simply splitting the $350,000 that's been buried under the big "W", but if anyone had listened to her, we wouldn't have a movie.
  • They did make an attempt to split the money, but couldn't figure out what constituted a fair division since the various parties involved had different numbers of people and only some of those actually went to help the thief and heard about the money in the first place. In fact, Sid Caesar's character went to the trouble of coming up with a pretty complicated formula for dividing it equitably based on all the variables.
    Lennie Pike: So lets see, now, I get one share for being a person, one share for going down the hill, one share for the truck, and one share for being a person in the truck, but no matter how you figure it out, I still don't get as much as anybody else!
• In It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Potter, a Morally Bankrupt Banker, derides George Bailey's late father, saying that he was not a good businessman. It's a point that George concedes, even admitting he has no idea why his father started the building and loan in the first place. However, he then goes on to say that while it wasn't a success by Potter's standards, it helped people move into their own homes.
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle: When the teens are sucked into the game, Bethany's first reaction after freaking out over being in an overweight male avatar is to freak out over not having her phone. When the others call her out on her Skewed Priorities, Bethany retorts that this is the perfect time to have it, as she could use it to try to get help.
• Jurassic Park (1993):
  • Dennis Nedry is a slimy jerkass who betrayed his employer, and inadvertently put people's lives in danger, because he felt he wasn't being fairly compensated for his work or knowledge. While nothing justifies his actions, he was right: he had a skillset that no one else at the park (including Mr. Arnold) could duplicate. Despite this, John Hammond still lowballed him. And this after he claimed numerous times that he "spared no expense" in every other aspect of running the park. While Hammond absolutely should have hired more than one person who knew the park's IT system, he also shouldn't have lowballed his employees (especially very uniquely skilled employees who were difficult to replace).
  • In the novel, Nedry is given a larger backstory as to why he decided to betray the park. In the novel, he was a subcontractor (rather than a direct employee of Hammond) brought on to create the park's security system. Hammond cheated Nedry on his pay, and Nedry tried to sue. Hammond then created a smear campaign that caused Nedry to lose customers. He was effectively forced in to working for Hammond for a fraction of his pay. The filmmakers decided not to include this subplot, as it would create sympathy for Nedry (who despite the unfair circumstances, still got people endangered and killed due to his betrayal).
• Jurassic World:
  • Claire, before taking a level in kindness, repeatedly talks about the animals as if they are nothing but assets and how important it is to beef up their profit margin and keep the investors happy. Thing is, even if she is a little cold about it, she's 100% right: a park of that size and magnitude would cost tons of money that isn't going to come from nowhere.
  • When Gray is clearly upset by his parents' apparent decision to get a divorce, Zach's response is to tell his crying, distressed younger brother that he has toughen up and that it's not his choice what happens to their parents. It's pretty harsh but Zach is right that Gray will have to learn to deal with their parents divorcing and there's nothing he can do about it.
  • Upon being accused of giving Indominus rex unnecessary adaptations to make her a perfect killer, Dr. Wu condescendingly points out that if they ever did use completely accurate DNA, the resulting dinosaurs would look completely different than what the public expects and his explicit instructions were to make dinosaurs people recognized and to make them bigger and scarier to draw crowds. By mixing in genes from so many different animals to produce desired traits, some unintended additions were inevitable. Later subverted when it's revealed that Wu had colluded with Hoskins to turn the I. rex into a living weapon.
  • Wu also calls out Masrani on the attitude that "We should keep these dinosaurs in their natural environments and not interfere" on the grounds that these aren't their natural habitats — they had to make changes to the DNA to allow these creatures to survive where they are, and virtually nothing on the islands are natural.
  • Hoskins later points out to Owen, after the Indominus rex has escaped, that calling in what are essentially hired guns to shoot the dinosaurs is the most practical option. Sure, the dinosaurs are only following their instincts, and Owen's raptors have been trained. But not every dinosaur has been trained, the Indominus rex has started killing for sport, and there are more than twenty thousand people trapped on the island until rescue arrives the next morning. Hoskins ends up hitting so many good points that Owen even temporarily works with the hired guns to stop the Indominus rex.
• In Just One of the Guys, Terry thinks her high school journalism teacher isn't giving her a fair chance because she's female and he's sexist. By the end she accepts that her article about school lunch nutrition just isn't that interesting.
• K-9: When Dooley's girlfriend Tracey is kidnapped, the captain points out that it was Dooley's "seat of the pants bullshit" that got Tracey involved in the first place. At the very least, the stunts Dooley pulled to antagonize Lyman at every turn, such as holding him and his guests at gunpoint during a dinner party, didn't help.
• Knives Out:
  • Ransom is a colossal jerk but he makes two fair points.
    • He was justified in calling out the rest of his family after they reacted poorly to the reveal that Marta inherits all of Harlan's fortune, especially considering how pleased they all were when they thought that only he had been disinherited.
    • When his mother constantly boosts about being a self-made woman, he points out to her that she was only able to start her business "from the ground up" after Harlan gave her one million dollars as a start-up loan.
  • The other Thrombeys makes snide comments Meg's "post-modern Marxist" A Degree in Useless, which is meant to portray them as insensitive and reactionary. But she gets a major Oh, Crap! moment when she realizes she is unable to pay off the rest of her college fees without an inheritance, given the low job prospects it provides. The other Thrombeys have a point that Meg's degree apparently isn't very practical.
• In La La Land, Keith tells Sebastian that he's got himself stuck in the past when it comes to traditional jazz, and that it won't do Sebastian any good to achieve his dream of opening a jazz club if no one comes to it. Considering Sebastian's already had to go through quite a Humiliation Conga by that time, Sebastian has no comeback for that. In fact, the next we see of Sebastian, he's joined Keith's group to create a more modern version of jazz.
• The Last King of Scotland: Stone, the arrogant Smug Snake British official whom the protagonist hates, turns out to be completely right about Amin's brutality. When Garrigan tries to get help from him, he only decides to if he does his bidding.
• In the movie Letters to Juliet, Charlie is rude, snarky and obnoxious, but he's not wrong when he points out that Sophie encouraging his grandmother to find her Old Flame is opening her up to a lot of potential heartbreak — when he asks Sophie what happens if Lorenzo has forgotten Claire, hates her for not running away with him, or is married to someone else or dead, Sophie has no answer for him. He's also not wrong to point out that it's insensitive to call Lorenzo "the love of her (Claire's) life" considering that she did eventually marry and have children, one of which was Charlie's father.
• In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, while Boromir's prickliness against Aragorn, the Elves and his lack of faith in the quest are his greatest flaws, Boromir's attitude is rooted in the fact that his people have been skirmishing against Mordor for centuries while the Elves, Dwarves and Rangers have apparently been sitting on the sidelines. His Vitriolic Best Buds relationship with Aragorn, while never openly hostile, all started because Boromir saw Aragorn as avoiding the conflict (not helped by Aragorn's initial hesitation to take his place in the world of Men) while Boromir's family and people have been struggling and dying to uphold the peace.
• If Ben and the rest of the group in Night of the Living Dead (1968) had listened to Harry and hunkered down in the basement, they would have had a much better chance of surviving.
• The titular Major Payne is absolutely correct about the effectiveness of his training methods, particularly in how he does succeed to do what no other leader could do by whipping the ROTC Boys into an effective squadron who scores first in the military games. Dr. Walburn does agree, but points out her issue is that this time around they're children so it's morally wrong to treat them with that level of severity and intensity, nor is it necessary for him to be in Drill Sergeant Nasty mode 24/7 (Even his fantasy about an idyllic married life includes a visit from the Vietcong). She ultimately succeeds in getting him to lighten up quite a bit and treat his cadets as children (Though he's still not above shaving them bald for talking back...).
• Martyrs: Anna phones her estranged mother after her companion Lucie has been revealed to be Axe-Crazy. Mother is generally rude and hostile. However, she's not wrong when she says that "that girl" is a bad influence, and that Anna should dump her.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Thor: Loki has two very good points. Putting Thor on the throne of Asgard at the beginning of the film would have been a very bad idea. Also, when he accuses Odin of adopting him for political reasons only, it is apparent that it strikes very close to home. The movie does make it clear Thor was a bit of a jerk and acted badly early on and the film is largely about him going through Character Development.
  • Iron Man 2: Senator Stern obviously has an ulterior motive namely because he's a member of Hydra, but he's correct in that asking a country to put its faith in its protection in one man, especially one as eccentric and prone to erratic and self-destructive behavior as Tony Stark, is not something that any nation would be prepared to do.
  • The Avengers (2012):
    • Captain America, tired of Stark's egomania, tries to insult his manliness by accusing him of being nothing without his Iron Man armor. Stark effortlessly swats the insult down, and it's followed by Natasha - not the biggest Tony Stark fan given their interaction in Iron Man 2 — nodding in acknowledgement of the point:
      Cap: Big man in a suit of armor. Take that away, what are you?
      Stark: A genius billionaire playboy philanthropist.
    • There's also Cap's question to Tony where he asks if he would lie on barbed wire to let others get across safely. Tony's response? Cut the wire.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): Rocket very cruelly and openly mocks at Drax's grief for the death of Drax's family at Ronan's hands. However, Rocket was entirely correct that Drax's loss is nowhere near sufficient justification for almost getting everyone else on Knowhere killed in Drax's attempt to get vengeance on Ronan. To his credit, Drax gets the message. Also, while it's not really an excuse, Drax was drunk off his ass at the time he did this — he probably would not have thought it an ethical course of action if he were sober.
    Rocket: [mocking Drax] Oh, boo-hoo-hoo, my wife and child are dead! I don't care if it's mean! Everybody's got dead people! That's no excuse to get everybody else dead along the way!
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:
    • Ayesha may be arrogant and condescending but her anger towards the Guardians (or specifically Rocket) for stealing her precious batteries, the same things that they were called to guard, is understandable.
    • Even the loyal Kraglin had to agree with Taserface that Yondu is soft when it comes to Peter.
  • Black Panther (2018):
    • M'Baku, the leader of Jabari tribe is a staunch opponent of Wakandian reliance on vibranium and its possible misuse by outsiders. He is proven correct when Killmonger ascends the throne and wants to use all its technology and weapons to tear apart the world. Also, what saves T'Challa's life isn't technology but natural snow and the Heart Herb.
    • When Shuri, Nakia and Ramonda say that T'Challa was murdered by Killmonger, M'Baku is the one to point out it was through ritual combat that both parties accepted and thus a valid defeat, not a murder. It winds up being Subverted when T'Challa shows up alive and points out that the ritual was a combat to the death, and as T'Challa is not dead, the trial was far from over. Unfortunately, Killmonger is in no mood to acknowledge that point.
• Master: Diandra and the other faculty opposing Liv as a candidate for tenure. They claim their opinion is not based upon Liv being a Black woman, but on the fact that she does not have much of a publication record, unlike Gail, the protagonist, who has two books under her belt.
• Marty Blank from Mean Creek points out that he and the kids had committed a major crime.
• In the third installment of The Mighty Ducks, the team gets a new coach (former North Stars player Ted Orion) who comes off as a Drill Sergeant Nasty. He is, however, right when he says that they rely too much on cutesy trick plays and not enough on defense and that they need to start playing on a higher level. This gets demonstrated in an early game in which an early 9-0 lead collapses into a 9-9 tie because of shoddy defense.
  Orion: How long does it take to score a goal? (throws a puck into the message board) Less than a second! That means no lead is safe if you can't play defense! Now get this straight: I don't give a damn how many goals you score! I want one number on your mind: zero, as in "shutout"! You got that?!
• MouseHunt: Ernie Smuntz, compared to his more idealistic brother Lars, is cynical, abrasive, and makes no effort to hide his contempt for their late father Rudolf and their family's string-manufacturing business. Harsh as he is, the film makes clear that Ernie has legitimate reason to resent his dad seeing as how Rudolf never acknowledged his son's talent as a chef and expected him to continue running the family business with Lars after his death even when Ernie had his own responsibilities to his restaurant. Furthermore, while his desire to sell the Smuntz family's string factory may have be going against Rudolf's dying wish, he correctly points out that the factory is a shell of its former glory that doesn't make anywhere near as much money as it did when Rudolf was alive and running it, and that Lars's determination to keep the family business going isn't doing him any good, especially since his refusal to sell the factory results in his wife furiously kicking him to the curb for choosing his loyalty to his family over financial stability.
• Nine Dead: Coogan is easily the most disgusting person in the room, what with being a self-admitted child molester and a sneering Jerkass besides, but he brings up a valid point when he asks the others why they are there. Sure, Coogan's past is probably the reason why the captor considers him worthy of the death penalty, but what have the others done that justifies such a punishment?
• Nixon: Maybe some people would not think of a 19-year-old college kid who protests against The Vietnam War as a Jerkass, but Nixon certainly does:
  Richard M. Nixon: She got it, Bob. 19-year-old college kid.
  H. R. Haldeman: What? Who?
  Richard M. Nixon: She understood something it's taken me 25 years in politics to understand. The CIA, the Mafia, those Wall Street bastards...
  H. R. Haldeman: Sir?
  Richard M. Nixon: The Beast. 19-year-old kid. She called it a wild animal.
• In Nocturnal Animals, Susan's mother is built up as a cold-hearted Control Freak who refuses to "understand" people who don't fit her standard (such as her son Cooper, for being gay). When we finally meet her, as cruel as her words of warning to Susan about marrying Edward sound, we already more-or-less know how it's turned out, telling Susan she is too strong-willed and hard for Edward, she does care about money no matter how much she pretends otherwise and that she's only going to hurt him in the long run. And as the flashbacks progress, it's eerie just how point-for-point accurate those warnings actually prove to be!
• Not Okay:
  • Harper is rude, smug, and by her own admission jealous of the attention Danni gets after the attack, but she's the only one of Danni's colleagues who notices something suspicious about Danni's story. When confronting her with the evidence, Harper reminds Danni people were killed in the attacks.
  • Danni's mother is very cold to her after she's forced to move back in after getting doxxed, but both she and her husband have been recieving death threats and accusations that they were involved in Danni's lie, which, considering how both of them were actually just as fooled as everybody else was, is a very understandable thing to be frustrated about. Danni's mother is also not wrong to point out that Danni's life is most likely ruined by the lie, considering how nobody would trust somebody who lied about something huge ever again.
• The Nutty Professor (1996): Cletus Klump, the father of Professor Sherman Klump, is abrasive and tactless, but he does have a point when he tries to discourage Sherman's dieting: that everyone should stop trying to fit into the media's narrow definition of beauty, because we're not all supposed to look the same.
  • That being said, the professor was morbidly obese, which is very unhealthy. The professor should want to get in to better shape for his own health, regardless of widely-accepted beauty standards.
• Office Space:
  • Bill Lumbergh is a Pointy-Haired Boss par excellence, but he rightly points out that Peter, the main character, is a shitty worker who isn't getting anything done, doesn't follow instructions, and seems to be trying to get fired.
  • The Bobs also have a moment of this: they're blatantly incompetent at their jobs and kind of total jerks, but they also rightly recognize that Lumbergh himself is an idiotic asshole who's doing nothing but dragging down the company. Additionally, while the audience will sympathize with Tom's firing, can anyone realistically expect a different result considering how panicked and upset he was during their meeting?
• Larry the Liquidator in Other People's Money. He seems to revel in the fact that he's hated for getting rich by destroying companies. But when people actually talk to him, he's quick to point out that he's just salvaging the value from companies that were essentially dead already.
  Kate: You know, you're not very nice.
  Larry: Since when do you gotta be nice to be right?
• In Pacific Rim, despite his egotism, Chuck Hansen criticized Raleigh and Mako after they inadvertently activated Gipsy Danger's plasma caster and nearly destroyed half of the Shatterdome, not out of malice, but because he was concerned with their ability to do their job and not end up hurting the other pilots.
  • Raleigh lost his brother and got nearly Gipsy Danger destroyed by refusing orders and engaging Knifehead 10 miles at sea rather than within the golden mile of the coast as ordered — it's easy to see how Chuck can hold Raleigh's rockstar-esque, above the rules attitude in contempt. Then Raleigh starts a physical fight with Chuck and comes close to seriously injuring one of the two surviving Jaeger pilots, which would've left Striker Eureka without a co-pilot and ruined any chance they had of closing the Breach.
  • By the time Raleigh rejoined the PPDC, almost every other Jaeger and their pilots, except the promoted Stacker Pentecost, has died in combat or from radiation poisoning. From Chuck's point of view, Raleigh never learned from his mistakes, and on top of that, abandoned humanity's only effective line of defense to work on a Wall project that was just proven to be useless. After Raleigh's last Screw This, I'm Outta Here several years prior, Chuck has no reason to trust that the older pilot will stick around and fight to the very end like all the other pilots have done.
• Pitch Black:
  • Carolyn is outraged to find out that Johns is a morphine addict when her copilot died in pain without relief. Johns states that the entire reason he's an addict in the first place is because of a piece of a shiv Riddick left right next to his spine that causes him nearly constant pain. He can still feel it rubbing against his spine and shows the wound to Carolyn.
    Johns: "You feel that? Riddick did that. He went for the sweet spot and missed."
  • Johns also repeatedly stresses to Carolyn that Riddick is someone to be genuinely wary of. Johns is a junkie coward and a prick who still operates within the bounds of the law, while Riddick is a dangerous killer who would sacrifice all of them in an instant if he could. Johns's point is proven when Riddick leaves Carolyn, Jack and Imam behind to die when they have outlived their usefulness.
• This is basically Barb's role in The Polka King. Barb is abrasive and unnecessarily mean-spirited in her criticism, but she was right about Jan's businesses lack of profitability, and her suspicions about his sudden prosperity after he started taking "investments" were ultimately vindicated.
• Power Rangers (2017): In the very beginning of the film, Kimberly's former cheermates go out of their way to ostracize and shun her, going so far as to call her into the bathroom just to tell her they're cutting her out of their lives and making it literal by cutting up a photo of them to leave Kim out of it. Later in the film, it's revealed that the reason for said treatment is because Kimberly shared a naked picture of one of her friends with a boy without said friend's permission, and pretended it wasn't her fault and everyone was out to get her when they understandably lashed out at her.
  • Jason chews out Zordon after discovering that he is only trying to help the team morph so he can use the energy to revive himself. While deceitful Zordon is right about them being unprepared to face Rita, making him Earth's best chance for survival. Ultimately averted when Jason point out the Zordon and his team already treied to defeat Rita and faiked, making Zordon's plan loop back around to being purely selfish.
• Raising the Wind: While he may have been far too rude about it, the cab driver was right in that Jill was in the wrong for backing into his cab, damaging his bumper, and losing him Chesney's fare.
• Rocky III: Clubber Lang was a total jerkass all throughout. Arrogant, cocky, disrespectful to just about everyone he came across. However, he was indeed right about initially being denied his title shot. He fought his way to being ranked #1, and was deserving of the same chance that Rocky got (and Rocky didn't even have to fight for his first chance). Meanwhile, Rocky, while he wasn't fighting tomato cans, he was fighting hand-picked boxers that Mickey figured would not win. Mickey outright admitted to protecting him to keep him champion. Which was not only unfair to Rocky, but also to Lang. Like him or not, Lang earned his title shot.
• Rollo and the Spirit of the Woods: When the rolleys run democratic elections for a new chieftain, they quickly vote for Big of whom they're intimidated of. The first voter who supports Big's only contestant Cacophony gets his nose twisted by Big until he changes his mind. Losing his patience when this happens, Cacophony starts ranting to the voters, telling them in an offensive way that the idea of democratic elections is to vote for whoever candidate the voter chooses, and that they'll reap what they sow with the leader they elect. He then tells Big in a highly insulting manner that he's being taken advantage of by Lackey. This is immediately proven right when Big (who didn't much understand Cacophony's verbose tirade) throws Cacophony through the air on Lackey's incitement.
• Safety Patrol: Principal Tromp's decision to crush Scout's dreams of being on the safety patrol and transfer him away from his friends isn't very nice. Still, the countless disasters Scout has already caused as a Heroic Wannabe without any official responsibility makes Tromp's lack of faith in Scout understandable, even if he is wrong.
• Saw:
  • Saw II: Eric Matthews may be a Dirty Cop and Rabid Cop, but few can dispute Matthews makes a damn good point when he points out that John Kramer/Jigsaw, no matter how he tries to justify the deaths in his games, is a murderer.
    Eric: I don't know what [the cure for cancer] is, but I know it's not killing and torturing people for your own sick fucking pleasure.
    John: I've never murdered anyone in my life. The decisions are up to them.
    Eric: Yeah, well, putting a gun to someone's head and forcing them to pull the trigger is still murder.
  • Saw V: Seth Baxter, the Fetishized Abuser and murderer of Mark Hoffman's sister, uses his last words to point out the fact that he did what he was told to do to pass his test and that he should have been allowed to live afterward. As Jigsaw later tells Hoffman, everybody deserves a fair chance, even murderers like Seth.
  • Saw VI: Simone wasn't a really good person but she's right when she demands to know what good could possibly come from John's logic. Even in the next movie, an incredibly bitter Simone calls out other survivors at their meetups for claiming Jigsaw made them positively re-evaluate their lives in some way.
  • Jigsaw:
    • Anna calls out John for his lack of compassion. While she has no room to talk, given she murdered her own baby then framed her husband for it, leading to him being Driven to Suicide, she's not wrong given John arguably becomes a bigger monster than her with his many atrocious plans.
    • Detective Halloran ''wins' his game but Logan is clearly set on murdering him anyway. When Halloran realizes this, he points out John gave his victims a chance to survive and that Logan is completely ignoring what the original philosophy was about. Logan doesn't care.
• Scream 3: Stephen Stone is a condescending dick to Dewey, but realistically he's completely right in pointing out he isn't under any obligation to take orders from him. Dewey is being employed by the film studio as a research consultant and him being involved in any capacity beyond that is only because he's dating one of the leads. Considering this and the fact that Dewey has a history of only surviving by sheer luck, it can't be a surprise that Stone - the one with actual professional experience working as security for the stars - doesn't see any reason to listen to him.
• Shaun of the Dead
  • Everything Pete says is absolutely true, since it's all about Ed being The Load and Shaun refusing to grow up. It's telling that Shaun really decides to turn his life around after Pete yells at him to do so.
  • David is right about Shaun's inept leadership, but he's only saying it because he's jealous that Liz hooked up with Shaun instead of him.It's a Deconstruction in this case. Sure he is right in his critic of Shawn but he never try to give others idea or strategies. He is too much of a Jerkass for his point to stand.
  • David is also right about having to shoot Shaun's mother, who's been bitten. Even Shaun deep down knows he's right, but can't bear to imagine shooting his mom.
• Shooter: Played with. At one point, Senator Meachum is telling Swagger that though the U.S. was involved in killing an entire village, "...it brought stability to the region which means that no one chops off their arms because their grandmother's grandfather belonged to a different tribe." It sounds like he's going to argue that awful as his actions were, they were a necessary evil, but then he slips into claiming that "they like us down there" and that he was justified anyway because the whole system is corrupt and it's all about who has the power.
• Spider-Man 3: Peter may have been under the symbiote's control, but he is right to report Brock for fabricating photos.
• Spree: Bobby is rude and mean to Kurt, but he is right that 1) Kurt acted like his killings were to be faked, but weren’t, and 2) that his videos aren’t very good, with lack of charisma and a rather awkward tone.
  • Kurt does have a point that the way Jessie films some of her videos is rather difficult to watch.
• Stargate: Both Jackson and Kawalsky call O'Neil out for bringing a nuclear bomb on the mission without informing anyone else, but O'Neil shuts them down by pointing out that if they faced down a hostile force intent on attacking Earth (which is exactly what's happening), they would need to destroy the stargate, and if Jackson had been able to get them home like he claimed, their objections would be irrelevant anyway.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: First Contact: While Admiral Hayes wasn't entirely right to send Picard away when the Borg attacked Earth (and Picard's showing up to the party proved to be the vital element that won the battle), his assessment of Picard as a potentially "unstable element" in a critical situation wasn't really wrong either, as we see in the latter parts of the film.
  • Deconstructed in Star Trek Into Darkness with Admiral Marcus. He's completely correct in his belief that a war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire is coming, and that it's too late to defuse it so the Federation needs to prepare. However his arrogance causes him to think he can rein in the dangerous and uncontrollable Khan, while his desperation to give the Federation a head-start leads to him committing increasingly amoral acts like trying to kill the Enterprise crew to cover up his crimes. So while the Jerkass has a point, his Jerkassery causes him to both go overboard and botch the job.
• In the Star Wars series:
  • Revenge of the Sith:
    • Mace Windu is seen as a Jerkass for not promoting Anakin to the rank of Jedi Master during the infamous scene where Anakin is made a member of the Council. While Anakin's martial prowess is inarguable, the fact that he immediately throws a temper tantrum ("you can't do this, I'm more powerful than any of you"), as well as his constant Leeroy Jenkins attitude throughout the films and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, show very clearly that he does not possess the mental stability necessary to become a Master. It's the same reason that martial arts schools will not afford the rank of black belt to just any Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy who has the necessary skills; there is an element of mental and emotional discipline that Anakin clearly lacks.
    • At the same time, Anakin isn't presented as entirely wrong either. While him throwing a tantrum at being denied the rank of master proves he's not ready, Star Wars: The Clone Wars demonstrated he'd have plenty of reason to distrust the Council. In spite of years of loyalty to the Order, they lied about Obi-Wan Faking the Dead and kicked Ahsoka, Anakin's own Padawan, out of the Jedi Order on flimsy evidence to save face to the Republic and acted like they weren't at fault for it when she was offered a place back and chose to leave instead. The fact the Council is only granting Palpatine's request to make Anakin a Council member so they can have him spy on the Chancellor only proves Anakin is right to be angry, as they still don't trust him in spite of the crap they've put him through.
    • While Mace attempting to kill Palpatine is seen as a step too far, he's not wrong that the Sith has taken control of both the Senate and the Courts. No matter what sort of evidence is offered against him, he'll just use it to walk away and then have the perfect excuse he needs to arrest the Jedi. If anything, killing Palpatine will put an end to the Sith dynasty, but alas, Anakin cuts off Mace's hands before he can strike the blow, and it all goes downhill from there...
  • A New Hope:
    • Vader may well have provoked Motti's outburst by so belittling the Death Star, the focus of all the assembled officers' efforts and hopes for presumably months, in comparison to the Force, but given what we've seen of it in the franchise since then, he has a point.
    • Motti had to know he was tempting fate to say something like "your sad devotion to that ancient religion" to Vader's face, and indeed it took Tarkin's intervention to save his life, but the Force can't keep anyone in the room from agreeing that for all Vader's mastery of it the Empire is still no closer to finding the rebel base or recovering the Death Star plans.
    • Leia complains about a rescue she doesn't like but she was critiquing more Luke and Han's lack of planning and foresight. After all, it's not much of a rescue if everyone either gets recaptured or killed in the attempt. Given the situation, the only logical choice would have been no rescue at all, as Han wanted. They were already in enemy territory with escape being a long shot and they didn't find out she was there until they were already hip deep in trouble.
  • In The Empire Strikes Back, Han is called out by Leia and Luke for taking his payout and bailing on the Resistance. He explains, however, that bounty hunters are constantly and actively hunting him because of his debt, and he's as good as dead if he doesn't pay back Jabba the Hutt. In addition, Han never said he was not coming back. Leia and Luke treat him as a deserter, whereas in reality, he was just taking a short leave of absence in order to defuse a situation that was potentially life-threatening to himself and everyone around him. General Rieekan agrees and dismisses him on good terms:
    A death mark's not an easy thing to live with. You're a good fighter, Solo. I hate to lose you.
  • The Last Jedi has a double example in the conflict between Admiral Holdo and Poe Dameron.
    • Holdo is aloof and condescending towards Poe, dismissing him as just another arrogant hotshot who needs to fall in line and stick to his orders. Given that Leia already demoted Poe after his recklessness got a number of resistance bombers killed earlier in the film and that Leia agrees with Holdo when she wakes up, Holdo is justified in doing what she does. Why she didn't throw Poe in the brig for disobeying orders, though...
    • The First Order had also tracked the Resistance through hyperspace, meaning that they either have some miraculous new technology, or the Resistance has a traitor. The latter is the most likely, so sharing information about the plan could be a potential death sentence for the entire group.
    • On the flip side, as far as Poe is aware, Holdo does not have any kind of plan. In a life-or-death situation, he and the rest of the crew are supposed to trust a leader that they don't personally know, who refuses to explain her plans even in the most vague of terms and wants them to follow her blindly. For all they know, Holdo is the traitor. Rather than explain her plan, or even reassure anyone that a plan exists in the first place, Holdo simply refuses to say anything for days on end. Plus, not only does it come across to everyone else like she's doing nothing and has no plan at all, but if anything had happened to her (she could have fallen down the stairs) nobody would have known what she had planned, or how to implement it. Poe's mutiny may have been wrong, but he was correct in pointing out Holdo's bad leadership, and the fact that his mutiny even got off the ground clearly shows that the unrest caused by Holdo being so tight-lipped was becoming a significant problem, and they only crossed that line after Holdo refused to explain why she was fueling up seemingly-defenseless transports, making it look like she was preparing to use everyone else as bait so she could flee with her personal staff. RedLetterMedia pointed out in their review that the underlying theme of that plot-line seems to be "Don't question authority ever", which is a rather strange philosophy for the anti-authoritarian Resistance.
    • Another example occurs much earlier in the film when Poe hotheadedly argues against (and later disobeys) Leia's orders to abandon the attack on the Dreadnought as it being a "Fleet killer". Since the majority of the film takes place in a slow chase scene with the First Order following the Resistance, had Poe not destroyed the Dreadnought the Resistance might have been destroyed with little effort following the First Order tracking them through Hyperspace.
• St. Vincent (2014): Oliver's father apparently cheated on Maggie repeatedly, and she's very upset when he gets joint custody. The fact is, though, he's still Oliver's father, and by all indications, cares about his son. He also makes the very good point that Maggie has a very demanding job, which makes it impossible for her to be with Oliver full-time, and this resulted in her leaving him with a man she barely knew who took Oliver to very inappropriate places. Oliver admits, at one point, that he missed spending time with his father, but didn't want to hurt his mother by telling her.
• The Suicide Squad: As neglectful as a parent as he is Bloodsport's completely right in saying to his daughter that she should have had a partner to help her steal the smartwatch she wanted to avoid getting caught, that she's ultimately responsible for her own predicament, as she committed a robbery despite knowing how living a life of crime ended up for her dad, and that her robbery was completely pointless as she already had a phone that had the same features that the watch she coveted had. He makes it clear to Waller that he's fine with her going to juvie as punishment to learn the consequences of her actions and only relents when Waller makes it clear that she'll ensure she's tried as an adult and sent to Belle Reve instead. He also has a point that his daughter should logically want nothing to do with an unrepentant assassin who has absolutely no idea of how to be the father she needs and should try to have a normal life as far away from his influence as possible.
• In Switch (1991), womanizer Steve is killed by his various girlfriends and brought to Heaven for judgement. While noting how Steve's actions and horrible behavior should send him to Hell, he's given a second chance that he can get a "true soulmate to love him," he'll be allowed into Heaven. The Devil protests as he's been wanting Steve's soul for himself. While he's driven by greed, the Devil does make the correct point that the deal simply says Steve has to "earn" a woman's love, not love her in return. Thus, he's right in that all Steve has to do is seduce some lady into truly falling in love with him while he feels nothing for her and Heaven will have to allow an unrepentant womanizer in. But if there was a challenge, like, say, turning Steve into a woman, then Steve will have to truly earn his redemption. Heaven agrees and thus Steve becomes the gorgeous Amanda.
• Iceman in Top Gun is your typical 80's rival against Maverick but he makes valid points about Maverick, especially about the danger Maverick puts himself and others with his reckless stunts and how he abandons his wingman to get a better shot. In the final mission, he even goes up to Maverick's CO and tries to keep Maverick grounded after hearing Maverick would be his cover because he wasn't sure if Maverick could fly properly after losing Goose in an accident.
• Vader Episode I: Shards of the Past: Evil Jerkass he may be, but Palpatine raises some surprisingly relevant points in his tirade to Darth Vader, calling out on how he's just wallowing in his grief rather than doing anything to improve his situation.
• Whiplash: Fletcher's abuse and horrible insults that he spews at his students are all in his effort to push people far beyond their normal capacity and became the best they can be. His methods may be extreme, but as he points out, merely telling someone that they did a good job and then do nothing else can easily squelch the true raw talent hiding inside someone.
• In The Wizard of Oz:
  • Miss Gulch. Toto went into Miss Gulch's yard, chased her cat up a tree, and bit Miss Gulch on the leg. Okay, Miss Gulch could and probably should have been a bit kinder (at the very least, she could have made it a warning rather than giving them no chance to remedy the situation), and it seems like she has a history of being difficult with the Gales that goes far beyond this one issue, but in this case, she's well within her rights to be upset. Especially since, by her own admission, this happens at least once a week and Dorothy has made no effort whatsoever prevent it, choosing instead to threaten Miss Gulch for being upset rather than, say, putting Toto on a leash, or carrying Toto past Miss Gulch's yard, to prevent this from happening.
  • The Talking Trees. They are trapped in place, unable to move, and every now and then, people come along to snatch off pieces of their body and eat them.
• This happens a lot in the X-Men Film Series.
  • In the first film, Senator Kelly defends the need for a Mutant Registration Act by pointing out that there are documented cases of mutants with the ability to walk right through any solid surface, or psychics that can Mind Control people, and ordinary people have no protection against a mutant who would decide to abuse such abilities. In the third film, the President defends his decision to weaponize the "Cure" by saying "I wonder how democracy can survive, when one man can move cities with his mind!" And in the second film, a single mutant nearly assassinates the President despite all the security in the White House. It's telling that despite the movies' villains often being the ones pointing this out, the heroes never have a response to these concerns. Even while there actually are some answers that could possibly be made to these concerns, the heroes never bring them up.
  • In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Trask justifies the need for his Sentinels to Nixon by pointing out Mystique can shapeshift into any person; she could impersonate Nixon himself, walk into the White House, and order a nuclear attack. Considering all the other things we've seen her do with her powers over the franchise, including the infiltration of the government in such a manner as he warns, his concerns are perfectly valid.
  • The villains in Logan are unrepentant, amoral, murderous bigots, but they do ultimately have a point regarding Xavier and how dangerous he is. Given that he needs to be constantly drugged to ensure he doesn't turn in to a seizure-induced psychic nuke (one of which nearly kills hundreds of people), an earlier episode of which is heavily implied to have killed off most of the X-Men, and that he actively resists and avoids taking this medication, it's hard to argue against this.
  • In Deadpool 2, Colossus is angry with Wade's wanton killing rather than a proper dispensation of justice. Wade, though eventually acknowledging his own problems, isn't wrong that Colossus is too much of a goody-two-shoes to see that there are times where there's no such thing as fighting fair. Colossus takes Wade's advice to heart when confronting The Juggernaut.
• The film Zero Charisma is full of them. The first is after Scott is ousted as Game Master; he angrily states to the others that Miles is not their friend and will abandon them once he's done with his "experiment" i.e. gets bored. Granted Scott is only saying this because of his insecurities, and his inability to cope with not being in charge, but he is right. Miles does eventually abandon them, and returns to his hipper friends excluding the others. Scott even calls him out on this during the party scene.
  • Miles delivers one to Scott pointing out that, he took nothing from him and it is his own fault no-one likes him.
    • Nana also delvers one to Scott after he yells at her for welching on her promise to give the house to him. She points out that was in return for him taking care of her, but he doesn't instead she takes care of him. Furthermore, it is her house so he has no claim to it period.
• In Zack Snyder's Justice League, during a flashback, the Dean of Gotham City University admonishes Victor Stone for hacking into the school's database to alter the grades of a struggling student. While Victor's mother tries to argue that Victor was just helping someone in need, the Dean is completely right to be angry because Victor, in essence, helped a fellow student cheat.

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