Unintentionally Sympathetic / Live-Action Films

• Ray Finkle, the deranged kidnapper and murderer from Ace Ventura. Anyone would turn out at least a little screwed up after what he'd been through. Seeing as he was the only professional athlete to come out of his small town, you'd think he'd be a beloved folk hero. Instead, he misses a field goal at the biggest football game of the year, causing his team to lose the game and ending his football career... and the townsfolk never, ever let him live it down. They even vandalize his parents' home, driving his mother to irreversible insanity and making his father so paranoid that he has to get his shotgun every time he answers the door! It's no wonder that Ray's room is covered with hateful graffiti blaming Dan Marino for the miss and has Ray's traumatic blunder playing on an old movie projector at all hours of the day - or that Ray was eventually committed to a mental institution and went as far as undergoing a sex-change operation to steal a missing hiker's identity for his murderous plot. This has gotten worse over time, as the film pulled an Unsettling Gender-Reveal at a time when far fewer people were understanding of transgender people and the difficulties many of them would have to deal with. The sympathetic backstory only goes so far, considering that for all his issues Finkle's decision was that Murder Is the Best Solution.
• In The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, Elmo is supposed to be in the wrong for not wanting to share his blanket with Zoey, and learns to share in the end. But, when you think about it, it's Elmo's personal precious blanket, so Elmo had every right to not want to share it, and he had no obligation to share it, either.
• Avatar
  • Colonel Miles Quaritch, the main antagonist. Many viewers found his actions and motivations understandable, to the point that he's regarded by some as the true hero of the movie. He plays A Father to His Men straight, making his dislike of the Na'vi somewhat justified due to their penchant for killing his Marines. He's forced to sit idly by while his men are picked off one by one by the Na'vi because his higher-ups insist on attempting diplomacy with an enemy that he clearly (and correctly) believes aren't interested in diplomacy. Then, around the midpoint of the movie, a Marine he had trusted betrayed him and started gathering an army to drive humans off the planet, and you can kind of understand Quaritch's motivations for stopping it. The sequel Avatar: The Way of Water if anything only makes Quaritch more sympathetic, as he’s forcibly resurrected through Brain Uploading into a Na'vi body and reveals more Hidden Depths with his genuine love for his son Spider despite being now a completely different species to him (even giving up Kiri in a Hostage Situation when Neytiri is holding a blade to his throat) and the movie devotes a lot time to their surprisingly touching bond. Also while Quaritch commits atrocities in his vengeful pursuit of Jake, he repeatedly refrains from hurting Jake’s children despite many opportunities, stating he only wants Jake himself, showing even at his worst Quaritch is still a Noble Demon. Some viewers actually wish the films would follow his story instead of Jake, simply because he’s a far more layered and interesting character.
  • The humans in general become this when one considers a certain Word of God statement included in the official artbook: namely, the reason they want Pandora's resources so badly is because they need them to save Earth's environment, from the destruction that, admittedly, they wrought on it. At the end of the war, rather than broker an agreement or treaty between the two species, the Na'vi force the humans to return to the now nigh-uninhabitable Earth under threat of violence, essentially damning the humans to the same fate of genocide they intended for the Na'vi. Yay? The second film made this the explicit motive for humanity's return and further colonization.
• Dr. Noah Faulkner in Bio-Dome was probably meant to come off as the bad guy, but no matter which way you look at it, Bud and Doyle are ridiculously obnoxious, stupid beyond belief, and they might as well have been actively sabotaging the experiment. It's no wonder he went psychotic in the end.
• The Birth of a Nation. We're supposed to take it for granted that Gus is trying to rape Flora (he was stalking her, though), but all we actually see him doing is asking her to marry him, then chasing her to allegedly apologize, after which she promptly jumps off a cliff. This makes it hard not to feel sorry for him, Scary Black Man or not, especially given his punishment.
• Black Christmas (2006) reveals that the lead female's boyfriend has a sex tape online with another of the sorority sisters - and the sorority kicking him out of the house is to be seen as an empowering moment after he calls them all "spoiled bitches". Except that Kyle says the video was made before Kelli came to the sorority, meaning he and Megan had sex before they were together. Megan is killed off too quickly before we can learn anything about the situation - but it seems to be that she knew she was being filmed. The video is on the internet because someone else stole them from Kyle and uploaded them specifically to get revenge. Kyle is a victim of revenge porn and we're supposed to side with Kelli because he wasn't honest about something that just happened that day.
• Black Christmas (2019): The reveal that the frat boys are all being controlled by the college's founder raises the question of whether they're actually responsible at all for their actions. While as a group they're established to be a bunch of rather misogynistic assholes, we don't know if they can really be considered murderers who deserve to be burnt to death.
• Black Panther (2018) clearly wants to portray Killmonger as a Tragic Villain who has become just as bad as what he's fighting against, as T'Challa calls him out for. However, a number of fans ended up siding with him over T'Challa due to his tragic backstory and feeling that he made better points about Wakanda's lack of action and complicity in people's suffering. The only reason Killmonger isn't the hero of this story is the film has him go full Revenge Before Reason / He Who Fights Monsters / Final Solution rather than actually trying to make things better once he has the power to do so. This view was also taken by Honest Trailers, which claims that he won the moral argument by convincing T'Challa to change his ways and open Wakanda to the rest of the world.
• Bowling for Columbine: Moore clearly intended to set up Charlton Heston as the "bad guy" during his interview at the end of the documentary. However, viewers tend to have far more sympathy for Heston since it was subsequently revealed that he suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Moore's attempted hatchet-job is also so obvious that even people who might otherwise agree with Moore's political views find it hard to defend him in that moment.
• Bride Wars has Emma's fiancée Fletcher, who's supposed to be seen as controlling. Yet some viewers saw him as the Only Sane Man who realized that both Emma and her best friend Liv had become selfish bridezillas. The fact that Emma dumps him for Liv's brother Nate at the end is by some seen as the story "punishing" him for not bowing down to his bride's whims.
• In The Caine Mutiny, there's the mutineers. Captain Queeg, commander of the eponymous vessel, spent much of the film acting as The Neidermeyer, culminating in him having a nervous breakdown during the hurricane and forcing Maryk to relieve him. Lt. Greenwald is able to get the mutineers acquitted, but afterward, delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to them, saying that Queeg had years of distinguished service before succumbing to the stress, and if they'd given Queeg their unconditional loyalty (citing when Queeg had asked them for help in an earlier scene), they wouldn't have needed to relieve him, a point that Keith, one of the mutineers, agrees with. For some viewers, however, Queeg's irrational behavior made him unfit for command, and his asking for help was too little, too late.
• Captain Marvel (2019)
  • "The Don", a random biker from a deleted scene, comes across Carol Danvers trying to read a map and attempts to flirt with her, spouting off several innuendoes and asking her for a smile despite her trying to ignore him. In response, Carol shakes his hand and uses her powers to shock him before forcing him to relinquish his jacket and motorcycle. The Don complies immediately, and Carol quips "What, no smile?" as he runs away. The movie clearly intended this scene to be framed as Carol putting a chauvinistic and sexist asshole in his place. However, it completely ignores that Carol assaulted and robbed a defenseless Muggle because he made a sexist and flirty comment towards her, and was being just annoying. The theatrical cut tries to downplay this trope: The Don only flirts with her in passing, and Carol steals his bike when he leaves, which still comes across as extreme for Carol to do such a thing, just not as bad.
  • In a childhood flashback, we see Carol and her brother racing in a go-cart circuit. When the brother shouts, "Slow down!" before a hairpin curve, Carol angrily hits the gas and ends up crashing her go-cart. Next thing we see is their father, visibly distraught, scolding her. She remembers the scene as an example of men trying to push her down. In reality, her brother just said her that the curve was dangerous and she was too fast and her father was worried that Carol could be badly hurt! This paints Carol as a jerkass who could not assume her own failures and projected on men.
• In Caveman, Tonda is the bad guy, and no question he's an asshole... but at least he's looking out for his tribe, and he was also shown to be genuinely upset when he lost Lana to the river (despite that because of his status he would be able to easily get another mate), so did he really deserve the beating (and possible death) he got in the end?
• The monster from Cloverfield. It was big, it was scary, and it went on a rampage in New York City. But for some, the movie takes on a whole new perspective when they find out that the monster is a terrified, newborn baby looking for its mother. For others, that knowledge causes precisely the opposite reaction.
• Rochelle of The Craft comes off as more sympathetic than intended, considering the source of her angst is that she's getting racial taunts from the school's Alpha Bitch. And while she initially enjoys her revenge, she feels bad when she sees how miserable Laura Lizzie is afterwards. She also attempts to talk Nancy down in the climax, when the latter threatens to slit her throat. Her Face–Heel Turn seems more motivated by fear of what Nancy will do to her and, judging by what Nancy attempts to do to Sarah, that's a valid fear. A deleted scene also clarifies that she's the only black girl in an all-white neighborhood, and the school shuns her because of her race.
• Cuties:
  • Amy's mother definitely has her flaws, but it's hard to blame her for reacting the way she did when the school called to tell her that Amy had been fighting and dressing up inappropriately. Even if she hit her, the scene simply portrays a mother furious at her daughter for acting too maturely for her age and any other parent out there cannot help but relate to her plight instead, on top of worrying about her husband's second marriage which she is still broken up about.
  • The film pretty clearly wants Yasmine to be seen negatively for her being the one who threatens Amy's position in the Cuties. However, while Yasmine gets kicked out of the team for her own mistake earlier in the film, many found her to be much more sympathetic on account of Amy pushing her in the river, and Yasmine showing she cannot swim. If not for the nearby buoy, Yasmine could have drowned, making her look far less unsympathetic than the film wanted to show.
• Diary of the Dead ends with Debra watching footage of a hunting party using zombies as target practice and wondering if humans were really worth saving. But since the film takes place in a Zombie Apocalypse where anyone who does not kill the zombies becomes their next meal, the hunters seem sensible rather than the Fantastic Racists the film suggests they are.
• Tamir in The Dictator. Despite his plans to use the land of Wadiya's oil resources and sell them to the highest bidder, he actually comes off as a competent leader who actually seems to care about improvement and has a rightful stake as a ruler (while Aladeen is a terrible ruler who schemed his way to the throne and runs the land as an Egopolis).
• White Goodman from Dodgeball is a chauvinistic Jerkass who takes his fitness regime and business to extremes, but his backstory is that he was a morbidly obese man who decided to get his act together and used the means by which he lost weight as the basis of his business. His antagonism towards Peter is mostly because he slept with several of White's trainers, and sent a male stripper to the one-year anniversary of his gym.
• The Sean Young movie Dr. Jekyll & Ms. Hyde (a Gender Bender take on Jekyll & Hyde) has this for Helen Hyde, the female, supposedly evil side. Dr. Jacks (the Jekyll character) is very much a Designated Hero, being a whiny, arrogant chemist who feels his job at a major fragrance company is beneath him. Helen, on the other hand — while certainly possessing a ruthless, ambitious streak — comes across as more proactive than Jacks, and while she does try to stop Jacks from taking back control of their body, he is doing exactly the same to her.
• Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction. Yes, she did boil a girl's innocent rabbit to death, and possessively stalk Dan (a married man) after having a one-night stand with him, sneaking her way into his life to torment him before attacking his wife Beth. Many still found Alex pretty sympathetic and tragic in spite of it, as she's clearly mentally unwell (she shows all the signs of borderline personality disorder) and needed psychological help rather than getting shot to death. It's partly Dan's fault in the first place for cheating on Beth and ignoring any possible consequences from it, including not taking Alex's clearly obsessive traits seriously until it was too late. Furthermore, the original ending actually had Alex killing herself, which definitely makes her more sympathetic, but test audiences didn't like it and wanted Alex to be punished instead.
• Mycroft in Enola Holmes may be a misogynistic jerk who wanted to control Enola's life against her wishes, but he was the one sending money to his mother for upkeep, only to find the estate in ruins, Enola abandoned and that his mother was swindling him so she could use the money for her secret society/activism that has activities that are borderline terrorism no less. It's understandable why he was upset and angry toward Eudoria.
• Although Michael Palin's character in A Fish Called Wanda spends much of the film trying to assassinate a mean old lady, audiences invariably saw him as The Woobie. This is probably a combination of Palin being a nice guy, the fact his character is an animal lover, and that he is more likable than the film's antagonist, the Wicked Pretentious thug Otto, who consistently torments him.
• Iris, the kaiju from Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys, is actually pretty sympathetic because its motives aren't really explored. Sure, it's stated from the beginning that it would probably destroy the world, but the old lady who said that was quoting a legend with plenty of room for error, as far as we know. It does indeed suck the life juices out of people, but that's just how it eats, as it doesn't have a mouth. It tried to merge a schoolgirl with itself to become more powerful.
• Godzilla in the film Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack! was intended by director Shusuke Kaneko to be a malevolent monster (hence, why his eyes are a pure soulless white). However, as this Godzilla is a reanimated zombie containing the souls of people killed during WW2's pacific theater, many fans do not view Godzilla's actions as driven by his own will and volition. To them, Godzilla is merely an empty vessel or puppet controlled by another force. Then again, considering that this is Godzilla we're talking about, the fandom ended up rooting for him more than they did for the heroic monsters (IE: Baragon, Mothra, and, ironically enough, his arch-nemesis King Ghidorah).
  • Happens again in Godzilla Against Mecha Godzilla. The current Godzilla, due to a recent tweet by a producer, is heavily implied to be Kiryu's son. Overnight after that tweet, he goes from a rampaging monster to a lost child looking for his father. Notably a few scenes in the movie show Godzilla staring at his roboticized father in surprise, as if recognizing his dad and confused about why his father is trying to kill him...
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The three bounty hunters whom Blondie kills in his first scene are only trying to capture the legitimately wanted Tuco (and without the same con game Blondie pulls by breaking him out of jail then turning him in again), and even though they get into a gunfight with Blondie over that bounty, they did catch Tuco first, and Blondie announced his presence with a heavy-handed Implied Death Threat that wouldn't have inspired goodwill in anyone.
• Harry and Marv the "Wet Bandits" of Home Alone and its sequel. While they are greedy thieving antagonists who rob innocent families and children at Christmas, who by the end of the movie and the sequel Would Hurt a Child, a good number of viewers still feel sympathy towards them. Because ultimately what Kevin subjects them both to over the course of two movies is absolutely horrific, even if it was Played for Laughs. It doesn't help that Kevin could've just called the police at multiple points (granted, there wouldn't be a movie then, but still) and it's quite evident Kevin is genuinely enjoying torturing Harry and Marv like Jigsaw and taking satisfaction from their agony. Even the Wet Bandits actors themselves lean into this Alternative Character Interpretation, with Daniel Stern making a video where he plays Marv making a distress call to Harry, sobbing in fear that Kevin is out there hunting them and reiterates the Trauma Conga Line and attempts on his life that Kevin put him through.
• Home Sweet Home Alone: The would-be antagonists Jeff and Pam are Anti-Villain at best, a down on their luck couple who didn't want to rob Max's house or harm him, just obtain a doll that was rightfully theirs so they could provide for their family. Max, meanwhile, is very unsympathetic, and his "Home Alone" Antics seem mean-spirited rather than funny.
• In Jason's Lyric, the younger brother, Joshua, is a Jerkass who cares for no one but himself and has difficulties in staying out of troubles. But, when he ends up shooting himself after his dear older brother, Jason, could finally walk away from him to be together with his girlfriend, Lyric, some viewers are both glad yet feel sorry for him at the same time. Because, viewers believe that Joshua genuinely loves his brother, as they grew up together. After his mom seems to have given up on him, he considers Jason as his only hope since the latter has always backed him up. So, many consider him a little boy who just wants someone to take care of him, aside from the fact that this two brothers' relationship is obviously one-sided.
• Zara Young from Jurassic World is a massive example of this, so much so there’s plenty of articles online (including Cracked) that are in sympathy of her. She’s meant to be seen as an unlikable stern businesswoman who prevents her unseen fiancé from having a bachelor party on phone while failing to babysit her boss Claire’s nephews Zach and Gray, making her death via dinosaurs supposedly karmic. However, said death getting savaged by several pteranodons before being eaten by mosasaurus all while screaming her lungs out was so ridiculously horrific that is extremely hard not to feel sorry for her. It also helps a scene earlier Zara did show genuine concern over Zach and Gray’s disappearance, making her a good deal more likeable than the film’s actual protagonists Claire and Owen, who were respectively more concerned about the park being closed and the killer dinosaurs getting used/hurt.
• Linda and Walt in Knives Out can become this to some viewers. Although neither of them are nice people, Linda is shown to have a genuinely loving relationship with her father and grieved at his death, so Harlan's decision to cut her completely out of his will may seem unfair, especially as Harlan never had the chance to explain his reasoning to her or that she did anything wrong, compared to the rest of the family. Walt being abruptly cut from his father's company can also appear unnecessarily harsh as it appears Walt was a decent employee of Harlan's. Harlan doesn't go into detail about his motives beyond telling Walt to develop his own creative talents, though it was implied that Harlan was intending to explain in more detail but his death cut things short.
• Joe, the Christian fundamentalist antagonist of The Ledge, is supposed to be presented as a close-minded religious fanatic and a domineering husband. But even with these flaws, he is shown to be truly devoted to and in love with his wife Shana, and when he discovers that she is cheating on him, Joe is shown to be really devastated and heartbroken... the exact same reaction a lot of people would've had in his place.
• The Irish Slasher Movie Manhunt:
  • The protagonist's best friend Adam is meant to be seen as a Dirty Coward because he leaves Michelle to die and hits Sarah during an argument. Except elsewhere in the film, he displays genuine Friendship Moments and is shown to sincerely care for the others (especially when he comforts Michelle over finding Jono's body). Some of this is thanks to James McClean's charismatic performance too.
  • Michelle likewise is to be seen as The Load for a moment where she needs to stop and rest, and says she needs a drink (meaning water or something). A silly demand yes but Tommy's response is to yell and manhandle her.
  • The villain too once his motivations and backstory are revealed. He had to watch his father murder his mother as a child, and then had to kill the father to save himself. He worked hard to get better through counselling, and built a good life for himself...only to discover that his best friend had an affair with his wife, who then raised the resulting son as his. Coupling that with the protagonist Tommy being a massive Designated Hero, and you have this in spades.
• Kimberly from Madea's Big Happy Family. She is indeed an angry and pretentious snob who cares more about her real estate employment than her family (particularly her dying mother and her loving husband), but she has good reason to care little for her family as she came from a very messed up past which she had never resolved. Later in the film, we learn that she was raped by her uncle at thirteen, which resulted in her getting pregnant with her "brother" Byron, who the family had passed off as her mother's son, which was withheld from him throughout his life, her sister Tammy — who's no saint herself, being a bully to her own husband while simultaneously being a pushover with their disrespectful sons — threw this back in her face during a fight just to win the argument, when she (rightfully) called out the family for consistently "playing nice" with each other instead of facing their many problems and nothing ever happened to the uncle (and that her mother/other relatives did nothing to pursue any kind of punishment for him and instead just prayed about it.)
• This happens to Professor Kaman from the pro-creationism film A Matter of Faith:
  • He is set up as the villain since he advocates evolution, but he doesn't really do anything the average viewer would consider outright evil or even mean. In fact, he seems to be one of the nicest characters in the film and shows far more tolerance to the creationist father, Stephen, than any Real Life professor would display.
  • He seems to make genuine efforts to make his classes interesting and seems well-liked by students.
  • When Stephen tells him about his faith, Kaman is completely fine with it and without a bit of sarcasm encourages him to keep believing if it helps him.
• Imhotep in The Mummy remake comes off as far more sympathetic than an Omnicidal Maniac who wants to Take Over the World has any right to be, considering he did it all for love. Likewise, his Love Interest is also rather sympathetic considering she's the unwilling sex-toy of the Pharaoh and dies (the first time) shouting: "My body is no longer his temple!" This is perhaps why in the sequel, Anakh-Su-Namun gets portrayed as a manipulative Black Widow instead of an unwilling slave wearing touch-betraying body paint. He also has a decidedly emotional final death scene in said sequel.
• Out of Darkness: The film's attempts to present the tribe as the real villains and causing everything bad out of superstitious paranoia and violence fails badly for a lot of viewers, who point out that they were absolutely justified in their actions against the Presence (see the trope below) and that they only fall apart because of the former's torment of them.
• Inspector Jacques Clouseau the Trope Codifier for Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist from The Pink Panther (1963) might be the most famous case of this in film history. Unlike later films, he's not the protagonist, which is David Niven's character Sir Charles Lytton a master jewel thief and his two accomplices his nephew George and his lover Simone (who is married to Clouseau), are the ones we're supposed to root for. Clouseau is presented as somewhat arrogant and bumbling but he still comes off as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, whereas the “heroes” are just greedy, unlikable jerks who are quite cruel to Clouseau (particularly Simone). They even pull off a Karma Houdini at the end whilst Clouseau gets falsely accused of stealing the Pink Panther and sent to jail. While there is some Values Dissonance at play here, Peter Sellers’ performance was so liked that he became the Breakout Character of the Pink Panther franchise, meaning even audiences back then found Clouseau more sympathetic than Lytton and his crew.
• Power Rangers (2017): Kimberly’s cheerleader bullies who used to be part of her Girl Posse are more sympathetic than they were intended to be, their Alpha Bitch cruelty to Kimberly is undeniably bad but it is revealed Kimberly is the one who leaked a compromising photo of another friend and teammate of theirs, making their anger towards her actually understandable and fairly reasonable given how serious of a crime that is. Even if their revenge bullying of Kimberly is still quite cruel. Worsening matters, is that Kimberly doesn’t apologise to her friend whose photo she took nor does she admit to or express guilt to any of her new friends apart from Jason in private, who being her Love Interest of course forgives her easily. This makes Kimberly pretty Unintentionally Unsympathetic to some viewers in how she avoids coming to terms with her felony, since she seems to care about making herself feel better rather than personally make up for it. The moment in the climax where Kimberly wrecks the girls’ car with her Zord is meant to be a humorously satisfying and empowering moment of revenge for her — even though she was the one who had done wrong and humiliated one of her friends.
• Rotti Largo from Repo! The Genetic Opera. He's terminally ill, was betrayed by the love of his life, and has had to deal with Luigi, Pavi, and Amber for years, on top of the stress caused by being the CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation. One could also argue this for his children — growing up with Rotti as a father couldn't have been easy, and their reactions when he disowns them are pretty sad.
• RoboCop (1987): Bob Morton may be a Jerkass Corrupt Corporate Executive, but he's also the primary business rival of the film's Big Bad, Dick Jones. While motivated purely by self-interest, he's responsible for keeping the disastrous ED-209 off the streets and creating our hero, Robocop. All that said, the filmmakers didn't expect that audiences would feel so sorry for him when Boddicker brutally murders him in retaliation for crossing Jones.
• SHAZAM! (2019): Dr. Sivana, due to the traumatic way he's taken to the Rock of Eternity and sent packing when he's found not worthy, which results in him trying to find a way back in and free the Seven Deadly Sins. It's understandable that someone in those circumstances would be traumatized and have a Freak Out. It is compounded when we are shown that Sivana grew up in an abusive household, with his older brother constantly belittling him, while his father openly considered him to be a loser. The mistreatment only intensified after the accident, as they both blamed him for something he had no control over. His incredulous reaction towards Billy is also completely understandable, as he was coldly rejected by Shazam for not being pure enough, and yet when he encounters Billy for the first time he correctly realizes that the standards for being given Shazam's powers were significantly lowered as Billy acts like a sniveling coward.
• The Smurfs: Azrael, Gargamel's cat. He's supposed to be just as evil as his owner, but he's commonly treated in ways that would be animal cruelty in real life (e.g. being thrown). Add that to the fact that his tendency to try to eat the Smurfs from the cartoon doesn't feature in the movie.
• Soul Food: The film tries to really lay it on thick that Teri being a lawyer is supposedly inferior and selfish to Maxine's homemaker and implies that Miles cheating on her with Faith is also deserved due to her apparent coldness and unwillingness to start a family. However, the family comes off as very ungrateful due to enjoying the fruits of the money that her successful career brings to their own lives without bothering to thank her for it or even appreciating her skill or the years of hard work she put into her job. With everything she's dealt with up until now, you can understand her demeanor.
• Spider-Man 3: We're not supposed to root for Peter when the Symbiote makes him lash out at others and vent his frustrations rather than meekly accepting the ups and downs of his life. However, since Peter is often The Woobie and put through bad situation after bad situation over the course of three whole movies, it's nice to finally see him grow a backbone, gain confidence, and improve his life for a while even if he goes too far in the end and descends into Memetic Loser Jerkass territory. Oh, and there's also the fact that one of the guys that Peter lashes out at just committed an act of plagiarism and libel, both of which are very illegal and grounds for being fired from his job. Additionally, withholding rent until the landlord fixes the door is something Peter is legally allowed to do as a tenant.
• The villains in Star Trek: Insurrection can be divided into two camps: corrupt Federation officials who want to make the Fountain of Youth qualities of the Ba'ku planet generally available to the galaxy at large and former residents of the planet who were exiled and now need the planet's qualities to stave off death. Both groups come across as quite a bit more sympathetic than the writers intended, despite their dog-kicking ways. It doesn't help that the Ba'ku only appear to occupy a few hundred square kilometers at most.
• Star Wars:
  • Attack of the Clones: Anakin's massacre of the Tusken Raiders is portrayed as his Start of Darkness, but considering they all seem to be bloodthirsty assholes who attack humans for no reason, not to mention had just kidnapped and murdered his mother, quite a few viewers think he was completely justified.
  • In Return of the Jedi, after Luke kills Jabba the Hutt's rancor, its keeper Malakili comes out and mourns for his dead pet (the bloodthirsty, deadly pet used only for eating prisoners for Jabba's amusement.), and has to be led away in tears. His four seconds of screen-time crying got an unintentionally large amount of the audience to sympathize with him, to the point that in the official novelization, Luke is shown to feel sorry himself for the beast's enslavement and is only putting it out of its misery; then, the man's story is further fleshed out in the tie-in novel Tales from Jabba's Palace, in a very A Boy and His X way. You won't be able to watch that scene without a sniffle again. In other EU material, rancors are characterized as being rather like pit bulls, in that they're very sweet-natured creatures when well cared for (the specific rancor at Jabba's palace was deliberately starved and equipped so that it'd provide a good show when people got thrown into the pit, as well as suffering other abuses from Jabba). It doesn't hurt that Malakili was days away from smuggling the rancor away to a peaceful life when Luke showed up.
  • The directors of the Sequel Trilogy probably didn't intend for General Hux to be sympathetic. The movies consistently portray him as a cowardly and spiteful Smug Snake who relishes in genocide and gleefully orders the destruction of millions of innocents to assert the First Order's (and, by extension, his own) superiority, while the abuse he receives from Snoke and Kylo Ren is clearly meant to be a well-deserved Humiliation Conga Played for Laughs. However, his backstory, as depicted in the Expanded Universe comics and novels, is appallingly tragic, having been regularly abused by his father for his weakness, and mocked by other Officers for his illegitimate heritage. There's also the fact that he was recruited by Gallius Rax (the then-leader of the Imperial remnants after the death of Palpatine) and made to lead a group of child soldiers when he was only about five, and this took place after he's forced to evacuate from his homeworld when it was besieged by the New Republic, meaning that he probably didn't really have any choice but to serve the First Order, given that it's the only life he knew of. More than a few fans find him far more sympathetic (or, at the very least, has a more valid Freudian Excuse) than Kylo Ren, whom the movies did try to portray as a misguided Tragic Villain. Though he does have an attitude problem, he was still very reasonable enough to prioritize his crew first.
  • Poe in The Last Jedi is supposed to come off as an arrogant flyboy who needs to be knocked down a peg despite being established as a well-respected soldier in the first movie. This ends up putting him in conflict with Admiral Holdo, who boots him to a subordinate role and refuses to tell him any useful orders or information and expects him to shut up and do as he is told as some sort of attempt to teach him humility. Poe, who was trained by General Leia herself, has valid arguments about Holdo's poor leadership and attempts to reason with her, but is treated like a nosey child. With the pressure from the First Order mounting, Poe is left with no other option but to pull a mutiny from a leader he deems incompetent, which is shown as reckless but seen as a Necessary Evil order to bring back order to a panicking crew. More importantly, he only crossed the line into mutiny when he caught Holdo fueling up defenseless transports, which, without knowing about the cloaking devices, made it look like she was going to use the crew as bait so she could escape with her personal staff; Holdo did nothing to dissuade Poe from this conclusion or otherwise prevent him from spreading it to the rest of the already badly demoralized crew. It gets even worse when one considers that Poe was demoted for leading an attack against a Dreadnaught that could have potentially annihilated the surviving fleet before the movie proper could even begin, but was chastised as "reckless" when one of the potential outcomes was complete annihilation of what little remained of the Resistance, rather than a few outdated bombers and their volunteer crews.
• TRON: Legacy: Clu was a nasty piece of work who attacked his own creator, turned the title character into a attack drone, committed a full-blown genocide of the Iso species, ruled as a tyrant over his fellow Programs in full-blown Putting on the Reich, and planned to enforce his brand of "perfection" on the human world. Unfortunately, the fandom is (unsurprisingly) full of real-world IT staff who point out that Flynn forgot the first rule of programming - a program does what you tell it to do, not necessarily what you want it to do. Clu was operating on an impossible and stupidly-worded directive to begin with. The Expanded Universe material show that The Grid was on the verge of falling apart and taking everyone, Programs and Isos alike, down with it while Flynn was apparently oblivious to how bad things actually were, too distracted by his responsibilities in the analog world. Flynn was also a bit of a jackass User, frequently calling his world the "real" one (Clu calls him out on this in Betrayal), and treating the Programs as inferior to the Isos. As horrible as Clu's actions were, he was following his directive and may not have believed there were any other options to save the system and fellow Programs.
• While Vanilla Sky is ambiguous about how much sympathy Julianna deserves, the fact that she genuinely loves the hero David to the point of killing herself earned her a lot of sympathy from the audience (she tried to take him with her, but he kind of has it coming as he cheated on her and coldly dismisses her feelings), as well as the fact some people thought that her supposed romantic rival Sofia wasn't particularly interesting. Couple this with the fact that Julianna isn't really an obsessive stalker like her original counterpart Nuria (all of the stalker-ish actions is done by her dream form), and she is portrayed by Cameron Diaz, who has much more charisma and acting experience than Nuria's actress Najwa Nimri and Sofia's actress Penélope Cruz as well as arguably outshines Cruz, and you might have a clear picture why Julianna ended up being the one the audience roots for.
• Steve Trevor's host aka "Handsome Man" from Wonder Woman 1984 has garnered more sympathy from people than the filmmakers intended. He's evidently supposed to be just a convenient vessel for Steve Trevor to come back to life in after Diana wishes for his return, and where exactly his conscious mind goes after Steve unintentionally hijacks his body (whether it's a Get Out situation) is not deeply discussed or considered important. This only made a lot of viewers feel terrible for him as Diana and Steve put his life into mortal danger multiple times throughout the movie, have sex using his body (effectively making it rape on Diana's part) and Diana even suggests making the possession permanent. Consequently, this also made Diana's grief over being forced to take back her wish and freeing this poor man from Steve's psyche unsympathetic for a lot of viewers. Additionally this could've been avoided altogether by just having Steve appear in a new body without the Grand Theft Me.
• The Made-for-TV Movie Youre So Cupid tries to frame the prank war between the two sisters Emma and Lily as them being as bad as each other. Except Emma only does one thing to Lily, tricking her into missing an audition for the school play, which pales in comparison to the two things Lily does. First, she jealously draws all over Emma's prom dress with a sharpie, which was a pretty expensive dress as well. Then after the audition sabotage, she cuts off Emma's hair while she's asleep! Rather than the brat she's intended to be seen as, Emma looks considerably better than Lily, especially since she showed regret for sabotaging the audition, whereas Lily showed none for the two things she did.

---