Marvel Universe
Villain Has a Point in this franchise. open/close all folders
Comic Books
Comic Books
- Acts of Vengeance: When Magneto confronts the Red Skull and berates him for his involvement in crimes against humanity, Skull counters by calmly pointing out that Magneto is also motivated by racial self-interest and has a lot of blood on his own hands. Magneto has no answer to this; in fact, Skull's analysis is reflective of realizations Magneto had about himself in the past.
- Doctor Doom is a megalomaniac who wants to Take Over the World. However, the reason he wants to is because he honestly believes that it will be for the benefit of mankind. And he is right. He was able to look into the future and see all the possible futures that could come to pass and the only one free of human suffering and strife was the one where he was in control of humanity. Though the validity of the point is undermined by his methods, which usually amount to depriving most of humanity of its free will, killing or imprisoning anyone who resists, and in short proving that everyone who believes Doom is right is a closet fascist themselves.
- He actually succeeded in the graphic novel Emperor Doom (with the forced help of the Purple Man), and did make the world a better place. He was so bored, he actually let the small band of heroes who Wonder Man freed from his control win. The heroes aren't even sure they did the right thing.
- Played With in the 2019 Doctor Doom comic. Doctor Doom gets visions of a Utopic alternate reality, where he has made earth a paradise, various alien civilizations waring in the main Marvel universe are at peace, and he is in possession of various powerful artifacts like the Ultimated Nullfiier for safe keeping. But it turns out he gets there by letting go of his ego and working with his hated rival Reed Richards. Main Marvel Doctor Doom can't handle this, kills his alternate reality counterpart, and destroys this alternate universe.
- Gorr the God Butcher from Thor: God of Thunder (2012) is one the most effective examples of this. While Gorr is a monster and psychopath his proclamations that Marvel’s gods are corrupt and ineffectual deities who hurt and neglect the very people whom pray to them is ultimately true and something Thor himself begrudgingly agrees with, even while fighting Gorr to the death.Gorr: At last I understand you, little god. The old you, the king, has always been fuelled by regret. He thinks if he kills me he can erase his history of wretched failure. And the young one, the Viking god uses arrogance and shame to mask crippling shame. But you I could never figure out until now. You know I’m right. That’s why you fight so hard. Why you try so desperately hard to seem noble. Because you see just how petty and useless your kind truly are. You know what I know. That the gods have never created or cared for anything except themselves.Thor:…Gorr: The god who doubts heh? I changed my mind. You’re my favourite Thor.
- Played With though as while Gorr’s assertion that the gods are bad is correct in many cases (Zeus, Hela, Loki etc.), he refuses to acknowledge the fact he’s really become no different from them, if not arguably worse since he needlessly kills gods of nature and love. Gorr’s own hypocrisy seals his fate when it is revealed the weapon he’s been using to slay gods, the All-Black, is a godly blade meant to be wielded by divine beings.
- In Inhumans vs. X-Men, despite being the villains of the series, the X-Men are in practice actually in the right. As stated In-Universe, disrupting the Terrigen Mists has no negative effect beyond seeing that people who weren't super-powered to begin with... don't spontaneously get super-powers they never even asked for, whilst letting them saturate the atmosphere will kill off an entire sub-species of humanity who had made no hostile actions towards the Inhumans in the first place. This is lampshaded when the Inhuman Kamala asks if her people are supposed to be the good guys in this situation.
- Often the case with Magneto, and the main reason why he so often swings between being an enemy or an ally of the X-Men, and even as an enemy, he seldom completely loses the sympathy and grudging respect of the X-Men. This carries over to the films, where it is indeed usually humanity (or, at least, a human), who escalates the human-mutant conflict, but his possibly-justified retaliation crosses the line by targeting innocents as well as the guilty. Not to mention Magneto tends to ruin his own argument and moral standing through his hypocrisy and rage-induced cruelty. For example at one point in the middle of battle he almost kills Kitty Pryde a fellow Jew and innocent girl, showing at his worst Mags is hardly any better than the Nazis who killed his family and millions of his race. He did have a My God, What Have I Done? on that occasion though.
- The Punisher: It happens very often that a mook/mob boss attempts to be spared by pointing out that he personally had nothing to do with the murder of Frank's family, that killing him won't bring Frank's family back, or even that killing him won't do a thing about the nation's crime levels. This is entirely true (especially in recent stories where Frank's family was caught in a mob war shortly after Frank's return from The Vietnam War, meaning the criminal might not even have been born then), but Frank shoots him anyway (some thinking/responding along the lines of "Tell me something I don't know"). In the MAX version, this is for the simple reason that Frank isn't trying to avenge his family's killers anymore (that happened in The Cell): he's slaughtering as many criminals as he can before he's inevitably killed and can finally join them in death (in this interpretation, he's punishing himself with a Forever War for failing to protect them and having wanted to abandon them due to his Vietnam-induced disconnect).
- During a story set during the Christmas season, plant-controlling villain Plant-Man tried to stop people from buying Christmas trees, stating that cutting down the trees to use them for a brief period of time was a waste, since that meant the trees could not absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. Continuing the cycle just meant more and more trees going to waste.Spider-Man: Man's got a point.
- In the wake of Superior Spider-Man (2013), when Doctor Octopus took over his body for a time, Peter Parker has to acknowledge that some of Otto's moves weren't too bad. For example, Otto actually waited for backup from the police when taking on some criminals and using his technology for some advantages rather than Spidey's usual half-written plan.
- Anna Marie points out that a reason Otto was able to have a better personal and business life than Peter was that Otto knew he didn't have to answer every call for help as New York had plenty of police (and other heroes) to handle run-of-the-mill crime.
Anna Marie: Otto may have been a jerk...but he knew that "with great responsibility" didn't mean all the responsibility.- When he's accused of "plagiarizing" Otto's work, Peter is stripped of his degree. At first upset, Peter realizes Otto was right as going around with a degree he never actually earned wasn't ethical and tries for one on his own.
Films
Films
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Loki had a legitimate point in Thor, in that his brother wasn't ready for the throne. It is only because Loki let the frost giants into Asgard, leading to Thor being banished by Odin for recklessly seeking revenge against them, that Thor learns humility and grows into being a worthy future king and protector of the Nine Realms. A deleted scene also shows that, by that point, Loki is made the legitimate king of Asgard while Odin sleeps. In Thor: The Dark World, Thor has emotionally matured to the point that he openly states Loki was right, and even more, Thor doesn't have (nor wants to have) the ability to be as ruthless as the king of Asgard sometimes has to be. He also correctly points out one of the problems with Thor's relationship with Jane: its Mayfly–December Romance aspect, since Jane is a normal mortal and Thor is an Asgardian who could live for thousands of years. (As of Thor: Ragnarok Jane and Thor have broken up, though it's not explained why.)
- While conversing with Thor before the Final Battle of Thor: Ragnarok, Hela points to the history Odin hide away as a sign that he covered up anything he found unpleasant. Thor doesn't deny it.
- Black Panther (2018): Part of Erik Killmonger's motivation is the hardship that he has seen and experienced African minority communities undergo in places like America, where their historical presence stemmed from slavery. He condemns Wakanda's isolationism policy, pointing out that the country has had the resources to assist these people in need for centuries and could have alleviated a lot of people's suffering if they intervened instead of continuing to silently support the status quo by doing nothing. He inherited this attitude from his father, N'Jobu, who tried to smuggle vibranium out of Wakanda to arm African minorities and lead a violent uprising. T'Challa does not agree with his methods nor his ultimate goal of committing mass genocide of non-African and African descended people to establish a new world order where he's in charge, but does come to agree that Wakanda has an obligation as an African Advanced Ancient Acropolis to help out Africans in other nations who are struggling. He decides to begin opening Wakandan community centers specifically for this purpose.
- Spider-Man: Homecoming: When the government agency "Damage Control" took over Adrian Toomes contract and forced him off the cleanup site, they inflicted financial hardship on him and jeopardized his ability to support his family. Toomes points out to Peter that he's young and doesn't understand that the "rich and powerful, they do whatever they want" and just don't care about "guys like us". He even points out that Tony Stark himself first made his fortune as a weapons manufacturer and ultimately claims that everything he has done has been to secure his family's future. Peter, driven by his high moral standards points that selling weapons to criminals is still wrong and while he doesn't relent in stopping Toomes' plans, it does appear some part of what he said resonated with Peter as reflected in his decision to turn down Stark's offer to join the Avengers and remain someone "to look out for the little guy".
- X-Men Film Series
- The villain in X2: X-Men United is so extremely anti-mutant that he would experiment on and enslave his own son to exterminate them all. In the process he enslaves another mutant to attack the president of the US, just so he can offer a target for the president to authorize an attack on. Before the strike, though, an objection is made that the target is a school. The villain responds sarcastically "Sure it is," showing x-ray imagery of a secret jet underneath the school's basketball court. A dispassionate observer should note that that is actually extremely suspicious. Normally schools don't have military-grade equipment hidden in their facility, and after all "schools" in some parts of the world have been used as recruiting centers/supply bases/etcetera by terrorist organizations before — both for the purpose of camouflage, and making attacks on them politically troublesome. Not to mention, locations protected by the Law of Armed Conflict, like churches, schools, and historically important locales, forfeit that protection if they're used for a military purpose and Xavier's school would be a legally valid military target. The president then orders a non-lethal infiltration and capture mission, which from his position is entirely reasonable.
- X-Men: Days of Future Past presents the inverse of the situation seen in X1. This time, it's the government who takes the side of the mutants at Trask's Senate hearing and refuse to give the funding he needs to create the Sentinel program. The problem is that Trask has very well-founded fears that the audience can sympathize with. He correctly points out that the U.S. and Russia nearly went to war in the course of a single battle as a result of mutant intervention (which they officially deny, but are later seen to have removed several pieces of clothing and technology from and stored). After the Paris Peace Accord incident, he then points out that the participants include a man who can direct metal (and is the prime suspect/convicted prisoner in the death of a sitting U.S. President), another who believes that mutants will drive humanity into extinction, and a third who can shapeshift into anyone and order a nuclear strike if she felt like it. It doesn't justify his genocidal tendencies towards mutants, but these are some very real fears.
- Trask went to a lot of trouble to convince Obstructive Bureaucrats that mutants do exist, that they can be dangerous, and that America needs some kind of protection from them... and Magneto proved that Trask was completely right.
- As said under Comics above, Magneto himself, especially in X-Men: First Class when the actual moment of the inevitable break between him and Charles happens because he wants to retaliate against people who have just tried to kill all the mutants (including the ones to whom they are allied), in an attack solely motivated by fear of what they might do with their power rather than because the mutants were in any way aggressive towards them at the time. Charles protests that the men Magneto's immediately targeting were Just Following Orders, which unsurprisingly does not make the Holocaust-survivor relent.
- In fact throughout the entire movie series, Magneto is proven right time and time again about the potential danger humans pose. X-Men: The Last Stand saw him state the cure for mutations would be weaponized, and he was right. Now we saw it used against Magneto and his followers, mutant supremacists, but in X-Men: Days of Future Past the humans developed Sentinels that possessed an Adaptive Ability to mutant powers. This led to the movie's Bad Future where mutants and any humans who sympathize with them are rounded up into internment camps in scenes remiscient of the Holocaust. In Logan, humans used GMO foodnote to neutralize the X-gene.
Video Games
Video Games
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2: During the Final Boss, Carnage tells Spider-Man that's he's just like him, and that he was glad when he killed other criminals. He tells him that he wants to do the same thing, to stop criminals forever. Surprisingly, Spider-Man agrees with him, but also points out that feeling anger and the desire for revenge is human. What's important is whether or not he acts on those feelings.
Western Animation
Western Animation
- Avengers Assemble: Mojo verbally rips Hawkeye a new one by pointing out that he and the Hulk fight over every stupid little thing, causing massive collateral damage in the process, and that he just put what they do naturally every day on live television but somehow he is considered a bad guy. You can tell by Hawkeye's facial reaction that he realize Mojo does have a valid point.
- Unintentionally so in The Spectacular Spider-Man, when Peter is torn between buying a new camera and giving the money to Aunt May to pay her outstanding bills. It's something The Shocker of all people says that hammers home what he is supposed to do:Shocker: Ain't nothin' personal, Hoss. The simple truth is, if a man's a man he honors his responsibilities. And you're one of mine.(Later)Peter: But... if a man's a man he honors his responsibilities. You're one of mine. Aunt May, please, let me help.
- X-Men: The Animated Series/X-Men '97
- In "X-Ternally Yours", the Assassins Guild and Thieves Guild have to regularly pay tribute to a being called the X-Ternal or be destroyed. In a ploy to eliminate the Thieves Guild, the Assassins kidnap Bobby, who hold the Thieves' tribute. When they release him, they empty the box. When the Thieves find out almost too late about the trick and confront them, the Assassins call them stupid for not looking in the box.
- "Lifedeath, Pt. 2": One of Deathbird's points of contention against Xavier and Lilandra's marriage is a suspicion that he'd want the Shi'ar capital moved to his own homeworld of Earth. While Deathbird's accusation is built on racism and jingoism, she's not wrong, as Xavier had suggested exactly that to Lilandra, though she declined the request.
