History DesignatedVillain / Film

* ''Film/ProjectX'': Rob the neighbor is regarded as a big party pooper who just doesn't want the partygoers to have any fun, but he didn't even ask them to shut down the party until nearly midnight, and he wants the party to end because the noise is keeping his wife and child awake. Despite his good reasons, though, the movie keeps treating him as if he wronged the kids, and he ends up getting tased, stalked, tackled, and nearly gets his house set on fire for his troubles.

** He doesn't exactly lie to his kids as he breaks down before getting to that part, not to mention he never actually sees what happened to her. Plus he is shown to be very guilt-ridden about the whole matter as it is. Yet his kids flat out accuse him of lying about everything.

* Rail Chief Patterson in ''Film/MoneyTrain'' is the bad guy because... he doesn't want his trains robbed by the protagonists. Granted, he's not exactly likable, being a {{greed}}y MeanBoss and a ControlFreak with [[LackOfEmpathy little to no empathy for others]] (and for the cherry on top he also directs some [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain low key racism]] first at a black officer working for him and later a hispanic officer too), but when the "good guys" are cops going rogue and whose motivation is to pay off gambling debts one of them owes to the criminal underworld (and one of them was semi-seriously planning the heist when paying off the debt was not nearly as much of an issue as it later became), it's hard to say they're any better when it comes to greed, at least. This is downplayed example, however, because Patterson does undeniably go JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope by endangering the lives of dozens of innocents as part of his attempt to stop the robbery, and both the film and characters react to it as a major escalation from simply being a petty {{Jerkass}} to an actual villain, but that's also something which movies, particularly of that era, often tend to shrug off or excuse whenever a main character does it. It's been observed on a number of occasions that leaving out a few unsympathetic moments might be enough to turn Patterson from the bad guy to a fairly typical hardass movie cop trying to stop criminals.

* In ''Film/PatchAdams'', anyone who expects Adams to conform is an antagonist, especially Dean Wilcott. Adams' nonconformity includes practicing medicine without a license, stealing from a hospital, and ignoring background history. The audience is expected to [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality side with Adams on all issues]], but most audiences think that the StrawmanHasAPoint. Adams' roommate is treated as a villain who needs to change because he's annoyed by Adams and thinks that he cheats on his exams. However, the character is simply an earnest medical student who has good reason to be suspicious of Adams' flawless grades, given the fact that we never see him study. Even the RealLife Patch Adams, who behaves nothing like his fictional counterpart, hates the movie and sides with the "villains."

* The A.I. from ''Film/ResidentEvil2002''. It was ''supposed'' to be seen as wrong for insisting that the main characters kill one of their own who was infected before the A.I. would let them leave and for killing everyone in the facility when the virus was released. The problem with this? ''It was the only one doing its job''. Everyone else was too busy trying to force their way in and then out, short circuiting the A.I. or sending in more and more people into what should be a building under total quarantine. If they had just let the A.I. do its job they wouldn't be dealing with a world wide zombie apocalypse two movies later. The Red Queen becomes much more antagonistic during her return in ''Film/ResidentEvilRetribution'', in which she's running a facility cloning Alice and several of the movie series characters by the hundreds and killing them over and over again in order to try and control Umbrella's viruses.

* ''Film/SchoolOfRock'' depicts Ned's girlfriend Patty as being pushy and hypocritical because she "forces" him to demand Dewey actually get a job and pay his ''massive'' rent debt. Even though this is a rather reasonable demand, since Dewey isn't terribly concerned with what a drag he is on Ned. She is also supposed to be seen as hypocritical by pointing out that Dewey steps all over him and manipulates him...even though he does ''exactly that'' to Ned, to the point of engaging in identity theft to get a job under his name and trying to beg that he not do anything about it when Ned finds out. She's later further villainized for convincing Ned to press charges over the identity theft. At no point in the film is Dewey ever truly sorry for what he pulls on Ned and how many laws he broke or even that what he did could seriously impact Ned's own career as a teacher. For starters, the income from the job that Ned technically lost out on since Dewey took it from him, or what would happen when Ned didn't declare income from a job unknowingly taken under his name on his taxes. Dewey ''does'' acknowledge that what he did to the kids was wrong, but he's not ever aware of how much he took advantage of his roommate either. The moment where Ned breaks up with Patty for Dewey's concert is supposed to be a triumph of assertiveness when her only crime is being kind of aggressive over Ned not ever standing up for himself and being taken advantage of.

* Zander Barcalow in ''Film/StarshipTroopers''. He's supposed to be seen as the bad guy because he keeps trying to "steal" Johnny Rico's girl Carmen throughout the movie. However, he's completely upfront about his interest in her. When they fight in the mess hall, he keeps his word about disregarding rank (he's an officer fighting with an enlisted man), he could have easily had Johnny imprisoned, thrown out of the Mobile Infantry, or even (going by book canon and/or the third movie) ''executed''. He risks his own ass to come out and give the Roughnecks covering fire when they are evacuating Planet P when he could have sat in his cockpit, safe and sound. He was an honorable man and a brave soldier. It also doesn't help that whilst Rico is actively trying to fight off the affections of Dizzy, the same simply cannot be said about Carmen when it comes to Zander (at least by what we see on-screen). Its hard to put all of the fault at his door for trying to ''steal'' away another man's girlfriend when she comes across as wanting to be stolen.

* In ''Film/UnaccompaniedMinors'', the bad guy is the airport security director. He's upset that he can't go on vacation because the whole airport is snowed in. The protagonists are all kept away in a children's area, but the main characters break out, and proceed to steal food, steal a transport, and go to the mileage club without being accompanied by an adult. He confines them to the airport room while the rest of the kids are taken to an inn. For the rest of the film, they break out, steal from the unclaimed baggage, and try to get to that inn where one of the character's sister is. The director's just doing his job in trying to get them back. He proceeds to fall over a slop, [[ItMakesSenseInContext crash a canoe]], and an annoyed guest assaults him, along with the girl who stole the car! At the end of the film, this is addressed, as he just tells the main kid that he's just doing his job. However, the movie still treats him as a scrooge for being bitter on Christmas, and it's he who learns the lesson about giving, while the protagonists don't get called on their actions.

** Speaking of which, he had every right to be furious about them leaving the safe-zone. When you have the most deadly plague in history which has ravaged Britain in less than a month out there and the US Army enforcing the rules then you would be pissed, yet the film forgets that to focus on how him lying was so terrible and he is shown to struggle to find a response, making it seem like his kids have any moral high ground.

* ''Film/ClashOfTheTitans1981'': Medusa has [[TheWoobie never done anything wrong in her entire life]], and just wants to be left alone in a place no one could find her. That doesn't stop people from all over the world apparently hunting her down and trying to kill her to get her head, even though they have to ''enter the Underworld'' to do it.

* Amy's mother and aunt in ''Film/{{Cuties}}'', supposedly, for their traditional beliefs about women and their role in their culture. Even when they discover about Amy's out of control behavior and provocative wardrobe, their reactions weren't that unjustified since, in the mother's words, "you lied to me. You steal from me," which are things that Amy actually did. Granted, the mother's first response was to slap her but for the most part, she was panicking and sobbing while any other conservative Muslim family could've done much worse, especially in real life.

* The New York district attorney Sean Kierney in ''Film/FindMeGuilty''. Throughout the film, Kierney is the rival to DesignatedHero [=Jackie DiNorscio=]. Despite coming off as something of a {{Jerkass}}, at no point in the film is Kierney wrong about his reasons as to why Jackie and his associates deserve to be convicted. However, the film goes out of its way to portray Jackie as the blameless hero (who at best will try to explain his flaws with halfassed reasoning) and Kierney is presented as a crusading zealot out to enforce the claimed "government oppression" of Italian-Americans. He ends up being a borderline StrawCharacter for how easily Jackie outmaneuvers him. Granted, this was based on historical events, but even still, the movie is clearly not on his side when he's one of the few characters in the movies who's simply looking for justice.

* Keith in ''Film/LaLaLand'' is a Jazz musician who understands that the traditional form of the genre is no longer as popular as it used to be, and to "save" the genre, he must adapt to what younger people are listening to. He creates a successful Jazz Fusion band that rides to great success and at least one arena-packing tour. Too bad he isn't the hero of the story. Sebastian, who is a Jazz traditionalist, doesn't want to change anything and thinks anyone doing so is a sellout and a traitor. Keith is shown as a nice guy and just as passionate about the genre as Sebastian, but the film makes it seem like he is in the wrong for wanting to change a genre from what it used to be, despite Jazz itself being a form of music that was created as something new and non-traditional and something that evolved over time, never staying the same. It doesn't help that the audience is supposed to side with Sebastian in this, despite the fact that Keith offers him steady employment (an offer Sebastian happily grabs after being fired from several previous gigs), and the money Sebastian makes from the tours and chart success enables him to [[spoiler:lease and open a jazz club that is operating several years after the main events of the film]], proving that even if Keith wanted to change the genre into "something it's not", there's still a market for traditional Jazz, particularly in a hotly-contested market like Los Angeles.
* ''Film/LittleGiants'': Zigzagged with Kevin O'Shea. The crux of the film is that he cut one of the most skilled players to try out for the team on the grounds that she's a girl, and he otherwise turned down numerous other kids who were just not cut out for football. Aside from rejecting Becky, Kevin's actions are perfectly understandable, sorry to say for the kids. We otherwise see that he's a good coach who cares for his players, won't stoop to cheating to win, and loves his family including his brother and niece who are against him. At worst he's a VillainyFreeVillain who just acts like a {{Jerkass}} on occasion, but considering his genuinely impressive career, who can blame him for not taking it well when his little brother forms a rival team?

* Dr. Jarret in ''Film/MansBestFriend'' is an interesting case of this. He is performing unethical and illegal research on animals (bad) and he created the genetically engineered killer dog that causes all the trouble in the movie (also bad, but keep reading). His purpose was to build the ultimate guard dog after his wife and child were killed; he figured it would be a good product to sell. He also kept Max on a strict regiment of drugs designed to keep him from going berserk and insane. When the DesignatedHero steals Max from the laboratory, the police and others don't seem too interested in taking Dr. Jarret seriously, despite the fact that he has explained that his dog is a ticking time-bomb that's ready to explode in a shower of mayhem...He made the monster, but he kept it under control, and it was only due to the acts of others that it escaped and was able to kill people. And we're supposed to believe that he's bad.

* The disaster film ''Film/{{Meteor}}'' had an American general be portrayed in a bad light for objecting to Russians getting access to a top secret American command center during the height of the Cold War. StrawManHasAPoint.
* Rail Chief Patterson in ''Film/MoneyTrain'' is the bad guy because... he doesn't want his trains robbed by the protagonists. Granted, he's not exactly likable, being a {{greed}}y MeanBoss and a ControlFreak with [[LackOfEmpathy little to no empathy for others]] (and for the cherry on top he also directs some [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain low key racism]] first at a black officer working for him and later a hispanic officer too), but when the "good guys" are cops going rogue and whose motivation is to pay off gambling debts one of them owes to the criminal underworld (and one of them was semi-seriously planning the heist when paying off the debt was not nearly as much of an issue as it later became), it's hard to say they're any better when it comes to greed, at least. This is downplayed example, however, because Patterson does undeniably go JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope by endangering the lives of dozens of innocents as part of his attempt to stop the robbery, and both the film and characters react to it as a major escalation from simply being a petty {{Jerkass}} to an actual villain, but that's also something which movies, particularly of that era, often tend to shrug off or excuse whenever a main character does it. It's been observed on a number of occasions that leaving out a few unsympathetic moments might be enough to turn Patteron from the bad guy to a fairly typical hardass movie cop trying to stop criminals.
* Discussed in ''Film/MonkeyBone'' by Death who is fed up with people treating her like the bad guy when she's just trying to do her job, which must be done, all the while people are breaking into the Land of the Dead to steal "exit passes" and cheat death. She's right too: while she has a ''literally'' explosive temper, she's a charmingly likeable person (Being played by ''Creator/WhoopiGoldberg'' cemented that), a BenevolentBoss, and even a ReasonableAuthorityFigure [[spoiler:willing to bend her own rules sometimes and let people return to Earth]].

* ''Film/ANightAtTheOpera'': Lasspari is at least [[{{Jerkass}} unpleasant]] enough that the audience wants to see him eat humble pie, but Gottleib is never portrayed as anything but a decent man looking out for his opera and his investors. Sure, he doesn't like Driftwood, thinking him a [[CorruptCorporateExecutive cheat]], a [[ConMan hustler]], and a [[GoldDigger fortune hunter]]... but Driftwood ''is'' all of those things, and he has no particular grudge against Tomasso and Fiorello until they break into his business and start ruining his show and repeatedly injuring his head. On the other side Gottleib was absolutely ok with helping Lasspari ruin Rosa's career because she rejected his advances and only gave Ricardo a chance when he was literally his only hope.

** [[spoiler:If anything, the safe company was the least at fault. Holding them responsible for the fact that a man who, of his own free will, locked himself in one of their safes and then had said safe submerged deep under water, and then died, is fairly absurd.]] If anything, the fact that Shrike was unable to escape from the safe is testament to the fact that the safe was well-made and functioned as intended.
** Also, [[spoiler:the insurance company can hardly be faulted for refusing to pay out for the death of a man, whose reckless actions directly caused it. Being a magician doesn't absolve one from responsibility.]].
** On top of all that, [[spoiler:this designation is later subverted in the sequel where it's revealed that, like Dylan in the first movie, Bradley was really part of the mysterious Eye organization all along, with his rivalry with Lionel Shrike being all a ruse to keep up appearances when they were really partners the whole time. So it turns out Dylan's beef with him was entirely pointless.]]

* ''Film/TheParentTrap1961'': While Vicki may be an unsympathetic character, at the same time she is only viewed as a "villain" by the girls, simply because she gets in the way of their plan to reunite their parents. Plus, she really didn't deserve the last prank the girls pulled on her (by covering her feet in honey), which really could have killed her -- which makes her understandably furious. And while much is made of Vicki being a gold digger, no one ever seems to call out Mitch for being a much older man marrying a younger woman, or for failing to mention to the woman he intends to marry that he was previously married and has another daughter; Vicki is justifiably not pleased when she finds out the truth. On the other hand the film does establish early on that she only wants to marry Mitch for his money and she remarks to her own mother about her plans to ship Sharon and Susan off to boarding school.

* In ''Film/UnaccompaniedMinors'', the bad guy is the airport security director. He's upset that he can't go on vacation because the whole airport is snowed in. The protagonists are all kept away in a children's area, but the main characters break out, and proceed to steal food, steal a transport, and go to the mileage club without being accompanied by an adult. He confines them to the airport room while the rest of the kids are taken to an inn. For the rest of the film, they break out, steal from the unclaimed baggage, and try to get to that inn where one of the character's sister is. The director's just doing his job in trying to get them back. He proceeds to fall over a slop, [[ItMakesSenseInContext crash a canoe]], and an annoyed guest assaults him, along with the girl who stole the car! At the end of the film this is addressed, as he just tells the main kid that he's just doing his job. However, the movie still treats him as a scrooge for being bitter on Christmas, and it's he who learns the lesson about giving, while the protagonists don't get called on their actions.

* ''Film/ANight AtTheOpera'': Lasspari is at least [[{{Jerkass}} unpleasant]] enough that the audience wants to see him eat humble pie, but Gottleib is never portrayed as anything but a decent man looking out for his opera and his investors. Sure, he doesn't like Driftwood, thinking him a [[CorruptCorporateExecutive cheat]], a [[ConMan hustler]], and a [[GoldDigger fortune hunter]]... but Driftwood ''is'' all of those things, and he has no particular grudge against Tomasso and Fiorello until they break into his business and start ruining his show and repeatedly injuring his head. On the other side Gottleib was absolutely ok with helping Lasspari ruin Rosa's career because she rejected his advances and only gave Ricardo a chance when he was literally his only hope.

* ''Film/TheShapeOfWater'': During the Asset's breakout, Giles is caught and nearly arrested by a security guard. However, Dr. Hoffstetler arrives at the last minute and gives the guard a lethal injection. The scene is played up as a BigDamnHero moment. Never mind the fact that the victim was an ordinary security guard who was JustFollowingOrders. Could also be seen as a case of ProtagonistCenteredMorality. Then again, Giles himself was horrified at this action, it could be said to be a necessary evil in order to save the Asset, and presumably everyone else.

* ''Film/TheSantaClause1'': The cops later in the first film are treated as trying to ruin Christmas by arresting Santa, but from their perspective, they're just holding a delusional man who kidnapped a young boy and committed breaking and entering.

* ''Film/TheSantaClause1'': The cops later in the first film are treated as trying to ruin Christmas by arresting Santa, but from their perspective, they're just holding someone who kidnapped a young boy.

* ''Film/TheSantaClause'': The cops later in the first film are treated as trying to ruin Christmas by arresting Santa, but from their perspective, they're just holding someone who kidnapped a young boy.

* The Gorgonites in ''Film/SmallSoldiers'' is actually a JustifiedTrope InUniverse. The Gorgonites were originally meant for an environmental-friendly toyline, but it was cancelled and folded into the Commando Elite as the bad guys. However, their creator was angry at that and, instead of turning the Gorgonites into the enemy, [[WriterRevolt their friendly nature was left in]]. Thus, the supposed-to-be heroic Commando Elite turn into genocidal monsters because they are "the good guys" (and because their bumbling creater accidentally outfitted them with CPs from guided missiles) and the Gorgonites are "the bad guys".

* Donald Sinclair of ''Film/RatRace''. He doesn't tell the racers he and a bunch of other millionaires are betting on them, and some of the bets they do make come off as kind of callous, but he's otherwise totally upfront about the conditions of the race, he's polite to the racers, doesn't sabotage or impede them in any way, really does have a cash prize waiting for them, and isn't directly responsible for any of the problems the racers run into [[spoiler:including not getting the money]]. Yet at the end [[spoiler:him getting shamed into donating millions of dollars he wasn't interested in donating to charities is treated like a moral victory instead of incredibly unfair]].