Jellico is made a hated character from the Enterprise crew’s reaction to him, not anything he did. They’re a bunch of titty babies “aaawww this isn’t the way Captain Picard does it. whaaa!”
The character is pretty much an asshole from the first scene whose only real interest is “getting the jump on everybody”, but then, everybody in that movie is kind of an asshole except for Argyle, Holly, and Sgt. Al Powell. Especially Ellis.
False dichotomy; Vilos Cohagan is both, because how else is he going to keep the turbinium keeps flowing if he doesn’t prevent the rebels from activating the reactor? But, then again, he was entirely a creation of the Rekall simulation, so he’s just made to be a villain.
Well, that is how most fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation see it, but then they’re accustomed to the slack-ass way that Picard and Riker run the Enterprise (which they frequently claim to be the “flagship of the fleet” even though it has no admiral aboard). Jellico is there to shape up the crew into a fighting force that is well drilled and rested (hence his order to move to a four shift rotation), and all he gets from the senior staff is defiance and even conspiracy to undermine and ignore his orders even as he is doing his best to ensure the success of this nonsense mission and survival of Picard, Dr. Crusher, and Worf. Apparently fans think that he is ‘micromanaging’ the crew but in fact he the time to explain why he wants things done just so, and his explanations are clearly informed by his understanding of shipboard operations and capability, which begs the question of why the command staff isn’t already anticipating his orders.
Stranger
Who would you rather go to war with as your skipper? Picard or Jellico? And the episode made it very clear that Jellico was there to prepare the Enterprise for a possible shootout with the Cardassians and they needed to be ready yesterday. And here is an important point in military management, he needed to make it clear that while he was in command it was his ship, not on loan from Picard. Lastly, and maybe this biases me, I feel the same way about Riker that Jellico dod.
As any of our USN veterans can attest, the battle to be the right amount of demanding about what matters and semi-lax about what doesn’t is a very difficult balancing act that many COs get wrong.
Leading by being liked doesn’t really work. Leading by being hated also doesn’t really work.
Dabney Coleman in 9 to 5 comes to mind. But he nails the part so well he is fun to watch to see what he does next.
And here’s the important question: was Jellico wrong in anything he demanded? And a trivium, the reason Jellico demanded Troi where a uniform was because the actress Marina Sirtis was tired of the counselor’s outfit and wanted to wear a uniform.
Joe Pantoliano in Midnight Run is excellent. He’s really a fantastic actor. Cypher in The Matrix is similar but arguably actually evil.
Picard had a unique way of commanding. He was very good at getting his crew to do what he wanted without really ordering them. They were like little puppies, practically wetting themselves to please him (especially Geordi)*. The crew wanted to be liked, or at least acknowledged, by the Great Man. That seemed to be reward enough. It was kind of something you’d see in elementary school age children. But it worked. And while it works best in exploratory missions his system did beat the Borg multiple times.
Jellico needed to get the ship ready for war on very short notice. When you’re in combat and you say “fire phasers” you don’t have time to handhold some pissbaby saying “Captain Picard would ask nicer!” Jellico needed people to jump and then ask how high.
And the 3 vs 4 shift duty rotation? Viewers didn’t seem to notice that it didn’t matter which one the Enterprise was on, Jellico would have switched it to the other. The point was “I’m in charge now, so get used to it”.
*but notably not Ensign Ro Laren. Maybe that’s why I liked her being added. Until they assassinated her character. I suspect Mariner wouldn’t fit in on the Enterprise, but Boimler certainly would.
Acknowledging that diving into the details here is probably a hijack if it goes on too long, but you can be by the book correct and still be an asshole, or bad at your job. And, demanding 100% rule compliance is not necessarily an effective approach to human systems.
I feel like most of the answers to the OP (and most that I can think of) are some version of “character who is a regulator or rule enforcer, whose need for compliance stands in contrast to our heroes, whose get things done attitudes bust through all red tape and complacency in order to solve [whatever the movie is about]”.
We do love our rebels.
I’m trying to think up any opposite examples- not-actually-bad-guy antagonists who are rebels or iconoclasts, with heroes who are rule followers who enforce the status quo.
Lando Calrissian?
So I’ve been watching Strange New Worlds and there’s an episode where the leadership… um, changes… And the “new” command wants to switch to a two-hour rotation. The children are not happy. I wonder if that’s a throwback to TNG and this guy. (I don’t recall the TNG episode. My mind is like a seive for anything on film.)
He wasn’t really an antagonist, though, and the rules-following people (the Empire) weren’t the ostensible good guys.
He was to Han & Leia & Chewie
Nah, he was at best neutral. Sure, he had to sell them out, but that was because the most evil person in the galaxy was standing right there.
He did actually fix the Falcon, and did actually try to save H, L and C, and told them that Vader really wanted Luke, and then actually gave up everything to spring them all from Vader’s clutches.
Going back to the OP, I think the mayor from Jaws, whilst probably not being as bad as outright evil, is definitely more than just an a-hole. He’s firmly in the greedy, negligent s.o.b. category.
The other sort of assholes are the corrupt or the bootlickers.
The heroes are doing everything morally and technically right and they’re still failing. Why? Because of an enemy mole or some corruption or something up the chain of command. That character isn’t necessarily Eeeviiiillll, but they’re immediately hateable for what they represent in contrast to our white-hatted heroes.
Finding an actor who has a punchable face, can deliver that single-minded selfishness convincingly, and also casually delivery some gratuitous puppy-kicks to up his asshole street cred can be a tall order. But when it works, it works great.
Heels are the most popular characters in pro wrestling for a reason. The crowd loves to hate a heel more than they love to love a face.
Coleman also played a dick in WarGames as the guy in charge of the WOPR. But, to be fair, Matthew Broderick’s character almost did start WWIII by illegally hacking into it.
I was going more for perfomances that you appreciate for the acting more than a role just opposing the protagonist. This character is an asshole but, damn, the actor killing it. I think Brian Cox in Longitude was excellent, for example. Hamilton in Jaws is an irritating bureaucrat and jerkish when he tells Hooper that he wants to: “Get your name into the National Geographic.”, but has a good point about not cutting open the tiger shark on the town dock to see if the Kintner boy is in it and then seems really in shock at the hospital after the Pond attack and Brody gets him to sign the voucher to hire Quint.
ETA:
Definitely negligent and sob-ish, but I’m not sure about greedy. The town needs summer dollars or, as Quint puts it, the citizens will be on welfare all winter. I didn’t see how the mayor was personally benefiting except in the usual way of a politician doing what he thought would get him re-elected by “protecting” the town’s economy.
The closest I can think of right now is the Canadian-made sci-fi show Continuum.
The ostensible hero is a cop from the future, who is chasing some rebels from the future, who are trying to change the past to prevent the government they were living under from coming into existence. Early on, you root for the cop who is trying to maintain the status quo, and catch people who are labelled criminals. But as the series progresses:
you learn that the government in question is an oppressive corporation-based police state, and the “criminals” are actually rebels against that police state. The “good guy” cop is actually working to support that police state, although it’s clear she’s been sufficiently brainwashed by propaganda that she never quite realizes that. So the criminals are clearly antagonists, but it’s hard to say they’re wrong about wanting to change things in the future.
Sid in Toy Story surely qualifies. He’s an a-hole to his sister, but the ‘torture’/amateur surgery of the toys hardly counts as evil given he’s no idea they are sentient. He’s just a young boy having fun.
So Burke in Aliens. Or is he an ahole for trying to get Ripley and Newt infected with the facehuggers?