# Heroes, Antiheroes, and Villains **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 4, 2025, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119 "2025-03-04T18:20:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/81 "2025-03-05T21:39:21Z")
> [@Flightless](#): > > The Cowboys who cut up the prostitute (or whores as Little Bill calls them) are the bad guys. In an ideal society, the local enforcement (Little Bill) would have brought them to Justice. His rather dismissive failure to do so makes him the bad guy. > > William Munny is a bad man who killed women and children in his past. But his wife convinced him of the error of his ways. But she died and he has got 2 kids to raise. > > So he takes a job killing violent predators. They kill his friend who didn’t kill anybody. So he kills them too. > > Not advocating vigilante justice but he’s far from the villain of the movie Again there are no heroes in Unforgiven. That’s one of the many things that make it awesome (or rather the way it portrays moral ambiguity, by subverting Hollywood tropes, makes it awesome. There are plenty of movies where all the characters suck that just end up being dull movies where you aren’t invested in what happens) You can argue as to who is the villain (my money is on Little Bill) but there are no heroes and William Munny is absolutely not a hero (or antihero) ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/82 "2025-03-05T21:41:20Z")
How about EFNY’s Snake Plissken? Anti-hero? Villain protagonist? He’s a war hero and a bank robber. He saves the president but dooms the country to continuing the war. I think he’s more villain in EFLA. He wiped out the entire country’s electrical grid, maybe permanently. But I think the audience is supposed to think he’s the hero. I dunno. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/83 "2025-03-05T21:43:22Z")
Plissken is a Nihilist; I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out where nihilism fits. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/84 "2025-03-05T21:43:28Z")
Snake is 100% an antihero. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/85 "2025-03-05T21:57:40Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out where nihilism fits. Say what you want about the tenets of villainy, dude, at least it’s an ethos. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2025, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/86 "2025-03-05T23:00:17Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > But, in the original books, he’s a good guy all the way through. I think Snape is a hero but _not_ a good guy. He’s cruel, unpleasant, and punitive to the students he doesn’t like, including but certainly not limited to Harry, in ways that could get a real-world teacher fired. But he is heroic, courageous, and self-sacrificing. I take him as evidence that a character can be both a hero and a jerk. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/87 "2025-03-06T01:01:14Z")
> [@solost](#): > > I conceded the point, but it still doesn’t feel right to me. I think of an antihero as someone who generally does the right thing, despite using morally or unethically unsound methods to do so. > [@Miller](#): > > Of the rest, only Bill Munny counts as an anti-hero. > [@griffin1977](#): > > I disagree. Bill Munny is 100% not a hero, anti or otherwise. A lot of this discussion can be resolved by defining what an anti-hero is. And I’m not sure there is a clear cut definition, however in the case of Travis Bickle, he made a couple of ‘top 10’ lists as an anti-hero. Some of those lists generated by Hollywood insiders. I consider him an AH, but others may not. I found this definition online: “_An “antihero” is a main character in a story who lacks the typical heroic qualities like strong morals, selflessness, and courage, often making questionable decisions **while still being the protagonist.** They might do good things but for the wrong reasons or with flawed motivations; essentially, they are a flawed character who doesn’t fit the mold of a traditional hero, but is still the central figure in the narrative._” I feel that’s a pretty good definition. In the case of Bill Munny (which seems more ambiguous to me), film scholar Allen Redmon describes Munny’s role as an antihero by stating he is “a virtuous or an injured hero [who] overcomes all obstacles to see that evil is eradicated, using whatever means necessary” Including even greater evil, one supposes. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/88 "2025-03-06T01:08:00Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > A lot of this discussion can be resolved by defining what an anti-hero is. Post 8. ---
**Author:** ![Flightless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Flightless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flightless)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/89 "2025-03-06T01:41:46Z")
How about Shane? Hero or Anti-Hero? His background is pretty vague. He’s clearly a gunslinger. Trying to be a good non violent man. But the bad guys draw him back into his violent ways. He rides off into the sunset. Maybe the next town he won’t kill a bunch of people. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/90 "2025-03-06T01:49:03Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > A lot of this discussion can be resolved by defining what an anti-hero is. A good chunk of this discussion has been arguing about the definition of antihero. Without rehashing an argument that’s not going to be resolved. It basically boils down to this bit > [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > They might do good things but for the wrong reasons or with flawed motivations How mandatory is the doing good things bit? Some (correct, upstanding, handsome, moral and heroic 😉 ) dopers think this is the essential definition of an antihero, they do good, heroic things but in an unheroic way, other (incorrect immoral and villainous 😉 ) dopers think that is not needed and protagonists who do villainous things also count. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/91 "2025-03-06T01:58:43Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > film scholar Allen Redmon describes Munny’s role as an antihero by stating he is “a virtuous or an injured hero [who] overcomes all obstacles to see that evil is eradicated, using whatever means necessary” Did he actually see the movie?! At no point did Munny do or say anything to imply he was remotely interested in eradicating evil. The whole god-damned point of the movie is that all the protagonists were to some degree evil and no one, Munny, or anyone else, was remotely interested in anything at like a traditional Hollywood “overcoming evil” quest. This ranks alongside a description I once read of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest that described Nurse Ratched as “kind hearted”. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/92 "2025-03-06T02:11:13Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > Travis Bickle, he made a couple of ‘top 10’ lists as an anti-hero So Travis Bickle is an interesting case. He’s kinda the most extreme example of “doing heroic things for unheroic reasons.” He literally just wanted to shoot some people, at one point earlier in the movie he was considering shooting a random politician because the girl he fancied was into him, he ended up shooting up a pimp because he was obsessed with his child prostitute. Sure he ends up being literally celebrated as a hero, but it could have gone very differently ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/93 "2025-03-06T02:20:35Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Again there are no heroes in Unforgiven. That’s one of the many things that make it awesome (or rather the way it portrays moral ambiguity, by subverting Hollywood tropes, makes it awesome. There are plenty of movies where all the characters suck that just end up being dull movies where you aren’t invested in what happens) > > You can argue as to who is the villain (my money is on Little Bill) but there are no heroes and William Munny is absolutely not a hero (or antihero) I never really liked that film. Pale Rider is my fave late Eastwood western. But Little Bill kept the law. He did punish the cowboy for hurting that women- made them give up some horses to the brothel owner. Mind you- he is a brutal violent man. Little Bill is certainly not a hero, but is he the villain? > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > How about EFNY’s Snake Plissken? Anti-hero? Villain protagonist? He’s a war hero and a bank robber. He saves the president but dooms the country to continuing the war. Yeah, why he did that makes no sense at all. Up to that point, I kinda liked him, but that was a jerk and senseless move. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/94 "2025-03-06T02:47:13Z")
The novelization of the movie made it clearer: the information on the tape was apparently the only copy of the notes of a physicist who had come up with a way to create fusion bombs with zero fallout. With that, the USA could have nuked the Soviet Union (or anyone else) with impunity. The President would have become the _de facto_ emperor of the planet, with little prospect of the corrupt and oppressive military government ever ending. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/95 "2025-03-06T02:58:06Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I never really liked that film. Pale Rider is my fave late Eastwood western. But Little Bill kept the law. He did punish the cowboy for hurting that women- made them give up some horses to the brothel owner. Mind you- he is a brutal violent man. Little Bill is certainly not a hero, but is he the villain? So I actually liked it for exactly that reason it’s really murky and morally ambiguous, and full of subtext. He doesn’t think he is a villain. But ultimately he does the most heinous thing that happens in the movie (torturing Morgan Freemans character, an innocent\* black\*\* man, to death and displaying his corpse in public) and it’s his evil acts (that one and treating the prostitutes like property that’s damaged not the victims of a crime) that bring about all the bad things that happen in the movie. So yeah, he’s the villain (I think?) ‘\*’ - at least the most innocent character in the movie, and the only one to actually make an explicit moral choice to not do something evil. Although little bill clearly thought he was guilty . ‘\*\*’ - it’s never spoken of but would he have treated a white person so harshly? Again all subtext, no clunky exposition, left for the viewer to decide ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/96 "2025-03-06T06:20:01Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > The President would have become the _de facto_ emperor of the planet, with little prospect of the corrupt and oppressive military government ever ending. Thanks for that. Of course, none of that is in the movie, and Snake had no way of knowing that anyway. He heard two seconds of the tape, with no context. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/97 "2025-03-06T07:22:52Z")
A lot of hair-splitting (which I appreciate, pedantry is next to godliness 🙂 ). So, animated [Harley Quinn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harley_Quinn_(TV_series)) from her own titled show: Sympathetic villain with redemption arc to hero? Sympathetic villain with redemption arc to antihero? Straight-up antihero? ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/98 "2025-03-06T10:39:05Z")
I guess I meant a “good guy”, as in aligned with the forces of good, not a good person. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/99 "2025-03-06T12:26:01Z")
She saved Superman from a Kryptonite bath. It was mainly to show Poison Ivy she could be trusted. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119/100 "2025-03-06T18:30:26Z")
I’d say all four main characters on Seinfeld were antiheroes. Selena Myers on Veep was IMO almost beyond antiheroic; she was the main character, but she was such an awful person that the audience just laughed at her problems, rather than empathizing with them. The show wasn’t trying to get you emotionally invested in the success of her political career. Nancy Botwin from Weeds, OTOH, was a total antiheroine. The audience was meant to like her, and to hope that she succeeded in her efforts to rescue her family from various dangerous situations…despite recognizing that her family was in danger only because of her own catastrophically poor decisions. As I recall, a lot of Dopers stopped watching the show in the last few seasons precisely because they lost the ability to sympathize with Nancy after her 487th self-destructive choice, and without that sympathy the show wasn’t compelling. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heroes-antiheroes-and-villains/1015119.md?page=6)