Wait - don’t the bad guys always make you kill someone when you join up, just to prove you’re bad? At the very least, they give you an empty gun and try to trick you into it, or see if you try to kill them.
How about Hamlet? Given a chance to live and – well, less “see his twue wuv” and more “crush his enemies, and see them driven before him, and heah da lam’ntations of da wimmin,” he agrees to do a good turn for the pirates who captured him.
•Daffy Duck agreed to join Sinestro (much to the latter’s surprise), but that was on TV.
•Catherine Zeta-Jones…towards the end of Oceans 12—under certain definitions of “good” and “bad.”
(Damn, that spoiler-box can be cumbersome.)
In addition, the rival sides he switches between are both bad guys.
At the end of the piece of crap movie “The Legacy” Katherine Ross decides to turn herself over to Satan to get the power.
Not the major character, but Thufir Hawat in Dune.
This week’s episode of Being Human (US) had a flashback to Aiden agreeing to getting turned into a vampire so his men would be spared.
The Expendables hits all of those beats. The good-guy-turned-bad is redeemed after the big fight (I think they handwave it away as a concussion or something) and comes back in the sequel as a full-fledged good guy.
May I put forth a few (all Westerns I might add)
Posse - While the main guy, Kirk Douglas, did not take the offer, his entire posse did.
There Was a Crooked Man - Sort of, I guess.
The Good Guys and The Bad Guys - The whole basis of the movie with a couple of twists.
Also, at the end, Mystique joins Magneto.
“Hello, Clarice.”
Clarice gets all wrapped up with Hannibal Lector in “Hannibal”. the sequel to “Silence of the Lambs.”
Dolph Lundgren’s character in The Expendables turns on the rest of the good guy mercs for a few bucks.
Surprised not mentioned yet. CMDR. Data goes over to the cute Bork chick. Fires the torpedoes/missiles to destroy the Enterprise in the past thereby destroying Patrick Stewart and the good guys in the future. When the torpedoes/missiles miss, the Bork chick is shocked - shocked I tells ya. Meltdown follows.
Borg. Bork is what he wanted to do to her.
Yeah, and what a prick Data was in that scene. What if the Phoenix had a problem and slowed down a little? What if one of the torpedos blew up accidentally? Or Cochrane saw the torpedos and aborted? Why put Picard through that and risk him being too despondent to react in time to escape? Seems like lots of risk, seeing as how he could’ve sprung his little trap at any time during that scene.
The OP is talking about the main hero, right? Not some tertiary character who betrays them?
The problem with the OPs question is that these scenes happen often enough:
-Heist films - pull off this job or I’ll kill you
-Mob films - Welcom-a to the family! If-a you betray me I-a kill you!
-In too deep undercover films - Prove you’re with me or I’ll kill you
-Playing both sides films - (all together) if you kill (other guy) Ill reward you…otherwise I’ll kill you
-Films with ambiguous morality - Which one of us is the real bad guy? Oh it’s that even worse guy! Let’s kill him together!
But they are usually a short term ruse to either stay alive or get close to someone to kill them. Some examples.
Point Break - Special Agent Johnny Utah (Keanu) willingly goes on a bank robbery with the Dead Presidents to save his girlfriend.
Salt - Salt (Jolie) has to make an extreme sacrifice to prove that she is still loyal to her KGB (or whoever) handlers.
Legend - Lili (Sara) is convincing enough that she is about to kill the unicorn that Jack (Cruise) has to think twice about putting an arrow through her face.
The Hunger Games - Peeta spends the intial couple of innings tagging along with the ‘careers’.
In The Line of Fire - Harrigan (Eastwood) shoots his partner to prove he isn’t a cop. Although he could tell the gun was empty (well…there could have been one bullet).
The Fast and the Furious films. Toretto (Diesel) is the bad guy. Is there really any reason O’Conner (Walker) just up and quits the FBI to join a ring of car thieves for 6 films?
Boink is what he wanted to do to her. Bork is the guy George W. Bush wanted to put on the highest court of the land.
I suppose it is open to interpretation, but I always felt that Paul Newman’s Harper did not turn in his friend the killer.
Good point, I’d forgotten about that aspect.
Yep, main character, I’m currently watching ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ (I know, I know…) and the Big Bad makes the offer to spare Sean Connery’s character if he’ll join Team Evil…which despite being massively outnumbered he spurns naturally…
How about The Watchmen? Basically everyone (except Rorchach) goes along with Ozymandius’ plan in the end (though the question of who is good and who is bad is pretty much a central concept of the series).