# Villains with a point **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comic-books-manga\ **Created:** [September 5, 2020, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885 "2020-09-05T16:17:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Wolf333](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf333/32/3460_2.png) [@Wolf333](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolf333)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/61 "2020-09-06T17:10:01Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > > [@Galactus](#): > > > > Elmer J. Fudd was just trying to put food on the table. Rabbits and ducks were in season. > > Elmer was a vegetarian. He only hunted for sport. > > Cite: Rabbit Fire (1951) > > [https://youtu.be/kn3Tx7Vs988](https://youtu.be/kn3Tx7Vs988) Plus, he owned a mansion and a yacht. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/62 "2020-09-06T19:24:51Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > > [@Galactus](#): > > > > Elmer J. Fudd was just trying to put food on the table. Rabbits and ducks were in season. > > Actually, there is some debate on that last point. I hope I’m not the only one who got this. > [@eschereal](#): > > And, of course, Roy Batty, he just wanted a little more life. I’ve seen Blade Runner dozens of times, it’s my favorite SciFi movie. My two observations: 1. Deckard is obviously a replicant. 2. In my outrageous opinion, Roy Batty is the “hero” of the film. More human than human but more importantly, more “humane” than a human. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/63 "2020-09-06T19:44:28Z")
TV Tropes is good for a sampling of examples, subdivided by genre/medium, under the heading [Villain Has a Point](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainHasAPoint). See also [Designated Villain](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DesignatedVillain), [Hypocrite Has a Point](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HypocriteHasAPoint), [Jerkass Has a Point](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JerkassHasAPoint) and [Strawman Has a Point](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StrawmanHasAPoint) from the same site, for related examples. (Also, say goodbye to your long weekend) ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/64 "2020-09-06T19:50:38Z")
That Iceberg was minding it’s own business. ---
**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:** [September 6, 2020, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/65 "2020-09-06T19:54:50Z")
WRONG! That iceberg was getting revenge for its brother, which was harvested and turned into drink ice. ---
**Author:** ![Galactus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/galactus/32/3581_2.png) [@Galactus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Galactus)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/66 "2020-09-06T19:56:53Z")
> [@TreacherousCretin](#): > > Deckard is obviously a replicant. If Deckard is a replicant why is he so inferior(weaker) to all the other replicants? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/67 "2020-09-06T20:06:12Z")
> [@hogarth](#): > > The Native Americans in just about every “cowboys and Indians” movies were resisting foreign invaders. Likewise the “natives” in any number of colonialist movies set in India or Africa. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/68 "2020-09-06T20:08:13Z")
He is not inferior to the other replicants. Weak perhaps because he is a Nexus 4EX, not designed for strength but for endurance. He seems at a disadvantage because he is conditioned to avoid erroneous retirements, so he determines that he is dealing with an illegal -6 by provoking them into attacking him first. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/69 "2020-09-06T21:04:15Z")
Heath Ledger’s Joker in Batman The Dark Knight. Gotham is a city where officials are wracked with corruption, organized crime is rampant, and the only ‘bright spot’ is a vigilante who wears a fancy suit who sends lots of thugs to the hospital and helps police get around people’s rights but never really dents (no pun intended) the overall situation, and in fact makes it worse when he inspires copycat vigilantes to pick fights. The Joker sees that Gotham as having a plethora of problems, with Batman as a symbol of them, and he sets out to fix it. He’s ruthless and clearly isn’t bothered by killing people, but overall his violence about as focused as what real police and military forces typically do, and not bad by general action hero standards. Most of the time he’s willing to kill criminals and corrupt officials and do property damage, but generally doesn’t kill uninvolved people. He threatens people that get in his way but tends not to kill them out of hand (no one actually dies when he raids the party, for example) and does huge damage like the hospital explosion with plenty of warning so that people can evacuate. He makes exceptions sometimes, like with Rachel and Dent to get at Batman, and of course the boatloads he expects to die at the end, but he’s really a lot more careful than he seems. Over the course of the movie, the Joker destroys (literally sets half of it on fire) the mafia’s money, kills off some of them and sets up others to be prosecuted, kills off multiple corrupt officials and sets things up to get more of them, puts Batman to the test and when he fails (choosing to save his personal interest instead of acting in the city’s interest) turns Batman into the city’s villain. At the end, the excessive corruption in Gotham is gone (especially the police chief), organized crime is barely functioning and is being prosecuted, and the vigilante and copycats are no longer out in force. For eight years until Bane comes along, Gotham actually functions decently and is safe and peaceful. He cleaned up the city and emboldened its spirit, and while he was imprisoned in the process, he achieved his goal and defeated his adversary. An interesting piece of evidence in favor of this theory: Alfred’s famous “some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn” speech actually makes it quite clear that the Joker has a real, major goal, and that the fundamental problem is that people like him and Batman refuse to look at whether they are actually heroes or villains. While Alfred sees himself as a hero just trying to bring order, he was actually working as an agent of a colonial Britain as some sort of soldier or LEO. Colonial Britain was attempting to loot Burma, kill any locals that got in their way, and destroy their local customs and culture in the name of ‘civilizing’ them, they weren’t actually benevolent. The man who was raiding their caravans and throwing away their gemstones was intended to hurt the colonizers and interfere with their plans - he didn’t want to watch ‘the world burn’, he wanted to see his oppressors burn. He certainly could be reasoned or negotiated with, it’s just that the British (including Alfred) weren’t willing to give him anything that he wanted, namely freedom from their colonial ventures. The fact that the Joker has concrete goals, but at least one of them is something Bruce Wayne won’t consider (having Gotham treat Batman as a villain) is a direct parallel. (This is off the cuff and it’s been a while since I watched the movie, various people online have this theory more fleshed out). ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/70 "2020-09-06T21:05:25Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Likewise the “natives” in any number of colonialist movies set in India or Africa. Or the man in Burma raiding British convoys who Alfred says ‘just want(s) to watch the world burn’ in Batman: The Dark Knight. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/71 "2020-09-06T21:31:50Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > On a similar note, Walter Peck in _Ghostbusters_ . He was a government official doing his job and he had every reason to be suspicious of what the Ghostbusters were doing. Maybe every reason to be suspicious, but simply cutting the power to a large industrial device was an incredibly stupid move, like trying to shut down a nuclear reactor by cutting power to the cooling pumps. One gets the impression that he was flexing his power as a mid-level bureaucrat rather than doing what was best for the city. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/72 "2020-09-06T21:37:10Z")
Exactly, he had some good points but was a willfully stupid dick in enforcement. Besides, William Atherton made a career of playing villains and antagonists in the 80s. Ghost Busters, Real Genius, Die Hard & Die Hard II ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/73 "2020-09-06T21:38:41Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Maybe every reason to be suspicious, but simply cutting the power to a large industrial device was an incredibly stupid move, like trying to shut down a nuclear reactor by cutting power to the cooling pumps. One gets the impression that he was flexing his power as a mid-level bureaucrat rather than doing what was best for the city. Yes. I’ll concede that was a dumb move. But it was relatively late in the movie. He was making reasonable requests in his initial encounters with the group. ---
**Author:** ![smilingbandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@smilingbandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smilingbandit)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2020, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/74 "2020-09-07T03:05:13Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > > > Maybe every reason to be suspicious, but simply cutting the power to a large industrial device was an incredibly stupid move, like trying to shut down a nuclear reactor by cutting power to the cooling pumps. One gets the impression that he was flexing his power as a mid-level bureaucrat rather than doing what was best for the city. > > Yes. I’ll concede that was a dumb move. But it was relatively late in the movie. He was making reasonable requests in his initial encounters with the group. He wasn’t reasonable, early or late. He comes in making some demands that he had no right to make - precisely because he _didn’t_ have any paperwork to back himself up and had no idea what he was doing. He obviously wasn’t acting on behalf on an official government investigation, and while he works for the EPA he makes accusations that have nothing to do with it. His actions also strongly imply he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what the law or his authority allows. The EPA/Federal govt. doesn’t back him up in any sense; he just convinces city employees to do things. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2020, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/75 "2020-09-08T13:40:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Not really. They partied and took road trips. Lots of college students do that. But we also saw that they went to classes and took their exams. The Deltas weren’t doing anything that much worse than the Omegas. But as far as Wormer was concerned the Omegas were the right type of people and the Deltas were the wrong type. Cut the horseshit son. Who dumped a whole truckload of fizzies into the swim meet? Who delivered the medical-school cadavers to the alumni dinner? Every Halloween, the trees are filled with underwear. Every spring, the toilets explode. And the Deltas cheated on their exams. There’s the whole scene where they’re going through the dumpster looking for the mimeos. Now, informing their respective draft board that they’re now eligible for military service, that was a dick move. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2020, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/76 "2020-09-08T14:29:36Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > And the Deltas cheated on their exams. There’s the whole scene where they’re going through the dumpster looking for the mimeos. Doesn’t the scene just before that show the Omegas taking the real mimeo out of the trash and putting a fake one in? Seems to me that makes the Omegas just as guilty as the Deltas. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2020, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/77 "2020-09-08T14:36:05Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Doesn’t the scene just before that show the Omegas taking the real mimeo out of the trash and putting a fake one in? Seems to me that makes the Omegas just as guilty as the Deltas. Guilty of what? Trying to screw the Deltas? If the Deltas weren’t cheating, no harm would have come from what the Omegas did. There’s no indication the Omegas were planning on using the exam to cheat themselves, just that they were working with Wormer to get rid of the Deltas. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2020, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/78 "2020-09-08T14:43:46Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > Cut the horseshit son. > > Who dumped a whole truckload of fizzies into the swim meet? > Who delivered the medical-school cadavers to the alumni dinner? > Every Halloween, the trees are filled with underwear. > Every spring, the toilets explode. > > And the Deltas cheated on their exams. There’s the whole scene where they’re going through the dumpster looking for the mimeos. The issue here is not whether they broke a few rules and took a few liberties with their female party guests. They did. But you can’t hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few sick perverted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, muldoonthief, isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do what you want to me but I’m not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2020, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/79 "2020-09-08T15:42:00Z")
Gentlemen! (Hums The Star Spangled Banner upon leaving.) ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2020, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885/80 "2020-09-08T16:00:41Z")
> [@solost](#): > > The general in the Nick Cage - Sean Connery camp classic The Rock. He threatened to shoot a missle loaded with nerve gas or whatever at San Fran unless the government paid the families of servicemen who died in secret missions and were then disavowed, the compensation they deserved. Not only that, when it came to the crunch, he refused to fire the missiles, admitting it was always a bluff, which directly led to his death (and he clearly regretted his actions, especially as most of his men also died shortly after). I know it’s a ridiculous, but I love that movie. > [@TreacherousCretin](#): > > > [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > > > > [@Galactus](#): > > > > > > Elmer J. Fudd was just trying to put food on the table. Rabbits and ducks were in season. > > > > Actually, there is some debate on that last point. > > I hope I’m not the only one who got this. You weren’t - I thought it was brilliant. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/villains-with-a-point/919885.md?page=5)