Best morally correct villains and morally questionable heroes

[Bannan_mantis]

I was wondering, often movies have the villain with little to no morals while a hero has strong morals he stands by or at the least is someone that most of the time justifies his actions. I was wondering about times where these ideas have been reversed showing a villain that the audience can relate to and agree while there's a hero that isn't really a true hero. What are some of your favourite examples of this?

One example of mine:


One example I was thinking of while making this was Ozymandias and Rorschach from the watchmen graphic novel, Ozymandius shows how his plan was to overall bring world peace by unifying nations under one major threat which when you think about is something that kind of makes him a bit of a hero even if he did kill everyone in new york while Rorschach is in the position of being a hero yet he is mentally unstable, a murderer and has probably committed more violent crimes that some of the worst serial killers from real life.

[Eldan]

Except there's very strong evidence in Watchmen that Ozymandias' plan won't even remotely work. Even before Rohrschach's book lands with the press. Both sides make a few initial gestures, but America just lost its nuclear deterrent in the form of Dr. Manhattan, it's been mentioned that the Soviet Union is scared and jumpy already about being overwhelmed by America, Nixon is still effectively running a dictatorship for life... it's at best a very temporary measure, bought at the expense of several major world cities. They'll eventually realize there's no alien/Dr. Manhattan is no threat, and then it's back to status quo ante. Noble goal, majorly flawed approach.

How about Killmonger in Black Panther? The entire movie had major problems, mostly in that Wakanda just doesn't work as a nation on any level, but Killmonger was, well, right. The entire nation are being selfish pricks. And he uses the means he has at his disposal. I mean, they choose their kings by duel, what did they think woudl happen? The next strong thug with a grudge becomes king.

[Brother Oni]

The King of Qin as depicted in the film Hero.

On the surface, the king is a tyrant dedicated to conquering the known world, while the hero is a man from a conquered kingdom who is trying to stop him.

On a deeper level, the king is attempting to stop the previous centuries of incessant warfare which has brought misery to the people of China by uniting all of the kingdoms under one banner, while the protagonist is a nameless assassin that has dedicated years of his life solely for revenge.

[Kato]

Ugh, come on, Ozymandias is the classic terrible example of a 'justified villain'. 'Killing millions to save billions' is a stupid plan, that only remotely works because the author twists the story to make it work.
Rorschach is a better example, the very vigilante crime fighter who cares only about his own justice, akin to Punisher or some less moral incarnations of Batman. Or Dexter if you want something not comic related.

There are some more instances like what you're looking for but frankly, almost always the villains will at some point do something to justify them getting destroyed.
i.e. Gundam has two series with rather evil protagonists, Wing and 00, where the heroes are more or less terrorists and the bad guys are just the world fighting back. (In Wing you can argue the evil government is evil enough, and in 00's second season that's pretty obvious, but the latter's first season is a kind of straight example) (code geass also features terrorists, but they are more clearly revolutionaries against an evil oppressor)

I think we kind of have to define what 'best' means... The ones where we would most likely join the villains side?

[Khedrac]

There are large numbers of morally questionable heroes - Punisher and Deadpool to name but two (even some presentations of Batman).

Morally correct villains is harder, at least partly because the sort of circumstances that make an interesting story tend to lead to the antagonist always being at least morally gray (the correctness being dependent on viewpoint).

That said, take a look at Star Trek - there are quite a few episodes where the Enterprise crew goes up against something "playing god" and protecting a civilization while keeping them at a relatively primitive level. If the protectors are skilled enough to eliminates the drawbacks of limited technology keeping a race "safe at home" is a lot better morally than introducing them to the wider interstellar playing field where there is a lot of conflict and they may get themselves destroyed! (Not to mention the way the Enterprise crew ignore the Prime Directive about half the time.)

I think most of the time in stories "morally correct villains" are actually better described as "morally correct antagonists" and used in the story to distract the heroes from the real villain - consider the Nova Corps in the first Guardians of the Galaxy film. Also honest police in any Batman story when they are trying to arrest him.

Edit: Also Ocean's 7.

[Rockphed]

From Girl Genius we have Baron Wulfenbach, a world conquering tyrant who does it because he wants the wars to end. He isn't exactly a villain, but his psychological hang-ups have caused nearly as many problems as the actual villains in the story.

From the same source we also have Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer, who is a (nominal) hero whose grand plan is to kill an entire class of people. Albeit, the class of people he intends to kill is mad scientists who have, by and large, turned Europe (and probably the rest of the world) into a great wasteland inhabited by rogue death-bots and wandering monsters.

[Dr.Samurai]

I'm not too familiar with the Hellboy franchise but from the movie, would Prince Nuada and Hellboy count?

As a hero, Hellboy seems to just be a pet attack dog being kept by the Bureau. He's not exactly free and does what he's told.

As the villain, Prince Nuada is trying to prevent the destruction of his people, who will die if action isn't taken.

[Kitten Champion]

Blade Runner, or, for that matter, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Though I wouldn't call the Replicants/Androids "morally correct" - there's an effort to estrange them from such sympathy - but their actions are... justified, or at least more than the protagonist's.

[deuterio12]

One of the first Getter Robo plotlines has the aliens attacking Earth because they came from a future where Getter evolved in an unstoppable space fleet that goes around the galaxy purging all non-humans with extreme violence, so their only hope of survival was going back in time and try to destroy Getter before it got too strong.



i.e. Gundam has two series with rather evil protagonists, Wing and 00, where the heroes are more or less terrorists and the bad guys are just the world fighting back. (In Wing you can argue the evil government is evil enough, and in 00's second season that's pretty obvious, but the latter's first season is a kind of straight example) (code geass also features terrorists, but they are more clearly revolutionaries against an evil oppressor)


Between the original Gundam and Gundam Z we have the "good" Earth Federation eventually spawn the Titans that include former war heroes but ends up going around comitting atrocity after atrocity, to the point protagonist Amuro goes rebel and teams up with his arch-nemesis Char to fight them.

Turn A Gundam has the protagonist being a traitor to his original Moon faction that would just like to settle back on Earth and hold back their massive tech superiority most of the time but some Earth rulers are greedy jerks that want to profit as much from the situation as possible and keep provoking the moon people.

Even G-Gundam has the reveal that all the giant robot fights aren't allowing Earth to recover and the villain just wanted to restore the planet.

[Calemyr]

No references to Farscape?

The crew of Moya will cheat, sabotage, and outright break alliances when it suits them, while the major big bad, Scorpius, struggles to be polite, self controlled, and holds his end of bargains up at all costs - which is often the reason his plans are thwarted. Add in the fact that Scorpius is genuinely dedicated to stopping an enemy that will inevitably enslave or execute every species in the galaxy while Crichton and co can barely see part their own noses...

It's a real shame the series has dropped off the face of the planet, vanishing from any streaming site and the DVD/BluRays are hard to come by anymore. It was really good.

[No brains]

The Legacy of Kain series is a huge grey spiral of morally ambiguous guys.

Raziel seems genuinely concerned with using his unique powers to do what is 'right', but he's a blood(soul?)-thirsty thug who really wants the path of righteousness to include lots of victims paving it.

The Elder God is an omnipresent abomination that manipulates mortal races into warring so it can eat their souls. Then again, it might not have had a choice in what it is, and is simply trying to stay fed.

Mobius is also a time-travelling manipulator whose big evil end-game is to... eradicate monsters that eat people. Certainly he doesn't care who suffers for him to get what he wants, but if one ending of the first game is to be believed, killing all the vampires works out pretty well.

Kain, who this whole series is named after, is an *******. He actually likes watching people suffer. He opposes other people-torturing monsters, but hey, those are HIS people to torture!

[ben-zayb]

A lot of wrestling heels (guys you boo) and babyfaces (guys you cheer) are like this.

There's too many to mention, but one of the recent heel character is a guy that is supposed to be booed just because he's of a different ethnicity. He calls the crowd out on this pattern and illicited further boos that way. Plenty of babyfaces blatantly cheat, use dirty tricks, bribe, or outright malign/insult/bully the heels; then get cheered for these by the crowd.

[Chen]

Ugh, come on, Ozymandias is the classic terrible example of a 'justified villain'. 'Killing millions to save billions' is a stupid plan, that only remotely works because the author twists the story to make it work.

The comic alien invasion thing may have had some real life basis

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/reagan-and-gorbachev-agreed-pause-cold-war-case-alien-invasion-180957402/

Reagan was dead at the time of this interview so he can't corroborate but this otherwise seems credible.

[GloatingSwine]

Ugh, come on, Ozymandias is the classic terrible example of a 'justified villain'. 'Killing millions to save billions' is a stupid plan, that only remotely works because the author twists the story to make it work.


The very name Ozymandias is supposed to clue you in to the fact that his plan won't work in the long term.



I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.


That plus the context of the Black Freighter story where there's a clear identity between the Mariner and Ozymandias. Remember that in the Mariner's tale he was the threat he was afraid of, and the global tensions Ozymandias sought to deflect were also of his own making (he even says at one point he has dreams of "swimming towards a vast black...", clearly mirroring the ending of the Mariner's tale and showing him suppressing his conscience over what he's doing).

The story doesn't twist to make Ozymandias' plan work, it just turns away before it falls to dust and the "necessary sacrifice" is revealed as an atrocity.

[The Fury]

I'm not sure if this is the best, but he's one of my all-time favorites and one I find really compelling. Nox from Wakfu.

As introduced, he's presented as a mad time-mage draining life-force, (The eponymous "Wakfu,") from plants, animals, people, civilizations. At first, it seems like he's doing this because he's been driven mad by an Artifact of Doom, (the Eliacube,) but it's actually because he needs a vast amount of Wakfu to travel back in time to save his family. He even reasons that if his plan succeeds, all the people he killed will be fine, since he'll have reversed time to a point well before he killed them.

Tragically, his plan doesn't work. The most vast amount of Wakfu on the planet ends up being only enough to reverse time by twenty minutes. Dammit.

As for morally dubious heroes, I'll go with Caim from Drakengard. Here, the word "hero" is in big ol' quotation marks. Really, his whole characterization comes off as a reexamining of traditional RPG mechanics and structure. You need to level up, right? And to level up you need XP. And to get XP you need to kill things. What kind of person would do well in a paradigm like that? A blood-crazed maniac, of course.

[Sapphire Guard]

I thought the whole point of cutting off exactly where it did was that we don't know whether Ozymandias' plan works or not.Maybe the New Frontiersman publishes it, maybe they publish the fluoride story instead. Maybe people believe it, maybe not.


The entire movie had major problems, mostly in that Wakanda just doesn't work as a nation on any level, but Killmonger was, well, right. The entire nation are being selfish pricks. And he uses the means he has at his disposal. I mean, they choose their kings by duel, what did they think woudl happen? The next strong thug with a grudge becomes king.

So the solution is a giant race war?Nah.


The Legacy of Kain series is a huge grey spiral of morally ambiguous guys.

Raziel seems genuinely concerned with using his unique powers to do what is 'right', but he's a blood(soul?)-thirsty thug who really wants the path of righteousness to include lots of victims paving it.

The Elder God is an omnipresent abomination that manipulates mortal races into warring so it can eat their souls. Then again, it might not have had a choice in what it is, and is simply trying to stay fed.

Mobius is also a time-travelling manipulator whose big evil end-game is to... eradicate monsters that eat people. Certainly he doesn't care who suffers for him to get what he wants, but if one ending of the first game is to be believed, killing all the vampires works out pretty well.

Kain, who this whole series is named after, is an *******. He actually likes watching people suffer. He opposes other people-torturing monsters, but hey, those are HIS people to torture!]

The Sarafan Lord just wants to get his people out of hell.

What a great series that was.

The guy that takes over Alcatraz in The Rock? He just wants justice for soldiers the US Government screwed over, tries as hard as he can to keep casualties down, and has no intention of carrying out the threatened terrorist attack.

[Traab]

Yeah, morally questionable heroes are easy. Morally correct villains are a lot harder to pin down because even affably evil is still evil. The closest I can think of are the "become a great threat to the world to force it to unite in peace" types that were already covered, but lets add pein/sasuke from naruto as other examples. In naruto we even see it actually WORK. The entire final arc has the great nations united against a massive threat. All enmity is pushed aside (at least for now) and they work together to fight the bad guy, so at least it kinda makes sense that sasuke would think this is a viable option to keep people relatively peaceful. But its still killing thousands to save millions.

[Mordar]

My favorite morally correct villain is Javert. Valjean is also, to my mind, very morally correct, so that makes for my favorite kind of story.

- M

[hamishspence]

Just how "correct" was Javert intended to be?

As The Giant put it:


As I recently referenced in the comic, all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, and Javert went quite a bit further in the wrong direction than just "doing nothing." He supported and enforced an unjust set of laws even above and beyond what was required of him. He tricked his way into the good graces of the students with a plan designed to lead to their deaths. When Fantine dies and Javert confronts Valjean, and Valjean says he must take care of Cosette, Javert could have said, "I'll make sure the girl is taken care of if you turn yourself in." He didn't. He didn't care whether she lived or died when he easily could have without compromising his duty. The idea of mercy is so incompatible to his mindset that when he finds himself having displayed it, his only solution is to commit suicide because his world doesn't make sense anymore. When you get to the point that the idea of mercy is incomprehensible to you? You're a villain.

While the alignment system is very useful for playing the game, it is not the be-all and end-all of analysis. As you say, there is no alignment in Hugo's work. We declare Javert to be Lawful Neutral after-the-fact, but that doesn't absolve the character of his villainous aspects. It just means we did the math and found that he fits in Box A slightly better than Box B. The fact is, the very idea of being "Neutral" with regards to Good and Evil is a D&D invention; it does not exist in most literature. In Hugo's eyes, Javert is Evil by virtue of repeatedly choosing not to be Good when given multiple opportunities. He is an antagonist who represents a moral position the author holds as being contemptible; thus, he is a villain.

[Ibrinar]

Antagonist would be easier since heist movies and stuff would apply. But actual villains hmm I guess villain protagonists from something like worm is not what this is looking for. I am trying to remember a story where the villain commits evil to prevent a greater threat and the hero ends it an solves it another way but the solution doesn't sound like a realistic way to solve it. I know there are a few of these but can't remember any atm. Cabin in the woods maybe? They are preventing world ending threats though in a really messed up way and that story doesn't offer any alternative solution.

The wicked witch of the west for wanting the shoes. They were looted from the corpse of her sister, they should rightfully go to her! (got that from google.)

But something clear cut probably would require an author that has a horrible world view and thinks an villain is bad but isn't to a reasonable person.

[Tyndmyr]

Beauty and the Beast.

Depending on rendition, Gaston is actually pretty decent. A war veteran who protects his town from a monster who definitely engages in some kidnapping, violence and so on. Sure, we're not meant to sympathize with Gaston, but at the end of the day, his dislike of books or what have you merely makes him a bit different from us, not a monster.

And of course, at the time, being uncharitable to guests was considered pretty awful. So even as a prince, the guy's got some serious ethical issues.



The guy that takes over Alcatraz in The Rock? He just wants justice for soldiers the US Government screwed over, tries as hard as he can to keep casualties down, and has no intention of carrying out the threatened terrorist attack.

I always liked that one. That's a bad guy that you can respect, yknow?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I always liked that one. That's a bad guy that you can respect, yknow?

That's probably why he doesn't actually stay the bad guy. The film makes a big point of him being a more decent person than the military leadership that sends the good guys in. Some of those guys he brought with him for this job, not so much... (That is a good movie though, I never understood how Michael Bay made that before going of the rails. It's near perfect, at the very least near perfect by comparison, in so many ways.)


This leads me to a question: is this about antagonists who are good and protagonists who are bad, or is this about people unsarcastically portrayed as actual villains/heroes where we disagree with the film makers and think they're telling their story wrong?

[Tyndmyr]

Ooh, Jurassic Park.

Hammond is presented as a kindly grandfather sort, and one of the good ones. He therefore gets to survive and what not.

Except, yknow, he's pretty directly responsible for the entire scenario. It's his park. The experts are only there to ensure the park is safe because somebody *already* died under his watch, and the lawyer made him call in experts to get it checked, but he didn't want that.

The lawyer is brutally killed, of course.

[Keltest]

Ooh, Jurassic Park.

Hammond is presented as a kindly grandfather sort, and one of the good ones. He therefore gets to survive and what not.

Except, yknow, he's pretty directly responsible for the entire scenario. It's his park. The experts are only there to ensure the park is safe because somebody *already* died under his watch, and the lawyer made him call in experts to get it checked, but he didn't want that.

The lawyer is brutally killed, of course.

Stupid and villainous aren't really synonymous. Yeah, he wasn't a moral paragon, but AFAIK there wasn't actually any malice behind his actions at any point, just poor judgment.

[Tyndmyr]

Perhaps, but there was a *lot* of wilful stupidity, then.



John Hammond: All major theme parks have delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!
Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but, John, if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists.


With a different face and tone of delivery, Hammond would have been seen as a straight up monster for just ignoring the danger to people's lives after already killing one.

And the lawyer's definitely treated poorly even so. That guy was doing the right thing, but he's treated as a monster.

[JoshL]

I do appreciate the Farscape references, but Scorpius' motivations were far from pure. He was a pretty complicated character, but most of it boiled away to revenge underlying any "for the good of the universe" talk. You could argue that the Peacekeepers were generally well intentioned extremists though.

I'll nominate Walter Peck, from Ghostbusters. Works for the EPA, concerned about hazardous chemicals and an unlicensed nuke running in the middle of Manhattan. Meets hostility because he's RIGHT. They don't have a license, and none of them seem to care if anything is hazardous. Follows the correct proceedure, gets a court order to shut them down while the danger is assessed.

[Ebon_Drake]

Perhaps, but there was a *lot* of wilful stupidity, then.



With a different face and tone of delivery, Hammond would have been seen as a straight up monster for just ignoring the danger to people's lives after already killing one.

And the lawyer's definitely treated poorly even so. That guy was doing the right thing, but he's treated as a monster.

Gennaro wasn't acting out of some kind of moral concern over public or worker safety though. He was just trying to protect Jurassic Park's investors from financial loss. He isn't in the wrong for doing his job, but he's not particularly on a moral high ground either. Notably, his reaction on visiting Jurassic Park is "holy crap we're gonna make so much money!" rather than raising ethical and safety objections in the way Grant, Malcolm and Sattler do.

Plus there's the whole "abandoned a pair of children to go hide in a bathroom stall" thing.

[Friv]

I thought the whole point of cutting off exactly where it did was that we don't know whether Ozymandias' plan works or not.Maybe the New Frontiersman publishes it, maybe they publish the fluoride story instead. Maybe people believe it, maybe not.

Honestly, I thought it was pretty clear that Ozy's plan wouldn't and couldn't work, and in fact that he was ignoring the thing that could - the way in which the ordinary people whose lives he found unimportant were banding together before he killed them all.


So the solution is a giant race war?Nah.

The thing about Black Panther is, Killmonger wins.

His goals were noble. His cause was just. His methods were monstrous, and would have led to nothing but senseless slaughter. He was too steeped in violence and hatred to realize this.

But at the end, T'Challa undertakes Killmonger's goals. He opens Wakanda to the world, and commits his country to saving people.

[Keltest]

Honestly, I thought it was pretty clear that Ozy's plan wouldn't and couldn't work, and in fact that he was ignoring the thing that could - the way in which the ordinary people whose lives he found unimportant were banding together before he killed them all.



The thing about Black Panther is, Killmonger wins.

His goals were noble. His cause was just. His methods were monstrous, and would have led to nothing but senseless slaughter. He was too steeped in violence and hatred to realize this.

But at the end, T'Challa undertakes Killmonger's goals. He opens Wakanda to the world, and commits his country to saving people.

I think its pretty clear that Killmonger's stated goals and his actual goals were not the same thing. He wasn't after justice, he wasn't trying to help the downtrodden. He was himself a massive racist. The very fact that T'Challa does what Killmonger claims to want without the bloody global conflict proves this. He doesn't want equality, he wants to become king of the world. He wants to grind people under the heel of his boot.

[Tvtyrant]

Seems like a contradiction. A villain's dependency on hoeing and plowing keeps them from discovering the lofty heights of morality offered to us gentles.

[Traab]

Beauty and the Beast.

Depending on rendition, Gaston is actually pretty decent. A war veteran who protects his town from a monster who definitely engages in some kidnapping, violence and so on. Sure, we're not meant to sympathize with Gaston, but at the end of the day, his dislike of books or what have you merely makes him a bit different from us, not a monster.

And of course, at the time, being uncharitable to guests was considered pretty awful. So even as a prince, the guy's got some serious ethical issues.



I always liked that one. That's a bad guy that you can respect, yknow?

Gaston also threatens to toss her dad into a loony bin unless she agrees to marry him. And his sole interest in her is she is hot.

[Zevox]

A video game I played earlier this year has a pretty good example of at least the latter, arguably the former up to a point: Tales of Berseria.

You want a morally questionable hero? How about one who is openly driven only by vengeance, on a quest to kill her brother-in-law for the murder of her younger brother, despite the fact that said murder was part of a ritual that to all appearances has massively helped towards saving the world from a demon plague?

That's the basic setup, and boy, do they play Velvet's "one step removed from being the villain, if that" status to the hilt. Early events in the story have her breaking out of prison by setting free other prisoners to riot and create a distraction for her with no concern for what happens to them, leaving an annoying companion for dead the moment she finds out she's in trouble, setting fire to a town as a distraction to let her and her companions steal a ship, and taking a job to kill a priest without caring why the person asking her do it wants him dead. She really doesn't care what she has to do if it gets her closer to achieving her revenge. There's also the fact that the event where her brother was murdered also turned her into a demon, and of her companions, one is another demon, one is a pirate bearing a curse of bad luck whose concern for others is primarily directed at his crewmates, and another is an amoral-at-best witch whose motivation for much of the game can accurately be summed up as: "for the lolz." The other two who are more morally upstanding are a child and a woman who is essentially a Paladin but who initially starts traveling with them as basically their prisoner.

And the villain of the game, Artorius, at least at first appears to be the "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" type. He sacrificed Velvet's brother in order to empower a group called Exorcists to use what are essentially angels to fight against the demon plague ravaging their world, and a few years later when Velvet is making her escape from that prison, he's become known as the savior of the world and is widely beloved for his heroism, and you meet a lot of people who will attest to how much better their lives have gotten since he showed up. Of course, you later find out that he's planning worse - his ultimate goal is to revive a sleeping god who will remove all free will from the people of the world in order to achieve the perfectly peaceful world free of demons that he wants - but up until that point, you could reasonably see him as much more morally correct than the game's protagonists, despite the whole "murdered a child once" thing.

Hell, even after that point they keep playing with the theme - Velvet's big speech prior to the endgame includes the line "We go to bathe the world in the flames of chaos!" for crying out loud, because in order to combat the awakening of Artorius' god they're going to awaken four elemental gods, and their awakening will cause a lot of damage to the world in the form of natural disasters. And even before the final battle itself, her whole group basically admits that their motivations are fundamentally selfish, and they're okay with that. It's a very different way to see things go than you usually get in these fantasy JRPGs, and a lot of fun for that.

[Prime32]

I think its pretty clear that Killmonger's stated goals and his actual goals were not the same thing. He wasn't after justice, he wasn't trying to help the downtrodden. He was himself a massive racist. The very fact that T'Challa does what Killmonger claims to want without the bloody global conflict proves this. He doesn't want equality, he wants to become king of the world. He wants to grind people under the heel of his boot.
I mean, in his establishing scene he

kills people whose ancestors stole artifacts they didn't understand just because they look pretty, saying that anyone who'd do that will "take everything else" too.

...and then on his way out he casually steals an artifact he understands even less, just because it looks pretty.

[JNAProductions]

I'm not sure if this is the best, but he's one of my all-time favorites and one I find really compelling. Nox from Wakfu.

As introduced, he's presented as a mad time-mage draining life-force, (The eponymous "Wakfu,") from plants, animals, people, civilizations. At first, it seems like he's doing this because he's been driven mad by an Artifact of Doom, (the Eliacube,) but it's actually because he needs a vast amount of Wakfu to travel back in time to save his family. He even reasons that if his plan succeeds, all the people he killed will be fine, since he'll have reversed time to a point well before he killed them.

Tragically, his plan doesn't work. The most vast amount of Wakfu on the planet ends up being only enough to reverse time by twenty minutes. Dammit.

As for morally dubious heroes, I'll go with Caim from Drakengard. Here, the word "hero" is in big ol' quotation marks. Really, his whole characterization comes off as a reexamining of traditional RPG mechanics and structure. You need to level up, right? And to level up you need XP. And to get XP you need to kill things. What kind of person would do well in a paradigm like that? A blood-crazed maniac, of course.

YES! I was gonna bring up Nox! I love him so much!

[Kitten Champion]

Gaston also threatens to toss her dad into a loony bin unless she agrees to marry him. And his sole interest in her is she is hot.

I would say his sole interest in her is that she's unattainable, and he's... Gul Dukat, essentially.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Ooh, Jurassic Park.

Hammond is presented as a kindly grandfather sort, and one of the good ones. He therefore gets to survive and what not.

Except, yknow, he's pretty directly responsible for the entire scenario. It's his park. The experts are only there to ensure the park is safe because somebody *already* died under his watch, and the lawyer made him call in experts to get it checked, but he didn't want that.

The lawyer is brutally killed, of course.

Well, movie JP is different from novel JP. In the novel, Hammond suffers an ironic death due to his blatant and continuous inability to appreciate the dangers of his park. He's also a lot more dismissive towards the scientists with regards to their concerns over safety.

They softened his character considerably and allowed him to live for the movie. Probably because it's a lot more optimistic/family-friendly to have the character producing wonders actually survive instead of being condemned to death. Don't dream, kids.

Neither Hammond is a villain, though. They're more like a fool playing with fire, who is hero-adjacent. The antagonists for the story is primarily big, bad nature.

[Kitten Champion]

The only "morally correct" character in Jurassic Park is Jeff Goldblum. Everyone else - those with agency in the story and not randos who run away or get eaten - is criminally inept, diabolically inept, or insufferably sanctimonious... and inept.

[Eldan]

I mean, in his establishing scene he

kills people whose ancestors stole artifacts they didn't understand just because they look pretty, saying that anyone who'd do that will "take everything else" too.

...and then on his way out he casually steals an artifact he understands even less, just because it looks pretty.


Yeah. I'm not saying Killmonger is a good guy. Everything he does is terrible. But a lot of what he says is right. While a lot of what Wakandan Royalty as a whole both says and does is pretty monstrous. But then, they seem to be an inheritable warrior aristocracy, and we have thousands of years of history to show where those end up.

[Rynjin]

As for morally dubious heroes, I'll go with Caim from Drakengard. Here, the word "hero" is in big ol' quotation marks. Really, his whole characterization comes off as a reexamining of traditional RPG mechanics and structure. You need to level up, right? And to level up you need XP. And to get XP you need to kill things. What kind of person would do well in a paradigm like that? A blood-crazed maniac, of course.

You're stretching real far with Caim. He may be the least morally dubious character in the party because hey, he may be a bloodthirsty psychopath, but he's not a pedophile rape-murderer or literal baby eater (...well and I guess the golem kid is okay, I don't remember any particularly heinous thing about him) but he's only the hero relative to the evil empire he's fighting for entirely selfish reasons and IIRC is actually the villain in the sequel.

Ignoring the sequel (which has a less justified character twist and is an all around inferior game), Prototype's Alex Mercer (or the creature you know as him for the game's length) fits better since he has actually altruistic goals once the initial killing spree is over and the achievement where you avoid snacking on civilians is actually the canon state of the game and features a full on character arc for the guy, which Caim doesn't have (and then Prototype 2 just tosses all that aside and makes Mercer a carbon copy of the mid-game boss from the first game. Harrumph.).

[Frozen_Feet]

The best morally correct villains I know are from Shin Megami Tensei IV: the White.

Basically, after showing you exactly how much of a sack full of crap the SMT multiverse is, they kindly ask you to pull the plug on the whome thing. At that point, it's easy to nod, embrace your inner nihilist and just let the whole thing be consumed by an ever-expanding black hole.

The White's case is not hurt by the fact that even in many "better" endings for this franchise, you still end up killing most of everybody.

For that matter, Flynn, the player character, makes a wonderfull morally correct villain if you side with the White or go the Law route. Basically, you can be unfailingly polite, just and helpfull to all beings you meet... before erasing most or all people from existence because God.

Of course, Flynn and Walter both make good morally questionable heroes on the Chaos route.

[Yora]

The King of Qin as depicted in the film Hero.

On the surface, the king is a tyrant dedicated to conquering the known world, while the hero is a man from a conquered kingdom who is trying to stop him.

On a deeper level, the king is attempting to stop the previous centuries of incessant warfare which has brought misery to the people of China by uniting all of the kingdoms under one banner, while the protagonist is a nameless assassin that has dedicated years of his life solely for revenge.

Even if the king was not justified in his brutal conquest, the more immediate question the movie poses is how it would make anything better if he gets assassinated.
The civil war was terrible but now it's over. Punish the king for his deeds, and you get back to the civil war you didn't want in the first place.

[Kitten Champion]

Oh, I remembered another one. The Last of Us.

The Fireflies would definitely be the heroes in any normal work - trying to fight back against oppressive military control and save what's left of the world - and yet we experience the world from Joel's perspective and see his priorities.

[Traab]

Oh, I remembered another one. The Last of Us.

The Fireflies would definitely be the heroes in any normal work - trying to fight back against oppressive military control and save what's left of the world - and yet we experience the world from Joel's perspective and see his priorities.

A follow up would have been interesting. One where we play as elly and the goal is, she WANTS to do this to save humanity. So she runs away from joel looking for the fireflies and joel is now the resident evil style nemesis bad guy constantly chasing her down and trying to kill anyone who would help her get operated on. Talk about murky, the protagonist is actively seeking out suicide to save the world, the antagonist is trying to protect the life of a girl he loves like a daughter.

[Brother Oni]

Even if the king was not justified in his brutal conquest, the more immediate question the movie poses is how it would make anything better if he gets assassinated.
The civil war was terrible but now it's over. Punish the king for his deeds, and you get back to the civil war you didn't want in the first place.

In the timeframe of the movie, Qin hadn't quite fully conquered all the kingdoms and consolidated its control, so the warring isn't over just yet.

I assume the immediate consequence of a successful assassination would be the conquered kingdoms rebel and regain their sovereignty, freedom and culture. For many people that's sufficient reason to assassinate a brutal tyrant that has crushed and oppressed your fellow countrymen - the fact that eventually the countries will recover enough to restart their constant warring is long term, big picture thinking that they are too short sighted to see or wilfully ignore.

In Nameless' case, the king is an enemy of Zhao and must be killed - this is only reinforced by the conquest of Zhao by Qin and the decade that Nameless has spent perfecting his 'Death at 10 Paces' technique. The fact that the king persuades such a single-minded man full of hatred for his enemy around to his point of view of 'the greater good', pushes the film out of black and white morality territory in my opinion.

A minor technicality: it's not really a civil war - each of the kingdoms in the Warring States were separate countries at the time, so it's just a war.

[Avilan the Grey]

Are we talking about deliberately morally questionable heroes, or heroes that the writer / director THINKS are morally superior but isn't?
And the same about the villains, obviously.

Wicked Witch / Dorothy comes to mind if we are talking about people that supposedly are bad because the author said so. Others are for example the Red Queen in the first Resident Evil movie, who clearly is the hero.
The God Of War trilogy is of the other kind, where you KNOW the "hero" is an ******* at best.

[The Jack]

When I first watched Spider-man: Homecoming, i was absolutely sure that Vulture was the good guy and Peter was just ignorantly aping what he thought a hero should do. The second time round, I wasn't so sure, but much of it remains. The first issue is that a court case for such a blatant violation of a contract and such a hostile seizure of assets would've been a no-brainer. I'm not a law expert, but that stuff was heinous. The real bad guy in that film was Stark. Perhaps the vulture was intimidated and unfamiliar with how court works, as many working class people are; What he does is fair.

Keaton's Vulture was a decent guy. He offered parker peace on numerous occasions, kept his secret, that issue with the gravity gun might've genuinely been an accident, and cares for his workers. Sure he sells weapons, but he sells weapons in America. That's like selling chopsticks in china. (I joke of course, but you can make such an argument)
Spidey, on the other hand, Is just trying to impress a terrible father figure and join the avengers. He ruins the lives of his friend and her family through the pursuit of an infantile understanding of justice.



Wakanda is something that people seem to get wrong a lot.

Let me get a few things off the chest before I can begin the meat: As much as I dislike the wonder metal, The wakandan economy can work. You do not need international trade if you have all the resources you need, and as much as the contrary is touted; objectively you don't need a free market to innovate; Both putting things into space and Tetris were Soviet innovations after all.
Setting aside the comic-book alien panther god guiding all technological development, early access to high quality materials is going to be a huge kickstarter in technological development.

The only thing that doesn't seem very reasonable is the tribes. What sociological trickery do you need to stop them from merging or fracturing over thousands of years?

It's dumb, yes, but The trial by combat almost never happens, nobody challenges for king, so they've never really thought to update it. There are plenty of laws in real countries that are hundreds of years old and haven't been amended because nobody enforces them.
But here's the main thing.
Nakia was "right", Killmonger just emphasized her point, but in a very Yank-centric way. Honestly, that's part of the problem with black panther (the comics too); The American view on race and africa is so skewed from the rest of the world it needs mentioning. A black person living in the chunks of western europe that I'm familiar with is just an exotic curiosity; He or she's a person that happens to have really dark skin. The slavery game didn't last that long for Europeans and they weren't so invested in it that they'd have apartheid and hatred long after. It's not to say racism doesn't exist in europe, but it's not institutionalized on such a scale and the counter-culture isn't really there either. It's a thin line narrative and I don't think I can say more without problems, but killmonger's ambition would just lead to unrest in the US, South africa, and a few scattered areas. Those "wardogs" getting the wonder-weapons in Paris or london wouldn't be doing much with them. (i can't remember who was supposed to be up for it and who was on standby. It was an incredibly ill thought out and rushed plan)

Killmonger was a thundering dumb-ass. W'kabi siding with him for killing claw, after knowing that he'd rescued claw from his king's justice in the first place, is treason so stupid it's a miracle he had the position for it in the first place.

T'chala did nothing wrong other than allow W'kabi his position. Killmonger really doesn't belong to this thread.

[comicshorse]

Killmonger was a thundering dumb-ass. W'kabi siding with him for killing claw, after knowing that he'd rescued claw from his king's justice in the first place, is treason so stupid it's a miracle he had the position for it in the first place.

T'chala did nothing wrong other than allow W'kabi his position. Killmonger really doesn't belong to this thread.

I must admit I always thought W'Kabi was a much worse person than Killmonger. Killmonger has been shaped by personal tragedy (not a excuse) and has an idea for a new world he wants to create. W'Kabi just seems to want to turn his high tech. weapons on living targets for a change

[Keltest]

The only thing that doesn't seem very reasonable is the tribes. What sociological trickery do you need to stop them from merging or fracturing over thousands of years?

It looked to me like the tribes were performing legitimate functions beyond just being ethnic groups. The border tribe for example looked like they were responsible for the security of the nation as a whole, maintaining the image of being a backwater third world country, and otherwise keeping people out of Wakanda's business that didn't belong there. They also looked like they were the rank and file army of Wakanda.

The point being, the tribes are more than just sociological constructs, they have actual jobs that they do as well.

[Avilan the Grey]

The only "morally correct" character in Jurassic Park is Jeff Goldblum. Everyone else - those with agency in the story and not randos who run away or get eaten - is criminally inept, diabolically inept, or insufferably sanctimonious... and inept.

I don't know. Speaking movie now, whatshername, the woman, too. She does nothing wrong in the entire movie.

Edit: as for Black Panther I agree that it is far FAR more America-centric than it claims to be.

[The Jack]

The point being, the tribes are more than just sociological constructs, they have actual jobs that they do as well.

Then you'd call them professions or guilds or something. It's not like they have a compelling etymological reason to still call them tribes; They're translating into English.

(Jobs still have everything to do with sociology, but I'll let that slide. Can you imagine a world where someone'll say "you can't wear that dress, you're a Trader not a miner/Lawyer/Scientist, because the tribes do have coded fashion.)

[No brains]

The only "morally correct" character in Jurassic Park is Jeff Goldblum. Everyone else - those with agency in the story and not randos who run away or get eaten - is criminally inept, diabolically inept, or insufferably sanctimonious... and inept.

I have to disagree because without nuances to counter Goldblum's science-phobia, he may also advocate for other regressive ideas about science and culture. Don't get me wrong, in-world Jurassic Park was a stupid idea. But outside that, 'playing god' is the bill hook that unhorses Famine and Pestilence. Refraining from touching DNA because 'it's not man's place' is dangerously milquetoast.

Also isn't he kind of a creep to that one lady? I might need to watch that movie again and actually pay attention to the non-dinosaur parts.

[comicshorse]

Then you'd call them professions or guilds or something. It's not like they have a compelling etymological reason to still call them tribes; They're translating into English.

(Jobs still have everything to do with sociology, but I'll let that slide. Can you imagine a world where someone'll say "you can't wear that dress, you're a Trader not a miner/Lawyer/Scientist, because the tribes do have coded fashion.)

You've never been given a dress code for a job ? :smallsmile:

[Avilan the Grey]

Then you'd call them professions or guilds or something. It's not like they have a compelling etymological reason to still call them tribes; They're translating into English.

(Jobs still have everything to do with sociology, but I'll let that slide. Can you imagine a world where someone'll say "you can't wear that dress, you're a Trader not a miner/Lawyer/Scientist, because the tribes do have coded fashion.)

Not seeing your point here, to be honest. Tribe is a perfectly functioning word to illustrate what is going on. After all, they are more than "guilds", they have preserved their own separate religious and cultural (and clothing) customs for one thing.

And yes, I can imagine that world, because it is still very common today around the globe AND it is how it used to be in the Western world a mere 100 years ago.

[Brother Oni]

You've never been given a dress code for a job ? :smallsmile:

Depending on the angle you look at it, you could call it a uniform instead - something they wear for their day job and before they get home to change.

[Velaryon]

A lot of wrestling heels (guys you boo) and babyfaces (guys you cheer) are like this.

There's too many to mention, but one of the recent heel character is a guy that is supposed to be booed just because he's of a different ethnicity. He calls the crowd out on this pattern and illicited further boos that way. Plenty of babyfaces blatantly cheat, use dirty tricks, bribe, or outright malign/insult/bully the heels; then get cheered for these by the crowd.

Beat me to it. Although I would argue that at least in WWE's case, this happens because of incompetent storytelling rather than any intention on the company's part.

The most egregious example in recent years have got to be Rusev and Lana. At first they were saddled with a cringey, 30-years-out-of-date Evil Russian gimmick (despite the fact that Rusev is Bulgarian even in kayfabe), but even after they softened on that somewhat, most of their boos came from the fact they were foreigners (though how anyone can buy Lana's terrible Russian accent is beyond me). The absolute nadir has to be the time when they had Rusev and Lana break up, then inserted Dolph Ziggler and Summer Rae into the story to turn it into an awful couples feud. Rusev was still consistently portrayed as the heel even though he was by far the most sympathetic character in that awful storyline. Mercifully, the whole thing got scrapped when they got married in real life and Lana showed off her wedding ring on social media.

But even aside from that, John Cena, who has been held up for the last 13 years or so as WWE's ideal of what a heroic good guy should look like, has regularly bullied opponents, used homophobic slurs, stolen his supposed friend's girlfriend, and numerous other things that are anything but heroic. I am sure someone who has watched more faithfully than I have in recent years can come up with a ton of examples of heels who were morally in the right when feuding with Cena.

[Pex]

Batman vs Superman

Lex Luthor - his tirade against the Supers was actually right. They would be made into gods by the people. Unrelated movie but on point, in Batman & Robin an NPC commented how she wasn't afraid because Batman would protect the city. Lex Luthor did not want humanity subservient, but he's made into the villain doing evil because he's Lex Luthor.

Batman - Does the same things he condemns Superman. Only his Justice is Right, exactly as Lex Luthor ranted.

[The Fury]

You're stretching real far with Caim. He may be the least morally dubious character in the party because hey, he may be a bloodthirsty psychopath, but he's not a pedophile rape-murderer or literal baby eater (...well and I guess the golem kid is okay, I don't remember any particularly heinous thing about him) but he's only the hero relative to the evil empire he's fighting for entirely selfish reasons and IIRC is actually the villain in the sequel.

Stretching? In what sense? In that he's a hero or that he's morally dubious? I'd agree that next to a dude that rapes kids and a lady that eats babies, Caim doesn't look that heinous. However, those characters weren't given the same focus as Caim, Inuart, Verdelet, and Furie. All said, I stand by the statement that Caim isn't functionally different from any classic RPG protagonist, aside from the story actually acknowledges that he kills far more people that he has to. And, yes he was the villain in the sequel. And the villain from the first game was also a playable main character... who mysteriously got more British over the years.


Ignoring the sequel (which has a less justified character twist and is an all around inferior game), Prototype's Alex Mercer (or the creature you know as him for the game's length) fits better since he has actually altruistic goals once the initial killing spree is over and the achievement where you avoid snacking on civilians is actually the canon state of the game and features a full on character arc for the guy, which Caim doesn't have (and then Prototype 2 just tosses all that aside and makes Mercer a carbon copy of the mid-game boss from the first game. Harrumph.).

Yeah... sorry, I've never played Prototype so I don't think I can comment. I will agree that Drakengard 2 was not that great of a sequel. Like most disappointing media, it had some potential to be good that just wasn't fully realized.

[Present 2.0]

I have to think of Jinno from Afro Samurai. I actually really wanted him to succeed and Afro to lose.

I don't know the Manga, but in the Anime it seemed like he made less collateral damage than Afro in his own quest for revenge. Okay, that may also just be, because we saw the story from Afros Viewpoint. Since Jinno was also obsessed with his revenge like Afro, maybe he did some similarily morally reprehensible stuff.

Still, Jinno was more sympathetic to me, simply because he showed more emotions, while Afro just seemed cold.

[tomandtish]

How about Killmonger in Black Panther? The entire movie had major problems, mostly in that Wakanda just doesn't work as a nation on any level, but Killmonger was, well, right. The entire nation are being selfish pricks. And he uses the means he has at his disposal. I mean, they choose their kings by duel, what did they think woudl happen? The next strong thug with a grudge becomes king.

Slight modification: I do think it's "Next strong thug with a connection to the royal line". At least in the MCU, that seems to be why his challenge is allowed.


Ooh, Jurassic Park.

Hammond is presented as a kindly grandfather sort, and one of the good ones. He therefore gets to survive and what not.

Except, yknow, he's pretty directly responsible for the entire scenario. It's his park. The experts are only there to ensure the park is safe because somebody *already* died under his watch, and the lawyer made him call in experts to get it checked, but he didn't want that.

The lawyer is brutally killed, of course.


Never mind the first movie, the second gets everyone backwards. I'll steal some very good points from TV Tropes here....

Peter Ludlow is the head of InGen Corporation, and is primarily made out to be the main villain by Ian's group. Yet, all of his actions throughout the film are pragmatic, well-reasoned and entirely understandable. In a deleted scene from the opening, Ludlow removes John Hammond from the board of directors, correctly pointing out that Hammond's experiment has resulted in tens of millions of dollars being lost, the deaths of at least five people, and a little girl getting injured by Compsognathus when her family strayed too close to "site B", and then correctly pointing out that the only way to save the company is to authorize a relaunch of the park at their backup site. Despite the fact that he acts generally callous towards Ian, Sarah and Nick (who are outsiders), InGen still rescues them during the climax when they reach the operations center. Even when they get back to San Diego, Ludlow invites Ian and Sarah in to his private launch event despite them acting like ***** to the security guards. After all this (and the T-Rex escaping), all he receives is a response from Ian that "now (he's) John Hammond" a short while before he gets eaten by a baby T-Rex as its mother watches.

The human villains have this trait specifically so that their arguments can be dismissed. While they were shown to be quite ruthless when dealing with the dinosaurs, the Designated Heroes were directly or indirectly responsible for every human death in the movie. The 'villains' keep going out of their way to save the protagonists' lives, while the 'heroes' continue to heckle and sabotage them. While a Tyrannosaurus is rampaging through the hunter group, the leader suddenly finds out that one of the heroes stole the bullets from his gun.

The film also falls headfirst into Strawman Has a Point. The antagonists are supposed to be evil because they claim that the dinosaurs were property of the local Mega Corp., when that's exactly what they are; they wouldn't even exist if they hadn't been deliberately created, which also nicely shatters the protagonists' argument that they should be left alone to live naturally, nature having nothing to do with it. A clear example of the "villains" being more like jerks than actually evil people.

[Tvtyrant]

Everyone who doesn't join the seperatists or republic in the prequels is probably right.

The conflict ends up being largely fought between tiny armies of slave soldiers while the Republic's population mostly just watches. Millions of slave soldiers in a population of trillions, and both armies have so little support from the populace that they don't join in unless the conflict is actually in their system.

[Mordar]

Just how "correct" was Javert intended to be?

As The Giant put it:


As I recently referenced in the comic, all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, and Javert went quite a bit further in the wrong direction than just "doing nothing." He supported and enforced an unjust set of laws even above and beyond what was required of him. He tricked his way into the good graces of the students with a plan designed to lead to their deaths. When Fantine dies and Javert confronts Valjean, and Valjean says he must take care of Cosette, Javert could have said, "I'll make sure the girl is taken care of if you turn yourself in." He didn't. He didn't care whether she lived or died when he easily could have without compromising his duty. The idea of mercy is so incompatible to his mindset that when he finds himself having displayed it, his only solution is to commit suicide because his world doesn't make sense anymore. When you get to the point that the idea of mercy is incomprehensible to you? You're a villain.

[snip alignment stuff]In Hugo's eyes, Javert is Evil by virtue of repeatedly choosing not to be Good when given multiple opportunities. He is an antagonist who represents a moral position the author holds as being contemptible; thus, he is a villain.

While I very much appreciate and enjoy the work done on OotS, I'm not sure I accept Word of the Giant as truth here. His interpretation is clearly colored by his own philosophy, as is mine.

Javert is a statement on the perils of fanaticism. He is the ultimate supporter of the ideal that law is the pillar that holds society up and prevents its descent back into barbarism. It is because of this that he is morally correct...and also a villain. The law is moral, and it is just. It treats all people equally in its pure form, and that is the form to which Javert holds. He is willing to prosecute the mayor as well as the street urchin, and is not swayed by circumstance or bribe. He holds to that morality to nearly the end, and his inability to reconcile other truths and other moral goods lead to his particular end.

Are there different ways Javert could have handled the situation regarding Cosette? No, absolutely not. The law does not bargain with criminals. The law owes no concessions to the fugitive. We don't know that he doesn't care about the girl...only that any care one way or the other is secondary to his duty. And while his duty does seem obsessive, we know that Valjean is wanted by more than just Javert. In fact, the arrest at Fantine's death bed is possible only because other police have arrested someone else they believed to be Valjean by mistake. Now, could a different police officer have handled the Cosette issue differently? Of course. And they could have been morally correct as well...just differently so.

Suggesting that Javert's infiltration of a mob bent on violently restructuring the world order makes him a reprehensible villain is a matter of framing. While they are extremely sympathetic and match our modern definitions of good guys (at least, good-intentioned guys) they are planning likely violent insurrection. Limiting the collateral damage of such a group is a driving force behind undercover operations and is laudable. That it happens here and in the way it does makes it tragic, but it does not make Javert evil. Hugo himself, I believe, specifically addressed Javert as making the ideals of law and authority "almost evil", but he seems to stop far short of labeling Javert as evil.

Finally, mercy is not the key element of his decision to suicide. In my opinion, in fact, it is irrelevant on its own. It isn't that a superior foe spared/saved his life, or someone with power over him chose a more merciful course of action than what was readily available. It is that a criminal made decisions that clashed so viscerally with his world view that he could not reconcile the actions with what he knew. The law, the one thing by which he measured and metered his whole life, the one constant on which he could rely and on which he based his sense of self...was the law wrong and fallible? By extension, is he then flawed and his actions not above reproach? His entire life has been spent transforming his hatred of the circumstances of his birth into adherence and devotion to law as the only tool by which "scum" like himself could rise above their contemptible beginnings...and now he is confronted full force by his own understanding that a criminal, born of scum just as Javert was, is far from contemptible, and is, by Javert's own estimation, good and of value. It is that understanding, driven home by yet another laudable act by Valjean, that leads to his suicide. Suggesting that it was an isolated act of mercy being incomprehensible to Javert sells the character far short and suggests to me a basic misunderstanding of the character - or perhaps intentionally reducing him to caricature make a point not supported by the work.

In a shorter answer to your question, I think he was supposed to be rigidly, fanatically and absolutely correct...because the point of Javert was to show the danger of exactly that. Fanatical devotion to the most pure and good of things can have villainous (though not necessarily evil) outcomes, and you don't have to be a bad guy to be the Bad Guy.

- M

[hamishspence]

mercy is not the key element of his decision to suicide. In my opinion, in fact, it is irrelevant on its own. It isn't that a superior foe spared/saved his life, or someone with power over him chose a more merciful course of action than what was readily available.

The argument was that when Javert found that he had been merciful:


The idea of mercy is so incompatible to his mindset that when he finds himself having displayed it, his only solution is to commit suicide because his world doesn't make sense anymore.


it broke him.

[Tyndmyr]

The only "morally correct" character in Jurassic Park is Jeff Goldblum. Everyone else - those with agency in the story and not randos who run away or get eaten - is criminally inept, diabolically inept, or insufferably sanctimonious... and inept.

Yeah. Ineptness is remarkably common. Jurassic World doubled down on this, too. Everyone who isn't Chris Pratt is awful, to varying degrees.

Though the guy funding it seems less responsible in this one. Not his call to tinker with the things they did, and he certainly didn't authorize any of the questionable military things. He still dies, though. And the random aide who watched the children very briefly got an end that feels a wee bit unfair, given that she's not really a monster.

As far as Lost World, etc goes, yeah, there were huuuuge problems. Taking the bullets out of someone's gun when they're facing off against man eating predators is straight up murder.


Yeah. I'm not saying Killmonger is a good guy. Everything he does is terrible. But a lot of what he says is right. While a lot of what Wakandan Royalty as a whole both says and does is pretty monstrous. But then, they seem to be an inheritable warrior aristocracy, and we have thousands of years of history to show where those end up.

Wakandan dad-king made an error, sure. They seem to have done generally okay for the rest of their history, though. That said, T'Challa isn't potrayed as bad. At most, he's coming to grips with the failings of his father.

Yeah, maybe Wakanda didn't fix all the world's problems, but they're usually not responsible for causing them, either. That's neutral territory at worst.

And the warrior thing seemed to be mostly tradition at this point anyways, with the challenges usually a formality that's forgone by the tribes.



Keaton's Vulture was a decent guy. He offered parker peace on numerous occasions, kept his secret, that issue with the gravity gun might've genuinely been an accident, and cares for his workers. Sure he sells weapons, but he sells weapons in America. That's like selling chopsticks in china. (I joke of course, but you can make such an argument)

That movie made the Vulture into an awesome villain. One with chops, and one that's fairly hard to hate, despite being imposing.

The gravity gun thing does seem like an accident, and he usually attempts to do the right thing.


Those "wardogs" getting the wonder-weapons in Paris or london wouldn't be doing much with them. (i can't remember who was supposed to be up for it and who was on standby. It was an incredibly ill thought out and rushed plan)

It was literally a "take over the world" plot at that point, which puts Killmonger into mustachioed villain territory at that point. It wasn't anything like a good or coherent plan to fix anything, it was just a blatant bid for power. This is foreshadowed pretty hard by how he treats Wakandian traditions when they're not useful to him. He's not actually very interested in getting Wakanda to do the right thing, it's just a handy path to power for him.

Also, yes, W'Kabi kind of grabs the idiot ball with both hands.

[Rynjin]

Javert is a statement on the perils of fanaticism. He is the ultimate supporter of the ideal that law is the pillar that holds society up and prevents its descent back into barbarism. It is because of this that he is morally correct...and also a villain. The law is moral, and it is just. It treats all people equally in its pure form, and that is the form to which Javert holds. He is willing to prosecute the mayor as well as the street urchin, and is not swayed by circumstance or bribe. He holds to that morality to nearly the end, and his inability to reconcile other truths and other moral goods lead to his particular end.

Fanatics are, almost by definition, not correct. Laws often have degrees of nuance written into them, and even where explicitly not, much of the enforcement is left to the discretion of officers and judges because the people who write laws are flawed humans who understand that a perfect law is impossible to write.

Mercy and discretion are not incompatible with the law; assuming so is a fundamental misunderstanding of what laws are for (to keep society running smoothly) and how they are meant to work outside of a vacuum. Javerts actions are in line with the letter of the law, but none of the spirit, and it could be quite easily argued that aside from being neither technically nor morally correct in his actions from anything previously said, he is just using the law as a shield to justify his innate thirst for cruelty, which is also not moral.

[Frozen_Feet]

Black Panther movie is a great example of what this thread is about, but it seems people get one important thing wrong:

T'Challa is not the hero.

He is the villain. Or, like his actor put it, the Enemy. He represents the institutions and privileged people who do nothing to ease suffering of the lower classes. I mean, duh, he's the king.

But he's also morally correct, because he is not the Enemy through any action of his own. He did not choose to exclude those other people, nor Killmonger and his family. T'Challa just inherited this whole mess.

It's Killmonger who is the hero, seeking to overthrow an oppressive status quo. But obviously, his morals don't hold up very well, because when and where he's right about the state of the world, he lacks the capacity to change the world for the better. He can only pursue his goals in the form of an extended revenge quest, which even in the best case scenario would just invert who's boot stomps on who's face.

Really, the dynamic between Killmonger and T'Challa is very similar to what the assassin and the emperor have in Hero, another movie talked about in this thread.

[Mordar]

Fanatics are, almost by definition, not correct. Laws often have degrees of nuance written into them, and even where explicitly not, much of the enforcement is left to the discretion of officers and judges because the people who write laws are flawed humans who understand that a perfect law is impossible to write.

Mercy and discretion are not incompatible with the law; assuming so is a fundamental misunderstanding of what laws are for (to keep society running smoothly) and how they are meant to work outside of a vacuum. Javerts actions are in line with the letter of the law, but none of the spirit, and it could be quite easily argued that aside from being neither technically nor morally correct in his actions from anything previously said, he is just using the law as a shield to justify his innate thirst for cruelty, which is also not moral.

On the first (fanatics = not correct): Probably, but a conceit that changes directions with the perception of the speaker, right? We see tons of lauded fanaticism in all kinds of places that we don't really talk about here, but some of them are good, some are bad. We see it in fan-dom (hence the word, even). It almost strikes that cord of "If you're poor and do X you're crazy...if you're rich and do X you're eccentric."

The modern enforcement of laws is a pretty contentious topic, but I think an argument can be made that the laws shouldn't be nuanced...at least shouldn't be excessively so, but the enforcement/judgement must be mitigated by circumstance.

I disagree strongly with the idea that laws are to keep society running smoothly, but it is a matter of degree - I believe they are to keep society. Running smoothly has all kinds of efficiency connotations and seems to suggest that absent laws society would still exist, it would just be jangled and inefficient. That may be so, but I believe that absent laws (including social compact kind of laws, not just words codified in statute) chaos reigns.

That being said, I did specifically mention that other officers could certainly have handled the arrest and disposition of Cosette very differently, and with far greater concern. Being merciful and using discretion are vital components of what we consider good police officers and good people. They are not, however, part of Javert's moral devotion.

Javert's actions are, we are led to believe, perfectly in line with the law. The spirit of the law is debatable, and is best left to the lawmakers. I am certain, however, that the spirit of the law in France from 1800-1832 is that thieves are to be arrested regardless of the reason they stole the bread, and in fact are probably in place to protect bakeries from the poor, to the praise of everyone from the bakers on up. Valjean's crimes are simple and clearly crimes - he stole, he fled captivity, he broke his parole. He is guilty by all measures of the application of the term, and he both knows and admits this. There is no manifest cruelty in Javert's actions. Valjean broke the law at least three times. There is a clearly prescribed course of action to be taken. When Javert fails to complete this course, and is confronted with the actions of Valjean and his response and what that means, he is broken.

Javert is not a "bad cop". He is not corrupt, or using his position to curry favors, live out base urges or heap suffering on others. He is cleaving perfectly to the purpose of the law - protect the people from those who ignore the rules of society. And because he holds to that one perfect moral cause...he is wrong. He is the perfect instrument of a good thing, but only of that one thing, and when he realizes that being the perfect instrument of one thing is insufficient...or wrong...that is the moment when he ends.

I wonder if maybe that is the point I haven't made clear. I don't think Javert is a good person. I don't think he is an anti-hero. He is a villain in this story. Valjean is a good person - a great person, even. He is a redemption story, a charity story, a looking-out-for-fellow-man story. He is what everyone should aspire to be. He is a 7+ on every modern laudable moral out there. Javert is a 10 on one moral and a "not applicable" on all of the others. Not a 0, 1 or 2. That is why I believe Javert to be a morally correct villain. He is the bad guy because he is so moral. But without proper scores on the other hypothetical moral axes, the perfect instrument is imperfect in practice.

- M

[Dienekes]

Bah, no one takes Les Mis with the historical mindset in question. To understand Javert and his actions you have to understand France when Victor Hugo set the novel. Remember what Javert lived through. He'd lasted through the violence of the French Revolution, the horrors of the Reign of Terror, the rise and fall of Napoleon. And now, finally, France has stabilized under law. Which he jealously protects, to the point that criminals on the street know him by name. He is not a villain in the traditional sense. And Hugo never refers to him as evil. The closest he gets is describing him as how virtue can become "almost evil."

It is not the act of mercy itself exactly that causes Javert to commit suicide. It is the understanding that he has been wrong his entire life. Javert was a man without beliefs beyond the necessity that law must be upheld or the world will descend into the anarchy of the Revolution. He opposes the June Revolution because they represent the destruction that he has spent his entire life trying to prevent, in his own way. And in his mind, morality and the law are always the exact same thing. Because we, the reader, know of Jean Valjean's motivations, we know that Jean is a good man and the system is broken. But Javert has not had to confront that problem before.

And now, watching Valjean save a boy after also saving him. Javert must confront the fact that there is a difference between morality and law. Therefore morality itself must come from something other than law. His entire worldview destroyed he could choose to either change or die. And in the book it is made repeatedly clear, that Javert cannot handle change or self-reflection. So he chose the only option available to him.

He is not an evil man nor is he morally good. He made the mistake of believing he was, and when proven wrong he felt his only course of action was suicide. That is not the motivation of an evil man. He is most certainly never depicted as cruel or desiring the subjugation of others in the book (outside of Norm Lewis' interpretation, one of many reasons I did not like the 25th Anniversary Concert). He truly wholeheartedly wants justice and order. He wanted to keep France functioning. There were no ulterior motivations. He was not secretly a sadist. He was just wrong.

[Bohandas]

I think Javert falls under the category of "Lawful Stupid"

[Dienekes]

I think Javert falls under the category of "Lawful Stupid"

A slightly more nuanced version than normal. But yes. That’s a pretty apt description.

[Friv]

I think Javert falls under the category of "Lawful Stupid"

If I were going to be diagnosing him, I'd probably say he falls under the category of "severe PTSD and depression in a time period before counseling had been invented."

The guy was born in prison, grew up shunned for his criminal parents, lived through multiple disasters stemming from a failure in governance. He clutched to the law to provide meaning, because without that meaning his life was nothing but suffering and blame for things that weren't his fault. By believing in the Law, he can believe that there is justice in the world, and that his suffering was deserved, because without being persecuted for being the child of criminals, he would have become a criminal like them.

He doesn't let himself have pleasure because of his inherited sin. He doesn't let himself have mercy, because mercy would mean that his treatment was unjust. He is too honest to lie to himself about the world, and too hurt to seek to change it. In the end, what undoes him is the realization that he was wrong, that his suffering did not serve a greater purpose, and that he had caused suffering for no stronger reason than because he was told to. He saves Valjean, committing a final act of good, and then gives in to the self-hatred that has been chasing him his entire life.

[Mordar]

I think Javert falls under the category of "Lawful Stupid"


A slightly more nuanced version than normal. But yes. That’s a pretty apt description.

This should be exciting.

How does he fit that definition beyond the too-frequently seen "Anyone that is Lawful is stupid" mindset?

- M

[zlefin]

I was wondering, often movies have the villain with little to no morals while a hero has strong morals he stands by or at the least is someone that most of the time justifies his actions. I was wondering about times where these ideas have been reversed showing a villain that the audience can relate to and agree while there's a hero that isn't really a true hero. What are some of your favourite examples of this?

One example of mine:


One example I was thinking of while making this was Ozymandias and Rorschach from the watchmen graphic novel, Ozymandius shows how his plan was to overall bring world peace by unifying nations under one major threat which when you think about is something that kind of makes him a bit of a hero even if he did kill everyone in new york while Rorschach is in the position of being a hero yet he is mentally unstable, a murderer and has probably committed more violent crimes that some of the worst serial killers from real life.

I'm unsure, becuase I'm unsure how you're categorizing everything. There's plenty of villian protagonist series; some of which have grey v grey morality. So it depends what you count as a "hero". Hero and villian may well not be defined within the fictional universe, so how do you decide which is which? one can't rely on the protagonist/antagonist distinction.

I do like villians with a good reason/justification for thier actions (even if they are more evil than the heroes nonetheless)

Also, are we looking at movies only, or media more generally? I'm wondering if i'ts hard to pull off something like that well in the time constraints of a movie.

[Bohandas]

This should be exciting.

How does he fit that definition beyond the too-frequently seen "Anyone that is Lawful is stupid" mindset?

- M
To be fair, I've only seen the play, not read the novel, but in the play he's so shaken by the discovery that being a petty thief does not automatically make a person a mustache twirling supervillain that he's driven mad by the revelation and jumps off a bridge

[Dienekes]

This should be exciting.

How does he fit that definition beyond the too-frequently seen "Anyone that is Lawful is stupid" mindset?

- M

I may be misunderstanding the meaning of lawful stupid. But my interpretation is that when dedication to the letter of the law as opposed to the spirit causes obvious negative consequences that are ignored because of dedication to that law, it should be seen as lawful stupid.

And while Javert does a whole lot of legitimately good things in the book. His dogged pursuit of criminality has left to a rapist going free, because of class bias. He also brings about the worsening of conditions for a factory and town that made Valjean mayor. And would have left a child to be enslaved all because of his unquestioning belief that a convict does not change despite evidence to the contrary being in front of him at several times. From Valjean caring for the dying woman, to him giving out alms for the poor, and so on.

Furthermore, I think book Javert would agree that he had been acting in this way (if not in those words precisely), since his last act is writing down a letter that gives directions on how to reform the police so that lawful stupidity doesn’t run rampant through France. Then he offs himself, admittedly.

[Lord Raziere]

Spec Ops: the Line:

The Morally Questionable Hero:
Captain Walker. The guy who disobeys orders to only do reconnaissance on Dubai ravaged by sandstorms in favor of acting like a hero, going in to try and save it, ends up killing everyone in his way starting with the people he was trying to save mistaking him for the soldiers sent in before, then the soldiers sent in before mistaking him for CIA, accidentally kills civilians with white phosphorous and rapidly descends into killing more and more people in an effort to find a final boss to feel like a hero, including destroying the water supply on the orders of a CIA agent in a desert, but only ends up going more and more insane until he is basically the villain.

The Morally Correct Villain:
Various factions all trying to do what they think is best to make the situation better: Insurgents that see the american troops there as a bloody oppressive regime that need overthrowing, the american troops already there just trying to keep law and order and provide what remaining food and water to the people, and it turns out the person Walker is trying to find to defeat so he can feel like a hero already killed himself weeks before he came into Dubai out of guilt for what he had to do, Walker was just hallucinating his presence.

it is a game where all the horrible events within turn out to be caused by the hero aside from the already hellish situation that he was just making worse with every action, and pretty much ends up the only survivor of Dubai. the final decision of the game is about whether he deserves to die for what he has done or whether he deserves to live with the consequences and horror of his actions by being taken back to civilization to face justice.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Stupid and villainous aren't really synonymous. Yeah, he wasn't a moral paragon, but AFAIK there wasn't actually any malice behind his actions at any point, just poor judgment.

Unlike say Nedry who was actually responsible for shutting off the security system and computers.
Who was both stupid and villainous

[Razade]

Spec-Ops: The Line is one of those things that really falls apart under any kind of scrutiny. Forget the giant sandstorm destroying one of the richest cities in the world in a singular event, which is just...no...it also breaks down with the most bare of understanding on the chain of command, redeployment and any sensible operations protocol.

The main character suffers PTSD and getting redeployed requires a basic psych test he'd have failed hardcore. Not only that, but the minute he started disobying orders his two friends should have turned around. The minute he starts to hallucinate, they should have relieved him of his duty as he was unfit to lead. They'd never have reached the White Phosphorus event. Forget the Geneva Convention and how it handles civilian deaths, it limits the use of incendiary weapons. There wouldn't have been White Phosphorus to even use in that a area.

The game is a mess. Attempting to tut tut people who play first person shooters for not understanding how such things work in the real world, they abandon the real world for the expensive of their story. It just detracts from the over all message. Also played like garbage.

The main character isn't a villain though, he's a mentally ill combat vet that shouldn't have been put in the position he was put in. The person who sent him is the villain.

[Lord Raziere]

Every story breaks down under scrutiny. If we ignore every story because they wouldn't line up 100% with the logic of the real world, there'd be no stories to tell. its still a better handling than black and white morality and acting as everything will be okay when the hero saves everything.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Yeah, it's almost like there's this forbearance of plothole-seeking thing writers expect from their audience.

As far as I'm aware, the plot detailed depicted an escalation precisely because it's the sort of thing the audience wants to happen. So, any breaks from reality was an artistic choice. Oh wait, games aren't art. I forgot for a moment there.

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah, it's almost like there's this forbearance of plothole-seeking thing writers expect from their audience.

As far as I'm aware, the plot detailed depicted an escalation precisely because it's the sort of thing the audience wants to happen. So, any breaks from reality was an artistic choice. Oh wait, games aren't art. I forgot for a moment there.

Agreed. a relevant video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9HivyjAKlc

willing suspension of disbelief, needs to be brought back. I admit, I've only seen Spec Ops the Line from a lets play and don't really play shooters? and mostly to examine how it criticizes certain attitudes and what it has to teach and say about the people going through such situations, particularly when the worst happens. because yeah sure you can argue that the worst won't happen because of certain logical things, its easy to say so you don't have to face it, but that doesn't really help for actually examining that worst situation and how your supposed to deal with it. such fiction is an opportunity to say "yes, but what if it does? what does that say about us?"

[Rynjin]

Nah, the thing is, plot holes only become noticeable (on casual viewing, for minor plot holes) if the media in question fails to draw you in enough to suspend disbelief in the first place.

Major plot holes are their own issue, and your ability to notice minor ones if you aren't looking for them is a canary for larger structural and storytelling flaws that jog you out of the experience.

Talking about them in regards to how a movie or whatever is bad is shallow analysis, but is a good springboard for discussing other stuff.

Of course what he's talking about are plot contrivances anyway, not plot holes, but the same principle applies. Both exist anymore n all media, but the more noticeable they are the more that media failed at storytelling.

[AlanBruce]

Somebody mentioned The Last of Us and having recently finished one of PS4's best games this year...

Kratos from the GoW franchise. A look at his life prior to the latest game and the current one.

If anyone has played the series (at least the original trilogy), Kratos is at best, an antihero who, after a series of terrible and selfish decisions on his behalf, plays right into Divine Trickery by Ares.

This leads him to not only butchering hundreds if not thousands of innocents, but his family in a fit of true Spartan Rage. He of course, blames the gods, despite serving them for years afterwards. But even when he gets his revenge on Ares, he's still far from a noble soul.

This gets worse in the sequel, when he butchers the Sisters of Fate and then brutally impales Zeus, who narrowly escapes by using Athena as a human shield.

Despite her telling Kratos that Zeus cannot die or OLynmpus will fall, he doesn't care: he wants to kill the guy. Now mind you, he was made God of War to fill Ares' shoes, but his belligerent and volatile behavior in Olympus caused the other gods to be concerned... or outright afraid of him. Especially Zeus.

The third and last game in the original trilogy has him murder gods left and right. There is no sense of noble quest here- he will snap necks, dismember and rip heads off. Hell, he even killed his grandfather when the poor guy was already caught in Tartarus!

And every time he killed a deity, the world suffered for his actions. Biblical style.

At no point did Kratos feel any remorse of what happened to the world...and he kept on doing it until he bashed Zeus to a bloody paste with his bare hands.


Now, we fast forward to the latest game and check on the main antagonist.

Balder is insane, yes. But it wasn't his choosing- his mother "blessed" him with invulnerability, which has a Monkey's Paw style effect on the guy, driving him insane.

He just wants this taken off him and after 100 years of not feeling "ANYTHING!", it's clear that he'd go crazy. So, when Faye's spell wore off, he went to ask for a way to get this curse removed, but communication problems arose and a few seconds later, well... if you have played the game, you know what happens.

[Eldan]

Agreed. a relevant video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9HivyjAKlc

willing suspension of disbelief, needs to be brought back. I admit, I've only seen Spec Ops the Line from a lets play and don't really play shooters? and mostly to examine how it criticizes certain attitudes and what it has to teach and say about the people going through such situations, particularly when the worst happens. because yeah sure you can argue that the worst won't happen because of certain logical things, its easy to say so you don't have to face it, but that doesn't really help for actually examining that worst situation and how your supposed to deal with it. such fiction is an opportunity to say "yes, but what if it does? what does that say about us?"

There's a difference between nitpickery and pointing out when a story just doesn't work. I've also only seen Spec Ops in a let's play because I can't stand shooters, but... it really doesn't hold together. Maybe because I didn't care about the gameplay enough to be drawn in, but about ten minutes into the game, I started wondering why anyone put this guy in command of anything. And 30 minutes in, I was wondering why his colleagues hadn't shot him for his about 20 million war crimes and going against his own side.

And that's before we get into Spec Ops critizising you for shooting people in games on flimsy pretexts and then not letting you advance without shooting everyone in most scenes.

To suspend your disbelief, there has to be something to suspend on. The world has to hold up to at least casual observation and its own internal logic long enough to tell the story.

[Razade]

Every story breaks down under scrutiny.

No they don't. Fullstop.


If we ignore every story because they wouldn't line up 100% with the logic of the real world, there'd be no stories to tell. its still a better handling than black and white morality and acting as everything will be okay when the hero saves everything.

Sure there would, there'd still be stories about the real world. I tell stories all the time and they work 100% with the logic of the real world because they happened. But that's just...a nitpick on top of a nitpick. I don't care if every story lines up with real world logic 100% of the time, I never said I did. I also never took the stance that the story had to have a happy ending with the hero saving the day. I don't even know where you're coming from there.


Agreed. a relevant video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9HivyjAKlc

Oh hey, a video! Thanks! I'll add this to the "People telling me I'm doing it "Wrong" when they just mean I don't enjoy the things they enjoy for the reason they enjoy them" pile.


willing suspension of disbelief, needs to be brought back.

It never left, you can't bring back what never left. You know what we do need to bring back though? Examining enshrined pillars through a critical lens and accept that they have flaws and that those flaws doesn't mean they're any less good than they are. When can we do that?

That isn't Spec Ops: The Line though. It's not good. The gameplay is awful, clunky and slapdash and the reason it's enshrined is because the gaming community as a whole will embrace anything that enjoys a healthy bit of moral self-********. Which is all that Spec Ops: The Line is. A game to make people feel like they're on the right side of an argument as it attacks a genre of games (and video game players) that never made any kind of claim to be real combat in the first place.


I admit, I've only seen Spec Ops the Line from a lets play and don't really play shooters? and mostly to examine how it criticizes certain attitudes and what it has to teach and say about the people going through such situations, particularly when the worst happens. because yeah sure you can argue that the worst won't happen because of certain logical things, its easy to say so you don't have to face it, but that doesn't really help for actually examining that worst situation and how your supposed to deal with it. such fiction is an opportunity to say "yes, but what if it does? what does that say about us?"

I also don't play shooters but I did play Spec Ops: The Line and here we get to the real meat and potatoes of why this isn't just a "nitpick" over "plot holes", which aren't holes. They're pretext to set the story in motion that just don't work. Contrivances, as someone already said.

Had Spec Ops: The Line just been a shooter game with no grander ambition I'd have politely sat on my hands and said nothing to the effect of "This is not how a U.S Military Unit operates". If they'd just said "this is over the shoulder shooter game 2020202020202110607, but YOU'RE the monster"...sure. Interesting angle. However that's not what The Line does. It sits there, smugly criticizing a genre that it itself embraces. "This is what REAL war is like"

No it's not, Spec Ops: The Line. Our main character, who we learn has a history of mental illness and he's sent in because of a personal attachment to the proposed villain of the story. We learn of this much later into the game but had that been in the opening salvo I'd maybe have bought into it. But it continues from there, his squadmates presumably know about this history. They'd have been briefed and there are protocols (as said) when your leader starts to disobey orders and visibly hallucinate. Which happens. There's a scene in the game where you come upon a bunch of dead people strung up on radio poles and the main character hears the villain taunting him.

We learn later that that never happened. Walker (the main character) just starts screaming and shooting at corpses. That's what his squad mates see. There's being willing to suspend disbelief and then there are things that just break the entire mood. That scene? That scene was it for me. The next person under him should have immediately revoked his command and turned the whole assembly back around with a "Mission Failed" sticker slapped on every possible surface they'd adhere to.

But that's not the first time it happens in the game either. As you progress up to that point you (Walker) get more deranged, aggressive and brutal to the people you fight. And your squadmates. It's not that it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. It's that it doesn't hold up to a gust of wind.

Then comes the moralizing. The preaching "modern shooters give a distasteful view on war" mantra the game chants at you at ever turn. And then hands you rocket launchers to blow the baddies up and then comes the "we can't progress until everything but us is so much raspberry jam on the walls" If it made us feel bad about that or gave us ways to circumvent it. Like stealth. Or any other mechanic that plenty of other games with a "killing is wrong, try to avoid it" message push. Dishonored did it. Why couldn't Spec Ops: The Line do it? Undertale did it and it's a steaming mess of dog crap. Spec Ops: The Line loses its message to a game made by one dude and a legion of kickstarter money.

Don't whine that your game is attempting to display the real cost of war, preach to me about what video game violence does to perceptions of real violence and then hand me a sawed off shotgun and tell me to kill ethnic people in counties I can't pronounce (I can pronounce Dubai for the record) and then tell me that I'm a bad person for doing it.

Because all that does is make me go "fine, I just won't play". Which is what I've done since. I haven't played Spec Ops: The Line and only actually finished it because my apartment lost internet for a week and I had nothing better to do after work.

[Eldan]

Dishonoured is an interesting case, actually, now that's it's mentioned. In that some of the "peaceful" options are extremely distasteful, too. You brand the Overseer on his face to mark him a heretic (I think it was heretic?), but okay, the game goes out of its way to point out how horrible he is. STill, it's branding and exile instead of killing. But then comes the part where you have the option to either kill a noble lady or knock her out and sell her to someone who pretty explicitely says he wants to rape her and keep her as a prisoner.

[Razade]

Dishonoured is an interesting case, actually, now that's it's mentioned. In that some of the "peaceful" options are extremely distasteful, too. You brand the Overseer on his face to mark him a heretic (I think it was heretic?), but okay, the game goes out of its way to point out how horrible he is. STill, it's branding and exile instead of killing. But then comes the part where you have the option to either kill a noble lady or knock her out and sell her to someone who pretty explicitely says he wants to rape her and keep her as a prisoner.

Yeah....Corvo does some pretty nasty things. Daud and his apprentice lady too. But the people they're against are far far far worse. Forcibly infecting your city with a disease to instigate a power grab may not be the worst thing a villain's ever done but it's pretty sick.

[Ibrinar]

Agreed. a relevant video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9HivyjAKlc

willing suspension of disbelief, needs to be brought back. I admit, I've only seen Spec Ops the Line from a lets play and don't really play shooters? and mostly to examine how it criticizes certain attitudes and what it has to teach and say about the people going through such situations, particularly when the worst happens. because yeah sure you can argue that the worst won't happen because of certain logical things, its easy to say so you don't have to face it, but that doesn't really help for actually examining that worst situation and how your supposed to deal with it. such fiction is an opportunity to say "yes, but what if it does? what does that say about us?"

That video has some really poor argumentation like the first example of what is not a plothole "how did batman get back to gotham" he completely ignores that such question are asked not because people don't get the concept of traveling but because for instance making it back in time doesn't seem possible to them which is why they require a explanation and can't fill it in like he suggests because they have nothing that makes sense to fill it in. (I don't know about that specific example or have watched the movie.) (Of course sometimes you aren't supposed to know exactly how something was done and the answer is just the guy is awesome so he did it somehow. But that is beside the point that the video guy builds convenient strawman for his other side.)

Or in his list of things for plotholes in your favourite movies he also uses a strawman version of plotholes with things like "if the alien acid eat through metal why doesn't it eat through the entire ship" acid works by chemical reactions and doesn't just eat through an unlimited amount of material given time so you can just suppose it case "used up" before it reached the point. Other examples also suffer from not doing his suggested thing and fill something reasonable in. NO there are plenty of works without any real plotholes. Didn't finish the video but it really isn't convincing me of anything.

[Eldan]

The Batman example dind't bother me when I watched the movie (there were other things that bothered me far more), but it is a thing that is never mentioned in the movie. But I wouldn't call it a plot hole. One can assume that Bruce Wayne could get someone to take him to the nearest city and that he could get on a plane.

[No brains]

It may seem like we're going off topic, but the discussion of 'plot holes' may have more to do with 'heroes' and 'villains' that we may think. This subject is probably a form of over-analysis in itself.

Feeling tired and inarticulate, so my TL;DWrite is that plot holes matter when something has insufficient verisimilitude or spectacle. It's kind of like an uncanny valley in suspension of disbelief.

Also the video fails to convince me. I will not be intimidated by some bozo with hulk hands punching people he disagrees with. It makes him a morally questionable hero. I don't find his arguments compelling and I don't find his gimmick entertaining. I could find a lot of plot holes in his video. :smalltongue:

[Rynjin]

Somebody mentioned The Last of Us and having recently finished one of PS4's best games this year...

***spoiler***

The game he's talking about is God of War, by the by. Because spoiler tabs are kinda useless when unlabeled.

[Keltest]

Yeah....Corvo does some pretty nasty things. Daud and his apprentice lady too. But the people they're against are far far far worse. Forcibly infecting your city with a disease to instigate a power grab may not be the worst thing a villain's ever done but it's pretty sick.

Indeed. Its also worth pointing out that, regardless of what a person deserves or how clean your revenge is, dead bodies spread the plague. That's why the game doesn't make moral judgments on Corvo and co, it just ranks it in the amount of destruction and chaos you have caused.

[dps]

Pick almost any story in which a social worker is trying to take a child away from its parent (the exceptions would be those works in which the social worker is the protagonist). The social worker will be portrayed as a villain, even though they're just doing their job. They may be in error about the parent being abusive, neglectful, or otherwise unfit, but that doesn't make them evil or villainous.

[Kitten Champion]

Pick almost any story in which a social worker is trying to take a child away from its parent (the exceptions would be those works in which the social worker is the protagonist). The social worker will be portrayed as a villain, even though they're just doing their job. They may be in error about the parent being abusive, neglectful, or otherwise unfit, but that doesn't make them evil or villainous.

Oh, yeah. It's pretty much the same thing with Internal Affairs in most any prime time cop/detective show. Sometimes it's warranted - insofar as the narrative proves they're legitimately the corrupt one(s) - but often they're more depicted as antagonists who abrasively intrude upon the works and lives of the brave heroes with their red tape and agendas. They're most likely to be blinded by their future ambitions, or harbour some kind of personal enmity with the main characters.

Another is the jurisdictional conflicts between police- most often the FBI - who comes to take the case away from the main characters for whatever reason. You have this turf battle which usually ends with the non-main character higher authority figures being dunked upon woefully.

It's such a contrived conflict and it comes down to the heroes shouldn't be held accountable or follow legal procedures when warranted because protagonist-centred morality.

[comicshorse]

]Oh, yeah. It's pretty much the same thing with Internal Affairs [/B] in most any prime time cop/detective show. Sometimes it's warranted - insofar as the narrative proves they're legitimately the corrupt one(s) - but often they're more depicted as antagonists who abrasively intrude upon the works and lives of the brave heroes with their red tape and agendas. They're most likely to be blinded by their future ambitions, or harbour some kind of personal enmity with the main characters.


Speaking of there is 2012 'The Sweeney' (also my personal Worst Film Ever)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0857190/?ref_=nv_sr_2

The Internal Affairs officer is absolutely right about exactly how corrupt the 'hero' is yet somehow we are meant to regard him as the villain for wanting to arrest the protagonist for all the thieving, rules breaking and torture of suspects he does. (He's also a massive **** but that's not really a arrestable offence)

[Lord Raziere]

*shrug*

yeah I don't really care about anything Razade just said.

I don't get his viewpoints, they're alien to me. I do not understand how he could possibly see Undertale or Spec Ops as bad. but I'm used to looking at others viewpoints and not understanding them.

I guess Razade just values different things? I think Undertale and Spec Ops the Line are both great. I'm not going to be angry at him for it, but am I going to suddenly understand how he can possibly dislike it? No. Sorry. I don't see where he is coming from, and I'm not going to make assumptions about where he is coming from with this, because that doesn't really work for communication. I guess I wish could understand, but I don't?

and again I stand by my stance about plot holes. It seems pretty obvious to me that the culture has gotten too obsessed with pointing stuff like that out and plot holes are good shorthand, and I just don't understand how no one can see that, but thats my problem I guess.

I guess I'll just say the Luffy is a morally questionable hero because he is a pirate and this creepy unrelatable monster child and the Navy is morally correct villain because honestly, I have seen no reason why the Navy SHOULDN'T bring law and order to the seas in One Piece if its filled with monsters like the ones encountered like Blackbeard.

[Brother Oni]

Pick almost any story in which a social worker is trying to take a child away from its parent (the exceptions would be those works in which the social worker is the protagonist). The social worker will be portrayed as a villain, even though they're just doing their job. They may be in error about the parent being abusive, neglectful, or otherwise unfit, but that doesn't make them evil or villainous.

Lilo and Stitch disagrees with you on that one. The social worker there, Cobra, is trying to do what is best for Lilo and despite her best efforts, Nani can't provide a decent environment for her.


Oh, yeah. It's pretty much the same thing with Internal Affairs in most any prime time cop/detective show. Sometimes it's warranted - insofar as the narrative proves they're legitimately the corrupt one(s) - but often they're more depicted as antagonists who abrasively intrude upon the works and lives of the brave heroes with their red tape and agendas. They're most likely to be blinded by their future ambitions, or harbour some kind of personal enmity with the main characters.

I'm not sure whether The Corruptor counts as a prime time show as it's a movie, but the IA officer isn't an antagonist there.

The IA sergeant in Lethal Weapon 3 initially starts out as an antagonist, but is soon brought into the protagonist fold.

[Tyndmyr]

Every story breaks down under scrutiny. If we ignore every story because they wouldn't line up 100% with the logic of the real world, there'd be no stories to tell. its still a better handling than black and white morality and acting as everything will be okay when the hero saves everything.

Unrealistic is not exactly what makes a plot hole. Inconsistency is.

I don't much care about why magic exists in Lord of the Rings. It's part of the setting, and so long as it's portrayed consistently, nobody gets put out that it's unlike the real world. They do get put out that the Eagles become a deus ex machina that solve all sorts of otherwise insoluble scenarios, but are not used to bypass other obstacles that they apparently can with ease. The problem doesn't lie in the eagles, but in the apparent contradiction.

So, no, not every story breaks down under scrutiny. Some are far, far more consistent than others. Yeah, some films are enjoyable despite plot holes, but generally, noticing that something doesn't make any sense detracts from enjoyment of most films. The fewer plot holes, the better the work.

I'd put an exception out there for films enjoyed specifically because they are bad, absurd, etc. Sharknado knows what it is. However, nobody considers those to be great works of art, yknow?

[Keltest]

*shrug*

yeah I don't really care about anything Razade just said.

I don't get his viewpoints, they're alien to me. I do not understand how he could possibly see Undertale or Spec Ops as bad. but I'm used to looking at others viewpoints and not understanding them.

I guess Razade just values different things? I think Undertale and Spec Ops the Line are both great. I'm not going to be angry at him for it, but am I going to suddenly understand how he can possibly dislike it? No. Sorry. I don't see where he is coming from, and I'm not going to make assumptions about where he is coming from with this, because that doesn't really work for communication. I guess I wish could understand, but I don't?

and again I stand by my stance about plot holes. It seems pretty obvious to me that the culture has gotten too obsessed with pointing stuff like that out and plot holes are good shorthand, and I just don't understand how no one can see that, but thats my problem I guess.

I guess I'll just say the Luffy is a morally questionable hero because he is a pirate and this creepy unrelatable monster child and the Navy is morally correct villain because honestly, I have seen no reason why the Navy SHOULDN'T bring law and order to the seas in One Piece if its filled with monsters like the ones encountered like Blackbeard.

I mean, when the basic premise of the game should render the plot impossible, I think we can call that a plot hole. Its not even a case of "this is unlikely, but sometimes people do dumb things" its just straight up "this should have been shut down in fifty different places before it got this far."

[Lord Raziere]

Unrealistic is not exactly what makes a plot hole. Inconsistency is.

I don't much care about why magic exists in Lord of the Rings. It's part of the setting, and so long as it's portrayed consistently, nobody gets put out that it's unlike the real world. They do get put out that the Eagles become a deus ex machina that solve all sorts of otherwise insoluble scenarios, but are not used to bypass other obstacles that they apparently can with ease. The problem doesn't lie in the eagles, but in the apparent contradiction.

So, no, not every story breaks down under scrutiny. Some are far, far more consistent than others. Yeah, some films are enjoyable despite plot holes, but generally, noticing that something doesn't make any sense detracts from enjoyment of most films. The fewer plot holes, the better the work.

I'd put an exception out there for films enjoyed specifically because they are bad, absurd, etc. Sharknado knows what it is. However, nobody considers those to be great works of art, yknow?

Okay?

I don't really care?

there is always contradictions. you can find those in anything. and I don't really care about Sharknado. again, you seem to be that guy who is more concerned about pointing out the contradictions and feeling smart about it than actually enjoying the thing itself. I only ever notice these contradictions when other people point them out when discussing something and when I actually view something....I almost never notice them, they are about as important as whether a random shoe is in a scene or not.

I mean I could say "blob walked over to blob." and it'd be a perfectly consistent story, but thats hardly a good story.

[The Jack]

I can see why someone'd hate spec ops the line, even though I haven't played it.
In general, people make a lot of stuff in order to villainise or lampoon something, ignoring a lot of stuff to.

I never got why people love the marines in aliens so much. As bad as Vietnam might have been, they're not a fair parody.


I think batman's a POS, in general. You can tell me about all this nuance, different writers and how he's a philanthropist, but the dude's a multi billionaire with a suspicious stranglehold over the economy of Gotham. You know what breeds crime? A lack of legitimate economic opportunities. I can't think of a rational for the batman thing better than -He saw his parents murdered by a poor dude, so now he wages personal war on the poor to feel better, branding it as justice and using his economic platform to ensure plenty of poor criminals. It's part of the reason why he doesn't kill- So his punching bag is perpetual. Everyone escapes Arkham and black-gate because Bruce wants it that way. Bruce gave Joker that Christmas tree rocket, it's obvious, How else would he get it? The decades of training and learning to be batman could've been spent increasing the ability of Wayne enterprises to do good or invested in politics if the guy had meant well.
Now, to get some arguments out the way.
-He's giving millions to charity so he can make billions and still look good.
-If he doesn't trust the police force, why doesn't he do a Luthor and build security bots? Why doesn't he use his influence to bring the feds down upon the department?

[Keltest]

Okay?

I don't really care?

there is always contradictions. you can find those in anything. and I don't really care about Sharknado. again, you seem to be that guy who is more concerned about pointing out the contradictions and feeling smart about it than actually enjoying the thing itself. I only ever notice these contradictions when other people point them out when discussing something and when I actually view something....I almost never notice them, they are about as important as whether a random shoe is in a scene or not.

I mean I could say "blob walked over to blob." and it'd be a perfectly consistent story, but thats hardly a good story.

Well youre coming off as somebody who has no standards and is confused that other people might, so...

This isn't just a contradiction, this is a gaping maw in the plot. You could launch a space shuttle through that gap if you aligned it correctly. The premise fundamentally does not work, at all. And maybe that doesn't damage your enjoyment of it, but other people cant take a work seriously if it doesn't even hold up to rudimentary scrutiny.

[Lord Raziere]

Well youre coming off as somebody who has no standards and is confused that other people might, so...

This isn't just a contradiction, this is a gaping maw in the plot. You could launch a space shuttle through that gap if you aligned it correctly. The premise fundamentally does not work, at all. And maybe that doesn't damage your enjoyment of it, but other people cant take a work seriously if it doesn't even hold up to rudimentary scrutiny.

*shrug*

thats your problem, it seems to work to me. its not as if any other horror thing is more logical. your the one ignoring the important message for the offscreen unthings that don't actually matter to the plot. anything that doesn't make the plot happen is unimportant to it and should be discarded, and you don't always have the time to lengthily explain why those things don't happen, because that sort of explanation is a luxury for a writer. perfect is the enemy of finished.

[Kyrell1978]

"The Operative" from Serenity.




The Operative: I'm sorry. If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to. You should have taken my offer. Or did you think none of this was your fault?

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: I don't murder children.

The Operative: I do. If I have to.

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Why? Do you even know why they sent you?

The Operative: It's not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: So me and mine gotta lay down and die... so you can live in your better world?

The Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there... any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.

[Willie the Duck]

"The Operative" from Serenity.

Firefly in general is a case where your sympathies can go back and forth with each new bit of information.

The operative is merely a cold-blooded (not good) patriot (good) willing to kill innocents (so not good) for the greater good (so, good. Happens all the time in movies. You gotta break a few eggs, yadda yadda...). The greater good being a the forces of government against frontier lawlessness (could go either way, depending on genre)... who turned an entire planet of peaceful people into cannibal rape monsters (uh...mistakes happen. In sci fi, often big mistakes) through a failed mind-control pacification experiment (okay, I don't want to play this game anymore, pass me my blankie, I'm going to go hide under my desk).

Even before the movie, the Firefly crew are how-you-look-at-it split between hardened criminals and just regular joes trying to get by. The rebellion Mal and Zoe are veterans of takes on different light based on how closely you think it hews to the American Civil War it is clearly an allusion to as well.

[Eldan]

Hang on. Raziere, are you honestly claiming that you have never once in your life watched something and thought "Hang on, this makes no sense?" And are you really suggesting that people who do so are somehow wrong?

That's a legitimate impression one can get while watching something, and discussing your impression is what art is about. Telling people that they are wrong to do so is seriously dickish. And the impression is nothelped by you just answering "Shrug, I don't care whta you say or think" to every attempt to discuss this.

[Kyrell1978]

Firefly in general is a case where your sympathies can go back and forth with each new bit of information.

The operative is merely a cold-blooded (not good) patriot (good) willing to kill innocents (so not good) for the greater good (so, good. Happens all the time in movies. You gotta break a few eggs, yadda yadda...). The greater good being a the forces of government against frontier lawlessness (could go either way, depending on genre)... who turned an entire planet of peaceful people into cannibal rape monsters (uh...mistakes happen. In sci fi, often big mistakes) through a failed mind-control pacification experiment (okay, I don't want to play this game anymore, pass me my blankie, I'm going to go hide under my desk).

Even before the movie, the Firefly crew are how-you-look-at-it split between hardened criminals and just regular joes trying to get by. The rebellion Mal and Zoe are veterans of takes on different light based on how closely you think it hews to the American Civil War it is clearly an allusion to as well.

I know that The Operative is not a good character, but I was talking more about his working for a "world without sin" and his knowledge that he didn't belong in that world. I think it should also be taken into account that when he was shown that the government in which he believed so strongly had made the planet into "cannibal rape monsters" (great turn of phrase there by the way) he changed his mind about that institution's ability to usher in that world.

[tomandtish]

I know that The Operative is not a good character, but I was talking more about his working for a "world without sin" and his knowledge that he didn't belong in that world. I think it should also be taken into account that when he was shown that the government in which he believed so strongly had made the planet into "cannibal rape monsters" (great turn of phrase there by the way) he changed his mind about that institution's ability to usher in that world.

The biggest problem with The Operative (and similar characters) is that they are SO dedicated to their cause that they never bother looking around. There's plenty of evidence well before then that the world TPTB are creating isn't a world without sin, it is one where the worst sinners have risen to the top. It took literally broadcasting video evidence of the deaths of 30 million people into his face to gt him to realize that. The torture and brainwashing of children (as well as everything else they were up to) apparently didn't budge him at all.

[Tyndmyr]

Okay?

I don't really care?

there is always contradictions. you can find those in anything. and I don't really care about Sharknado. again, you seem to be that guy who is more concerned about pointing out the contradictions and feeling smart about it than actually enjoying the thing itself. I only ever notice these contradictions when other people point them out when discussing something and when I actually view something....I almost never notice them, they are about as important as whether a random shoe is in a scene or not.

You may not notice things while watching a film, but many people do. A pedantic error, like newspapers using filler text for the small fonts you can barely see, is not really important. Mainstream films like The Last Jedi have confusing moments that contradict known information, and those do matter for you to even follow the plot.

You've got an odd worldview, in which there are "people like you", and people who don't enjoy movies. The rest of us also enjoy movies. We wouldn't go to them if we didn't. We just happen to rip on the ones that we didn't like, or flawed parts of things we otherwise enjoyed.


*shrug*

thats your problem, it seems to work to me. its not as if any other horror thing is more logical. your the one ignoring the important message for the offscreen unthings that don't actually matter to the plot. anything that doesn't make the plot happen is unimportant to it and should be discarded, and you don't always have the time to lengthily explain why those things don't happen, because that sort of explanation is a luxury for a writer. perfect is the enemy of finished.

Lots of horror is fairly self consistent. The Meg just came out, and it's pretty fun. It's not perfect, there's one or two scenes where one might think "that shouldn't possibly work", but in general the horror is pretty straightforwardly a giant shark eating people(not a spoiler, the trailer promises exactly this), and the film is generally fun to watch. If you fixed the coupla errors, it would not impact the horror of it at all.

Your writing advice is perhaps useful for a new writer who needs to gain experience, but it's not really appropriate for hollywood. A bit of polishing is in order when one is doing a multimillion dollar project, as compared to writing a fanfic or what have you. It's not wrong to have a higher standard for the former to meet.

[Ibrinar]

Okay?

I don't really care?

there is always contradictions. you can find those in anything. and I don't really care about Sharknado. again, you seem to be that guy who is more concerned about pointing out the contradictions and feeling smart about it than actually enjoying the thing itself. I only ever notice these contradictions when other people point them out when discussing something and when I actually view something....I almost never notice them, they are about as important as whether a random shoe is in a scene or not.

I mean I could say "blob walked over to blob." and it'd be a perfectly consistent story, but thats hardly a good story.

If you don't care you could just not tell others about your plothole related viewpoints? That would be the polite thing to do if you don't want to seriously talk about it.

[Sapphire Guard]

If Gotham is so terrible, how bad does Marvel New York look, with it's enormous superhero population and multiple billionaire geniuses, look? People come to that conclusion by mashing a bunch of continuities together and disregarding the come uppances that several of them involve.

The eagles are not Pokemon, they decide where they go, Gandalf doesn't give them orders.


In canon, Lady Boyle eventually murders her captor and escapes. The Heretic's brand isn't just a brand, it makes it a crime for anyone to help the bearer. Campbell shows up later in the game as a Weeper, so it's not just exile.

[GloatingSwine]

If Gotham is so terrible, how bad does Marvel New York look, with it's enormous superhero population and multiple billionaire geniuses, look? People come to that conclusion by mashing a bunch of continuities together and disregarding the come uppances that several of them involve.


Marvel New York is so densely populated with superheroes that you wonder why anyone bothers to do crime there.

Sure, let's rob a bank oh wait Wolverine was queueing to get his beer money for the evening and now he's upset...


Move to Arkansas, there aren't any superheroes randomly wandering around there.

[Lurkmoar]

In canon, Lady Boyle eventually murders her captor and escapes. The Heretic's brand isn't just a brand, it makes it a crime for anyone to help the bearer. Campbell shows up later in the game as a Weeper, so it's not just exile.




I always felt that Corvo's no-kill methods were cruel mercy, emphasis on the cruel part.

Except for Daud. If Corvo doesn't kill him, that was straight mercy.

Corvo is morally questionable, but his options were fairly limited. He couldn't exactly go to the Bristol version of the cops, he was a wanted murdered of the Empress. Couldn't exactly flee the county, unless he was willing to abandon Emily.


I was never crazy about that book, The Corroded Man because of the inclusion of time travel. To me, unless time travel is a central conceit to a series or franchise, it's better off left out.

[Lord Raziere]

You know what, nevermind. I had a rant, but I decided against it, and just going to leave and move on :smallmad:

[Rynjin]

I guess I'll just say the Luffy is a morally questionable hero because he is a pirate and this creepy unrelatable monster child and the Navy is morally correct villain because honestly, I have seen no reason why the Navy SHOULDN'T bring law and order to the seas in One Piece if its filled with monsters like the ones encountered like Blackbeard.

I thought the series made it readily apparent why Luffy is the good guy and the Navy are the bad guys. Luffy helps people and improves their lives wherever he goes, often toppling iron fisted dictators or wannabe dictators (Arlong, Wapole, Crcodile, Eneru, Moria, Hordy, and Doflamingo all fit the bill...a good 3/4 of the villains). The only reason he is branded a pirate is because he opposes the World Government, a cabal of iron fisted, inbred, needlessly cruel dictators that treat people as objects to be tortured and discarded, with the Navy largely acting as their thug brigade, which often GENOCIDES ENTIRE POPULATIONS to hide political secrets.

There's like five good (named) people in the entire Navy, and two are retired and one is getting court martialed for not being enough of an *******. It's pretty baffling to me that anyone can see the Navy as being in the morally right.


Marvel New York is so densely populated with superheroes that you wonder why anyone bothers to do crime there.

Sure, let's rob a bank oh wait Wolverine was queueing to get his beer money for the evening and now he's upset...


Move to Arkansas, there aren't any superheroes randomly wandering around there.

Not even there is safe! (http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Arkansas)

[Zevox]

The game he's talking about is God of War, by the by. Because spoiler tabs are kinda useless when unlabeled.
Kind of glad you mentioned that, since the reference to The Last of Us outside the spoiler made me assume it was something related to that and skip it, since I've never played that nor care about it.


Somebody mentioned The Last of Us and having recently finished one of PS4's best games this year...

Kratos from the GoW franchise. A look at his life prior to the latest game and the current one.

If anyone has played the series (at least the original trilogy), Kratos is at best, an antihero who, after a series of terrible and selfish decisions on his behalf, plays right into Divine Trickery by Ares.

This leads him to not only butchering hundreds if not thousands of innocents, but his family in a fit of true Spartan Rage. He of course, blames the gods, despite serving them for years afterwards. But even when he gets his revenge on Ares, he's still far from a noble soul.

This gets worse in the sequel, when he butchers the Sisters of Fate and then brutally impales Zeus, who narrowly escapes by using Athena as a human shield.

Despite her telling Kratos that Zeus cannot die or OLynmpus will fall, he doesn't care: he wants to kill the guy. Now mind you, he was made God of War to fill Ares' shoes, but his belligerent and volatile behavior in Olympus caused the other gods to be concerned... or outright afraid of him. Especially Zeus.

The third and last game in the original trilogy has him murder gods left and right. There is no sense of noble quest here- he will snap necks, dismember and rip heads off. Hell, he even killed his grandfather when the poor guy was already caught in Tartarus!

And every time he killed a deity, the world suffered for his actions. Biblical style.

At no point did Kratos feel any remorse of what happened to the world...and he kept on doing it until he bashed Zeus to a bloody paste with his bare hands.

Now, we fast forward to the latest game and check on the main antagonist.

Balder is insane, yes. But it wasn't his choosing- his mother "blessed" him with invulnerability, which has a Monkey's Paw style effect on the guy, driving him insane.

He just wants this taken off him and after 100 years of not feeling "ANYTHING!", it's clear that he'd go crazy. So, when Faye's spell wore off, he went to ask for a way to get this curse removed, but communication problems arose and a few seconds later, well... if you have played the game, you know what happens.

While Kratos is definitely (at best) a morally questionable hero, I wouldn't call him an example of a good one, at least not until the most recent game. For the entire original trilogy - and I assume the various midquel titles, never played those - he kind of drags things down by being that. It's very hard to be invested in or care about his story, because he's such an irredeemably bad, unrelatable character - just a revenge-obsessed sociopath, and their very few attempts to humanize him are too little and too late to be effective. His story works as an excuse to go killing mythological characters and enjoy the gameplay, but it doesn't create a good narrative or make him a good character, IMO.

I wouldn't call Balder in the most recent game morally correct in any way, either. Oh sure, you can totally understand him being upset with his mother over the side-effect of her spell causing him to be unable to feel anything, but that doesn't change he's almost as obsessed with killing her as Kratos was with Ares and Zeus, even after he's freed from her spell's effects. Plus he's portrayed happily working for Odin, and while everything you learn about him in the game is admittedly secondhand and thus open to question, if it's accurate he's pretty awful in his own right in this game's world, and it does come from multiple corroborating sources, so odds are it's at least somewhat on the mark at worst.

[Razade]

I thought the series made it readily apparent why Luffy is the good guy and the Navy are the bad guys. Luffy helps people and improves their lives wherever he goes, often toppling iron fisted dictators or wannabe dictators (Arlong, Wapole, Crcodile, Eneru, Moria, Hordy, and Doflamingo all fit the bill...a good 3/4 of the villains). The only reason he is branded a pirate is because he opposes the World Government, a cabal of iron fisted, inbred, needlessly cruel dictators that treat people as objects to be tortured and discarded, with the Navy largely acting as their thug brigade, which often GENOCIDES ENTIRE POPULATIONS to hide political secrets.

There's like five good (named) people in the entire Navy, and two are retired and one is getting court martialed for not being enough of an *******. It's pretty baffling to me that anyone can see the Navy as being in the morally right

Luffy isn't a hero. He says it constantly. He doesn't go out of his way to help people and the crew actively rob people and places. They're pirates. But Luffy isn't a bad guy, he's just living a free life and when people try to stop other people from living a free life (and get in his way) than he fights. That's really his only motivation. He's not fighting anyone to better the world, he's fighting them because

1. They're in his way
2. They oppose his lifestyle
3. There's meat involved.

He's an anti-hero.

[Tyndmyr]

Claiming to not be a hero, just someone wanting to help, is something a ton of heroes arch-typically do.

[deuterio12]

Luffy isn't a hero. He says it constantly. He doesn't go out of his way to help people and the crew actively rob people and places. They're pirates. But Luffy isn't a bad guy, he's just living a free life and when people try to stop other people from living a free life (and get in his way) than he fights. That's really his only motivation. He's not fighting anyone to better the world, he's fighting them because

1. They're in his way
2. They oppose his lifestyle
3. There's meat involved.

He's an anti-hero.

Luffy virtually never steals, most of the time he's either finding unattended treasure or getting rewards for his good deeds.

Then Luffy will hand out said treasure out of his own will to help people in need. (https://www.mangareader.net/one-piece/651/16)

Really, that's how heroic Luffy is. "Oh, you need money? Here, have those giant bags filled with treasure."

[Forum Explorer]

Okay?

I don't really care?

there is always contradictions. you can find those in anything. and I don't really care about Sharknado. again, you seem to be that guy who is more concerned about pointing out the contradictions and feeling smart about it than actually enjoying the thing itself. I only ever notice these contradictions when other people point them out when discussing something and when I actually view something....I almost never notice them, they are about as important as whether a random shoe is in a scene or not.

I mean I could say "blob walked over to blob." and it'd be a perfectly consistent story, but thats hardly a good story.


Well maybe an example will help you understand this viewpoint.
Penny's death is a good example of this for me. It's not just something that happened, it's something that zero sense. It pulls you out of the the story making you go 'wait what?' and when you try and figure it out it breaks down even further.

Spec Ops the line seems to do that with a twist reveal, which is the worst time to **** everything up. In this case, if the PC is having psychotic breaks then his comrades should point that out, at the very least. They especially should, because this is how the military works, try and remove you from command. It's such a bad twist it retroactively ruins the rest of the story. It's like if Lord of the Rings ended by having Sam secretly be Sauron the whole time. Not only is that really stupid, but it doesn't make sense to begin with.

[Bohandas]

*The hero from Blade Runner is at best the equivalent of Hannibal Lecter's role in the plot of Silence Of The Lambs or Pinhead's role in the plot of Hellraiser 1, and at worst actually the villain of the film.

*Everybody in the movie Frankenstein. The deranged mad scientist is mostly harmless. Of the three people the monster kills two were self defense and the third was an accident. The doctor who is presented as the voice of reason is a dangerous amoral quack.

[Razade]

{Scrubbed}


I don't get his viewpoints, they're alien to me. I do not understand how he could possibly see Undertale or Spec Ops as bad. but I'm used to looking at others viewpoints and not understanding them.

Both are over-moralizing pap that hobble their own message while trying to be clever. I generally dislike things that try to speak to me as if I'm a child. Both games also have the problem of terrible controls and not particularly entertaining gameplay. I also find it incredibly annoying when a game wants to shut itself down in an attempt to be "meta" and clever. It's neither. It's annoying, it's gimmicky and I don't have time for it. Undertale had good music at least.


I guess Razade just values different things? I think Undertale and Spec Ops the Line are both great.

I value coherency and treating the audience like adults. I value a story that takes the time to build suspense and narrative tension, rather than tell me it's done that post-hoc while scrambling to cover the set dressing with as many blinking lights so as to distract me from the man behind the mirror.


I'm not going to be angry at him for it, but am I going to suddenly understand how he can possibly dislike it? No. Sorry. I don't see where he is coming from, and I'm not going to make assumptions about where he is coming from with this, because that doesn't really work for communication. I guess I wish could understand, but I don't?

Being angry at me would be pretty unreasonable so, good on ya for not getting angry that I dislike the things you like.

As to understanding me, you could just read what I wrote. I'm not lying or obfuscating my position. I think I've listed very plainly why I dislike the things I dislike. You've dismissed them all, every single one, as "people not being willing to suspend their disbelief" and then have gone on to talk about how since you don't care, it doesn't matter to you. You haven't attempted to see things from any position but your own because you're assured that your position is the correct one. You strike me as the sort of person who hasn't read a single argument against any position they hold.

That's not a place I'd like to be. Question everything, especially the things you care about.


and again I stand by my stance about plot holes. It seems pretty obvious to me that the culture has gotten too obsessed with pointing stuff like that out and plot holes are good shorthand, and I just don't understand how no one can see that, but thats my problem I guess.

Your stance is a strawman. You taking aim at "the culture" is misplaced. If the rest of the world is telling you you're wrong, it might not be them that has the problem. Maybe. It's not always the case, but I think you want to look down your nose at people for disliking the things you dislike. I think it's arrogance that motivates you, some need to be smarter or better than these "cultured" people. But since you don't care if the things you like make sense or have consistency or quality, you just go "culture has a problem" because you don't have any actual valid arguments to back up why you like the things you like in the face of criticism. It's a defense mechanism.


I guess I'll just say the Luffy is a morally questionable hero because he is a pirate and this creepy unrelatable monster child and the Navy is morally correct villain because honestly, I have seen no reason why the Navy SHOULDN'T bring law and order to the seas in One Piece if its filled with monsters like the ones encountered like Blackbeard.

I agree that Luffy is a questionable hero. He doesn't think of himself a hero in the first place so....I'm fine with him not doing heroic things when he doesn't do them. As for "unrelatable"...that's just your problem honestly. You don't really seem to be able to relate to many people, if any, so I honestly can't find this a point of agreement. It's you, not the story. As for the Navy being morally correct...you're kidding yourself. The Navy props up a corrupt political system where the World Nobles employ slaves. Not just slaves, slaves to move them around because they refuse to walk and slaves to move giant construction equipment even when they could use machines.

The Navy destroys entire populations for knowing too much. They destroy countries for the pursuit of knowledge. They look past pirates who are far worse than Luffy and Co, employ them even as a deterrent against other pirates, they allow pirates to control countries with such an iron fist that the people in the country die of starvation. They allow the World Nobles to build giant bridges and other things on the backs of slaves. Tequilla Wolf has taken 700 years of slaves. The Navy doesn't just support it, but defends it. That's just a small lift of what the Navy does. The Navy and the World Government are so heinously corrupt and twisted that there's a faction within it to reform it.


Luffy virtually never steals, most of the time he's either finding unattended treasure or getting rewards for his good deeds.

Then Luffy will hand out said treasure out of his own will to help people in need. (https://www.mangareader.net/one-piece/651/16)

Really, that's how heroic Luffy is. "Oh, you need money? Here, have those giant bags filled with treasure."

Luffy steals all the time. Not only that but Luffy has said he's not a hero. Fullstop. Heroes have to share their meat. Others may think of him that way but he isn't a hero and he isn't trying to be a hero. He's just trying to live his life free. He's said that on more than one occasion. He may be heroic, but he's not a hero.

You're also vastly underselling and mis-characterizing the events on Fishman Island. He told Hody he didn't care if he took over. That's before Hody tried to drop Noah on the city, where his friends are. He then gave up the money because he felt personally responsible for eating all their candy.

Then Nami screamed at him for giving up their treasure.

[deuterio12]

Luffy steals all the time.

Fine, name three times since he set sail.



Not only that but Luffy has said he's not a hero. Fullstop.

So when a genocidical psycopath says they aren't the villain, they aren't the villain?

Actions speak louder than words.



Heroes have to share their meat.

Yet everybody in Luffy's crew gets to eat to their heart's content, nobody's starving in there.



Others may think of him that way but he isn't a hero and he isn't trying to be a hero. He's just trying to live his life free. He's said that on more than one occasion. He may be heroic, but he's not a hero.

You're also vastly underselling and mis-characterizing the events on Fishman Island. He told Hody he didn't care if he took over. That's before Hody tried to drop Noah on the city, where his friends are. He then gave up the money because he felt personally responsible for eating all their candy.


Those things are contradictory. You can't say Luffy just wants to live free and then claim he feels weighted down by responsibilities to other people. An anti-hero pirate would've just sailed away with both treasure and candy, but a Luffy always pays his debts.



Then Nami screamed at him for giving up their treasure.
And that's why Luffy's the heroic captain and main protagonist.

[Forum Explorer]

Both are over-moralizing pap. I generally dislike things that try to speak to me as if I'm a child. Both games also have the problem of terrible controls and not particularly entertaining gameplay. I also find it incredibly annoying when a game wants to shut itself down in an attempt to be "meta" and clever. It's neither. It's annoying, it's gimmicky and I don't have time for it. Undertale had good music at least.


See, now that is something that I don't understand. Undertale's moralizing is pretty minimum. Or perhaps I should say, it exists. Besides Undertale, I don't think I could come up with 5 games that actually had a moral to them. (For the record; Dishonored, Fallout 3, Spec Ops the Line, and Bioshock). And in those games the morality was really basic and binary where a single bad act too many will push you to the evil ending, and vice versa with no middle ground. Or just stupid. Like Fallout will call you a bad person for sending a radiation proof ghoul in to fix the machine rather then heroically (and pointlessly) sacrificing yourself. And we've already talked about Spec Ops the Line. Can you think of a game that had a moral done well?

I don't think Undertale talks to you as if you were a child, but I could see the argument for it. The game itself is relatively childish with it's art style, the monster's personalities, and it's storyline.

Not liking the mechanics, gameplay, or gimmicks is on you. There's nothing wrong with not liking it, but there's nothing really to discuss either. I suppose the only question is, if you didn't like the gameplay or the mechanics why did you (presumably) finish playing through it? I don't care how good the story is, if I don't like the gameplay, I'm not going to play it. For example Skyward Sword. I'm love the Zelda games and lore. But I couldn't stand the controls, so I didn't even play through the first boss.

[Lord Raziere]

{Scrubbed}

[Razade]

Fine, name three times since he set sail.

They stole gold from Skypia comes to mind, despite the Skypians not caring about gold at all. He ditched out on his bill in various towns across the Alabasta arc. I guess that could count for more than one thing but I think it's fair to roll it into one. Luffy's also stolen a number of boats. The boat when he escaped Impel Down, the boat he used to infiltrate the Marine HQ to deliever his message and ring the Ox bell. Pretty sure (but it's been a long long time) that he stole a boat after beating Alvida.

So there's your three.

The rest of the crew are even worse when it comes to pilfering. Nami is called The Cat Thief for good reason.


So when a genocidical psycopath says they aren't the villain, they aren't the villain?

They certainly aren't the villain to themselves. Which ya know, I said. Luffy doesn't see himself as one. Others do.


Actions speak louder than words.

Sure do. Some of their actions.

Declaring themselves "pirates": The story line clearly establishes the grounds for identification as a pirate in One Piece and at the very least simply declaring oneself a pirate is enough to have the Marines arrest you. Though they declared themselves pirates, originally their actual reporting as being "pirates" was merely revenge from Nezumi because Nami beat him up. They had however acted more as vigilantes at the time because the East Blue pirates were allowed to hurt their friends and potential crewmates. Up until this point, by official means they were not classified as pirates.

Burning the flag of the world government: a declaration of war

They have hit/attacked members of the law enforcement: a crime even in the real world. Zoro commented when he raised his swords against the Marines for the very first time after Luffy freed him, once you are declared a criminal there is no going back.

Holding a hostage: Holding the Ryugu Palace guards and, Ministers of the Left and Right, and King Neptune. Although, it wasn't true, they were still "involved" with the hostage situation with the World Nobles at the Human Auction House.

Pillaging: At the very least the Straw Hats did pillage gold from Skypiea (though were naive to the inhabitants' own regard to gold). Luffy beat Bellamy to get Cricket's stolen gold back. Nami also had previously stolen valuables from other pirates with the aid of the Arlong Pirates when needed, as well as being part of Arlong's crew who was actively pillaging villages around the East Blue. Franky had stolen from others (Usopp was a victim) to get what he wanted prior to being a 'pirate', and even though a pirate could not report him, it's still a crime. They also robbed the whole treasure hoard of Thriller Bark, although its inhabitants left it on their ship and died before the crew were back.

Privateering: They have also committed at least one act that would fall into the classification of "Privateering" (Igaram hired the crew to protect Princess Vivi on a price agreed by Nami together with their actions in Alabasta against Crocodile). Initially, outside of the Shichibukai, this is frowned upon and could have gotten the Alabasta royal family in trouble.

Vigilantism: Throughout the East Blue, they resolved one problem after another by acting as vigilantes even where the Marines could not succeed.

Freeing prisoners: Zoro, Robin, Usopp, Franky, and various members of Impel Down were all freed by a member of the Straw Hats.

Destroying Marine ships: Although a lie, Robin was said to have destroyed a number of ships at 8 years old. Since the start of the series, an untold number of lesser Marine ships have been taken down.

Murder and attempted murder: Zoro was known to have killed prior to joining the crew. Officially, Iceburg was apparently a target for murder by them, however Water 7, the place where it occurred, soon learned the truth.

Black market: Franky had at least one dealing with black market materials, the Adam Wood.

Forbidden research: Robin reads Poneglyphs, something that is banned in the One Piece world.

Overthrowing a king: Wapol being kicked out by the Straw Hats.

Destroying government property: Enies Lobby, Impel Down and Marineford all have had serious damage dealt to them.

Stealing a ship; On several occasions, such as when Luffy delivered his 3D2Y message, occasionally ships were stolen by the crew albeit it for brief periods of time.

Then there is punching a world nobel right in the face...


Yet everybody in Luffy's crew gets to eat to their heart's content, nobody's starving in there.

But Luffy still doesn't share his meat.


Those things are contradictory. You can't say Luffy just wants to live free and then claim he feels weighted down by responsibilities to other people. An anti-hero pirate would've just sailed away with both treasure and candy, but a Luffy always pays his debts.

No he doesn't, at least monetary debts he doesn't. It was a major bit of slapstick in the Alabasta arc that they'd dine and dash.

I also never claimed he was "weighted down by responsibilities". Those are your words. I pointed out why he gave the treasure to Big Mom. He says as much (https://youtu.be/jYL7VFGWUlI?t=114). The only person contradicting anything is you, and it's the story and how it's presented.


And that's why Luffy's the heroic captain and main protagonist.

He's absolutely the main protagonist. You don't have to be good to be a protagonist though. You don't have to be a hero either.


See, now that is something that I don't understand. Undertale's moralizing is pretty minimum. Or perhaps I should say, it exists. Besides Undertale, I don't think I could come up with 5 games that actually had a moral to them. (For the record; Dishonored, Fallout 3, Spec Ops the Line, and Bioshock). And in those games the morality was really basic and binary where a single bad act too many will push you to the evil ending, and vice versa with no middle ground. Or just stupid. Like Fallout will call you a bad person for sending a radiation proof ghoul in to fix the machine rather then heroically (and pointlessly) sacrificing yourself. And we've already talked about Spec Ops the Line. Can you think of a game that had a moral done well?

Bastion? I'd like to think it had some pretty deep emotions running through it with Zulf and the Kid. Forgiveness, being a very large part of it. Putting aside hate to carry someone who betrayed you through enemy lands to show that whatever wars happened in the past is over. Shadow of the Colossus I feel (and we could argue that the hero in that game is certainly morally ambiguous. He clearly know what he's doing is wrong but he wants to save the love of his life) has a message in it, the creators certainly seem to think so. I think the early Pokemon games had a decent moral to them. The love of nature and the desire to protect it, to keep it pristine and cherish it. Loving one's companions as a better form of growth than a simple desire to grow stronger.

The thing about morals in video games is they're different to everyone. Which I think is the big problem with games that set out to have one rather than a game that lets you come to your own conclusions.


I don't think Undertale talks to you as if you were a child, but I could see the argument for it. The game itself is relatively childish with it's art style, the monster's personalities, and it's storyline.

I certainly don't think it set out to do that. I don't think it achieved what it set out to do though.


Not liking the mechanics, gameplay, or gimmicks is on you. There's nothing wrong with not liking it, but there's nothing really to discuss either. I suppose the only question is, if you didn't like the gameplay or the mechanics why did you (presumably) finish playing through it? I don't care how good the story is, if I don't like the gameplay, I'm not going to play it. For example Skyward Sword. I'm love the Zelda games and lore. But I couldn't stand the controls, so I didn't even play through the first boss.

Well, we can certainly say if a game has objectively bad mechanics and gameplay. If the game is a buggy mess, it's a buggy mess. That's not on me. That's on the person who developed it. If it crashes every ten seconds, it's not my opinion the game is made poorly.

As to why I finished it...I started it. What better reason do I need? Maybe it gets better later on. Maybe I'm just bad at it and I'll get better and find the spot I enjoy. It didn't happen for Spec Ops (I also mentioned I only finished it because I was without internet for a week and I was bored) and it didn't happen for Undertale (I was playing it on stream and everyone promised it got better. It didn't.)

{Scrubbed}

[Rynjin]

I think a lot of people in this thread conflate "moral" and "law abiding", as Razade's post proves, along with the Les Miserables discussion. Not really a value judgment, just an interesting thing to note.

[Razade]

I think a lot of people in this thread conflate "moral" and "law abiding", as Razade's post proves, along with the Les Miserables discussion. Not really a value judgment, just an interesting thing to note.

I was just pointing out that Luffy isn't a hero with a list of his crimes. I don't think he's a morally wrong character. I'd say his moral compass is really rather strong when it's wrested away from One Piece being in part a comedy and thus needing him to have some outrageous character flaws to garner the chuckles. Though I do think stealing from people when you don't need to is rather immoral. I likewise wouldn't call Jean Valjean immoral for stealing the bread. He was starving to death. Was he wrong to steal? Sure, but certainly not immoral.

[Forum Explorer]

Bastion? I'd like to think it had some pretty deep emotions running through it with Zulf and the Kid. Forgiveness, being a very large part of it. Putting aside hate to carry someone who betrayed you through enemy lands to show that whatever wars happened in the past is over. Shadow of the Colossus I feel (and we could argue that the hero in that game is certainly morally ambiguous. He clearly know what he's doing is wrong but he wants to save the love of his life) has a message in it, the creators certainly seem to think so. I think the early Pokemon games had a decent moral to them. The love of nature and the desire to protect it, to keep it pristine and cherish it. Loving one's companions as a better form of growth than a simple desire to grow stronger.

The thing about morals in video games is they're different to everyone. Which I think is the big problem with games that set out to have one rather than a game that lets you come to your own conclusions.



I certainly don't think it set out to do that. I don't think it achieved what it set out to do though.



Well, we can certainly say if a game has objectively bad mechanics and gameplay. If the game is a buggy mess, it's a buggy mess. That's not on me. That's on the person who developed it. If it crashes every ten seconds, it's not my opinion the game is made poorly.

As to why I finished it...I started it. What better reason do I need? Maybe it gets better later on. Maybe I'm just bad at it and I'll get better and find the spot I enjoy. It didn't happen for Spec Ops (I also mentioned I only finished it because I was without internet for a week and I was bored) and it didn't happen for Undertale (I was playing it on stream and everyone promised it got better. It didn't.)


I never played Bastion, so I couldn't really say. I don't really feel like Shadow of the Colossus had a strong moral message to it, no more then say, Red Riding Hood does.

As for Pokemon, certainly not, and if you want to talk about preachy, then they are a perfect example of it. They rag on your rival for 'only caring about making his Pokemon stronger', but the player doesn't care either. Or doesn't have to at least. Repeatedly battling wild Pokemon to strengthen my own (which also flies in the face of 'keeping nature pristine'), ditching long time companions for new stronger Pokemon, and pumping them full of drugs/medicine to brute force my way through fights because I have so much money to have 99 Hyper Potions. So yeah, the gameplay and so called morals they are trying to teach you don't match up at all, and really it feels like hypocritical lip service or a childish message jammed in for the kids.

So no, I wouldn't consider Pokemon to have a moral. Not those games at least.



Considering how wildly successful Undertale was, I feel safe in assuming that it was successful it what it set out to do, just what it set out to do didn't appeal to you.


Fair enough, some games do have objective problems. Undertale, however, isn't one of them. Or it shouldn't be. If your version was crashing every ten seconds, then that's a rather unique problem. Not liking the bullet dodging, or menu, or movement controls, is not an objective problem.


A reason that makes you happy/improve yourself? It's one thing to force yourself to finish a project that'll make you better in some way, but Undertale is just a video game. I feel like it's an important skill to be able to leave something that you don't like behind. Otherwise you might find yourself trapped at a crap job, because hey, maybe the job will get better if you stick at it. Seriously, learning to ditch things that made me miserable is probably the most useful thing I learned from my first crappy job.

[Razade]

I never played Bastion, so I couldn't really say. I don't really feel like Shadow of the Colossus had a strong moral message to it, no more then say, Red Riding Hood does.

As for Pokemon, certainly not, and if you want to talk about preachy, then they are a perfect example of it. They rag on your rival for 'only caring about making his Pokemon stronger', but the player doesn't care either. Or doesn't have to at least. Repeatedly battling wild Pokemon to strengthen my own (which also flies in the face of 'keeping nature pristine'), ditching long time companions for new stronger Pokemon, and pumping them full of drugs/medicine to brute force my way through fights because I have so much money to have 99 Hyper Potions. So yeah, the gameplay and so called morals they are trying to teach you don't match up at all, and really it feels like hypocritical lip service or a childish message jammed in for the kids.

So no, I wouldn't consider Pokemon to have a moral. Not those games at least.

See, that's what I mean. Different people take different things away from the experiences they have. I wouldn't say any of them actively set out to preach at you (though the creator of Pokemon certainly seems to think his games have that message). But Spec Ops does go in with a message. Undertale too.


IConsidering how wildly successful Undertale was, I feel safe in assuming that it was successful it what it set out to do, just what it set out to do didn't appeal to you.

If you're saying what it set out to do is make money? Yeah, certainly did that. It sold a lot of games for an indie game. One million is nothing to sneeze at. But it certainly didn't go gangbusters, 1 mil isn't even that big a number for the most popular indie games.


Fair enough, some games do have objective problems. Undertale, however, isn't one of them. Or it shouldn't be. If your version was crashing every ten seconds, then that's a rather unique problem. Not liking the bullet dodging, or menu, or movement controls, is not an objective problem.

They are if they make gameplay less engaging or difficult. I'd say bad controls is one of the things that makes a game objectively bad from the get go.


A reason that makes you happy/improve yourself? It's one thing to force yourself to finish a project that'll make you better in some way, but Undertale is just a video game. I feel like it's an important skill to be able to leave something that you don't like behind. Otherwise you might find yourself trapped at a crap job, because hey, maybe the job will get better if you stick at it. Seriously, learning to ditch things that made me miserable is probably the most useful thing I learned from my first crappy job.

I don't prioritize happiness when ingesting media. I like to challenge myself and my comfort zones. On paper Undertale had everything I liked. In execution...wasn't for me and I sure tried to like it.

[Zalabim]

You may not notice things while watching a film, but many people do. A pedantic error, like newspapers using filler text for the small fonts you can barely see, is not really important. Mainstream films like The Last Jedi have confusing moments that contradict known information, and those do matter for you to even follow the plot.
Some movies are confusing, perplexing, or contradictory, but in the case of The Last Jedi, it turns out people just fail to understand real life and/or science fiction, and that says more about them than about the movie. What some people call plot holes, or just confusing or contradictory moments, actually aren't.

Well maybe an example will help you understand this viewpoint.
Penny's death is a good example of this for me. It's not just something that happened, it's something that zero sense. It pulls you out of the the story making you go 'wait what?' and when you try and figure it out it breaks down even further.
I can't imagine what there is to not understand or be confused by in that SPOILER. No one should be pulled out of the story, at least not in any inappropriate way, by that spoiler. Obviously it does mark a radical change in the story, which is why it is a spoiler.

[Rockphed]

Some movies are confusing, perplexing, or contradictory, but in the case of The Last Jedi, it turns out people just fail to understand real life and/or science fiction, and that says more about them than about the movie. What some people call plot holes, or just confusing or contradictory moments, actually aren't.

I liked The Last Jedi, but I maintain that it was unfocused and rambling. I think they tried to cram too much story in and lost some of the transitions in the process. When you only watch one character's story, however, it tends to make sense. So you have Rey training with Luke and having visions of Ben, which culminates in the throne-room fight scene. You have Finn's attempt to get the beacon away, which leads to meeting Rose and their adventure on the Casino planet. And you have Poe's attempt to get the fleet to start acting like a unit at war instead of a tea party.

That said, the only truly stupid thing in the movie is when Ben flies his fighter into the Raddus's fighter bay and blows up all the fighters. I mean it is a great tactic, but you would think that people would realize it is a great tactic and take measures to prevent it. (Okay, so it also happens in Phantom Menace, but the Trade Federation are terminally incompetent and only succeed at anything because they have a dark lord of the sith propping them up.)

[Zalabim]

I liked The Last Jedi, but I maintain that it was unfocused and rambling. I think they tried to cram too much story in and lost some of the transitions in the process. When you only watch one character's story, however, it tends to make sense. So you have Rey training with Luke and having visions of Ben, which culminates in the throne-room fight scene. You have Finn's attempt to get the beacon away, which leads to meeting Rose and their adventure on the Casino planet. And you have Poe's attempt to get the fleet to start acting like a unit at war instead of a tea party.

That said, the only truly stupid thing in the movie is when Ben flies his fighter into the Raddus's fighter bay and blows up all the fighters. I mean it is a great tactic, but you would think that people would realize it is a great tactic and take measures to prevent it. (Okay, so it also happens in Phantom Menace, but the Trade Federation are terminally incompetent and only succeed at anything because they have a dark lord of the sith propping them up.)

Oh jeez, that. I can explain that physically, in-universe, technologically. They were launching their own fighters so the fighter bay was open/exposed. But I really can't explain that. It feels like Diabolus ex Machina. We're under attack -> Launch fighters. It's the most ordinary response in the world. But this time, all the fighters are destroyed before they can launch, because I guess Ben Solo is just that good. Maybe he really is channeling the spirit of Anakin Skywalker. I recognize it as a plot contrivance. Keep Poe from going out and blowing stuff up, and getting in a dogfight with Kylo Ren. No way that ends with happy fans.

[Rockphed]

Oh jeez, that. I can explain that physically, in-universe, technologically. They were launching their own fighters so the fighter bay was open/exposed. But I really can't explain that. It feels like Diabolus ex Machina. We're under attack -> Launch fighters. It's the most ordinary response in the world. But this time, all the fighters are destroyed before they can launch, because I guess Ben Solo is just that good. Maybe he really is channeling the spirit of Anakin Skywalker. I recognize it as a plot contrivance. Keep Poe from going out and blowing stuff up, and getting in a dogfight with Kylo Ren. No way that ends with happy fans.

I can see why they did it, but I wish they had used another explanation. They could even have said "sorry Poe, we don't have fuel to fly the fighters."

The other thing that twigs me is that they go into this weird bit about how hyper jumps can't be traced, but if that were true, then how did Vader chase Leia to Tatooine?

[Zalabim]

I can see why they did it, but I wish they had used another explanation. They could even have said "sorry Poe, we don't have fuel to fly the fighters."

The other thing that twigs me is that they go into this weird bit about how hyper jumps can't be traced, but if that were true, then how did Vader chase Leia to Tatooine?

The Force? Intuition? A carefully analyzed intelligence network about the rebellion and its allies? Large amounts of manpower? Flight plan taken from the larger ship? If hyper jumps can be traced, what are all those homing beacons for?

[Jan Mattys]

Ok, I'll say it here.

Both the most morally correct villains and the most morally questionable hero, in my opinion, belong to "Dead Poets Society".

I know it is very uplifting to see such a talented and passionate teacher in a school, and of course Robin William's character is tailormade to be charismatic and seductive to young men stuck in a world focused on self-discipline, but I strongly feel Mr. Keating is... well... wrong.

Self Discipline and Self Improvement are presented as mutually exclusive in the movie, the first being a cage and the second being the answer to life, universe and everything. But that's a very twisted way to look at it. Discipline and Dreams both concur to create a strong, stable and happy human being and honestly, once you stop looking at the Dead Poets Society through your rebellious teenager eyes, it is clear how Keating is creating more problems than he is solving.

I'll go even further and say that, while Neil's father is obviously a bad, bad example of parenthood, the fact remains that Keating was instrumental in pushing a frail, confused and frustrated teenager to the extreme and tragic outcome of suicide. He got numerous warnings and knew extremely well how strong of a grip he was gaining over his students, and he didn't worry about it.

Multiple times, other teachers and even the principal of the school warn him, but to no avail, and we as an audience are supposed to root for him anyways.

Seriously, once you look at the movie with unbiased eyes, it is a painful thing to watch. Kids are frail and stupid and easily manipulated - to the surprise of absolutely no one, I'd add - and one should be more careful around them than Robin Williams is.

[Willie the Duck]

*The hero from Blade Runner is at best the equivalent of Hannibal Lecter's role in the plot of Silence Of The Lambs or Pinhead's role in the plot of Hellraiser 1, and at worst actually the villain of the film.

I forget, is it stated in the movie that the replicants each had to murder a person to be here on Earth?


Self Discipline and Self Improvement are presented as mutually exclusive in the movie, the first being a cage and the second being the answer to life, universe and everything. But that's a very twisted way to look at it. Discipline and Dreams both concur to create a strong, stable and happy human being and honestly, once you stop looking at the Dead Poets Society through your rebellious teenager eyes, it is clear how Keating is creating more problems than he is solving.

The movie makes a lot more sense if you were a ~15-40 y. o. (U.S.) American in 1989. A wave of 50's nostalgia had washed over the nation during the 80s, and the backlash was a reminder of the crippling conformity and indoctrination of the 1950s U.S. It was also about when boomers started writing and helming movies and the boomers had been told in the 50s that 'discipline' involved going and re-fighting their Dad's wars by-proxy in the rice paddies of Vietnam. 'Self Discipline' was a code word between generations (going both ways) to indicate that the boomer generation wasn't living up to their parents' ideals, and whole lot of movies of the time were shots across the bow going the other direction.



I'll go even further and say that, while Neil's father is obviously a bad, bad example of parenthood, the fact remains that Keating was instrumental in pushing a frail, confused and frustrated teenager to the extreme and tragic outcome of suicide. He got numerous warnings and knew extremely well how strong of a grip he was gaining over his students, and he didn't worry about it.

Multiple times, other teachers and even the principal of the school warn him, but to no avail, and we as an audience are supposed to root for him anyways.

Seriously, once you look at the movie with unbiased eyes, it is a painful thing to watch. Kids are frail and stupid and easily manipulated - to the surprise of absolutely no one, I'd add - and one should be more careful around them than Robin Williams is.

That's not unbiased, it's biased in another direction. However, I will concede that Keatings was thoroughly irresponsible. Everyone involved failed Neil thoroughly.

[Wraith]

Quite a lot of movies that portray Satan as the villain, often do so in a particularly scattershot way that implies that he's not all that bad.

In Constantine, he strikes a deal with John to release a soul from Hell after a service was performed.... and he does it. Yes he opposes God, and is the Great Deceiver, and the Prince of Darkness... but he stuck by his word. He didn't even revoke the deal when it became clear that John had managed to get out of his half of the agreement, instead giving John a free shot at redemption instead of forcing the issue.

In Bedazzled, Brendan Fraser's protagonist spends 86 of the 90 minutes committing sin after sin and generally proving himself selfish and worthy of damnation, but again the Devil honours the contract and lets him off scott-free for a single penitent act. She wrote in a get-out-of-hell-free clause into he contract - for some reason - and not only honoured it but also admitted it freely even though Fraser was completely unaware of it. She plays fair.

In Little Nicky, Satan is actually an amiable and pretty stand-up guy. Yes, he opposes the Lord of Creation, but at the same time he is genuinely affectionate of his children, does his job of torturing evil souls efficiently and reliably, and even makes a fairly selfless sacrifice of allowing his youngest, most vulnerable son return to Earth to live free of his own influence.

And the TV show Lucifer is a constant deconstruction of the idea that Satan is an evil person. He's arrogant and hedonistic, sure, but he's genuinely nice and goes out his way to be fair and honest with people, despite how badly he has been treated in the past and how he was unfairly tarred by religion since his imprisonment in Hell.
Heck, several of his antagonists throughout the series are his own brothers who remained loyal to God - literal Angels of the Lord - and in comparison they're all self-righteous jerks who blindly follow their own imperfect perceptions of God's unknowable will. Around them, Lucifer is almost always on the moral high-ground in comparison.

[Forum Explorer]

See, that's what I mean. Different people take different things away from the experiences they have. I wouldn't say any of them actively set out to preach at you (though the creator of Pokemon certainly seems to think his games have that message). But Spec Ops does go in with a message. Undertale too.



If you're saying what it set out to do is make money? Yeah, certainly did that. It sold a lot of games for an indie game. One million is nothing to sneeze at. But it certainly didn't go gangbusters, 1 mil isn't even that big a number for the most popular indie games.



They are if they make gameplay less engaging or difficult. I'd say bad controls is one of the things that makes a game objectively bad from the get go.



I don't prioritize happiness when ingesting media. I like to challenge myself and my comfort zones. On paper Undertale had everything I liked. In execution...wasn't for me and I sure tried to like it.

Pokemon literally have characters preach at you with all the subtly of an after school cartoon. Really, I get the feeling that you don't like Undertale's morality because it tries to invoke guilt in you as a player. The game plays gotcha with Toriel's death, who is designed to be as heartbreaking as possible, Flowey calls you out on reloading the game, Undyne will call you a murderer, and Sans literally judges you at one point. It's not any more subtle then Pokemon, but I find it a lot more impactful because it actually takes into account what you actually do in the game. But I suppose I understand where you are coming from at least, which is all I was aiming for.



As of last month, it's up to 3.5 million. Which puts it right at the top with the other top Indie games in existence. (Except for Minecraft which blows all the competition away at something like 54 millions copies sold) But I don't look at that so much as money made, as a crude barometer of how many people heard it's message. And any sort of media with a message wants to be heard. Besides that though, Undertale also has a very active fan community. Pictures and remixes of course, but even stuff like fan games, stories, and a full on musical. Many people who played the game fell in love with the characters, and felt that emotional impact that the game was going for.


Sure. And if you were talking about the latest Star Fox game, you might have a point. But Undertale uses WASD controls. It's pretty standard. It's so standard that the last time I bought a gaming keyboard, it has the WASD keys in a different color to make them more visible. Also again, the majority of people who played the game enjoyed it, and didn't have anything bad to say about said controls. So at that point, I don't think you can say that Undertale's controls (or mechanics) are objectively bad.

Self Improvement is fine as well. I suppose Undertale is short enough that's it's not exactly that big of a time sink to go see the ending even if you aren't liking it.



I can't imagine what there is to not understand or be confused by in that SPOILER. No one should be pulled out of the story, at least not in any inappropriate way, by that spoiler. Obviously it does mark a radical change in the story, which is why it is a spoiler.

Because physics doesn't work that way. It's like someone throwing a baseball and instead of it going forward, it floats to the ground like a feather. The action and the motion are completely disconnected. Yeah, I know physics is mostly ignored in the series regardless, but this case even violates the physics that the show itself uses. It certainly pulled me out of the story, and is a reason why I really did not enjoy the climax of that season.

[GloatingSwine]

Quite a lot of movies that portray Satan as the villain, often do so in a particularly scattershot way that implies that he's not all that bad.


That's because lots of people have read Paradise Lost....

The comic version of Lucifer that the TV series is incredibly loosely based on is considerably less sympathetic than the TV version. He's absolutely honest, but only because he's too proud to lie and can deceive people just fine with absolute truths, but he absolutely doesn't care about anyone or anything but himself, and is quite willing to let the entirety of creation fall to nothing rather than do what someone else wants him to do.

[Tyndmyr]

Some movies are confusing, perplexing, or contradictory, but in the case of The Last Jedi, it turns out people just fail to understand real life and/or science fiction, and that says more about them than about the movie. What some people call plot holes, or just confusing or contradictory moments, actually aren't.

I disagree, but I've already had TLJ conversations in a few threads, no need to put 'em here as well. Feel free to substitute another example of a film with plot holes if you like. I considered using The Room, but there's a certain point where one is no longer complaining about a hole in the plot, but is rather complaining about the entire thing.

As a different example of someone presented as a hero, but who really isn't...Mrs Doubtfire. Or literally any story where the main hero impersonates someone else, gaslights people, and makes up an ever expanding web of lies to get what they want.

[Brother Oni]

In Constantine, he strikes a deal with John to release a soul from Hell after a service was performed.... and he does it. Yes he opposes God, and is the Great Deceiver, and the Prince of Darkness... but he stuck by his word. He didn't even revoke the deal when it became clear that John had managed to get out of his half of the agreement, instead giving John a free shot at redemption instead of forcing the issue.

To be fair, that isn't due to any intentional shenanigans by John (for a change!) and due to a higher power laying claim. Rather than letting John enjoy his just reward in heaven, Lucifer instead cures John's cancer, giving him another chance to screw up and damn himself. Given that he's already relinquished his claim on the girl's soul and released it, he couldn't really claim it back again.

That said, I think you're mistaking fair for sympathetic. Peter Stormare, the actor that played Lucifer in Constantine, mentioned that he was having problems finding an interpretation of the character that hadn't already been done (among others, charismatic energetic demagogue was done by Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, suave mastermind was Robert De Niro in Angel Heart, roguish womaniser by Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick), so he came up with a Lucifer that 'liked to touch old people'.
That certainly isn't sympathetic or morally correct.


As a different example of someone presented as a hero, but who really isn't...Mrs Doubtfire. Or literally any story where the main hero impersonates someone else, gaslights people, and makes up an ever expanding web of lies to get what they want.

I was reading an interpretation of the film from the wife's viewpoint and Daniel is the crazy ex: he masquerades as woman in order to become her nanny to get access to their children, tries to sabotage her relationship with her new boyfriend and as the cherry on the cake, very nearly kills the boyfriend through a food allergy.

[rooster707]

And the TV show Lucifer is a constant deconstruction of the idea that Satan is an evil person. He's arrogant and hedonistic, sure, but he's genuinely nice and goes out his way to be fair and honest with people, despite how badly he has been treated in the past and how he was unfairly tarred by religion since his imprisonment in Hell.
Heck, several of his antagonists throughout the series are his own brothers who remained loyal to God - literal Angels of the Lord - and in comparison they're all self-righteous jerks who blindly follow their own imperfect perceptions of God's unknowable will. Around them, Lucifer is almost always on the moral high-ground in comparison.

I was about to say “that sounds a lot like Sandman,” but that show is actually based on a Sandman spinoff, isn’t it? :smallconfused:

[Brother Oni]

I was about to say “that sounds a lot like Sandman,” but that show is actually based on a Sandman spinoff, isn’t it? :smallconfused:

Yup. Lucifer essentially starts after the Sandman story arc where the Morningstar shuts up Hell, gives the key to Dream and goes on holiday.

[The Glyphstone]

Great Modthulhu: Let's be very clear here, everyone. You can disagree with someone else's opinions, dispute their arguments, or simply choose not to engage at your discretion. But do it politely, and if you cross from attacking someone's argument to attacking the person making it, you have gone too far. Especially in a discussion like this, people will have strong feelings about their positions, and if you think you're losing emotional detachment it's good to step back and away for a little bit if you need to.

[Jan Mattys]

That's not unbiased, it's biased in another direction.

You think? I am honestly interested in hearing why. To me, it is pretty clear that the suffucating sense of helplessness Neil suffers is caused by Keating's teachings clashing with his father's iron fist. While it is true that Keating tells Neil to confront his father, and in no way endorses lying to him, it is also true that Neil wouldn't have gone as far killing himself over being transferred to a military school if he hadn't been manipulated by Keating into thinking that freedom of choice at 16 trumps everything else and is worth dying for.

Maybe I should clarify: Neil's dad is a "villain" in a broad sense as well. But the principal of Welton College and the other teachers are not, and all warn Keating about the risks of teaching freedom as the supreme goal to a bunch of kids. But he doesn't listen. It's not that he doesn't listen to Neil's dad, he doesn't listen to colleagues and peers, all telling him he is on a dangerous path.

Neil's dad makes mistakes, but in a sense I can understand his poor judgement: he is not a teacher after all. But Keating, who IS a teacher and is as responsible for the grooming of the young guys under his wing, should really know better. It is his damn job, isn't it?

[Willie the Duck]

You think? I am honestly interested in hearing why.

Predominantly because there's no such thing as unbiased (or objective) interpretations. Certainly not in terms of literary/film analysis. But that seems like a tangent that maybe isn't helpful in this tense of a thread.


To me, it is pretty clear that the suffucating sense of helplessness Neil suffers is caused by Keating's teachings clashing with his father's iron fist. While it is true that Keating tells Neil to confront his father, and in no way endorses lying to him, it is also true that Neil wouldn't have gone as far killing himself over being transferred to a military school if he hadn't been manipulated by Keating into thinking that freedom of choice at 16 trumps everything else and is worth dying for.

Maybe I should clarify: Neil's dad is a "villain" in a broad sense as well. But the principal of Welton College and the other teachers are not, and all warn Keating about the risks of teaching freedom as the supreme goal to a bunch of kids. But he doesn't listen. It's not that he doesn't listen to Neil's dad, he doesn't listen to colleagues and peers, all telling him he is on a dangerous path.

Neil's dad makes mistakes, but in a sense I can understand his poor judgement: he is not a teacher after all. But Keating, who IS a teacher and is as responsible for the grooming of the young guys under his wing, should really know better. It is his damn job, isn't it?

It has certainly been discussed (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/DeadPoetsSociety)at length, and I hesitate to come down on any one side, particularly considering that I haven't seen the film in 10-20 years. It also sidesteps the confounding factor of the undercurrent of Neil and Todd's homosexual attraction (and how much that played into the suicide), which is so well telegraphed that the filmmakers confirmed trying to have it both ways, but let's be honest is not confirm in-film (so, death of the author interpretation), so it is really hard to include in the analysis.

Keating opened a gate he was incapable of controlling the outcomes of. No doubt. The question comes from where responsibility lies, and if (and how much) giving people the ambition to do things makes one responsible if they end up doing something untoward. If Keating instead gave his students a sense of patriotic fervor, and Neil instead went out and joined the navy and drowned at sea, we wouldn't go back and blame Keating for it. Beyond that, the suicide wasn't caused by Keating's teaching of freedom as the supreme goal, but it's interaction to the stifling conformity of 1950s America (to which Neil was clearly a poor fit), and his father's iron-fisted authoritarianism.

Again, I'm not sure who (if anyone) I consider the most to blame (the rest of Welton Academy being rather straw villains doesn't help the situation), only that I don't consider the picture especially one-sided. I think I will find the flick and rewatch, and see what I think. Thanks, you've given me a lot of food for thought.

EDIT: An aside: All of Neil's teachers, particularly those he was close to, should have been diligent to signs of depression. That's something that is part and parcel of an educator's duty (although it wasn't really part of the discussion in 1959). Outside of anything Keating did that might have furthered the suicide scenario, one certainly would have wished him more attuned to looking for such signs. Even in 1989, though, that was not significantly part of the education discussion.

[Friv]

The other thing that twigs me is that they go into this weird bit about how hyper jumps can't be traced, but if that were true, then how did Vader chase Leia to Tatooine?


INT. DEATH STAR - CONTROL ROOM

Darth Vader strides into the control room, where Tarkin is watching the huge view screen. A sea of stars is before him.

TARKIN
Are they away?

VADER
They have just made the jump into hyperspace.

TARKIN
You're sure the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship? I'm taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work.

You can't track someone through hyperspace, but if you put a homing beacon on their ship, and it emits a signal after arriving at its destination, that works just fine.

[Mordar]

I think a lot of people in this thread conflate "moral" and "law abiding", as Razade's post proves, along with the Les Miserables discussion. Not really a value judgment, just an interesting thing to note.

That may be partly my fault - "law abiding" is a moral, but it is far from the only moral (except for Javert, which is the character's defining trait and tragic flaw). My example was monomoral and that may have provided some misunderstanding (or conflation, as you use).

- M

[Traab]

They stole gold from Skypia comes to mind, despite the Skypians not caring about gold at all. He ditched out on his bill in various towns across the Alabasta arc. I guess that could count for more than one thing but I think it's fair to roll it into one. Luffy's also stolen a number of boats. The boat when he escaped Impel Down, the boat he used to infiltrate the Marine HQ to deliever his message and ring the Ox bell. Pretty sure (but it's been a long long time) that he stole a boat after beating Alvida.

So there's your three.

The rest of the crew are even worse when it comes to pilfering. Nami is called The Cat Thief for good reason.



They certainly aren't the villain to themselves. Which ya know, I said. Luffy doesn't see himself as one. Others do.



Sure do. Some of their actions.

Declaring themselves "pirates": The story line clearly establishes the grounds for identification as a pirate in One Piece and at the very least simply declaring oneself a pirate is enough to have the Marines arrest you. Though they declared themselves pirates, originally their actual reporting as being "pirates" was merely revenge from Nezumi because Nami beat him up. They had however acted more as vigilantes at the time because the East Blue pirates were allowed to hurt their friends and potential crewmates. Up until this point, by official means they were not classified as pirates.

Burning the flag of the world government: a declaration of war

They have hit/attacked members of the law enforcement: a crime even in the real world. Zoro commented when he raised his swords against the Marines for the very first time after Luffy freed him, once you are declared a criminal there is no going back.

Holding a hostage: Holding the Ryugu Palace guards and, Ministers of the Left and Right, and King Neptune. Although, it wasn't true, they were still "involved" with the hostage situation with the World Nobles at the Human Auction House.

Pillaging: At the very least the Straw Hats did pillage gold from Skypiea (though were naive to the inhabitants' own regard to gold). Luffy beat Bellamy to get Cricket's stolen gold back. Nami also had previously stolen valuables from other pirates with the aid of the Arlong Pirates when needed, as well as being part of Arlong's crew who was actively pillaging villages around the East Blue. Franky had stolen from others (Usopp was a victim) to get what he wanted prior to being a 'pirate', and even though a pirate could not report him, it's still a crime. They also robbed the whole treasure hoard of Thriller Bark, although its inhabitants left it on their ship and died before the crew were back.

Privateering: They have also committed at least one act that would fall into the classification of "Privateering" (Igaram hired the crew to protect Princess Vivi on a price agreed by Nami together with their actions in Alabasta against Crocodile). Initially, outside of the Shichibukai, this is frowned upon and could have gotten the Alabasta royal family in trouble.

Vigilantism: Throughout the East Blue, they resolved one problem after another by acting as vigilantes even where the Marines could not succeed.

Freeing prisoners: Zoro, Robin, Usopp, Franky, and various members of Impel Down were all freed by a member of the Straw Hats.

Destroying Marine ships: Although a lie, Robin was said to have destroyed a number of ships at 8 years old. Since the start of the series, an untold number of lesser Marine ships have been taken down.

Murder and attempted murder: Zoro was known to have killed prior to joining the crew. Officially, Iceburg was apparently a target for murder by them, however Water 7, the place where it occurred, soon learned the truth.

Black market: Franky had at least one dealing with black market materials, the Adam Wood.

Forbidden research: Robin reads Poneglyphs, something that is banned in the One Piece world.

Overthrowing a king: Wapol being kicked out by the Straw Hats.

Destroying government property: Enies Lobby, Impel Down and Marineford all have had serious damage dealt to them.

Stealing a ship; On several occasions, such as when Luffy delivered his 3D2Y message, occasionally ships were stolen by the crew albeit it for brief periods of time.

Then there is punching a world nobel right in the face...



But Luffy still doesn't share his meat.



No he doesn't, at least monetary debts he doesn't. It was a major bit of slapstick in the Alabasta arc that they'd dine and dash.

I also never claimed he was "weighted down by responsibilities". Those are your words. I pointed out why he gave the treasure to Big Mom. He says as much (https://youtu.be/jYL7VFGWUlI?t=114). The only person contradicting anything is you, and it's the story and how it's presented.



He's absolutely the main protagonist. You don't have to be good to be a protagonist though. You don't have to be a hero either.



Bastion? I'd like to think it had some pretty deep emotions running through it with Zulf and the Kid. Forgiveness, being a very large part of it. Putting aside hate to carry someone who betrayed you through enemy lands to show that whatever wars happened in the past is over. Shadow of the Colossus I feel (and we could argue that the hero in that game is certainly morally ambiguous. He clearly know what he's doing is wrong but he wants to save the love of his life) has a message in it, the creators certainly seem to think so. I think the early Pokemon games had a decent moral to them. The love of nature and the desire to protect it, to keep it pristine and cherish it. Loving one's companions as a better form of growth than a simple desire to grow stronger.

The thing about morals in video games is they're different to everyone. Which I think is the big problem with games that set out to have one rather than a game that lets you come to your own conclusions.



I certainly don't think it set out to do that. I don't think it achieved what it set out to do though.



Well, we can certainly say if a game has objectively bad mechanics and gameplay. If the game is a buggy mess, it's a buggy mess. That's not on me. That's on the person who developed it. If it crashes every ten seconds, it's not my opinion the game is made poorly.

As to why I finished it...I started it. What better reason do I need? Maybe it gets better later on. Maybe I'm just bad at it and I'll get better and find the spot I enjoy. It didn't happen for Spec Ops (I also mentioned I only finished it because I was without internet for a week and I was bored) and it didn't happen for Undertale (I was playing it on stream and everyone promised it got better. It didn't.)

{Scrubbed}

Too be fair, most of the "crimes" luffy committed are ameliorated by his "victims" Mainly the corrupt and evil world government, pirates that are more bandits of the sea than people who want to live free, and other such things. I really think anti hero fits better than straight up hero, because in all fairness he does spend most of his time violating the law, no matter how evil the government may be. And most of his heroics are less about "Omg this is evil and I will stop it," and more, "Hey, the friend I made needs help, I will fight this absurdly powerful enemy because of that." Its just tends to work out that the action he takes helps out everyone else too. It helps he is a genuinely nice guy. Friendly (so long as you arent a whiny crybaby, poor shirahoshi)

[Lord Vukodlak]

You can't track someone through hyperspace, but if you put a homing beacon on their ship, and it emits a signal after arriving at its destination, that works just fine.

That's was chasing Leia to Yavin, he was asking about was chasing the Tantive IV from the Battle of Scarrif to where it was captured above Tatooine in the opening of a New Hope.

To answer that question every Imperial ship in the galaxy was given APB to drop whatever they were doing and capture and detain any ship matching the Tantive IV's description.
One was caught receiving transmissions from rebel spies. And Vader had his target.

[Tyndmyr]

I was reading an interpretation of the film from the wife's viewpoint and Daniel is the crazy ex: he masquerades as woman in order to become her nanny to get access to their children, tries to sabotage her relationship with her new boyfriend and as the cherry on the cake, very nearly kills the boyfriend through a food allergy.

Exactly...a different point of view, and it becomes straight up terrifying. Hell, the idea of intentionally exposing people to their allergies as a way of getting back at people is pretty prominent in media, and it's pretty awful. For some reason, it gets treated as a cheeky shenanigan if the "hero" is doing it, and not as an attempt to kill or sicken someone.

[The Jack]

{scrubbed}

[Wardog]

Then comes the moralizing. The preaching "modern shooters give a distasteful view on war" mantra the game chants at you at ever turn. And then hands you rocket launchers to blow the baddies up and then comes the "we can't progress until everything but us is so much raspberry jam on the walls" If it made us feel bad about that or gave us ways to circumvent it. Like stealth. Or any other mechanic that plenty of other games with a "killing is wrong, try to avoid it" message push.

I've never played or watched Spec Ops: The Line, but the descriptions remind me somewhat of the film Natural Born Killers, which I found rather distasteful, because I felt it was glamourising violence while simultaneously smugly saying, "ah but you are watching this, so really you are the bad person".

[Rockphed]

I've never played or watched Spec Ops: The Line, but the descriptions remind me somewhat of the film Natural Born Killers, which I found rather distasteful, because I felt it was glamourising violence while simultaneously smugly saying, "ah but you are watching this, so really you are the bad person".

You can put a smug dig at the audience in something and do it well, but it is very hard.

[Dienekes]

You can put a smug dig at the audience in something and do it well, but it is very hard.

Basically the entire point of Inglourious Basterds. We revel in the violence and then we act horrified when we watch the Nazi propaganda film within a film and see the Nazis reveling at the violence.

Personally I found the whole thing fascinating.

Though with Spec Ops I’ve always found the argument that you have no choice but to progress through these entirely violent methods a bit lacking. As every player always has the choice to turn off the game and say the violence is not for you. Which is an entirely fair way to interact with the game. It’s goal is to get players to question the violence of the shooter genre. And whether or not the game is realistic in itself. It has the point that some of the missions of various shooters I’ve played have been straight terroriam.

[Rockphed]

Though with Spec Ops I’ve always found the argument that you have no choice but to progress through these entirely violent methods a bit lacking. As every player always has the choice to turn off the game and say the violence is not for you. Which is an entirely fair way to interact with the game. It’s goal is to get players to question the violence of the shooter genre. And whether or not the game is realistic in itself. It has the point that some of the missions of various shooters I’ve played have been straight terroriam.

I think any entertainment that thinks it succeeds by losing its audience is deluding itself. There are games, books, and movies that I have refused to finish for one reason or another. Invariably I have simply done my best to ignore them after discovering my reason for putting them down. A game that gives me the choice of "be incredibly violent or leave the game" might get put down, but I won't come away thinking "wow, that game taught me to hate violence". Instead I will think "wow, that game was too violent for me. I am going to tell people it is too violent whenever I feel it appropriate to voice opinions on it."

[Dienekes]

I think any entertainment that thinks it succeeds by losing its audience is deluding itself. There are games, books, and movies that I have refused to finish for one reason or another. Invariably I have simply done my best to ignore them after discovering my reason for putting them down. A game that gives me the choice of "be incredibly violent or leave the game" might get put down, but I won't come away thinking "wow, that game taught me to hate violence". Instead I will think "wow, that game was too violent for me. I am going to tell people it is too violent whenever I feel it appropriate to voice opinions on it."

That's entirely fair. But this message, is mostly intended for people who do sit down to play violent video games and go through the motions without thought about what that violence means. People who shot up an airport in CoD because that was the mission and so they did it. Or that one game where you save the United States by killing civilians in hoodies.

You may never play those games. And you might find the message of Spec Ops rather uninspired. And that's fine. I don't think the message was delivered in the most subtle way. But I personally thought the game pointing out that the usual shooter mission where you go in and kill everything is fairly problematic was at least academically interesting.

[Rockphed]

You may never play those games. And you might find the message of Spec Ops rather uninspired. And that's fine. I don't think the message was delivered in the most subtle way. But I personally thought the game pointing out that the usual shooter mission where you go in and kill everything is fairly problematic was at least academically interesting.

My point isn't that the message of Spec Ops: The Line is uninspired, but rather that the message is going to be ignored by people who play the game all the way through and never reach the people who give up on the game because they find the excessive violence distasteful. So the message they are trying to preach falls completely on deaf ears.

[Delicious Taffy]

My point isn't that the message of Spec Ops: The Line is uninspired, but rather that the message is going to be ignored by people who play the game all the way through and never reach the people who give up on the game because they find the excessive violence distasteful. So the message they are trying to preach falls completely on deaf ears.

It doesn't help that the people who really dislike the excessive violence, but keep playing the game to the end anyway, so they can see where the hell it's going with its point, wind up with basically a worse experience than the people who stopped playing partway through.

I'd rather come away with "Wow, this game blows chunks, I'm just gonna turn it off, erase the data, and play something fun," instead of "Oh my god, I just played this entire thing and it never got any better. I could have stopped ages ago, but I thought it was going somewhere."

[Wraith]

That said, I think you're mistaking fair for sympathetic. Peter Stormare, the actor that played Lucifer in Constantine, mentioned that he was having problems finding an interpretation of the character that hadn't already been done (among others, charismatic energetic demagogue was done by Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, suave mastermind was Robert De Niro in Angel Heart, roguish womaniser by Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick), so he came up with a Lucifer that 'liked to touch old people'.
That certainly isn't sympathetic or morally correct.

Don't get me wrong, I think that Peter Stormare's interpretation of Satan is one of the most brilliantly sinister ones on film. I very much enjoy it for that, and I'm certainly NOT trying to suggest that he is a "nice" guy in any way.

But... He's the Prince of Darkness, the Source of All Sin and the One True Evil... and yet he honours a deal with John Constantine, who is an ******* even to the people he likes. There's plenty of grey there, but the point is it's on both sides of the equation.


I was about to say “that sounds a lot like Sandman,” but that show is actually based on a Sandman spinoff, isn’t it? :smallconfused:

EXTREMELY loosely. The plot is about the same - Lucifer gets tired of Hell, leaves, and sets up a nightclub in downtown LA. After that, they're wildly different characters.

As Brother Oni said, the Lucifer in the comic is an inhuman monster. He's scrupulously honest, but only because there is nothing in creation that can threaten him if he offends them with his honesty, so why bother lying? Humans are as insects - sometimes amusing ones, but always far too insignificant to pay any real attention to.

In the TV series though, he is far more... human. He likes people and he enjoys spending time around them; while he still enjoys being "the temptor" he does so because he thinks people will have more fun if they enjoy themselves, not because he will get possession of their soul if they sin.

There's an apocryphal story that Neil Gaiman insisted that Lucifer in the comic was intentionally to be based on David Bowie - they look very similar, and they both ooze the same sort of supreme confidence. When the TV show was being developed, they decided that no one could ever live up to the 'aura' as projected by Bowie, even in a second-hand source, so they intentionally hired Tom Ellis to be something completely different to the source material rather than to try - and fail - to emulate it. :smalltongue:

[Keltest]

Don't get me wrong, I think that Peter Stormare's interpretation of Satan is one of the most brilliantly sinister ones on film. I very much enjoy it for that, and I'm certainly NOT trying to suggest that he is a "nice" guy in any way.

But... He's the Prince of Darkness, the Source of All Sin and the One True Evil... and yet he honours a deal with John Constantine, who is an ******* even to the people he likes. There's plenty of grey there, but the point is it's on both sides of the equation.

Why shouldn't he honor a deal? If he develops a reputation for not honoring deals, then people will stop making them with him, and that's pretty bad for his bottom line.

[tensai_oni]

About Spec Ops: the Line - y'all realize it's not a game about making you feel guilty, right?

The game's message is about loss of agency and disconnect between player and the character they (seemingly) control. It doesn't try to guilt trip you into feeling bad for doing bad things even though there was no other choice - you as a player didn't make choices here, because the choice wasn't yours to begin with. It was Walker's. It's not the player who chose to act this way, but Walker himself. By the end of the game you are as much of a horrified, powerless observer to Walker's descent into madness and brutality as his teammates are.

This is the intended reading, it's not just another story about making the player guilty for bad things that happen in the game. That reading is not only incorrect but cheapens the game's narrative.

[Razade]

About Spec Ops: the Line - y'all realize it's not a game about making you feel guilty, right?

The game's message is about loss of agency and disconnect between player and the character they (seemingly) control. It doesn't try to guilt trip you into feeling bad for doing bad things even though there was no other choice - you as a player didn't make choices here, because the choice wasn't yours to begin with. It was Walker's. It's not the player who chose to act this way, but Walker himself. By the end of the game you are as much of a horrified, powerless observer to Walker's descent into madness and brutality as his teammates are.


We invite the player to encounter some of the more horrific experiences that we hear from soldiers and the stories they tell as they come home from modern conflicts. These are not happy or heroic scenarios, but we feel they are important because they cause us to question ourselves, our way of life, and our way of thinking. We feel that it's extremely important to treat these themes with care, and we use them as an emotional tool in our narrative, rather than for shock value.

That's a direct quote from the person who made the game. This is an actual quote from one of the loading screens.


The United States Army does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. But this isn't real, so why should you care?

It absolutely was about guilt and it's absolutely about YOU. They call you out specifically and the creators were looking to push YOUR buttons. This article goes on to state pretty clearly that they wanted emotional reactions from the players. That they wanted to hit people's buttons. (http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/20/the-story-secrets-of-spec-ops-the-line) You're not powerless. You can turn the game off. His teammates weren't powerless (hence the problem with the game in the first place). They were obligated to stop him. Not just obligated, required to in any rational world.

This isn't about Walker. This is about the developers aiming at the FPS market and calling them all out for perpetuating violence as a glorified dream theater. All while presenting the game as a violent shooter game.

[Brother Oni]

Don't get me wrong, I think that Peter Stormare's interpretation of Satan is one of the most brilliantly sinister ones on film. I very much enjoy it for that, and I'm certainly NOT trying to suggest that he is a "nice" guy in any way.

But... He's the Prince of Darkness, the Source of All Sin and the One True Evil... and yet he honours a deal with John Constantine, who is an ******* even to the people he likes. There's plenty of grey there, but the point is it's on both sides of the equation.

Oh no doubt; Peter Stormare's interpretation is my favourite version of Lucifer.

As both you and Keltest have said, Lucifer is good to his word as there's very little reason for him not to keep it. It doesn't make him good or evil, it just gives him integrity which is independent of whichever way his moral compass is pointing.

As an example of another character with very good integrity but certainly not nice - Judge Dredd. He upholds the law of a corrupt, dystopic, crime riddled megapolis with the discipline, dedication and inflexibility that would do credit to any fascist police state, and yet he's the protagonist.

[LibraryOgre]

Quite a lot of movies that portray Satan as the villain, often do so in a particularly scattershot way that implies that he's not all that bad.

In Constantine, he strikes a deal with John to release a soul from Hell after a service was performed.... and he does it. Yes he opposes God, and is the Great Deceiver, and the Prince of Darkness... but he stuck by his word. He didn't even revoke the deal when it became clear that John had managed to get out of his half of the agreement, instead giving John a free shot at redemption instead of forcing the issue.

In Bedazzled, Brendan Fraser's protagonist spends 86 of the 90 minutes committing sin after sin and generally proving himself selfish and worthy of damnation, but again the Devil honours the contract and lets him off scott-free for a single penitent act. She wrote in a get-out-of-hell-free clause into he contract - for some reason - and not only honoured it but also admitted it freely even though Fraser was completely unaware of it. She plays fair.

In Little Nicky, Satan is actually an amiable and pretty stand-up guy. Yes, he opposes the Lord of Creation, but at the same time he is genuinely affectionate of his children, does his job of torturing evil souls efficiently and reliably, and even makes a fairly selfless sacrifice of allowing his youngest, most vulnerable son return to Earth to live free of his own influence.

And the TV show Lucifer is a constant deconstruction of the idea that Satan is an evil person. He's arrogant and hedonistic, sure, but he's genuinely nice and goes out his way to be fair and honest with people, despite how badly he has been treated in the past and how he was unfairly tarred by religion since his imprisonment in Hell.
Heck, several of his antagonists throughout the series are his own brothers who remained loyal to God - literal Angels of the Lord - and in comparison they're all self-righteous jerks who blindly follow their own imperfect perceptions of God's unknowable will. Around them, Lucifer is almost always on the moral high-ground in comparison.

Have you read Steven Brust's "To Reign in Hell"? It's a prequel to Paradise Lost.

[HandofShadows]

You can't track someone through hyperspace, but if you put a homing beacon on their ship, and it emits a signal after arriving at its destination, that works just fine.

IIRC Han says he pulled a few tricks to make sure they couldn't have been followed. So you can track someone through hyperspace, but it isn't a sure thing.

[HandofShadows]

I forget, is it stated in the movie that the replicants each had to murder a person to be here on Earth?

IIRC They slaughtered a whole bunch of people on the shuttle they hijacked.

[Wraith]

Have you read Steven Brust's "To Reign in Hell"? It's a prequel to Paradise Lost.

I have heard of it, but not gotten around to reading either. I am currently working through I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan which is a similar but slightly more modern (early 2000's, at least) version of the same story.

I can't say that I'm enjoying it, though. It seems to be that the main character were being played by painfully stereotypical Depraved Bisexual with a lot of unfortunate Hollywood-style "effeminate gay" mannerisms; it just makes him come off not as being smart and scathing, but simply a bitchy gossip. It's very petty, and frankly underwhelming.


Why shouldn't he honor a deal? If he develops a reputation for not honoring deals, then people will stop making them with him, and that's pretty bad for his bottom line.

I don't think that Satan is likely to run low on damned souls at any point in the near future, deals or otherwise :smalltongue:

But let's just say, I think he's sometimes portrayed as just being too honourable, or at least he gives up far, far too easily given his otherwise monstrous reputation.

[Sapphire Guard]

Don't get me wrong, I think that Peter Stormare's interpretation of Satan is one of the most brilliantly sinister ones on film. I very much enjoy it for that, and I'm certainly NOT trying to suggest that he is a "nice" guy in any way.

But... He's the Prince of Darkness, the Source of All Sin and the One True Evil... and yet he honours a deal with John Constantine, who is an ******* even to the people he likes. There's plenty of grey there, but the point is it's on both sides of the equation.]

He keeps to the deal out of cruelty, though, to deny John his chance at salvation.

[Traab]

IIRC Han says he pulled a few tricks to make sure they couldn't have been followed. So you can track someone through hyperspace, but it isn't a sure thing.

Going by what little ive read of the EU it was probably stuff like, "He headed to a place where there are many potential hyperspace routes, picked one, then rinse and repeat till the odds of the empire finding them are virtually nil" Like, imagine you are on the highway and coming up are 6 exits. You have 4 for the cardinal directions, and 2 for nearby local areas. Several of the cardinal direction choices will also lead to further splitting choices all at once. None will end up even remotely close to each other unless the pilot basically stops right there. Good luck figuring out which route the person took 10 minutes later when you show up. On the other hand, if you placed a gps tracker on it, it wont matter how many route changes they make. Once they stop, you know where they are and even as they move you can continue coming after them. Basically, there isnt anything magical about the hyperspace routes that prevent you from being tracked as such, its just they tend to have multiple branches that make tracking difficult against anyone willing to do more than fly in a straight line. The galaxy is a pretty big place after all.

[DomaDoma]

But let's just say, I think he's sometimes portrayed as just being too honourable, or at least he gives up far, far too easily given his otherwise monstrous reputation.

Prime example of course being "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". I mean, if ground rules say you're both the competitor and the arbiter of a music contest, does it even count as cheating to declare a close contest in your favor? Unless of course the idea was to skyrocket Johnny into fatal levels of self-conceit at a go, but the song really doesn't suggest that.

But I'll definitely buy it in the fiddle-contest songs of Heather Alexander James Adams. That sort of challenge is much more suited to faeries than to devils.

[Brother Oni]

But let's just say, I think he's sometimes portrayed as just being too honourable, or at least he gives up far, far too easily given his otherwise monstrous reputation.

In my opinion, he's just playing the long game. He's been around since the Creation, so a human lifetime is nothing to him - given that the person has been desperate/arrogant/prideful enough in the first place to make a deal with him, the chances are that like an addict, they will slide back into their old ways and he'll get another claim on their soul.

Without going into much detail, making a deal with the devil isn't the only for him to get a claim - committing a mortal sin for example (note that under Catholic theology, this is a specific technical term).

[chainer1216]

In the .Hack//G.U. video games on the PS2 the main villain is a guy who became infected with an AI/Virus that puts people into comas and the only way for those people to wake up is for him to get killed, but he finds out quickly that if hes killed at anything but an all out real fight he'll just revive and nothing is gained.

So the whole story revolves around the villain finding a person with a special power and driving them to get stronger and hate him, the main character turns out to be that person and hoo boy is he a whiny little **** who ends up using and emotionally abusing people to get what he wants.

[Kitten Champion]

In the .Hack//G.U. video games on the PS2 the main villain is a guy who became infected with an AI/Virus that puts people into comas and the only way for those people to wake up is for him to get killed, but he finds out quickly that if hes killed at anything but an all out real fight he'll just revive and nothing is gained.

So the whole story revolves around the villain finding a person with a special power and driving them to get stronger and hate him, the main character turns out to be that person and hoo boy is he a whiny little **** who ends up using and emotionally abusing people to get what he wants.

Sure, but he does have a lengthy character arc where he gets better over the whole series. Unfortunately for the GU anime, we're stuck with the Haseo that's either awkward and moody through the first half and a wannabe Edgelord for the second.

In most ways it's a story about how being that abrasive loner anti-hero is just corrosive, both to your emotional and mental well-being as well as in the practical sense of achieving your intended goals.

[Drascin]

Basically the entire point of Inglourious Basterds. We revel in the violence and then we act horrified when we watch the Nazi propaganda film within a film and see the Nazis reveling at the violence.

Personally I found the whole thing fascinating.

Though with Spec Ops I’ve always found the argument that you have no choice but to progress through these entirely violent methods a bit lacking. As every player always has the choice to turn off the game and say the violence is not for you. Which is an entirely fair way to interact with the game. It’s goal is to get players to question the violence of the shooter genre. And whether or not the game is realistic in itself. It has the point that some of the missions of various shooters I’ve played have been straight terroriam.

Well, yes and no. The thing is, it's a game that costs money. Asking people to throw away the money they spent on your game can, reasonably, end up with them feeling a bit cheated.

I have done it, mind. I have, at points, looked at the choices a game gave me, channeled my inner Sartre, yelled "RADICAL FREEEEEDOOOOM", and uninstalled the game. But it was actually Undertale that taught me that. That hey, just because a thing is in the game, it doesn't mean I have to do it if it's not fun. 100% completion is for suckers. But five years ago, I'd probably have been in the cheated camp myself.

EDIT: And yes, the entire plot of the GU videogames is basically a long arc of "Haseo, stop being a ****". He slowly goes from moody and emotionally manipulative jerk to actually a decent person, and the games make it very clear that being a moody jerk does not actually make you a badass, or help you attain your objectives. It's when you stop doing that that you actually make progress.

[Gurston]

The Simpsons, Homer is the hero (well the protagonist) in the simpsons and he has several antagonists (villians from his point of view) which include Ned Flanders. A bit shaky on the definitions of hero and villain but the question requires that a bit

[Willie the Duck]

The Simpsons, Homer is the hero (well the protagonist) in the simpsons and he has several antagonists (villians from his point of view) which include Ned Flanders. A bit shaky on the definitions of hero and villain but the question requires that a bit

The Simpsons is firmly in the vein of non-(inherently-)heroic protagonists, with about half the episodes being a variation of the formula of 'protagonist realizes over the course of 22 minutes how their initial behavior was in error, and learns a valuable lesson.' So they definitely have always done episodes where the person in-focus isn't necessarily the 'good guy.'

As to Homer-Ned, their one-sided rivalry is a great running gag. There even was an early-season episode where Homer realizes that he hates Flanders mostly because he resents the perfect life he thinks Ned has, and not because Ned had actually done anything to Homer. The thing is, I don't think the show ever made it ambiguous that Homer is mostly the bad guy in this dynamic.

[Tvtyrant]

Homer is a terrible person, an abusive alcoholic who fails as a human on every level. They slowly turned him into a nicer but dumber person over the course of 30 seasons, but he remains selfish and toxic.

[Avilan the Grey]

The Simpsons, Homer is the hero (well the protagonist) in the simpsons and he has several antagonists (villians from his point of view) which include Ned Flanders. A bit shaky on the definitions of hero and villain but the question requires that a bit

The Simpsons are actually rather morally strong. Every time Homer acts disgustingly, he gets punished, and every episode ends good or good-ish. Including the movie.
The tone is set in the very first "real" episode, and it follows from there.

[deuterio12]

The Simpsons are actually rather morally strong. Every time Homer acts disgustingly, he gets punished, and every episode ends good or good-ish. Including the movie.
The tone is set in the very first "real" episode, and it follows from there.

They only regularly end good/good-ish for Homer himself, and whatever punishment Homer gets is a soft caress compared to the suffering he spreads. He's always almost blowing up his own city, destroyed full ecosystems, ruined countless human lives, literally driven people mad to the point of suicide, beats up Bart more often than Bruce beats up the Joker, and at the end of the day Homer gets to keep his well paying job while having hot women throwing themselves at him every other month, Marge sticks with him virtually all the time, and Lisa's basically just keeping her head low while counting the days until she can escape.

There was also that episode where he gets an hair growth medicine that actually works and gets instantly promoted. Then he runs out of medicine, loses the hair, and starts working seriously for once in his life, only to be demoted anyway because he's bald again. "Your looks matter infinitely more than your actual work", really morally strong story there.

[Eldan]

He still essentially loves his family and tries to do right by them. And Marge has kicked him out at least once.

[deuterio12]

What part of "strangles his son every episode at least once" exactly counts as love?

Or how he ripped his hair off in despair every time Marge announced she was pregnant?

Or how he's constantly ruining the family's finances for his own amusement?

Or how he's constantly doing his best to make sure that Lisa, Bart and Maggie will only have radioactive wasteland to live on after Homer dies?

Or how he's constantly treating his own father like trash and not very secretly wishes he would just die off already?

And yes Marge manages to make a stand now and then... But then softens back up before the episode ends and welcomes back in the house the man who beats up his own children.

[Wraith]

Homer gets to keep his well paying job

Everything else I agree with, but otherwise I would like to point out that Homer earns less than $13 per hour before tax (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtgvWZuyYKc#t=9s), and is the sole earner in a family of five people. It's hardly a lucrative lifestyle. :smalltongue:

[Eldan]

What part of "strangles his son every episode at least once" exactly counts as love?

Uhm, I mean, it's a terrible thing he's doing, but according to the wiki it seems to be about twice a season on average and often doesn't happen for entire seasons.

Ripping out his hair: honestly a bit understandable? They are pretty poor, with an uncertain job, Marge seems to have been unemployed pretty much since forever, unexpected children are at least a shock. And he's shown to love them once they are born.

Radioactive wasteland: granted, he's terrible at his job. I wouldn't say he does it on purpose, though.

And the entire thing with his father is complicated. First of all, I doubt they can afford anything more than a very basic living facility for him. Abe's pension likely doesn't go very far, and we don't see any other facilities ever, as far as I'm aware. What else would their option be, having Abe live with them? They aren't trained in elder care or medicine. And entirely apart from that, Abe is far more terrible as a person than Homer ever was. I can understand that Homer doesn't want to see him too often.


I mean, they are not a model family. But Homer works an exhausting full time job he's not qualified for, with an abusive boss for minimal pay and still quite often finds time to spend time with his children and their hobbies, and occasionally makes them thoughtful gifts. I'd say apart from the violence, which comes across as cartoony and a bit strangely out of context anyway, he's not a terrible father.

[Kitten Champion]

The whole Frank Grimes episode was built around Homer's dangerous incompetence and - relative to Grimes - the inexplicably charmed life he has in spite of that.

But, as said, The Simpsons' style of comedy is pretty classical in the sense that Homer's selfish actions never go rewarded while his noble ones almost invariably end with good consequences if not the one's he initially desired. To an extent that applies generally to the show, though Mr. Burns will invariably get back his wealth and power regardless of his decisions or events and characters like Maud Flanders still do die tragically. It's been on a long, long time -- they've explored a lot of ground however familiar it usually is.

[Ibrinar]

There was also that episode where he gets an hair growth medicine that actually works and gets instantly promoted. Then he runs out of medicine, loses the hair, and starts working seriously for once in his life, only to be demoted anyway because he's bald again. "Your looks matter infinitely more than your actual work", really morally strong story there.

Don't know/remember the episode but that it ends with X and the moral being X isn't the same thing. Without seeing the episode I still assume that it is meant as a criticism.

[Sapphire Guard]

The Simpsons runs on cartoon physics. Exaggerated violence is a staple.

[Frozen_Feet]

Homer Simpson has nothing on Donald Duck. :smalltongue:

[No brains]

I don't know if we should ascribe Homer and the Simpsons any morality at all because their mercurial oafishness is meant to be taken as an exaggerated parody of yet cautious commentary on American culture. Homer's deeds don't equal Homer's morality. Homer does what the writers want the average American viewer to avoid. Homer's disgusting bearing is meant to be a hint that we are not meant to be like Homer and that if we find our goals aligning with Homer's we should check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.

[Traab]

Everything else I agree with, but otherwise I would like to point out that Homer earns less than $13 per hour before tax (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtgvWZuyYKc#t=9s), and is the sole earner in a family of five people. It's hardly a lucrative lifestyle. :smalltongue:

That was 20 years ago or so. Inflation puts him quite a bit higher now. Its still not exactly huge money, but hey, maybe property taxes are super low in springfield. He also likely has royalties from his days as a grammy award winning singer, and has worked multiple other jobs over the years including being a freaking astronaut. Its kinda hard to really peg his actual income.

[Devonix]

That was 20 years ago or so. Inflation puts him quite a bit higher now. Its still not exactly huge money, but hey, maybe property taxes are super low in springfield. He also likely has royalties from his days as a grammy award winning singer, and has worked multiple other jobs over the years including being a freaking astronaut. Its kinda hard to really peg his actual income.

That was also before he was placed on Salary and not weekly pay where it was stated to be 60 grand.

Also not counting his royalties from being an award winning recording artist with multiple grammies. As well as owning his own professional football team.

[The Jack]

There was also that episode where he gets an hair growth medicine that actually works and gets instantly promoted. Then he runs out of medicine, loses the hair, and starts working seriously for once in his life, only to be demoted anyway because he's bald again. "Your looks matter infinitely more than your actual work", really morally strong story there.

How can this be used to attack Homer's character? That's a jab at society.
As for their income, remember that they do occasionally go all out and spend on something really stupid or probably have to pay someone damages.

[deuterio12]

Because in the hair medicine episode the nuclear central efficiency actually goes up because Homer as an executive is a lot less damaging than security Homer spreading radioactive waste everywhere. Also he wastes all the extra money he makes and so when he runs out hair medicine he cannot afford more despite warnings from Marge.

As for his normal income, Homer can afford a big nice home, his nonworking wife, 3 kids including fancy hobbies like saxophone play, a cat and dog, two working cars and indeed they regularly go to vacations in exotic places. Lots of people can only dream about being as "poor" as Homer. And the show opens with him sleeping at his job during work hours and it is a running gag how incompetent he is yet still gets paid enough to afford his lifestyle.

[Traab]

Because in the hair medicine episode the nuclear central efficiency actually goes up because Homer as an executive is a lot less damaging than security Homer spreading radioactive waste everywhere. Also he wastes all the extra money he makes and so when he runs out hair medicine he cannot afford more despite warnings from Marge.

As for his normal income, Homer can afford a big nice home, his nonworking wife, 3 kids including fancy hobbies like saxophone play, a cat and dog, two working cars and indeed they regularly go to vacations in exotic places. Lots of people can only dream about being as "poor" as Homer. And the show opens with him sleeping at his job during work hours and it is a running gag how incompetent he is yet still gets paid enough to afford his lifestyle.

Too be fair, his dad paid for the house. Iirc, aside from property tax its theirs free and clear, so its not like he has to pay a mortgage. But yeah to the rest. Its why I love the theory that the simpsons is actually the Matrix, after the trilogy. Basically, its for the humans who decide to stay plugged in. Its lower resolution, and some details get dropped down, they lack the power to support the old matrix now. And the way the simpsons get to do all that insanely expensive stuff is like renewing your membership to the matrix. They toss in all this extra stuff to keep them entertained and happy in their tube of pink goo. Yeah its a silly theory, I dont care, it amuses me to think that homer is actually some random dude in a tube who just agreed to stay in the matrix for another decade in exchange for a trip to outer space and rio. :smallbiggrin:

[deuterio12]

Ah yeah, for all his bitterness Homer's father basically sold everything he owned so that his son had a nice place to raise his family. And Homer still treats him like crap.

Matrix would explain why the kids never grow up. Although there was a behind the scenes episode where they say Bart and Lisa and Maggie are much older than they look but filled with drugs to keep their bodies from developing.

[Traab]

Ah yeah, for all his bitterness Homer's father basically sold everything he owned so that his son had a nice place to raise his family. And Homer still treats him like crap.

Matrix would explain why the kids never grow up. Although there was a behind the scenes episode where they say Bart and Lisa and Maggie are much older than they look but filled with drugs to keep their bodies from developing.

Yeah I think they even treated it as a joke. "I will buy the house for you, just dont put me in a home" Then they dropped him off at the home and peeled out. Or something along those lines.