Blaze
Vanth
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 
Zorque
EfreetSK
Gradually_AdjustingWhat happened to sparing no expense?
That’s the irony, he cut tons of corners.
-RJ-
Schmoo
TheImpressiveXThe bad guy steals peoples wishes to maintain his power. They basically live in a “utopia” with at most their basic needs met… but don’t really want anything else because all their dreams have been stolen away by the antagonist.
It starts making it seem as though he might be a relatable villain, or even a secondary protagonist… but then proceeds to just make him a self-serving asshole.
A_norny_mousse👍
The Orville has a warm place in my heart. At first I found them too close to parody, but increasingly they have become a hommage to Star Trek.
Not a movie, but Warcraft 3 tried hard to convince you that Arthas was doing wrong things, when most of the things were pragmatic decisions.
The big one your supposed to think is the fork in the road where he, a paladin pledged to the light, had lost his way is when you discover a city you are trying to save from the undead is infected. Everyone in the city is dead, they just don’t know it yet. And when they die they will turn into more undead for an already stretched thin army to fight against. An entire city worth of fresh dead for the undead legion.
So Arthas takes his army, burns the city, and purges/kills everyone within, so that they do not suffer undeath, and those yet living don’t have another horde of dead to struggle fighting against. The people there don’t know why they are being killed, but are we supposed to believe that if Arthas had time to explain they’d want to become undead?
Whole thing was him doing the objectively correct thing, getting rightfully angry when his subordinates lack the conviction/loyalty/discipline to do what was best for all living people in the realm. And we’re supposed to think HE is the one who is wrong.
Nah. Miss me with that. Arthas did nothing wrong. Until later, when he did. But not when he burned that city.
nagaramAs a guy who felt the same way what 20 years ago when I played that game.
Keep it up. World needs to know.
But he did fuck up in the next campaign when he grabbed frostmourne. That was objectively a bad move.
Even before he grabs Frostmourne, hiring mercenaries to burn your boats so that your men are forced to follow your revenge quest is pretty fucked up.
I think the thing people miss is that even though what Arthas did at Stratholme was strategically correct, he was already doing it for the wrong reasons.
CileTheSane
VindictiveJudge
HollowNaughtYeah, I hear it a lot how Arthas’ story was about a man whose ideals were slowly corrupted
When I played through WC3, I thought his sudden shift in tone was honestly jarring, as his previous (albeit morally questionable) decisions were made during a time of war, where the entirety of humanity was on the brink of collapse. And then I’m supposed to believe this demon showed up, taunted him and Arthas just… followed him? Because he was getting irrational?
I’d call that sudden shift from “I’d do anything to protect my kingdom” to “gotta beat up this demon real quick, taking a large army and leaving the northern empire exposed” completely unexpected
Then he got his soul stolen, after which point you can hardly blame him for anything that happens
It’s a moraly gray situation, but he is a Paladin. His duty is to uphold a certain standard, no matter what. He should have let the knights do the genociding.
Someone needs to be there for you, to guarantee your rights. You need to be able to say: “our hero is here! He will never hurt us!”.
Same reason the US army had a no one left behind policy. Less sodiers deserting, more fighting bravely, because they know their comrades would save them, even at a loss!
You know, the paladin code of ideals that are supposed to be embodied by those sworn to the light IS antithetical to the stewards of the paladin principles. I had not considered that.
So perhaps one could say that the cold pragmatism of his choice would not have been wrong for an ordinary general to make, but was against his code, and betrayed a weakening or abandoning of his faith.
I still don’t think he was wrong broadly, but I think I agree with you that he was wrong with regards to being a paladin and a representative of what they are supposed to stand for.
lortyThere was an implied question mark there, yes. I think all of the people the game shows you are infected, implying they all are, but Arthas couldn’t KNOW that.
I think the main point though is that once the infected did turn, anyone who might’ve avoided infection would have been killed by those who didn’t and had their corpse reanimated anyway. At best a few stragglers might have managed to flee at the cost of an entire new army of undead being raised.
I think that there was no reasonable alternative to what Arthas did if the goal was to defeat the army of undead, and also if the goal was to minimize lives lost.
Maybe he was, but his team was not, which is what backfired on him.
“Bluffing” about killing millions with active nerve agents while surrounded by armed men who are willing to kill millions with active nerve agents ain’t a “good guy” kind of move. He was either lethally stupid or stunningly reckless, but either way, he assembled a team ready, willing and able to commit genocide.
That knocks you out of “good guy” territory.
SharkAttak"Look at this moron he thinks hes a computer LOL"
"Go roleplay your kink away from here ew"
"Get fucked lolol"
artyomDisagree. Some antagonists are bastards, and you can obviously make a good movie where people oppose them.
The bad guys in Star Wars are Nazis. “You do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them.’”
While the original movie was called Star Wars, many people refer to the series of movies as Star Wars.
Being pedantic isnt gonna help your argument here.
The whole fucking argument is that you don’t need relatable villains for a good movie.
Acknowledging that woobifying Vader happened later isn’t pedantic, it is the point.
You don’t have to empathize with Palpatine. He’s a manipulative dictator. You don’t have to empathize with Tarkin. You don’t really need to empathize with any of the generals Vader chokes in the original trilogy. You are not expected to wonder about the inner life and emotional state of the bounty hunters who must be told, “no disintegrations.”
It is fine for a movie to have bad guys who are just fucking bad guys. Sometimes - that’s how it is in real life.
Emphasizing is a much lower bar than thinking they’re justified, though. I emphasize with Lex Luthor, but don’t actually think he’s right.
As opposed to, say, Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, who was totally correct that something needed to be done about the evil mutated aristocrat kidnapping and imprisoning people from the village.
he was right, he was also an asshole though.
those ain’t mutually exclusive
ShaggySnacks
Trope Talk: Pure Evil
Did Marvel really have a lot of those? I think the main issue is they had too many villains, period. Most of which aren’t misunderstood, merely forgettable. Hero’s Journey + Scary Villainous Antagonist is not the only story template out there.
The problem is most marvel movies aren’t trying to tell a meaningful story with (inter)personal conflict and character growth, but to move their characters along from hijink to hijink using rote storytelling techniques.
There’s nothing wrong with having a BBEG, or a nuanced villain, or even a morally correct antagonist that is only pitted against the protagonist through happenstance. There are Great stories that use all of those tropes. The only relevant question is what story is being told and which antagonist best helps move it forward.
Thanos - Overpopulation is a problem
Agent Smith (The Matrix) - Humans are a cancer, consuming everything and spreading uncontrollably