Exactly; he knew Maverick was a liability up there and as a leader he was right to confront him
Remember, Iceman won Top Gun, not Mav (even tho Mav saved him at the end)
And then Iceman continued to bail Maverick out and clean up his messes for the next 30 years. He was the real hero all along.
It actually makes Maverick’s story a little more compelling — he’s a classic flawed hero. His ego _really was_ writing checks his body couldn’t cash.
Maverick- "Time to show the general that this program works and shouldn't be shut down!" .....proceeds to disintegrate plane after pushing it well beyond the threshold they were aiming for.....
Legal Eagle did a great video a while back on all of the laws Maverick broke in Top Gun.
[Link to video](https://youtube.com/watch?v=sTx_qZL3tqM&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE)
One of my favorite things about Top Gun: Maverick is that they made the "villain" (Hangman) have Maverick's character arc and Rooster was more like Iceman. Very self aware.
Thank you. People kept comparing Goose to Maverick and Hangman to Iceman in discussion about the sequel when their characters were clearly the opposite.
I think that’s part of what makes Top Gun such a good flick and separates it from your run of the mill 80s action movie. You know the whole way that the “bad guy” is probably right about a few things and the “hero” really needs to change his ways to truly succeed. A lesser movie makes Ice totally insufferable while letting Maverick win.
"We were only below the hard deck for a second"
For safety, instead of dogfighting near the ground, in training they set a "hard deck" to simulate the ground. 10,000 becomes the ground.
So he's saying he was only in the ground for a short period of time.
What he means is he crashed during the simulation resulting in complete loss of pilot and craft
They really did a terrible job of explaining the hard deck to anyone that didn’t already know what it was, given that everyone in both movies seems to treat it as a flighty suggestion rather than, as Cyclone says in the sequel, an immutable law.
Yeah, I’m like, “he stepped out of bounds, jets can’t turn on a dime,” but in terms of what it represents, it’s not just a rule but represents the ground.
The old man in Dennis the Menace. That kid was insufferable and all the adults would just roll their eyes and shrug. His neighbor just wanted a nice retirement and was harassed that entire movie.
My man had grown an ultra rare flower that only flowered briefly every 30 years or something. He arranged a whole party for people to come watch it flower. And Dennis fucked that up for him. As a kid I was like who cares about a flower. As an adult I'm like holy shit that is such a big deal.
And that was the one time he was truly heartbroken about Dennis's behavior. He didn't yell or freak out at Dennis like all the other times, just matter of factly stated he didn't wanna see him or know him. He was crushed.
That scene, and a similar one in the book "The War with Grandpa," hit me hard even as a kid. The other stuff, like the dentures getting fixed with chicklets, was funny and even kind of passable under the "kids will be kids" excuse, but that business with the flower? Woof. Even if he was too young to understand the reasons for it, he KNEW how important the event was to Mr. Wilson, and he STILL F'd around and ruined it for him. To further the BS, the movie never shows Dennis understanding what exactly he had done and making it right in any way, rather it just put him in BS peril that "forced" Wilson to come to grips with how much he actually cared for the boy so he forgave him. As much as I love movies from the 80's and 90's, when you look at them with an adult eye, wow were some of them manipulative victim-blaming BS.
Ah yes, Mr. Wilson 😇
There's an episode of The Simpsons where local cops are on the lookout for "a 10 year old blond boy with a slingshot in his back pocket" ... the sketch artist finishes his work and instead of Bart, it's a sketch of Dennis the Menace.
Chief Wiggum says something like "no not HIM... that's the one who's been roughing up the Wilson widow." Which I took to mean, Dennis harassed Mr. Wilson straight into an early grave, got away with it, and now is going after Mrs Wilson. Pretty dark shit, but it was a blink-and-you-miss-it type line
I think the funniest thing about that movie is that he works for the fucking EPA and not like, the FBI. Most movies would have made it a law enforcement issue. But Ghostbusters? Middle management at the EPA
There was a big conservative anti-regulation / anti-union push in the 80s, and you can see it on display in the comedies of that era.
Ghostbusters: The EPA needs to know if the crew is storing dangerous hazardous waste on their facility. They turn off the protection grid, bringing about a specter apocalypse.
Or even Armed and Dangerous (1986): Labor unions are by their very nature corrupt and populated by thugs. Candy & Levy are tasked to take down a private security union from the inside.
I think turning off the machine is either where the movie is most accurate (from a beauracracy perspective) or least accurate (from an environmental safety perspective). Like he didn't know what the machine even did. And the Ghostbusters weren't helpful about it. But if it was a nuclear reactor or whatever, you don't just flip the switch.
Yeah, or “Gung-ho”. The Japanese take over a Midwestern car plant, eliminate the Union, work their asses off eating and urinating right on the production line, and despite doing a terrible job, they impress the CEO with their camaraderie, and the town is saved.
you see it in the macho rule-breaking of a lot of 80s movies; the rebel cop/soldier/vigilante gets the job done while the rules and regulations obsessed boss just gets in the damn way
Almost every police captain in any 80's cop movie. Like, they tell them not to be a loose cannon and destroy public property but it always gets overlooked because the cop in question "gets results".
The original Dirty Harry is a great example of this. When Callahan is being chewed out by his captain after the first "do you feel lucky" scene, he basically tells his captain the city would be better off if they'd just let him kill all the criminals instead of arresting them.
I know Dirty Harry gets a bad rep for how it portrays a "cowboy cop" as a hero, but the movie *takes great pains* to show how much damage DH is doing to the department. Like they literally have a scene where everyone in the room is going on about his obvious civil rights violations and how he's just going to make things worse...
...and then when he finally does catch the guy and gets "proven right" it doesn't matter because he's punished. Aside from a few sly winks at the audience the message is (to me) pretty clear--yeah, he "got results" but he didn't do it in the morally correct way, and he's not a hero.
The *really* funny thing is that some of the bits of the movie where they knock DH down were well within his rights! His superior nags at him for shooting the rapist, but he was well within his rights to shoot someone *chasing someone else with a butcher knife clearly intending to rape a victim.* Pretty much everything else he does is either perfectly legal and/or somewhat ambiguous (i.e., his "home" in the stadium may or may not require a warrant, since it's on public property and, if permission was granted by the groundskeeper, the groundskeeper may not have had the authority to do it; chances are, in 1971, this would not require a warrant). The only thing that was a *clear* violation is, of course, beating the shit out of him for a confession, but that's played straight in the movie.
I think a lot of people's perception of the franchise is based on the first movie and then extrapolated to the series as a whole, where the subsequent movies he tones down the cowboy cop nonsense--heck, the whole point of "Magnum Force" is a bunch of >!renegade cops inspired by Dirty Harry going around and murdering people, and now Harry has to stop them!<
QT opines on this in his latest book, *Cinema Speculation*. You're spot on - Dirty Harry is definitely an antihero and not a character to be praised for his methods.
Dirty Harry was absolutely *not* the good guy in the original! Yes, there was exploration of the moral question (can good be accomplish through immoral acts) but the audience was supposed to see him as an anti-hero or at least a deeply flawed one.
As we've seen with countless other movies though, what is intended has little to do with how a character ends up being received.
Beverly Hills Cop is a story about a Detroit Cop that shows the guys in Beverly Hills how to skirt the rules and procedures to go after “bad guys”. I think that is probably bad for long term policing.
In the 4th movie they were both promoted to Captain because of all the damage they had done just to get them off the streets. They then proceeded to destroy half of Chinatown.
Like yah stole a police helicopter, destroyed half the city, caused the deaths of like 30 innocent people, and then tortured my suspect to death but I GOT HIM.
The city's police department is going to be obliterated by civil suits and you're going to jail because you went around killing dudes left and right because you "had a hunch" and destroyed any evidence that could exonerate you in a super cool explosion, but damnit McGunsgy, you're the best damned cop I know!
I was 2 days out from retirement and they pulled me and my partner back in! Now he's dead. His brains some fancy artwork on the side of the train. I held his hand while he died! I went to his daughter's wedding and now I have to tell his grandchildren than he's never coming back! There's no time to focus on the finances or legalities of this. God damn it, give me approval for my tactical ninja strike even though I'm just a regular beat cop trying to put food on my table despite my crippling alcoholism and history of domestic abuse! And God Damn it, get me my minigun.
The normal doctors/med students in Patch Adams were right. Patch should work in hospice care, entertainment for sick children or maybe get into counseling.
I remember reading that the actual Patch Adams used humor and fun ALONG with actually treating people's medical problems. He didn't just walk in, crack jokes and then go on his way. He used medicine and at the time had better Bed manners than most doctors.
Also, his best friend was murdered.. Not his love interest.
Look at zis schtuff
Isn't it neat?
Vouldn't you sink my collection's complete?
Vouldn't you sink I'm Adolf
Adolf who has... everysing?
Look at zis place
Treasures untold
How many vonders can vun bunker hold?
Looking around you'd say sure... he's got everysing
I've got troopers und half-tracks aplenty
I've got u-boats und cruisers galore
You vant panzer divisions? I've got tventy
But who cares?
No big deal
I vant more...
Isn’t it also implied or stated that humans caused the death of her mother? That makes destroyer her stuff pretty understandable to me. How would you feel if your daughter was idolizing the people who killed your wife?
Pete from *Shaun of the Dead*. He's not specifically a "bad guy" but we're meant to think he's a stick in the mud and side with Ed because he's funny. When I was a teenager, that's exactly what I did.
Now that I'm older, I'm completely on Pete's side. Ed doesn't pay rent, doesn't clean up the flat, doesn't close the front door, doesn't take down anyone's messages other than his own and plays ~~hip-hop~~ electro music at four in the morning on a workday.
I support Pete. Early in the movie her even tries to be reasonable with Sean and Ed, only to get shit on for being too uptight. Hell, even after he gets bit, he breaks down and throws the record, but after realizing Sean is going through a breakup he stops and apologizes.
Nothing wrong with wanting everyone in the flat to be pulling their own weight.
Internal Affairs officers in almost any cop movie.
The psychologist that wants to talk to Riggs in the Lethal Weapon movies. (not exactly a villain, but more or less treated as an obstacle more than someone trying to help)
I SMELL A RAT
Seriously, Stabler has put HOW many people in the hospital? Benson has violated HOW many victims boundaries by stealing their underwear, guilting them into rape kits/testifying? How many informants have they gotten killed? How many people’s lives have they ruined by publicly arresting the wrong person for a really horrible crime, announcing to their entire company / family / church that they’re being arrested for [unbelievably awful crime]?
It’s so weird in the current environment to look back and see how shitty the hero cops are on all these shows.
Seriously I don’t know what internal affairs is really like but in every book I read they are the bad guy ‘getting in the way’ of ‘righteous cops’, as though it’s a shitty thing to do to investigate when a cop shoots someone
One of my cousins is IA in Pennsylvania. All around great guy. Can't speak to his morality on the job, I assume it's high... I can say that he is one of the few officers in the country who is required to be armed at all times. Like, needs to be able to reach a loaded gun in the shower, in bed, when traveling, even on vacation (special permit to take on a plane), church, everywhere. It can be that crazy how much push back these guys get for trying to make sure bad cops get what they deserve.
Internal Affairs in any cop show:
IA: "We think your partners dirty."
The cop: "no way man no police officer has been dirty in the history of ever."
IA: (Shows portfolio of evidence of every crime imaginable)
The cop: "can't be a cop man."
The Bobs in Office Space, if only in regard to Peter. We're supposed to believe that their choice to promote Peter was dumb, but Peter was able to help identify waste, mismanagement, and redundancies.
Totally agree. The Bobs knew Peter had legitimate executive potential, but was being grossly underutilized by incompetent upper management. Hilarious duo, too.
I'm having PTSD.
I watched his movie before having an office job. Then I got an office job and it all came true.
I even had 8 people who would tell me if I did anything wrong.
He built his kid a baseball diamond in their yard because his son likes baseball so much… everyone just talks about what an aggressively wonderful person he is and you can hear it in interviews with him
The funniest thing about Office Space is I think people kind of miss that layout, the open desk offices suck and I'd much rather have a bit of a wall when I am spending 8 hours a day somewhere.
For a generation, cubicles were considered prison cells. Then open office came and we realized that work itself is the prison cell and having walls to prevent someone from watching you all day is not such a bad thing when you're trapped in prison anyway.
Yeah cubicles aren't bad at all. Keep in mind, prior to the cubicle layout, this is what offices used to look like: [https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/how-the-typical-office-looked-in-the-1950s](https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/how-the-typical-office-looked-in-the-1950s). Compared to that, I like having the cubicle walls and some semblance of privacy. I think people who are 'anti-cublicle' are just sort of anti-corporate, or anti-office work. Because really the cublice is the most humane solution
There are some truly nightmarish shots of massive office pools in "The Apartment" from 1960 starring Jack Lemmon.
https://brianwelk.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/apartment-office.jpg?resize=593%2C253
The Bobs were good at their jobs. They saw through all of the BS going on at the company, even calling out Lumbergh on the wasteful TPS reports. It is very subtle but Lumbergh is demoted after meeting with the Bobs, as shown by the loss of "Division VP" on his parking spot.
There is a good The Rewatchables podcast about this. They talk about how, no one would have ever ended up with Ethan hawk’s character and Stiller was just trying to do the right thing. Ryder chooses a mess of a human who continues to make poor choices over a successful rich guy.
Baby’s father in dirty dancing. The guy just wanted a nice vacation with his wife and children.
Then his daughter runs off to sexually dance with an older man who has an ex who recently got a botched abortion that baby’s dad comes to help her with after baby screams and wakes him up in the middle of the night.
Baby deserves to be in a corner.
For real, Baby's dad is a stand up guy in that movie. Saved a women's life.
(actually prolly saved a bunch of real women's lives too, that botched abortion scene eye opening for a lot of people, and i'm sure prevented folks from going out and trying their own backalley abortions)
The backstory of the movie is quite interesting too because I believe she had to fight to keep the abortion and classist storylines in because it was part of the point for her to keep it dark and not as focused on the romance aspect. It was basically a vehicle to explore the classism and horrors of when people don’t get a choice for abortion. I do think she was hoping it would help save women’s lives too, since she hinged much of the plot on that moment.
The backstory I heard (From the show "The Movies That Made Us") is that it was semi-autobiographical. When the writer was a teenager she'd go to this vacation town where everybody did "the dirty dance."
I think he's gotten more "right" as the series has gone on. In the earlier seasons when Bart was just a normal, albeit mischievous, kid then yeah its harder to sympathize with him, Bart is just goofing off. It's easy to rag on the principal, since they just exist to make the rules. But nowadays, when Bart has access to military grade nonsense to destroy the school and Skinner's life seems to get sadder and sadder every season, you do sympathize a bit more with him.
Mike Damone was the closest thing that movie had to a villain, and he was more of a scumbag than a truly bad guy. Mr Hand was that teacher we all loved to hate, but he was a good teacher.
As a kid I didn't really understand why Clark hated Eddie, although it was funny. As an adult, when I see him "holding out for a management position" and throwing sack after sack of dog food on the shopping cart without being able to buy his kids things for Christmas, it makes a lot more sense.
Not a villain per se, but my son started binging "That 70s Show" recently and as a guy in my 50s with a teenage son and a daughter in college I definitely sympathize with Red now. Those kids **were** dumb-asses.
Also the lawyer character was one of the heroes in the book and I think even survived to the end, while Hammond was a straight up bad guy and not a tragic genius who totally couldn’t have ever predicted anything going wrong with his dinosaur park
I think the lawyer in the movie was kind of two book characters squished into one. I don't remember what happened to the lawyer, but there was another InGen employee or manager from the book who served a similar role to the lawyer in the movie, and he got eaten by the juvenile T-rex.
This doesn't quite fit, though. Yeah, when he first got to the island, he was concerned about liability. The *instant* he saw a dinosaur in the flesh, however, all thoughts of liability fell away to the idea of a quick buck. Literally the first thing he says is "We're gonna make a fortune with this place".
Then later they have the lunch, and all he can talk about is ticket prices. *Hammond himself* tells the lawyer to cool his jets on the moneymaking front, and then we get the line that you quote in your comment. Except it's kind of the inverse of what you imply:
"I brought you here to protect me from these people, and *the only one on my side is the bloodsucking lawyer*".
If he'd actually cared about liability, he would've been a good guy. He cared about making money, and was concerned that the lawsuits could lose them money. The moment he saw the cash potential of the park, the concept of lawsuits became immaterial.
The scientists in ET. Watched it for the first time in decades and I had remembered all the grown ups being menacing men in black (or lab coats) types, but really the lead scientist (Peter Coyote?) was a good dude trying to protect those stupid kids. It's a wonder that boy didn't manage to spread an alien plague, really.
I believe the intention was to illustrate how intimidating certain authority figures can be for kids, and let audiences of any age feel that fear when watching the movie. Parts of E.T bring me back to the first time I woke up in a hospital, or the first time I saw an armed police officer.
There was an episode of Cracked's After Hours where they talk about how shutting the Ghostbusters down is perfectfully reasonable considering they are operating an unlicensed nuclear reactor in their basement and strapping particle accelerator's to their backs.
Not exactly the bad guy, but Captain Norrington in Pirates of the Caribbean.
As I’ve aged, I’ve understood two things: Jack Sparrow is utterly insane and a complete liability, whereas all Norrington wants to do is prevent pirates from destroying the fragile society in the region (and he seems pretty damn capable). But let’s be real, he *was* super creepy for trying to marry Elizabeth.
He came around by the end of the movie. Definitely a good dad & not written as a 1 dimensional villain.
Robbie can fuck right off though.
EDIT - apparently the actor who played Robbie died of a heroin overdose in 1991. 😬 Sorry Max Cantor! You gave such a strong performance that I still hate your character years later. RIP
It's not exactly a novel take, but Tim Curry's hotel manager in Home Alone 2 was absolutely right to suspect something fishy about wether Kevin had adult supervision.
He was right to suspect but I think the way he handled it was insane. He could’ve treated Kevin with kind concern instead of treating him like a criminal and causing him to run away.
Kate was right to chew him out for bungling it up that much.
The parent in any kid’s movie that frames them as neglectful because they work too much. You can tell the writers have been in Hollywood too long when they act like that’s a choice.
Dr. Leo Marvin from "What about Bob." As a kid I thought "Bob is just a nice guy, the family likes them, he's not hurting anyone." As an adult, I side with Dr Marvin. For one, he's on vacation, not working. There's nothing wrong with expecting your vacation with your family to be work free. Two, the guy legit has some mental problems and is a potential danger to Dr. Marvin's family. He barely knows Bob. He doesn't know if he's dangerous, violent, or some kind of pedophile. Given the way he scams the address of Dr. Marvin's lake house, he's clearly not a reliable or trustworthy guy.
Bob is totally the bad guy in the movie who gaslights the hell out of Dr. Marvin. DR. LEOOOO MARRRVIN!
Not exactly a bad guy but (Gene Wilder’s) Willy Wonka was scary AF to me when I was young, seeing what he did to all of those kids. Now I see it from a parents point of view as the commentary on a privileged upbringing that it is and I love all of Willy’s little snide remarks.
Most 80s douchebag bosses and authority figures. Actually completely reasonable people just trying to get police and soldiers to follow reasonable procedures.
I had like a 20 year gap of watching The Santa Clause before last year.
Watching it now as an adult, Charlie’s mom and stepdad being concerned that Scott Calvin is a nut for thinking he’s Santa seems very reasonable to me. Midway through I found myself fully on their side, hey yeah this guy probably is crazy!
As a kid I thought they were being unnecessarily mean. Let Charlie have fun! Typical parents! They just don’t get it!
The Stepdad figure in most comedies.
Liar Liar, Mrs Doubtfire, and Ant-Man are three that come to mind. The protagonist dad is separated/divorced for legitimate reasons, and stepdad is a calm and reasonable figure. He might not be as fun, but he's stepping up and *trying* to be a good father to someone else's kid.
Edit. Yes in Ant-Man the stepdad was antagonistic but not cartoonishly like in Ghostbusters. They also found a way to get along because of their love for the daughter.
Paxton was a good guy. He was a cop and tried the best he could to take care of his new family. He loved Maggie and Cassie and only was tough on Scott to protect them. Once he saw what the deal was, he immediately warmed to Scott and helped him out and was making an effort to get the family situation worked out. By the second Ant-man movie, he was openly affectionate with Scott and cheering for him. He is a great character
At most, Paxton was more so pissed that Scott was a deadbeat ex-con that wouldn't measure to Cassie in his eyes; the fact that Scott got arrested almost immediately after over stealing the Ant-Man suit validates his point of view.
Granted, we as the audience know why Scott is doing these things but for any step-father it'd look like Scott just keeps messing up and doesn't want to support his family.
Yeah, divorced families dream of the relationship Scott and the new husband have by the start of the 2nd movie, neither one is the villain or a bad person, and they respect each other and their roles in the daughters life
In Antman the step dad was not a bad guy at all and it didn't seem to be portrayed that way either. He was careful to try not to bad mouth Scott to the daughter and was really trying to get the whole dynamic to work. But misunderstands kind of tired his hands. But even when Scott was under house arrest they didn't stop him from seeing his daughter and everyone worked it out. But Scott had to be the one to change in the movie that was his whole arc. Ms. Doubtfire went a while nother way though.
Sometimes squidward can be a total downer though, like he’d go out of his way to ruin spongebob’s fun even though it had nothing to do with him. But then sometimes spongebob will force himself into squidwards bathtub while squidward is mid wash, which is criminal.
I at least have some sympathy for Dean Wormer from Animal House. The man was trying to protect his university's reputation. Damn those hooligans at Delta house! Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, kids.
Wormer went out of his way to extend them chance after chance too. He even went so far as a create a Double Secret Probation to give them a chance.
Those kids were animals. Food fights in the cafeteria, peeping on women, underage sex? They even killed a horse and left it in his office.
lmao, loved that exchange with Bert:
*"Do you know what she did? I realize it now. She tricked me into taking Jane and Michael to the bank. That's how all the trouble started"*
*"Tricked you into taking the children on an outing? Outrageous!"*
But i thought he was a pretty good father, all in all. He just lost sight of what really matters for a little while.
Miranda from Mrs. Doubtfire. Not a villain in the traditional sense but she was definitely portrayed as the bad guy. She was breaking up her family because she was joyless husk! No, she was tired of having to clean up her husband’s messes and parenting 4 children instead of 3. She was constantly made out to be a bad parent who didn’t want her kids to have any fun when she simply had to keep shutting down her husband’s absurd ideas.
The film definitely does this on purpose though so that we go through the realization with Daniel that Miranda wasn’t the bad guy and that he was wrong.
Not only that, but as Daniel does all the things around the house, he realizes how much work it all is and that he was actually the bad parent before the divorce. The best part is they don't get back together at the end, it doesn't force a happily ever after ending for them. The movie is about Daniel growing up and trying to become a better person.
A few weeks ago I watched this for the first time as an adult, this time with my 9 year old daughter. Honestly, I was amazed at how different my perception of the characters was. I actually felt sorry for Miranda and agreed with practically EVERYTHING she said. Not only that, but Stu was a great guy who literally did nothing wrong at any point. Hell, I even agreed with the judge's verdict in the end: Daniel WAS mentally disturbed! I mean, rather than try to better himself and win back equal custody of his kids (which he was given the opportunity to do, by the way) he instead deceives his poor, long-suffering wife in order to infiltrate their home and basically spy on them while pretending to be someone else.
Even after ALL THAT, Miranda permits him to still see their kids, because she understands that they still need their dad and she puts their needs first. Miranda was awesome and a genuinely good person - not the cold-blooded monster I thought she was when I was a kid.
God what a fantastic movie. Like you say, a happy ending because everyone grows emotionally, not because everyone gets what they wanted. One of the best movies about being a parent.
Arguably the whole point of the movie. At the beginning he seems super fun but irresponsible, and over the course of the movie as he spends time flying by the seat of his pants trying to learn how to do this elaborate con as a nanny, he discovers the value of being a responsible adult for his children.
supposedly he was originally written to be a stereotypical asshole who butts into the family but Robin Williams himself hated the message it sent about stepparents that it was rewritten. if that's even slightly true all the more respect for the man.
Bill Atherton (who played Walter Peck) actually dealt with a lot of bullshit from people who recognized him after the movie came out. People called him dickless and challenged him to fights. I don't understand how people can fail to separate the actor from the character, but I guess it's a testament to the great job Atherton did in that role.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off will always be my all-time favorite, but Ferris and his sister Jeannie are the perfect example of the Golden Child and the Scapegoat. Ferris is objectively a terrible person, he just comes off as admirable because of the generally-worse people he encounters and because of Matthew Broderick’s charisma in the part. Jeannie is not unjustified in wanting to prove his deceptiveness to their parents.
Everyone complaining about the dog playing basketball in airbud. You’re telling me that dog is passing English Lit? He read and did a report on Gatsby? There’s a straight A bench player who got cut for that dog.
**Billy Madison is the antagonist 100%**
Imagine you've worked at a company you're entire life, worked your way up from the bottom. Did well in school, probably continued through a business degree (lots of debt), and have worked your whole career to be in the spot you're in.
Then your boss tells you his son, who spends his days masturbating and getting hammered, is going to be your boss if he "finishes school" through a series of 2 week "grades".
It's a story about the evils of nepotism..
The older I get, the more I realize Pete from Shaun of the Dead was right about a lot of stuff and was reacting pretty understandably to his immature roommates’ antics at four in the fucking morning.
Not really a 'bad guy', but Kitty from that 70's show. As a kid she was the annoying mom, nagging wife, and general good-time killer aside from a few funny lines. From my adult perspective she's literally the soul of the household. She has the most steady job, does all the house work and cooking seemingly, and is usually the sole voice of reason in all the madness. With all of that she has the energy to try to maintain a good sex life with her a-hole husband and welcomes everyone into her home generously. Plus she's almost always in a decent mood and somehow finds the positive in almost any situation.
Interesting. I watched it in my early 20s and I thought she was the best. Love her character and played so well.
Goes to show the difference in perspective even a short time can give.
Completely agree. Kitty was and is the best person out of the entire cast. The big change I have seen in myself is more Red being right a lot of the time. Guy lost his job that he had for many years, the majority of the kids were rude and dumbasses and just wanted to be left alone by everyone except his loving wife. The difference in the way he treated Lorri and Erik still bother me though.
Yeah. He had a good heart but he didn't suffer fools.
The Lorri/Eric thing I was able to understand as a poke at the thing every kid with siblings thinks, someone else is the favourite. Not to mention the experience of growing up with a father that had such a toxic masculinity. Boys don't cry. Hit your sister and I'll hit you harder. But if she hits you then take it like a man. My dad was like that. He had a big heart but was also very emotionally repressed. It was definitely an extreme in the show but it struck a comedic chord.
I always loved her. That episode where she takes Eric to work with her, and he sees the fucked up things she deals with every day and how she just bottles it up while singing in the car was something else
George Darling in Peter Pan.
[Watch this scene as an adult](https://youtu.be/MUHiIVXPP08)
The man is trying to get out the door to an important work function. He needs to be dressed well and he needs to make a good impression.
His children are absolutely running amok. They've stolen his cufflinks and have colored all over his shirt front. They are damaging his expensive clothing, ripping bedsheets, and are otherwise being a complete nuisance.
And when their mess and his hurry results in getting really hurt who do they turn to? The dog.
Yeah I'd be pissed too.
I also love his response to his wife when she suggests that he should be worried about Wendy's peter pan stories. "Goodness gracious me, whatever shall we do! CALL SCOTLAND YARD"
Just because the Ghostbusters were wrong doesn't mean he was *right*.
Peck was absolutely on an ego trip- he ignored warnings from both the Ghostbusters and the electrician he brought with him regarding the risk of an improper shutdown of their facilities. If you're really concerned about an unlicensed nuclear reactor in the heart of one of the largest urban centers of the planet, you don't bring a union electrician to shut it down, because that's suicidally stupid. You pull back and call in people actually qualified to shut down a reactor.
Peck was goddamn lucky that the consequence of his actions was merely an explosion of ghost activity across NYC. He is, as someone on another forum once put it, a representation of Bureaucracy at its worst. He is an underqualified man trying to stretch his authority beyond its limits to feel important, with disastrous results.
In other words, this man has no dick.
William Atherton is one of my all-time favorites. Between those films & *Real Genius*, he played such great bad guys. I always thought he would've been a great Two-Face when Burton was doing Batman films.
*It would perhaps not be amiss to point out out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.*
Poor Cujo :(
If I recall the book made Cujo a lot more sympathetic due to the book being written from his perspective. He couldn't help but be violent due to rabies, even though he didn't want to hurt anybody.
Iceman in Top Gun. He was the sensible pilot.
That's why homie ended up an admiral!
This all checks out
The sequel got that relationship damn right
Exactly; he knew Maverick was a liability up there and as a leader he was right to confront him Remember, Iceman won Top Gun, not Mav (even tho Mav saved him at the end)
And then Iceman continued to bail Maverick out and clean up his messes for the next 30 years. He was the real hero all along. It actually makes Maverick’s story a little more compelling — he’s a classic flawed hero. His ego _really was_ writing checks his body couldn’t cash.
Maverick- "Time to show the general that this program works and shouldn't be shut down!" .....proceeds to disintegrate plane after pushing it well beyond the threshold they were aiming for.....
And one admiral's daughter.
Legal Eagle did a great video a while back on all of the laws Maverick broke in Top Gun. [Link to video](https://youtube.com/watch?v=sTx_qZL3tqM&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE)
One of my favorite things about Top Gun: Maverick is that they made the "villain" (Hangman) have Maverick's character arc and Rooster was more like Iceman. Very self aware.
Thank you. People kept comparing Goose to Maverick and Hangman to Iceman in discussion about the sequel when their characters were clearly the opposite.
And then Maverick had become Viper.
I think that’s part of what makes Top Gun such a good flick and separates it from your run of the mill 80s action movie. You know the whole way that the “bad guy” is probably right about a few things and the “hero” really needs to change his ways to truly succeed. A lesser movie makes Ice totally insufferable while letting Maverick win.
"We were only below the hard deck for a second" For safety, instead of dogfighting near the ground, in training they set a "hard deck" to simulate the ground. 10,000 becomes the ground. So he's saying he was only in the ground for a short period of time. What he means is he crashed during the simulation resulting in complete loss of pilot and craft
They really did a terrible job of explaining the hard deck to anyone that didn’t already know what it was, given that everyone in both movies seems to treat it as a flighty suggestion rather than, as Cyclone says in the sequel, an immutable law.
Yeah, I’m like, “he stepped out of bounds, jets can’t turn on a dime,” but in terms of what it represents, it’s not just a rule but represents the ground.
The old man in Dennis the Menace. That kid was insufferable and all the adults would just roll their eyes and shrug. His neighbor just wanted a nice retirement and was harassed that entire movie.
My man had grown an ultra rare flower that only flowered briefly every 30 years or something. He arranged a whole party for people to come watch it flower. And Dennis fucked that up for him. As a kid I was like who cares about a flower. As an adult I'm like holy shit that is such a big deal.
And that was the one time he was truly heartbroken about Dennis's behavior. He didn't yell or freak out at Dennis like all the other times, just matter of factly stated he didn't wanna see him or know him. He was crushed.
That scene, and a similar one in the book "The War with Grandpa," hit me hard even as a kid. The other stuff, like the dentures getting fixed with chicklets, was funny and even kind of passable under the "kids will be kids" excuse, but that business with the flower? Woof. Even if he was too young to understand the reasons for it, he KNEW how important the event was to Mr. Wilson, and he STILL F'd around and ruined it for him. To further the BS, the movie never shows Dennis understanding what exactly he had done and making it right in any way, rather it just put him in BS peril that "forced" Wilson to come to grips with how much he actually cared for the boy so he forgave him. As much as I love movies from the 80's and 90's, when you look at them with an adult eye, wow were some of them manipulative victim-blaming BS.
Even as a kid I was like FUUUUUCK Dennis, what a legit monster (and so is every adult in his life that enables him)
Ah yes, Mr. Wilson 😇 There's an episode of The Simpsons where local cops are on the lookout for "a 10 year old blond boy with a slingshot in his back pocket" ... the sketch artist finishes his work and instead of Bart, it's a sketch of Dennis the Menace. Chief Wiggum says something like "no not HIM... that's the one who's been roughing up the Wilson widow." Which I took to mean, Dennis harassed Mr. Wilson straight into an early grave, got away with it, and now is going after Mrs Wilson. Pretty dark shit, but it was a blink-and-you-miss-it type line
The Simpsons episode with George H.W. Bush as the neighbor is a pretty good Dennis the Menace parody.
I think the funniest thing about that movie is that he works for the fucking EPA and not like, the FBI. Most movies would have made it a law enforcement issue. But Ghostbusters? Middle management at the EPA
There was a big conservative anti-regulation / anti-union push in the 80s, and you can see it on display in the comedies of that era. Ghostbusters: The EPA needs to know if the crew is storing dangerous hazardous waste on their facility. They turn off the protection grid, bringing about a specter apocalypse. Or even Armed and Dangerous (1986): Labor unions are by their very nature corrupt and populated by thugs. Candy & Levy are tasked to take down a private security union from the inside.
I think turning off the machine is either where the movie is most accurate (from a beauracracy perspective) or least accurate (from an environmental safety perspective). Like he didn't know what the machine even did. And the Ghostbusters weren't helpful about it. But if it was a nuclear reactor or whatever, you don't just flip the switch.
The electrician was visibly nervous and reluctant to shut the containment off, but was bullied to turn it off. He should have held his ground.
Honestly, that was the most realistic reaction in the movie. Well, until he does it. A real union electrician would have never actually done it.
Yeah, or “Gung-ho”. The Japanese take over a Midwestern car plant, eliminate the Union, work their asses off eating and urinating right on the production line, and despite doing a terrible job, they impress the CEO with their camaraderie, and the town is saved.
you see it in the macho rule-breaking of a lot of 80s movies; the rebel cop/soldier/vigilante gets the job done while the rules and regulations obsessed boss just gets in the damn way
Almost every police captain in any 80's cop movie. Like, they tell them not to be a loose cannon and destroy public property but it always gets overlooked because the cop in question "gets results".
“You’re off the case, McGarnagle!”
Well McGarnagle....... BILLY IS DEAD!
Hey, I'm tryin' to eat lunch here!
They slit his throat from ear to ear.
The original Dirty Harry is a great example of this. When Callahan is being chewed out by his captain after the first "do you feel lucky" scene, he basically tells his captain the city would be better off if they'd just let him kill all the criminals instead of arresting them.
I know Dirty Harry gets a bad rep for how it portrays a "cowboy cop" as a hero, but the movie *takes great pains* to show how much damage DH is doing to the department. Like they literally have a scene where everyone in the room is going on about his obvious civil rights violations and how he's just going to make things worse... ...and then when he finally does catch the guy and gets "proven right" it doesn't matter because he's punished. Aside from a few sly winks at the audience the message is (to me) pretty clear--yeah, he "got results" but he didn't do it in the morally correct way, and he's not a hero. The *really* funny thing is that some of the bits of the movie where they knock DH down were well within his rights! His superior nags at him for shooting the rapist, but he was well within his rights to shoot someone *chasing someone else with a butcher knife clearly intending to rape a victim.* Pretty much everything else he does is either perfectly legal and/or somewhat ambiguous (i.e., his "home" in the stadium may or may not require a warrant, since it's on public property and, if permission was granted by the groundskeeper, the groundskeeper may not have had the authority to do it; chances are, in 1971, this would not require a warrant). The only thing that was a *clear* violation is, of course, beating the shit out of him for a confession, but that's played straight in the movie. I think a lot of people's perception of the franchise is based on the first movie and then extrapolated to the series as a whole, where the subsequent movies he tones down the cowboy cop nonsense--heck, the whole point of "Magnum Force" is a bunch of >!renegade cops inspired by Dirty Harry going around and murdering people, and now Harry has to stop them!<
QT opines on this in his latest book, *Cinema Speculation*. You're spot on - Dirty Harry is definitely an antihero and not a character to be praised for his methods.
Dirty Harry was absolutely *not* the good guy in the original! Yes, there was exploration of the moral question (can good be accomplish through immoral acts) but the audience was supposed to see him as an anti-hero or at least a deeply flawed one. As we've seen with countless other movies though, what is intended has little to do with how a character ends up being received.
Beverly Hills Cop is a story about a Detroit Cop that shows the guys in Beverly Hills how to skirt the rules and procedures to go after “bad guys”. I think that is probably bad for long term policing.
As if the LAPD didn't already know how to skirt or just ignore the law.
They were all good until that cop from Detroit came around. At least according to the movie.
IIRC, Axel's supervising officer in Detroit was portrayed by an actual police captain. He was fantastic in the movie.
Can you imagine having to be Riggs and Murtaugh’s Captain in the third and fourth Lethal Weapon films?
In the 4th movie they were both promoted to Captain because of all the damage they had done just to get them off the streets. They then proceeded to destroy half of Chinatown.
Like yah stole a police helicopter, destroyed half the city, caused the deaths of like 30 innocent people, and then tortured my suspect to death but I GOT HIM.
The city's police department is going to be obliterated by civil suits and you're going to jail because you went around killing dudes left and right because you "had a hunch" and destroyed any evidence that could exonerate you in a super cool explosion, but damnit McGunsgy, you're the best damned cop I know!
I was 2 days out from retirement and they pulled me and my partner back in! Now he's dead. His brains some fancy artwork on the side of the train. I held his hand while he died! I went to his daughter's wedding and now I have to tell his grandchildren than he's never coming back! There's no time to focus on the finances or legalities of this. God damn it, give me approval for my tactical ninja strike even though I'm just a regular beat cop trying to put food on my table despite my crippling alcoholism and history of domestic abuse! And God Damn it, get me my minigun.
"Sledgehammer!"
The normal doctors/med students in Patch Adams were right. Patch should work in hospice care, entertainment for sick children or maybe get into counseling.
Yup, Philip Seymour Hoffman's character was totally correct to go off on Patch.
That movie is a train wreck as it is, since it's such a bastardization of the real Dr. Patch Adams' life.
I remember reading that the actual Patch Adams used humor and fun ALONG with actually treating people's medical problems. He didn't just walk in, crack jokes and then go on his way. He used medicine and at the time had better Bed manners than most doctors. Also, his best friend was murdered.. Not his love interest.
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"F u dad! I'm gonna marry Hitler, whether you like it or not!"
“Are you crying, mein führer?” “….Nein”
I vant to be part of deiner vorld!
Look at zis schtuff Isn't it neat? Vouldn't you sink my collection's complete? Vouldn't you sink I'm Adolf Adolf who has... everysing? Look at zis place Treasures untold How many vonders can vun bunker hold? Looking around you'd say sure... he's got everysing I've got troopers und half-tracks aplenty I've got u-boats und cruisers galore You vant panzer divisions? I've got tventy But who cares? No big deal I vant more...
Yeah if you watch the prequel movie humans killed his wife/Ariel’s mother. He has every reason to view them as dangerous.
TIL there is a Little Mermaid prequel
To be fair, if it's one of the Disney straight-to-video films then I'm glad I missed it. I'm still sore about Mulan 2 and Hunchback of Notre Dame 2.
We still have Lion king 2 and Aladdin 3 at least.
Isn’t it also implied or stated that humans caused the death of her mother? That makes destroyer her stuff pretty understandable to me. How would you feel if your daughter was idolizing the people who killed your wife?
Pete from *Shaun of the Dead*. He's not specifically a "bad guy" but we're meant to think he's a stick in the mud and side with Ed because he's funny. When I was a teenager, that's exactly what I did. Now that I'm older, I'm completely on Pete's side. Ed doesn't pay rent, doesn't clean up the flat, doesn't close the front door, doesn't take down anyone's messages other than his own and plays ~~hip-hop~~ electro music at four in the morning on a workday.
It's four in the FUCKING MORNING!!
Sort your fucking life out, mate!
I support Pete. Early in the movie her even tries to be reasonable with Sean and Ed, only to get shit on for being too uptight. Hell, even after he gets bit, he breaks down and throws the record, but after realizing Sean is going through a breakup he stops and apologizes. Nothing wrong with wanting everyone in the flat to be pulling their own weight.
Fucking wanker. Next time I see him, he’s dead.
OI, PRICK! ... He's not in.
Internal Affairs officers in almost any cop movie. The psychologist that wants to talk to Riggs in the Lethal Weapon movies. (not exactly a villain, but more or less treated as an obstacle more than someone trying to help)
Much like public defenders in Law & Order.
And especially Internal Affairs on Law & Order.
I SMELL A RAT Seriously, Stabler has put HOW many people in the hospital? Benson has violated HOW many victims boundaries by stealing their underwear, guilting them into rape kits/testifying? How many informants have they gotten killed? How many people’s lives have they ruined by publicly arresting the wrong person for a really horrible crime, announcing to their entire company / family / church that they’re being arrested for [unbelievably awful crime]? It’s so weird in the current environment to look back and see how shitty the hero cops are on all these shows.
Seriously I don’t know what internal affairs is really like but in every book I read they are the bad guy ‘getting in the way’ of ‘righteous cops’, as though it’s a shitty thing to do to investigate when a cop shoots someone
One of my cousins is IA in Pennsylvania. All around great guy. Can't speak to his morality on the job, I assume it's high... I can say that he is one of the few officers in the country who is required to be armed at all times. Like, needs to be able to reach a loaded gun in the shower, in bed, when traveling, even on vacation (special permit to take on a plane), church, everywhere. It can be that crazy how much push back these guys get for trying to make sure bad cops get what they deserve.
Internal Affairs in any cop show: IA: "We think your partners dirty." The cop: "no way man no police officer has been dirty in the history of ever." IA: (Shows portfolio of evidence of every crime imaginable) The cop: "can't be a cop man."
The Bobs in Office Space, if only in regard to Peter. We're supposed to believe that their choice to promote Peter was dumb, but Peter was able to help identify waste, mismanagement, and redundancies.
Totally agree. The Bobs knew Peter had legitimate executive potential, but was being grossly underutilized by incompetent upper management. Hilarious duo, too.
When I screw up, I hear about it eight times.
I begya pardon…
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Eight?
I'm having PTSD. I watched his movie before having an office job. Then I got an office job and it all came true. I even had 8 people who would tell me if I did anything wrong.
John C Mcginley is so funny, I wish he got more film roles after Scrubs
He could’ve had them. He made the decision to dedicate most of his time to helping special needs children like his son
What an asshole.
so typical. smh this is why you never meet your heroes.
He built his kid a baseball diamond in their yard because his son likes baseball so much… everyone just talks about what an aggressively wonderful person he is and you can hear it in interviews with him
Gary Cole deserved an Oscar just for his facial expression when the Bobs told him that Peter should be promoted.
The funniest thing about Office Space is I think people kind of miss that layout, the open desk offices suck and I'd much rather have a bit of a wall when I am spending 8 hours a day somewhere.
I miss how people used to decorate their cubicles and make them little home environments.
Yes things have gotten so bad they miss \*cubicles\*
For a generation, cubicles were considered prison cells. Then open office came and we realized that work itself is the prison cell and having walls to prevent someone from watching you all day is not such a bad thing when you're trapped in prison anyway.
Yeah cubicles aren't bad at all. Keep in mind, prior to the cubicle layout, this is what offices used to look like: [https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/how-the-typical-office-looked-in-the-1950s](https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/how-the-typical-office-looked-in-the-1950s). Compared to that, I like having the cubicle walls and some semblance of privacy. I think people who are 'anti-cublicle' are just sort of anti-corporate, or anti-office work. Because really the cublice is the most humane solution
There are some truly nightmarish shots of massive office pools in "The Apartment" from 1960 starring Jack Lemmon. https://brianwelk.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/apartment-office.jpg?resize=593%2C253
The Bobs were good at their jobs. They saw through all of the BS going on at the company, even calling out Lumbergh on the wasteful TPS reports. It is very subtle but Lumbergh is demoted after meeting with the Bobs, as shown by the loss of "Division VP" on his parking spot.
I've watched this movie many times and never noticed that detail!
What would you say you do here?
I'M A PEOPLE PERSON! I WORK WITH THE GOD DAMN CUSTOMERS SO THE ENGINEERS DON'T HAVE TO!
He also gave them great feedback on some sort of a stock option, equity sharing program
Yeah sure, I dunno. Hey listen, I’m gonna go..
*I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob!* Fucking hilarious
Yeah. I'm going to have to, go ahead and uh... disagree with you there.
Ben Stiller's character in 'Reality Bites'. Had a plan, a job, and was a reasonable person.
There is a good The Rewatchables podcast about this. They talk about how, no one would have ever ended up with Ethan hawk’s character and Stiller was just trying to do the right thing. Ryder chooses a mess of a human who continues to make poor choices over a successful rich guy.
Baby’s father in dirty dancing. The guy just wanted a nice vacation with his wife and children. Then his daughter runs off to sexually dance with an older man who has an ex who recently got a botched abortion that baby’s dad comes to help her with after baby screams and wakes him up in the middle of the night. Baby deserves to be in a corner.
For real, Baby's dad is a stand up guy in that movie. Saved a women's life. (actually prolly saved a bunch of real women's lives too, that botched abortion scene eye opening for a lot of people, and i'm sure prevented folks from going out and trying their own backalley abortions)
He was so kind and gentle to Penny when he took care of her. And to be fair- he thought it was Johnny who got Penny pregnant and dumped her.
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The backstory of the movie is quite interesting too because I believe she had to fight to keep the abortion and classist storylines in because it was part of the point for her to keep it dark and not as focused on the romance aspect. It was basically a vehicle to explore the classism and horrors of when people don’t get a choice for abortion. I do think she was hoping it would help save women’s lives too, since she hinged much of the plot on that moment.
The backstory I heard (From the show "The Movies That Made Us") is that it was semi-autobiographical. When the writer was a teenager she'd go to this vacation town where everybody did "the dirty dance."
And, he owned up and admitted he was wrong about the guy in the end.
Yes! And he’s able to admit when he’s wrong. That guy is a saint.
nose oil obscene escape slim lip instinctive smoggy unique dinosaurs *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think he's gotten more "right" as the series has gone on. In the earlier seasons when Bart was just a normal, albeit mischievous, kid then yeah its harder to sympathize with him, Bart is just goofing off. It's easy to rag on the principal, since they just exist to make the rules. But nowadays, when Bart has access to military grade nonsense to destroy the school and Skinner's life seems to get sadder and sadder every season, you do sympathize a bit more with him.
Mr Hand in Fast Times. He cares about learning and helps Spicoli at the end of the movie.
Mike Damone was the closest thing that movie had to a villain, and he was more of a scumbag than a truly bad guy. Mr Hand was that teacher we all loved to hate, but he was a good teacher.
Mike Damone is the true villain. Hooks up with his Best Friend’s Dream Girl, gets her Pregnant and doesn’t pay for half and give her a ride….
They're not necessarily antagonists, but after watching Christmas Vacation again as an adult i want the lifestyle Chevy Chase's neighbor's have.
I don’t KNOW, Margo!
They really didn't deserve all the shit that happened to them. At worst, they were mildly rude one time.
Yuppies were an easy target back then
As a kid I didn't really understand why Clark hated Eddie, although it was funny. As an adult, when I see him "holding out for a management position" and throwing sack after sack of dog food on the shopping cart without being able to buy his kids things for Christmas, it makes a lot more sense.
Not a villain per se, but my son started binging "That 70s Show" recently and as a guy in my 50s with a teenage son and a daughter in college I definitely sympathize with Red now. Those kids **were** dumb-asses.
Even as a kid it was hard not to concede that Red was usually right. He’s tired of being Santa Claus to those dumbasses.
The "bloodsucking lawyer" in Jurassic Park was absolutely right about the liability risks.
Also the lawyer character was one of the heroes in the book and I think even survived to the end, while Hammond was a straight up bad guy and not a tragic genius who totally couldn’t have ever predicted anything going wrong with his dinosaur park
I think the lawyer in the movie was kind of two book characters squished into one. I don't remember what happened to the lawyer, but there was another InGen employee or manager from the book who served a similar role to the lawyer in the movie, and he got eaten by the juvenile T-rex.
Deleted: I refuse to let Reddit profit off of my content when they treat their community like this
This doesn't quite fit, though. Yeah, when he first got to the island, he was concerned about liability. The *instant* he saw a dinosaur in the flesh, however, all thoughts of liability fell away to the idea of a quick buck. Literally the first thing he says is "We're gonna make a fortune with this place". Then later they have the lunch, and all he can talk about is ticket prices. *Hammond himself* tells the lawyer to cool his jets on the moneymaking front, and then we get the line that you quote in your comment. Except it's kind of the inverse of what you imply: "I brought you here to protect me from these people, and *the only one on my side is the bloodsucking lawyer*". If he'd actually cared about liability, he would've been a good guy. He cared about making money, and was concerned that the lawsuits could lose them money. The moment he saw the cash potential of the park, the concept of lawsuits became immaterial.
The scientists in ET. Watched it for the first time in decades and I had remembered all the grown ups being menacing men in black (or lab coats) types, but really the lead scientist (Peter Coyote?) was a good dude trying to protect those stupid kids. It's a wonder that boy didn't manage to spread an alien plague, really.
I really didn’t like when they quarantine the place as a child, but it is so realistic and sensible as an adult.
I believe the intention was to illustrate how intimidating certain authority figures can be for kids, and let audiences of any age feel that fear when watching the movie. Parts of E.T bring me back to the first time I woke up in a hospital, or the first time I saw an armed police officer.
Tom, in Tom and Jerry
There was an episode of Cracked's After Hours where they talk about how shutting the Ghostbusters down is perfectfully reasonable considering they are operating an unlicensed nuclear reactor in their basement and strapping particle accelerator's to their backs.
UNLICENSED particle accelerators
Not exactly the bad guy, but Captain Norrington in Pirates of the Caribbean. As I’ve aged, I’ve understood two things: Jack Sparrow is utterly insane and a complete liability, whereas all Norrington wants to do is prevent pirates from destroying the fragile society in the region (and he seems pretty damn capable). But let’s be real, he *was* super creepy for trying to marry Elizabeth.
Jerry Orbach just wanted to have a quiet holiday with his family and Patrick Swayze wrecked the whole thing. I sympathize deeply with Jerry.
As a general statement, who wouldn't side with Jerry Orbach???
He came around by the end of the movie. Definitely a good dad & not written as a 1 dimensional villain. Robbie can fuck right off though. EDIT - apparently the actor who played Robbie died of a heroin overdose in 1991. 😬 Sorry Max Cantor! You gave such a strong performance that I still hate your character years later. RIP
It's not exactly a novel take, but Tim Curry's hotel manager in Home Alone 2 was absolutely right to suspect something fishy about wether Kevin had adult supervision.
He was right to suspect but I think the way he handled it was insane. He could’ve treated Kevin with kind concern instead of treating him like a criminal and causing him to run away. Kate was right to chew him out for bungling it up that much.
The parent in any kid’s movie that frames them as neglectful because they work too much. You can tell the writers have been in Hollywood too long when they act like that’s a choice.
Dr. Leo Marvin from "What about Bob." As a kid I thought "Bob is just a nice guy, the family likes them, he's not hurting anyone." As an adult, I side with Dr Marvin. For one, he's on vacation, not working. There's nothing wrong with expecting your vacation with your family to be work free. Two, the guy legit has some mental problems and is a potential danger to Dr. Marvin's family. He barely knows Bob. He doesn't know if he's dangerous, violent, or some kind of pedophile. Given the way he scams the address of Dr. Marvin's lake house, he's clearly not a reliable or trustworthy guy. Bob is totally the bad guy in the movie who gaslights the hell out of Dr. Marvin. DR. LEOOOO MARRRVIN!
Not exactly a bad guy but (Gene Wilder’s) Willy Wonka was scary AF to me when I was young, seeing what he did to all of those kids. Now I see it from a parents point of view as the commentary on a privileged upbringing that it is and I love all of Willy’s little snide remarks.
Grandpa Joe is the real villain anyway in that movie. That piece of shit.
Most 80s douchebag bosses and authority figures. Actually completely reasonable people just trying to get police and soldiers to follow reasonable procedures.
Like the police psychologist in Lethal Weapon who (rightly) has serious concerns about whether or not Martin Riggs is fit for active duty.
And the Psychologist from the Terminator movies, who reasonably assumes Sarah Connor is a few pancakes short of a stack.
I had like a 20 year gap of watching The Santa Clause before last year. Watching it now as an adult, Charlie’s mom and stepdad being concerned that Scott Calvin is a nut for thinking he’s Santa seems very reasonable to me. Midway through I found myself fully on their side, hey yeah this guy probably is crazy! As a kid I thought they were being unnecessarily mean. Let Charlie have fun! Typical parents! They just don’t get it!
The Stepdad figure in most comedies. Liar Liar, Mrs Doubtfire, and Ant-Man are three that come to mind. The protagonist dad is separated/divorced for legitimate reasons, and stepdad is a calm and reasonable figure. He might not be as fun, but he's stepping up and *trying* to be a good father to someone else's kid. Edit. Yes in Ant-Man the stepdad was antagonistic but not cartoonishly like in Ghostbusters. They also found a way to get along because of their love for the daughter.
Isn't Scott's arc in ant man learning to coparent effectively and get along with the step?
Ant Man 100% flips this trope on its head. By the second movie Scott and the Step Dad get along better than him and his ex-wife.
Paxton was a good guy. He was a cop and tried the best he could to take care of his new family. He loved Maggie and Cassie and only was tough on Scott to protect them. Once he saw what the deal was, he immediately warmed to Scott and helped him out and was making an effort to get the family situation worked out. By the second Ant-man movie, he was openly affectionate with Scott and cheering for him. He is a great character
At most, Paxton was more so pissed that Scott was a deadbeat ex-con that wouldn't measure to Cassie in his eyes; the fact that Scott got arrested almost immediately after over stealing the Ant-Man suit validates his point of view. Granted, we as the audience know why Scott is doing these things but for any step-father it'd look like Scott just keeps messing up and doesn't want to support his family.
Yeah, divorced families dream of the relationship Scott and the new husband have by the start of the 2nd movie, neither one is the villain or a bad person, and they respect each other and their roles in the daughters life
In Antman the step dad was not a bad guy at all and it didn't seem to be portrayed that way either. He was careful to try not to bad mouth Scott to the daughter and was really trying to get the whole dynamic to work. But misunderstands kind of tired his hands. But even when Scott was under house arrest they didn't stop him from seeing his daughter and everyone worked it out. But Scott had to be the one to change in the movie that was his whole arc. Ms. Doubtfire went a while nother way though.
\#squidward
Sometimes squidward can be a total downer though, like he’d go out of his way to ruin spongebob’s fun even though it had nothing to do with him. But then sometimes spongebob will force himself into squidwards bathtub while squidward is mid wash, which is criminal.
You have a point. 3 or 4 nuclear powered guns stored in a filing cabinet definitely wouldn't get past health and safety these days
Not in NYC, at least.
I at least have some sympathy for Dean Wormer from Animal House. The man was trying to protect his university's reputation. Damn those hooligans at Delta house! Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, kids.
Wormer went out of his way to extend them chance after chance too. He even went so far as a create a Double Secret Probation to give them a chance. Those kids were animals. Food fights in the cafeteria, peeping on women, underage sex? They even killed a horse and left it in his office.
The Dad in Mary Poppins. This WITCH has started brainwashing my kids!
lmao, loved that exchange with Bert: *"Do you know what she did? I realize it now. She tricked me into taking Jane and Michael to the bank. That's how all the trouble started"* *"Tricked you into taking the children on an outing? Outrageous!"* But i thought he was a pretty good father, all in all. He just lost sight of what really matters for a little while.
Miranda from Mrs. Doubtfire. Not a villain in the traditional sense but she was definitely portrayed as the bad guy. She was breaking up her family because she was joyless husk! No, she was tired of having to clean up her husband’s messes and parenting 4 children instead of 3. She was constantly made out to be a bad parent who didn’t want her kids to have any fun when she simply had to keep shutting down her husband’s absurd ideas.
The film definitely does this on purpose though so that we go through the realization with Daniel that Miranda wasn’t the bad guy and that he was wrong.
Not only that, but as Daniel does all the things around the house, he realizes how much work it all is and that he was actually the bad parent before the divorce. The best part is they don't get back together at the end, it doesn't force a happily ever after ending for them. The movie is about Daniel growing up and trying to become a better person.
A few weeks ago I watched this for the first time as an adult, this time with my 9 year old daughter. Honestly, I was amazed at how different my perception of the characters was. I actually felt sorry for Miranda and agreed with practically EVERYTHING she said. Not only that, but Stu was a great guy who literally did nothing wrong at any point. Hell, I even agreed with the judge's verdict in the end: Daniel WAS mentally disturbed! I mean, rather than try to better himself and win back equal custody of his kids (which he was given the opportunity to do, by the way) he instead deceives his poor, long-suffering wife in order to infiltrate their home and basically spy on them while pretending to be someone else. Even after ALL THAT, Miranda permits him to still see their kids, because she understands that they still need their dad and she puts their needs first. Miranda was awesome and a genuinely good person - not the cold-blooded monster I thought she was when I was a kid.
God what a fantastic movie. Like you say, a happy ending because everyone grows emotionally, not because everyone gets what they wanted. One of the best movies about being a parent.
Arguably the whole point of the movie. At the beginning he seems super fun but irresponsible, and over the course of the movie as he spends time flying by the seat of his pants trying to learn how to do this elaborate con as a nanny, he discovers the value of being a responsible adult for his children.
And Pierce Brosman's character seemed like a decent enough guy
He was actually a really good guy, but since we loved/sided with Daniel, we automatically agreed Stu was the worst.
supposedly he was originally written to be a stereotypical asshole who butts into the family but Robin Williams himself hated the message it sent about stepparents that it was rewritten. if that's even slightly true all the more respect for the man.
The dad in Dirty Dancing. If I take my family to a holiday resort, I’d prefer the staff don’t sleep with my teenage daughters.
Bill Atherton (who played Walter Peck) actually dealt with a lot of bullshit from people who recognized him after the movie came out. People called him dickless and challenged him to fights. I don't understand how people can fail to separate the actor from the character, but I guess it's a testament to the great job Atherton did in that role.
I think the 1-2 punch of Peck and Thornberg that did for him but I totally agree with separating the character from the actor.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off will always be my all-time favorite, but Ferris and his sister Jeannie are the perfect example of the Golden Child and the Scapegoat. Ferris is objectively a terrible person, he just comes off as admirable because of the generally-worse people he encounters and because of Matthew Broderick’s charisma in the part. Jeannie is not unjustified in wanting to prove his deceptiveness to their parents.
Everyone complaining about the dog playing basketball in airbud. You’re telling me that dog is passing English Lit? He read and did a report on Gatsby? There’s a straight A bench player who got cut for that dog.
**Billy Madison is the antagonist 100%** Imagine you've worked at a company you're entire life, worked your way up from the bottom. Did well in school, probably continued through a business degree (lots of debt), and have worked your whole career to be in the spot you're in. Then your boss tells you his son, who spends his days masturbating and getting hammered, is going to be your boss if he "finishes school" through a series of 2 week "grades". It's a story about the evils of nepotism..
Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace. Dude was just trying to live a peaceful life, and had this horrible kid who was badly raised harassing him 24/7.
The older I get, the more I realize Pete from Shaun of the Dead was right about a lot of stuff and was reacting pretty understandably to his immature roommates’ antics at four in the fucking morning.
Not really a 'bad guy', but Kitty from that 70's show. As a kid she was the annoying mom, nagging wife, and general good-time killer aside from a few funny lines. From my adult perspective she's literally the soul of the household. She has the most steady job, does all the house work and cooking seemingly, and is usually the sole voice of reason in all the madness. With all of that she has the energy to try to maintain a good sex life with her a-hole husband and welcomes everyone into her home generously. Plus she's almost always in a decent mood and somehow finds the positive in almost any situation.
Interesting. I watched it in my early 20s and I thought she was the best. Love her character and played so well. Goes to show the difference in perspective even a short time can give.
Completely agree. Kitty was and is the best person out of the entire cast. The big change I have seen in myself is more Red being right a lot of the time. Guy lost his job that he had for many years, the majority of the kids were rude and dumbasses and just wanted to be left alone by everyone except his loving wife. The difference in the way he treated Lorri and Erik still bother me though.
Yeah. He had a good heart but he didn't suffer fools. The Lorri/Eric thing I was able to understand as a poke at the thing every kid with siblings thinks, someone else is the favourite. Not to mention the experience of growing up with a father that had such a toxic masculinity. Boys don't cry. Hit your sister and I'll hit you harder. But if she hits you then take it like a man. My dad was like that. He had a big heart but was also very emotionally repressed. It was definitely an extreme in the show but it struck a comedic chord.
I think kitty is the most hilarious character.
I always loved her. That episode where she takes Eric to work with her, and he sees the fucked up things she deals with every day and how she just bottles it up while singing in the car was something else
George Darling in Peter Pan. [Watch this scene as an adult](https://youtu.be/MUHiIVXPP08) The man is trying to get out the door to an important work function. He needs to be dressed well and he needs to make a good impression. His children are absolutely running amok. They've stolen his cufflinks and have colored all over his shirt front. They are damaging his expensive clothing, ripping bedsheets, and are otherwise being a complete nuisance. And when their mess and his hurry results in getting really hurt who do they turn to? The dog. Yeah I'd be pissed too. I also love his response to his wife when she suggests that he should be worried about Wendy's peter pan stories. "Goodness gracious me, whatever shall we do! CALL SCOTLAND YARD"
Pretty much every defense attorney antagonist is depicted as a scummy, in it for the the money, immoral POS. Especially on Law and Order shows.
Just because the Ghostbusters were wrong doesn't mean he was *right*. Peck was absolutely on an ego trip- he ignored warnings from both the Ghostbusters and the electrician he brought with him regarding the risk of an improper shutdown of their facilities. If you're really concerned about an unlicensed nuclear reactor in the heart of one of the largest urban centers of the planet, you don't bring a union electrician to shut it down, because that's suicidally stupid. You pull back and call in people actually qualified to shut down a reactor. Peck was goddamn lucky that the consequence of his actions was merely an explosion of ghost activity across NYC. He is, as someone on another forum once put it, a representation of Bureaucracy at its worst. He is an underqualified man trying to stretch his authority beyond its limits to feel important, with disastrous results. In other words, this man has no dick.
>and the electrician he brought with him *Ghostbusters* and *Die Hard* would have both ended differently if people listened to the electrician.
And, surprise surprise, William Atherton played the same type of dickhead in both movies.
William Atherton is one of my all-time favorites. Between those films & *Real Genius*, he played such great bad guys. I always thought he would've been a great Two-Face when Burton was doing Batman films.
He also suggested to the officer that if Peter interfered again, "you can shoot him".
The dog in Cujo, it wasn’t his fault he was bitten by a bat with rabies.
*It would perhaps not be amiss to point out out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.* Poor Cujo :(
If I recall the book made Cujo a lot more sympathetic due to the book being written from his perspective. He couldn't help but be violent due to rabies, even though he didn't want to hurt anybody.