when the "villain" is objectively correct, pointing out the failure of the establishment and that change is necessary, and then also skins puppies alive for no reason, and then the points they bring up are never addressed again
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Literally this:
I mean it feels kinda silly but holy shit it's such a real life thing. Many people are much better at identifying issues than solutions.
"I can't believe you convinced me that we shouldn't be letting corporations pollute the planet! I'm never falling for that again!"
The most interesting villains are objectively correct in their reason for acting but their methods are monstrous because they lost perspective.
A good example is the military antagonists in The Rock, where the military guys have decided that threatening terrorism is the only way to get benefits for vets and some of them decide to actually follow through with it. They were justifiably angry about something valid, but went too far.
Evil just to be evil is rarely engaging.
Kind of like how the Suffragettes were objectively correct and had to blow men up to create change because otherwise they would simply have been written off as hysterical women.
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Anytime the moral is to not get angry about something that’s perfectly reasonable to be angry about
The inciting incident in Elmo in Grouchland will forever be scarred into my brain.
So tired of seeing revenge killing movies in Hollywood. As long as someone is truly evil and does something unforgivable in the 1st act, the "hero" is then justified in slaughtering like 100+ random people in a dark hallway in the 2nd act. I think it's the only sort of violence we're okay with anymore. Any other type of violence people might have a problem, but because it's done in the name of revenge for a dead wife/dog/kidnapped daughter, that's now been whitewashed as "good wholesome revenge killing." Or something.
Is it better when the hero decides at the last minute to spare the life of the villain so they “don't become like them” or is it worse?
If the hero also spares the life of the 100+ randoms, it's better.
But killing them and sparing the life of the super evil villain, is much much worse.
At least in my opinion.
Thank you! Henching is an undeservedly maligned profession.
I wouldn't mind seeing a take on it, where the 100+ are at least arguably spared and the villain is actually killed at the end, completing the revenge. At least once.
Kind of related, the stories where the protagonist slaughters dozens of people just to get to the antagonist and then let them live because they had a change of heart.
Like bro, you just killed 50 people to get to this guy and now you're just gonna change your mind at the last minute?!? The proles can't even catch a break in hero stories.
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"This character is a freak, let's make fun of them for being different, even run them out of town." Character saves their lives, usually using the thing that makes them different "Hey everyone, this character is the best, we love them!"
Acceptable theoretical moral: Love everyone. Actual implied moral: Love everyone because you'll never know when they might be useful to you.
It's also kinda harmful to disabled people. The implication is they can only be accepted if they prove themselves exceptional
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Rudolph's Nose trope.
Exactly. HATED that and the Clifford books as a kid for that reason.
I don't know if this is still a thing, but I feel there was a surge of media in the 90s and 00s telling us:
If you're not popular at school, all you have to do is cut your hair, get contacts, and buy the same expensive clothes as everyone else, THEN you'll finally be happy.
She's soooo ugly, she has glasses and a pony tail!
She has paint on her overalls!
Character who hates being X suddenly realizes being X is helpful actually when something very contrived and unlikely happens.
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They've got money for war, but can't feed the poor. Best they can do is spend ten times what they would spend to feed them to torture the poor more.
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I hate it when they come up with something to help with someone's disability, but it's thrown out because the disability "is what makes them special"
to be fair, some in the disabled community live this way. they like refuse to accept solutions to their disabilities and see it as cultural destruction when such available solutions are embraced.
big problem in the deaf community w/ the advent of cochlear implants and the advancement of that tech, because they see deafness as a unique and defining feature of themselves they want to pass on to their children.
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I don't mind specific morals I think I mind the way they're told or if they're pushed down our throats in ways that don't feel genuine.
But any time media portrays war as good or cool or badass or necessary. Basically every movie from the 2000s carries a secret pro War message.
From the 2000s
Wait till you get to movies from the 50a
I feel as though most war movies, especially the famous ones, the moral is always "war is horrible." The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) is about how hard it is to come back from war and resume life.
With the exceptions of Top Gun, Act of Valor (2012), Lone Survivor (2013), etc. Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) sticks out as propaganda-ish.
The ones I would actually call "war movies" and not propaganda. Like The Longest Day (1962), Tora Tora Tora (1970) are obsessed with their historical accuracy. Hard to call those pro-war.
There are a lot of movies in the 50s and 60s that werent so much war propaganda as they were soldier's experience. Since their audience was people who'd been through war already. You see a certain style of humor of soldiers not heroically leaping into battle, but desperatwly trying to avoid fighting entirely, and when their is fighting trying as hard as they can to survive more than amything else. Certainly there were propaganda films then that did treat soldiers as heroes, also fuck john wayne, but its in the 70s and 80s that those types of movies disappeared and all war movies became heroic, and even non-war action movies became pro-war.
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I hate when media tells us that men should always agree with their wives even when the wife is clearly wrong and irrational. And I'm a woman. If I ever get married, I want a husband who will tell me when I'm wrong. Nobody should have to just put up with their partner behaving like an irrational lunatic without saying something.
social media largely disagrees with you and is even more crazy about this type of thing than mass media is.
what is the most wild to me is when a professional comes on and talks about your perspective, they get mobbed and mass reported as being misogynistic.
a lot of egotistical nutbags, man or woman, seem to think they can never be wrong any partner who would confront them is evil and hateful for doing so. or it's a form of partner abuse. i had a couple of exes who basically told me I was abusive and hateful when I pointed out their financial problems were entirely of their own making...
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I legitimately want to see a movie about a husband/wife couple that gets along the whole movie. It's not that there can't be conflict, just have it come from outside the relationship.
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The "We know this is a silly action movie, we're not taking it seriously ourselves, wink wink!" thing that some action movies do. If I thought action movies were cringe, I wouldn't be watching the movie in the first place. Can the folks making it please make a movie that they aren't themselves embarrassed of?
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The moral of every Hollywood Racism Movie^TM ends up boiling down to "We could eliminate racism if only every racist met a person of [RACE] that they actually liked."
They're correct that this creates cognitive dissonance. The racist, upon meeting a minority member that doesn't uphold the stereotype, has two contradictory facts in their head:
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All members of a minority group are bad.
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This member of that minority group isn't bad.
This is cognitive dissonance. Both of these cannot be true at the same time. One of these premises must be wrong.
Hollywood imagines the bigot will treat this like a physicist disproving a theory by finding a counterexample. But bigotry is anyhing but scientific. You can't reason your way out of a place reason did not lead you to. Instead, they adjust their premises to:
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Most members of a minority group are bad.
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This member of that minority group is one of the few good ones.
Exactly.
I mean, that is actually the most successful way of countering racism in real life. Not 100% successful, but better than just trying to talk someone out of racist views.
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I'm tired of seeing the telling of "the scorpion and the frog" fable ham fisted into so many stories. I don't think I ever heard that one growing up, yet I've heard it a dozen times in shows.
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Love/friendship/family/moral high ground/any virtue/you name it always wins and is the solution for all your problems.
Reality is never that simple. So there's nothing to take away from such a lesson except for false hopes.
Anyone can achieve great things, even if they come from nothing... As long as they secretly have a great background and heritage out the wazoo. Or it is pre-ordained and has to be them; all other attempts doomed to failure.
The initial message might be fine, but it then undermines itself.
Any kind, empathetic character in a book sacrifices themselves to help others? "Oh, that character is an allegory for Christ, that's why they acted that way." I used to hear this all the time in English classes from middle school on, and eventually it got annoying enough that I wound up sitting down and reading the whole damn bible, just so that I could ask "In what way are this character's actions better explained by them representing Jesus than by the fact that they've been an empathetic, kind character who looks out for others for the whole book?" and actually be able to call out teachers that were just using it lazily.
Yes, there are plenty such allegories out there in books, but it got to the point where it seemed like some sort of thought terminating cliché for literary analysis in middle school and high school.
The amount of references to Christianity in random pieces of media makes me want to crash out God damn America cult
Christ is already a fucking allegory! Maybe there can be people who are just nice.
The power of love saves the day
I may be biased since im ace
Interstellar and Arrival, great films ruined by this lazy pathetic trope.
except it's not the day, it's the entirety of space-time.
God how much better they would have been had they had like a cool science solution to the plot, but they'd have never made any money without the hackneyed 'love saves the universe' shit endings they had.
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I don't know if this counts but I hate when they do male makeovers and cut the guy's hair.
Diane Keaton was once in a movie where she gets cancer. Meryl Streep is her hairstylist sister. She makes her this wig. Marvin's Room (1996)
Before makeover: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116999/mediaviewer/rm1756714240/
After makeover: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116999/mediaviewer/rm991533057/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116999/mediaviewer/rm303667201/
I laughed so fucking hard when they put on that wig and all acted like it was great.
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