10 movies where the hero is a horrible person
Protagonists don’t often tend to be intentionally written as horrible people, but in certain cases, it’s proven unavoidable relative to the way they’re presented on-screen.
Fortunately, a powerhouse performance has a way of papering over those cracks, with a talented and capable performer able to transform an unsavoury hero who doesn’t boast many redeeming qualities into a popular figure that appeals to audiences the world over.
There aren’t many names who can pull off such a balancing act, and it can’t be a coincidence that several seminal figures in cinematic history have managed to avoid the pitfalls of their putrid personalities thanks almost entirely to the generational talents that brought them to life.
The following ten movies didn’t set out with the intention of having a questionable hero rooted at the centre of their respective stories, but at the end of the day, many of them survived and then thrived thanks almost entirely to the actor playing the part.
10 movies with a terrible hero:
10. 500 Days of Summer (Marc Webb, 2009)
Despite having it made very clear to him that she’s not interested in continuing their relationship, Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s Tom Hansen still decides it’s a good idea to dedicate every fibre of his existence to convincing Zooey Deschanel’s Summer Finn that it was wrong to break up with him, and their romance is deserving of a second chance.
That’s quite clearly the behaviour of an antagonist, considering she laid it out in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t a believer in the concepts of soulmates or true love. Undeterred, though, he constantly ignores a stance she never showed any sign of deviating from in the hopes that – entirely selfishly, of course – he’ll be proven right, get exactly what he wants in the end, and fundamentally alter her core beliefs.
Even when they reconnect at the end of the film when she’s gotten married, and his worldview has shifted towards true love being a fairy tale, she instead offers that he was actually right; he just had his attentions focused on the wrong person. Clearly learning nothing and displaying zero personal growth along the way, Tom meets a potential professional rival in Minka Kelly’s Autumn and immediately becomes smitten, inviting her out for coffee to presumably begin the haunting cycle anew.
9. You’ve Got Mail (Nora Ephron, 1998)
It’s not like Tom Hanks to play such a thunderous douchebag, but a great deal of the blame can be laid at the door of You’ve Got Mail co-writer and director Nora Ephron, who manages to overcome the male lead’s twisted sensibilities on the strength of the effortless chemistry he shares with Meg Ryan.
As well as using the might of his corporate status in an attempt to crush her independent bookstore, his discovery that Ryan’s Kathleen Kelly is the subject of his online affections doesn’t unfold as a moment of realisation. Quite the opposite, in fact, as he weaponises that information to benefit only himself and his chain brand while she makes the heart-wrenching decision to close down.
He could have told her his true identity as soon as he wanted, but Hanks’ Joe Fox opted to sabotage his own blind date to throw petty barbs, in what’s equivalent to little children bullying the person they have a crush on as a transparent means of masking how they really feel. Sure, they get together in the end, but Joe had a nefarious way of going about it.
8. What About Bob? (Frank Oz, 1991)
Stars Richard Dreyfuss and Bill Murray ended up feuding behind the scenes in what proved to be a case of life imitating art, given how the former’s Leo Marvin is driven to his wit’s end by the latter’s Bob Wiley in the cult classic What About Bob?
Murray’s title character ends up following his freshly-appointed psychiatrist on vacation, indulging in borderline stalker behaviour that even sees Marvin’s own family begin to turn against him as they welcome Bob into their lives. Whimsical comedy on paper, sociopathic menace in practice.
Bob derives an almost perverse pleasure in dismantling the respected professional’s life, fabricating medical maladies to such a degree that Dr Marvin kidnaps Bob, who in turn plants explosives inside the family’s second home and watches it become engulfed in a ball of flames before Leo winds up catatonic and institutionalised.
7. Peter Pan (Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, and Wilfred Jackson, 1953)
Any adaptation of J. M. Barrie’s play would suffice, seeing as they all hit the majority of the same story and character beats, but it’s little wonder so many fan theories have proposed Peter Pan as being an altogether darker story than intended when the undertones are so sinister.
That being said, the implications are made clear in Barrie’s text that Peter has developed a habit of murdering Lost Boys, who outlast their usefulness: “The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers. And when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out”. That definitely sounds as though whenever a Lost Boy begins to grow up, they must be culled like cattle to preserve the ageless paradise of Neverland.
David Lowery’s Peter Pan & Wendy repositioned Captain Hook as an exiled Lost Boy, which fits in with the belief that he was left with no other choice but to develop his lifelong grudge as a means to prevent the green-clad monster from claiming any more victims once they’d aged beyond his liking. He’ll promise a lifetime of frolics and adventure that the mind can barely comprehend, but only until the inevitable ravages of time begin to set in, and then it’s game over.
6. Passengers (Morten Tyldum, 2016)
Adele was onto something when she warned Jennifer Lawrence against starring in Passengers before she signed on, with one minuscule hypothetical tweak to the story turning the star-crossed sci-fi romance into a serial killer thriller.
Lawrence’s Aurora Lane and Chris Pratt’s Jim Preston fall in love as the only two people awake on an intergalactic voyage that requires all of its passengers to be placed into suspended animation. The only issue, which is admittedly a notable one, is that he deliberately woke her up above all others because he thought she was hot and he was lonely.
If that had been the crux of the narrative – with Aurora finding her life increasingly in danger as the obsessed maniac who awakened her without her consent prowls the endless corridors of the Avalon to profess his love – then Passengers would have been an entirely different movie. Most likely a much better one, too, seeing as the end result was as toothless as it was banal.
5. Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986)
The sequel highlighted that while Pete Mitchell had mellowed with age, his reckless tendencies still had a habit of getting the best of him. In the original Top Gun, though, Maverick’s disregard for any and all sense of authority turns a movie without an obvious villain into one that puts its antagonist front and centre.
Val Kilmer’s Iceman is supposed to be the de facto bad guy, but that’s only because he’s constantly at loggerheads with the square-jawed, swaggering, and supremely cocky main character. Maverick disobeys direct orders, regularly puts his colleagues in danger, and has no issues causing millions of dollars in property damage to satiate his desire to hold bragging rights over the recruits.
He’s arrogant, self-absorbed, disinterested in anything that doesn’t concern either himself or his rapidly-inflating ego and laughs in the face of military authority despite having spent his career to that point in the military, where obeying directives laid down from above is more than likely one of the first things anybody gets taught.
4. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)
One saving grace of The Wolf of Wall Street is that Jordan Belfort is never intended to be viewed as a hero in the strictest sense of the word, but Leonardo DiCaprio makes him so damned charming and likeable that, at times, he’s all too easy to root for.
This is a man who built his reputation and fortune on exploitation and the flouting of legality, never mind the drug-addled debauchery, extramarital shenanigans, and thinly veiled disdain for normality that seeps out of his every pore.
Belfort is a reprehensible character on a moral level, one who has his followers hanging on every word as they march behind him on a path to capitalist excess that holds a blatant disregard for the law. Kyle Chandler’s Patrick Denham is presented as a nemesis of sorts, but at the end of the day, he’s simply an FBI agent trying to do the right thing by attempting to bring a notorious lawbreaker to justice.
3. The Karate Kid (John G. Avildsen, 1984)
With a feature-film trilogy, a six-season TV series, and an upcoming generational crossover with Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han on the horizon, Daniel LaRusso has been the gift that’s kept on giving for Ralph Macchio, even if his motivations in The Karate Kid are questionable at best.
The fist-pumping 1984 classic conditions its audience to celebrate Daniel’s triumph because he’s the underdog, but it’s LaRusso who instigates the chief rivalry in the first place by openly flirting with Elisabeth Shue’s Ali, even though it’s made clear she’s in a relationship with William Zabka’s Johnny Lawrence.
Taking up karate for the wrong reasons – in this case, revenge – Daniel’s temperamental nature regularly gets the better of him, while he embarrasses Johnny at a Halloween party and wastes no time at all in putting the moves on Ali from the second she breaks it off with her former flame.
2. Mrs. Doubtfire (Chris Columbus, 1993)
If it wasn’t for Robin Williams and his tour-de-force performance as Daniel Hillard, then there’s a distinct possibility Mrs. Doubtfire wouldn’t have endured as a beloved family comedy packed full of whimsy, fun, and rapid-fire gags.
After all, the story focuses on a couple who’d separated on the basis that the time he gets to spend with his children is limited. It’s an everyday situation that’s affected millions of people, but Daniel takes things to extraordinary things when overstepping his boundaries.
Disrespecting his estranged wife’s wishes, he buries himself in makeup to masquerade as their nanny, all while covertly gathering information about his children he would have learned anyway had he been more present in their lives. If that wasn’t sinister enough, he manipulates Sally Field’s Miranda into trusting Mrs. Doubtfire as a friend and confidant, which he exploits to try to ruin her new relationship.
He even sneaks cayenne pepper into the food of Pierce Brosnan’s Stu despite being fully aware of his allergies, which could technically have brought up a charge of attempted murder until he felt guilty and stepped in to save him.
1. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (John Hughes, 1986)
There eventually comes a point in everyone’s life when the lightbulb goes off, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off stops becoming a wholesome teen comedy about the wish-fulfilment of skipping school in favour of doing whatever comes to mind.
Matthew Broderick’s duplicitous title hero hoodwinks his parents and principal in order to set his plan in motion, but not without applying so much peer pressure to Alan Ruck’s Cameron that he convinces his so-called best friend to steal a car he plainly tells Ferris his father loves more than he does him.
Sympathising with Principal Rooney is a rite of passage for anyone who grew up on Ferris Bueller, but it comes with life experience and the knowledge that the beleaguered administrator is trying to do his job under difficult circumstances. Ferris, meanwhile, has nothing to complain about in his day-to-day existence and seeks the selfish adrenaline rush of convincing anyone who can enhance his experience that they’d be better off coming along for the ride.
