10 Movie Heroes I Didn't Realize Were Villains Until Much Later

Summary

• Many movie protagonists display behavior that makes them villains upon reflection.
• Heroes can hurt others and be the villains of someone else’s story.
• Characters like Scott Pilgrim, Jack Sparrow, and Woody show villainous behaviors often overlooked.

The so-called heroes, or at least the protagonists of certain movies, demonstrate a lot of behavior that actually makes them the villains of the story — or maybe they are just in a movie where every character is horrible. In many of these cases, I and everyone else didn’t realize this until rewatching the movie. Some of these characters are so iconic that everyone’s first instinct is to love them because pop culture itself does. However, their actions did a lot to hurt other characters.

This is a bigger trend than movies where the hero takes the villain’s offer or movies where the hero was the explicit villain all along. Most commonly, it is seen in movies where the main character is supposed to be on a journey of self-improvement, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t the villain in someone else’s story along the way. Additionally, the negative effects of whatever the hero did might be completely swept under the rug in favor of other themes the filmmakers wish to focus on.

10 Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera)

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010)

Admittedly, the whole point of Scott Pilgrim’s character is that he realizes he was awful to Knives by pursuing Ramona without officially breaking up with her. However, the video game-style battles and the existence of Nega Scott distract from the regular Scott’s misdeeds. I think Scott Pilgrim Takes Off‘s ending reframed the events of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World for a lot of people by leaning into the idea that Scott has always been the villain of the story.

This is obviously because of the reveal that future Scott is the mastermind behind the show’s biggest mystery, with all of Scott’s flaws having been taken to supervillain extremes. Present-day Scott comes to the same conclusion of apologizing to Knives before starting over with Ramona. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off also emphasizes some of the Evil Exes as villains we like watching be evil. On the other hand, Scott does a lot of careless things in the movie and incites conflict through his selfish behavior, but is still the story’s scrappy underdog.

9 Woody (Tom Hanks)

Toy Story (1995)

My memories of Woody go so far back that I can’t think of the exact moment when I realized that he was actually awful. Additionally, the prevailing opinion nowadays is that Sid isn’t the villain of Toy Story because he’s only destroying and remaking toys he doesn’t know are alive. On the other hand, Woody is selfish, condescending, and generally rude to all of Andy’s other toys (except for maybe Bo Peep). He uses his position of power as the de facto leader to sway things one way or another.

Woody may or may not have planned to knock Buzz out of Andy’s bedroom window like the other toys think. Finally, one of the darkest implications of Toy Story is that Woody completely traumatized Sid, who, as mentioned before, did not know that he was doing anything wrong. I can’t say I completely hate Woody because he is the star of a movie that I revere simply because of how it changed cinema, but if there is a true villain in the first Toy Story, it is definitely him.

8 Dewey Finn (Jack Black)

School Of Rock (2003)

Dewey commits the real crime of impersonation in School of Rock, with potential fraud and kidnapping charges. He pretends to be his friend and infiltrates a prep school as a substitute teacher to get paid what he needs for his share of the rent. When he realizes that he can cast his class as a new band, he has essentially found a way to indulge his worst tendencies. Keep in mind that his former band did win the Battle of the Bands — they are a talented group, and Dewey is just uncooperative because he wants to be the star.

School of Rock is supposed to be about how Dewey encourages these kids’ confidence and creativity.

So, Dewey disturbingly uses a lot of kids to bring to life his own rock star fantasies and sneaks them out of school, or motivates them to do so on their own. The parents should rightfully be freaked out about a random adult being around their kids; Dewey also manages to ruin his friend’s relationship while he is at it. School of Rock is supposed to be about how Dewey encourages these kids’ confidence and creativity. However, he leaves destruction in his wake for purely selfish reasons.

7 Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard)

Jurassic World (2015)

Claire is framed as conceited and cold in Jurassic World, mainly because she brushes off her nephews and leaves them with an employee so she can continue working. She is also shown to be cool about the dinosaurs, seeing them as attractions rather than living things. In this regard, her character completely changes by the time of the sequels. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom essentially reintroduces Claire as a new character, now an animal rights activist fighting for the dinosaurs left behind on the island.

All of these things are character flaws but don’t make Claire the villain of the story. What’s more significant is her role in the conception of the Indominous rex. Claire’s exact role in the bureaucracy that approved the creation of a new dinosaur species is unclear, but as she helped build the park, she presumably had some say. When the dinosaur gets loose, she is still worried about what it will do to the park’s profits. The first Jurassic Park movie is about the consequences of altering nature, and Claire herself makes the same mistake, costing lives.

6 Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp)

Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl (2003)

Jack Sparrow’s priority is survival, while things including finding immortality, reclaiming/maintaining command of the Black Pearl, and drinking rum are next on his list. He was going to shoot Will after their duel in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl; later movies prove that he is (maybe reluctantly) willing to sacrifice his friends to save himself. Almost the entirety of Pirates of the Caribbean is Jack showing up and being the catalyst for chaos, dragging others into danger.

In Curse of the Black Pearl, Jack manipulates Will a lot to get what he wants; maybe he was only bluffing about trading Will to Barbossa for the Black Pearl, but maybe he would have really done it. Will and Elizabeth both argue that Jack is a “good man,” and it isn’t totally clear what their reasoning is. I was pretty young when I first watched Pirates of the Caribbean and hadn’t come across as many anti-heroes, so it took me a while to get that Jack can do totally villainous things and still be the protagonist.

5 Yoda (Frank Oz)

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999)

Because the Star Wars prequel trilogy doesn’t do the best job of expressing its political themes, it also took me a while to realize how the Jedi Order is corrupted. It takes either watching the Clone Wars TV show (which is a much bigger commitment) to get this or participating in a lot of online fan discussions. Yoda and the rest of the Jedi Council’s declarations about Anakin’s future are much bigger than them being well-meaning if irritating authority figures, who are technically right in sensing that Anakin has the potential to turn to the Dark Side.

The Jedi become generals and soldiers when they are supposed to be peacekeepers, crossing a dangerous line considering the power they hold. Then the Jedi commit a lot of war crimes in The Clone Wars under Yoda’s leadership. One of the reasons that Anakin so quickly turns against the Jedi Order is because he had long been observing the hypocrisy of their actions, making Yoda’s attitude towards him from the time of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace that much more insulting.

4 Wesley (Cary Elwes)

The Princess Bride (1987)

The Princess Bride is a classic fairy tale adventure that I love for a lot of reasons. However, to be clear, the Dread Pirate Roberts has a reputation for leaving no survivors, which Wesley presumably upheld during his time with the title. So, he killed a lot of regular people — potentially including more innocent farm boys with sweethearts back home. However, Wesley’s impossible standards for Buttercup’s “true love” also started to irritate me at some point when I returned to the movie.

Wesley is pretty awful to Buttercup, in retrospect.

Wesley goes through the whole charade of kidnapping Buttercup and interrogating her about her “betrayal” of her beloved. For all he knows, marrying the prince was the best option Buttercup had, or she was coerced into it (both somewhat true). However, even if Buttercup had falled in love with the prince, Wesley has been gone for *five years* but apparently wanted her to sit in her house mourning him for the rest of her life. Also, his reaction to seeing her about to take her own life is to make a suggestive comment. Wesley is pretty awful to Buttercup, in retrospect.

3 The Wildcats (Various Actors)

High School Musical (2006)

I guess Sharpay and Ryan are supposed to be the villains of High School Musical, or maybe Ms. Darbus and Coach Bolton. However, the characters who demonstrate the meanest behavior towards Troy and Gabriella are…pretty much everyone else (except Kelsi). The entire basketball team and academic decathlon team obsess over Troy and Gabriella going to one audition, as though they are not allowed to do anything else with their lives. Additionally, Gabriella was at East High for all of a few days when this started.

Spearheaded by Chad and Taylor, they all constantly berate their friends’ interest in another activity, leading up to their scheme to break Gabriella’s heart before the audition. It took them a while to realize that this isn’t how friends act before they finally helped them. Really, the entirety of High School Musical should have been pretty uneventful. One of them mentions that they might be in the school musical after their big competitive event and their friend says “Okay, whatever,” and moves on with their life.

2 Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon)

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows (2010 & 2011)

Dumbledore is one of the hidden villains it took everyone a long time to realize the truth about, mainly because it isn’t revealed until the last book, and even then might require some rumination. Dumbledore is seemingly a very classic mentor and the character in Harry Potter who was designed to look like the stereotypical idea of a wizard. For at least the first few books, he is a kindly, wise, and even goofy teacher who shows up to help the heroes out of dire circumstances. This completely encompasses the time Richard Harris played him.

However, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hits the characters and the audience hard with all the reveals about Dumdledore, including his poor treatment of his younger siblings, the amount of information he kept to himself, and his manipulation of Harry. Even if I were to argue that Dumbledore is a “hard decisions” character archetype who concluded that the only way forward was to sacrifice Harry to save countless other lives, he made things too difficult for the Golden Trio. Dumbledore definitely withheld information that could have saved more lives and manipulated children more than he had to.

1 Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick)

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

In retrospect, Ferris is self-indulgent, lazy, and reckless — he just also happens to be very smart, endearing him to an audience that might not want to be friends with him in real life. His sister is right: Everyone else goes to school, he just needs to deal with it. However, Ferris’ biggest offense throughout the movie is pressuring Cam and Sloane into one crazy scheme after another (more so Cam than Sloane).

Cam made it pretty clear several times that he was not comfortable using his dad’s car. This leads to his outburst and accidental destruction of the car, which might have been better for him in the long run, but still glosses over the fact that Ferris should have been more considerate. Meanwhile, Ferris breaks a lot of other rules (maybe even laws) during his day off and drags the other two along with him. Revisiting the movie years later, I don’t find Ferris to be a particularly likable person, unlike some outright villains who I do like.