Sympathy for the villain

[GhostInTheMachine]

How often have you seen a piece of media (Movie, Show, Song, other art, etc) where you saw the villain, and even if they're morally repugnant, still kinda agree with them and wish they'd have won? Who's your favorite, or most impactful that had you questioning what "goodness" even means in this world? I'll give a few examples of my own after this thread gets going a bit, I'm currently passing out as I type this but I wanted to get it out before I forgot.

 

[getoutgirl]

As a kid I always liked the most slimiest, morally repugnant cowardly characters in media. Not the big bad guy, I'm talking the evil lil weak rat servant, the evil advisor, the scheming eunuch, all the backstabbing pieces of shit. Loved them and still do.
I'm talking Grima Wormtongue in lotr, peter pettigrew in harry potter, little finger in got, fking gollum. All the variations of that trope, almost always my favourite character of that media. why? I dunno.
But I always wanted them to survive. Not win, not even get away with their plans. I was content as long as they survived out of cowardice. Really rooting for them to be spared by the story (which rarely happened) above anything else that was going on in it.
Has idolizing those characters maybe influenced the fact I'm an absolute coward as an adult. maybe. yes. but god I still love them.

 

[Sprite_Geist]

For me it varies.

Sympathetic villains:
There are some antagonists and/or villains who I sympathies for, because I understand their pain, and reasons who doing whatever it is that they do. It could be argued that these characters represent what many people would become if they were in the same situation. These type of villains can also be a reflection of serious issues in a given society, and act as a cautionary tale for what happens when said issues are not addressed.

Unsympathetic villains:
These kind of villains are ones who I do not agree with at all - and who I think are genuinely awful, but still support them because the chaos they cause can feel cathartic. Sometimes I like to forget about motivations and justifications (to an extent), and follow the journey of these type of villains just for the thrill.

As an example: when I bought Fallout 3: GOTY Edition my first playthrough was evil, in fact I got my characters karma level to Very Evil. At first it was fun, but eventually I felt really bad and decided to do a Good karma playthrough.

 

[Agon321]

Honestly, I often root for the "evil" characters.
This is partly because I feel like antagonists are usually better designed than protagonists. Maybe it's just my imagination, but that's my impression.

I'm also a little tired of how easy it is to predict the ending because it's clear the bad guys can't win.
I wish the bad guys would win more often.
No, I don't like it when the power of friendship wins over an absolute badass who's trained their whole life and is smarter than everyone else.

 

[NumbItAll]

Joker and the sequel that everyone hated. I love Arthur even though he did horrible things. He was a victim and a perpetrator. The same could be said for numerous other characters in those movies. It's a fucked up mess and wild fever dream with no clean resolution.

 

[Renato]

As a child I remember that I loved the Enigmist played by Jim Carrey. Like, I really loved that character and identified with it. To the extent the my family for a brief time was even a little bit concerned. I liked the decoupling between weakness and being a loser: he was definitely weak but at the same time, in non obvious ways, he was one of the most dangerous villains. And not only that: he being weak didn't mean he was a potential victim to save from the bad guys. He himself was indeed the one to fear. Kind of a role model, in a very wicked way.

 

[GhostInTheMachine]

Having recently gotten through Bioshocks 1 & 2 again, I absolutely love the villains in those games. Ryan, Fontaine, and Lamb are all really well written characters who I can relate to in different ways. Ryan for his determination to achieve his grand vision, Fontaine for his absolute cunning and wit, and Lamb for her devotion to an ideology that's holding together the twisted community left behind by the failures of Rapture. Also playing through Resident Evil 4 & 5, I find myself respecting the hustle that Wesker has in his pursuit of global domination.

As far as other media goes, I tend not to watch too many stories that are black & white with their characters, so it's often hard to say who's a villain. I do have one example in Breaking Bad where I tend to go against the common analysis that Walther White did everything in the show purely for himself. Honestly, that's missing the whole point of the show which is to document how an otherwise stand-up guy can be pushed into becoming a ruthless monster in the pursuit of the resources he's been felt denied. Another example is the Joker from various incarnations but his variants from the Dark Knight Returns and Joker 2019 stand out the most.

There's also the classic Frankenstein's Monster from the original novel, but his movie incarnations are also really good. Always felt bad for the big guy. He didn't deserve any of that. On a similar note there's Sadako from Ringu where I feel like despite killing a lot of innocents, she's kinda totally justified in smoking everybody who watches her tapes.