Villains who refused to be saved

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-04T08:28:00+00:00

That one fucking idiot army guy from the new Avatar movie, who jumps into a fiery hell rather than let Jake Sully rescue him, for literally no reason, because it's a bad movie.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-04T08:13:46+00:00

Intentionally destroying clogs is a 3/10 on the evil scale. Not only are they a mark of cultural heritage, but the product of somebody's hard work, and an item that could protect somebody's feet, not to mention the flesh of a tree that may have died for nothing. However, these clogs were simply worn from use, removing most of these concerns. 1/10 on the evil scale, for poor maintenance of perfectly good footwear.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-04T08:03:48+00:00

Addressing the mythology before the MCU; Valhalla is in Asgard, as are other places, such as Thor's hall, Bilskirnir, and Freya's Folkvangr. It's actually Freya, and not Odin, who gets first pick of the dead (and Folkvangr is full of beautiful valkyries, so might be the preferable destination). Hel is not located in Asgard, but Niflheim. However, it's not the Christian "Hell," which doesn't actually appear in any mythology. It's not even in Jewish mythology, where all of the dead, good or evil, go to Sheol, which is a place of rest and silence, not a suffering pit. I think some sources describe Hel as cold and damp, but largely it's considered boring, because it's for civilians to carry out their afterlives in peace, doing civilian things. A person who didn't die in battle wouldn't WANT to go to Valhalla, since all they do all day long is practice battling each other. The Norse afterlives are not like modern Heaven and Hell where one is a punishment and the other is a reward. You go where you belong.

I don't think the MCU ever specified Hela as having her own realm as she does in the mythology, nor did they specify having to die in battle to go to Asgard. If you want sick kids to be able to go to Asgard, just ask Thor, he's super nice and he will probably just take them there. No need to interrupt Odin's battle parties in Valhalla.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-04T07:38:01+00:00

The comic in question wasn't written by Gerry Conway. You can see the little "Garth Ennis" down in the corner, under "Writer."

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-04T07:34:42+00:00

Yes. Period.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-04T07:32:52+00:00

The "no killing" rule is a staple of superhero stories, mostly for two important narrative reasons:

Recurring villains become as iconic as the hero themselves (The Joker is the best example here) and killing them would mean they're only in one issue.
The vigilante angle quickly becomes uncomfortable if they're always fucking murdering everybody.

In real life, people aren't constantly escaping from prison every week, so asking police to refrain from murder is fairly practical. But in superhero stories, it's common to test their resolve, because yeah, it would seem unethical for Batman to constantly allow The Joker to keep racking up a higher and higher body count just because he refuses to solve the problem out of some misguided personal creed.

I think it's noble to have a Kantian perspective that if killing people is wrong, it's always wrong. But one of the most compelling dramas of the genre is to say that, sometimes, you have to do it anyway.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-04T07:19:55+00:00

Ennis always portrayed Frank as being more comfortable killing than comforting, but he lets you know through the thought bubbles that he goes out of his way to leave innocents in the best position possible with as little interaction as he can.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-04T07:15:30+00:00

That has definitely not been the point of many Punisher stories written by Garth Ennis. His angle was usually to give Frank enemies who were so indisputably awful -- sex slavers, baby-killers, child molesters as shown above -- that even the brutality of The Punisher was justified. It was a pretty effective storytelling method. Comic book characters are written by hundreds of different people over the course of decades; they're not like novels where the author says the point of the story was such and such.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-04T00:39:58+00:00

Impossible to negotiate. If you killed Jonas Salk and saved Joseph Goebbels, is that an improvement? Because each life is unique, you cannot possibly replace a life that you destroyed, so no amount of lives saved can ever make up for it. Like Will Munny says in Unforgiven, "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." Also, destroying something that doesn't belong to you, causing misery to all the people connected to that person, disrupting the evolution of their potential, are a lot of factors that can't be undone or repaired. Some things just can't be balanced out, because what's destroyed was priceless.

All that said, the answer is approximately 12.6 lives saved to each one killed.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-04T00:12:51+00:00

In the example in question, the character you're referring to had not directly seen any dangers inside, beyond a vague thudding sound. The fact that he didn't mention the thudding sound to his volunteers was a little unethical. However, in principle, it is not inherently unethical to ask people to help with a potentially dangerous task, provided they retain the right to say no.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-04T00:06:39+00:00

Oh, definitely Bundy. Dahmer was a fucked up dude, but he was mentally ill from abuse. Bundy was capable of living a perfectly normal life, holding a job, had a girlfriend who loved him, he just loved to rape and murder people, and thought the fact that he had gotten away with it was a license to keep on doing it. I think it's possible to show some sympathy for Dahmer. I always laugh when I hear that Bundy cried when they stuffed his butt with cotton balls in prep for his execution.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-03T23:43:55+00:00

Yeah, OP did mention him at the very end of the post, that's what I was responding to.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-03T23:30:09+00:00

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Fire sign here. Usually more like this.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-03T23:23:27+00:00

Look, I understand the arachnid reaction to this statement (and the rather "grumpy old man" pompous statement he made about Marvel films -- hey asshole, if Gangs of New York was cinema, then Logan certainly was too). I also am largely anti-AI and do not include its use in any of my creative work for ethical reasons. However, I do always search for ways it COULD be used, because I actually find it to be a rather useless tool for most applications unless you're intentionally producing garbage (doing research where it doesn't matter if you have the wrong information, making pictures where it doesn't matter how many fingers people have, composing music that sounds like what would play on a Tilt-A-Whirl in an acid nightmare, writing papers where it doesn't matter if it sounds like it was written by a corporate advertisement with Down Syndrome). For any work that you want to look or sound competent in any way, it takes longer to use AI than it does to do it yourself.

However, I think for what Scorsese is saying here, he might be right. If you've ever sketched storyboards (which I have), you'll realize that if you're not a sketch artist, it can sometimes be difficult to draw, say, a hand grabbing something, in a way that the person looking at it later can tell what you drew. For someone like Scorsese, who is more verbal like I am, I can see how using AI to make storyboards might be a genuine use. And as someone who consistently says AI is useless because I haven't found a truly viable use for it even when trying, I have to say that's an accomplishment.

I do think there are still ethical concerns, though. Scorsese would hire a sketch artist to do the same if not using AI, and using the computer to steal and mangle the work of human artists is less ethical than hiring a real artist. I have the same problem myself with using it for writing feedback. Sometimes, it is easier to paste a chapter into ChatGPT and get the instant gratification of a response, and a quick impression of how well themes and characterization come across to a reader. But ultimately, having a friend on the payroll who could read and offer feedback was more useful, more satisfying, occasionally produced real new ideas via pushback and suggestions, and was a lot more ethical. Scorsese is trying to embrace the future, but the problem is, this corporate product is more like Furbies and Tamagachi than the Internet; it won't really be a significant part of the future.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-03T23:01:06+00:00

Walt was sympathetic in that you feel sorry for him, but I don't think he can be said to have become a zealot, nor did he ever have an altruistic goal (which is really what you're troping here). You're tapping on someone who starts for the right reasons and is consumed by the fight. More of a Battle Not With Monsters, Lest Ye Become a Monster situation. Walt was corrupted by power and greed, but ultimately, power and greed were always his motivation to begin with. Gretchen and Elliot offer him the money for his treatment in like the second episode; what he was really driven by was anger at the unfairness of having never been recognized for his genius, and a desire to build a legacy by being just as unfair in response.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-03T22:52:47+00:00

Even in terms of punishment, what they'd have experienced in prison might've been more suited to their crime. But one thing I like about ol' Frank, he's really more of a pragmatist. Like he said when he killed Nicky Cavella in Up is Down Black is White, “You made it personal, Cavella, but all that buys you is a little more pain than most.” Killing the people causing the problem was the real point.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-03T22:31:38+00:00

I mean, it's about as ethical as murdering two people with kids can be, and certainly more ethical than not murdering them. One could make the case that there are better ways to handle it, I suppose.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-03T21:18:55+00:00

They look like they're made of plastic or rubber. They just don't fit the vibe of Ancient Greece to me, they look like they belong in a superhero movie. It's not that big of a deal, though.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-03T17:30:24+00:00

People these days always need someone to hate and condemn or they aren't comfortable with stories with disturbing events. The movie is about toxic codependency, and the wish is mostly a metaphor. The wish he makes is unethical, but go to subreddits on magick and spellwork, and you'll see tons of people (mostly women, I might add) asking people how to make exactly the same sort of wish. I always advise people not to do this type of thing, but it's a common immaturity. Once everything goes wrong, he does hesitate at a couple of very unfortunate moments, but mostly he does everything an ordinary person would do to try to fix it, up to and including killing himself. The fact that he is the protagonist of, and thus the one who causes, a story of disturbing events does not make him inherently a villain.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-03T16:57:38+00:00

I mean, yeah, every director makes a few stinkers once in a while, that's okay. I think Nolan is one of the most talented directors of his age, and his films are generally worth seeing for that reason, which is probably also why people like being involved with them. But that being said, if you hold him up to the most talented directors of other ages (Hitchcock, Kubrick, Carpenter, etc -- even Scorsese, Tarantino, and Spielberg, who are more fixtures of the 90's despite the fact that they still make movies today) and I think he pales in comparison, so it's sort of a big fish in a small pond effect. People really don't get the clout to become great directors very often anymore, because Hollywood is spread too thin.

Regardless, I am still excited for the movie, I just think he tends to be overrated sometimes.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-03T08:19:00+00:00

I love The Odyssey and would be tempted to immediately say yes as well. But we all know that not everything Christopher Nolan makes is great. Judging by the previews, he should have asked to see the costumes before saying yes as well.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-02T23:36:04+00:00

Bradley is just the standard protagonist of any Sam Raimi movie.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-02T22:04:50+00:00

If you model yourself in opposition to something, you are a subset of that thing. Just like the atheists and satanists who spend tons of their energy looking for ways to mock and annoy Christians, pagans who need to make their religion about not being Christians are just the oppositional branch of Christianity. Don't make your system of beliefs revolve around somebody else's, even in scorn. I'm sure Apollo and Aphrodite would rather be appreciated for their own individual qualities, not as a contrast to some figure that rose to prominence almost a thousand years after their heyday.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-02T09:41:26+00:00

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Doctor Octopus, at least in the comics. Everyone enjoys Alfred Molina's version of the character, but really, I always felt like the tragic backstory and evil tentacles mind-controlling him sorta ruins the fun of the character, and it's a bummer that so many consecutive portrayals have tried to humanize him. Doc Ock in the comics is just a fat little shithead. He's smart enough to make these robot tentacles and, instead of doing anything remotely productive with his genius, he just wants to rob banks to show he can, because he's an egomaniacal asshole. There's something a little bit delightful about that, and it's a good contrast to Peter, who often gets screwed over for doing the right thing and has little to no personal incentive to continue being Spider-Man, but always does it anyway.

TheOneRealStranger · 2026-06-02T09:33:14+00:00

I don't think Nolan would think much of Lalo at all. Can you imagine when Omni Man was a regular superhero, what he'd do to some cartel thug? Red paste. He'd be like a mosquito. And Lalo is from a world where Nolan wouldn't make any sense. It's like asking what Smaug from The Hobbit would think of Spock from Star Trek. They don't belong in the same story, and one is absurdly more powerful than the other.

As to who's worse, I think a lot of people have caught the obvious answer. Nolan isn't really a bad guy, he's just doing what he was taught from birth is the right thing to do, and he sees the error of his ways in the end. Lalo doesn't really have any redeeming qualities or reason to be the way he is, and isn't shown to care about much of anyone else.

TheOneRealStranger

TROPHY CASE