The Social Network.
No Country For Old Men.
Also from the same year, There Will Be Blood.
He drank their milkshake.
He drank it ALL UP!
I sometimes enter zoom meetings saying that. Its hilarious.
Pretty much any Batman movie. It’s subtle, because it’s not chaotic evil, but lawful evil—the status quo, established hierarchic power structures and systemic injustices that plague the city remain in place. In fact, enforcing and protecting status quo is the whole raison d’entre of Batman, who is an extremely priviledged rich individual benefitting and profiting from the status quo. And thus has no desire to enact real societal change, unlike eg Baine.
I’d argue James Bond is also the same. Yes, Bond villains are evil—irrationally and comically so—but like Batman, Bond represents, enforces and protects the same hierarchic power structures and systemic injustices that give rise to these villains.
Then there is Star Wars and all this light vs dark side. But if you stop and think about it, Sith and Jedi are just two sides of the same medal. Jedi mind trick that coerces someone to do something against their will is extremely evil by its very concept. Especially in how trivialized its use is in the movies. Also, there is nothing civilized about lightsabers. These are horribly dangerous to the wielder and their opponent alike, will easily cut through hull plating by accident (a bad thing when a cm of material is all that’s standing between you and hard vacuum). And would in reality not make a clean cauterized cut, but explosively flash boil the target with the end result like being blown from a cannon.
Lawful, systemic evil is the most devilish kind of evil; it’s so subtle it goes unnoticed and is even celebrated as good, no doubt in no small part due to the vast propaganda machine lawful evil loves to build up around itself.
To add to the star wars situation, the jedi are just as bad for the force as the sith, if not worse. They enforce a rigorous dogma that forces their own to suppress all emotion from a young age out of fear that they may be corrupted by the dark side. Not only does this literally make Darth Vader, but it leads to an entire society of emotionally stunted psychics who apparently go rogue very often. They’re not sustainable.
Ignoring the new movies because I genuinely can’t figure out what they’re about, Anakin fulfilled the prophecy at the end of the original 3, destroying the incredibly powerful dogmatic regime of the jedi and killing both master and pupil of the sith leaving only independent, self governed force users dotting the galaxy.
Jedi: We teach restraint to powerful individuals to keep the universe in harmony. This means defending the weak, and often preserving the status quo.
Sith: We teach powerful individuals to fuck shit up, including each other, just because they can. This means culling the weak, and shaking up the status quo.
StarWars Leftists: Jedi are protecting the peace, the council is righteous!
StarWars Libs: Sith are changing the status quo! They’re anti corruption!
StarWars Centrists: These two are virtually the same!StarWars Anarchists: Fuck 'em all! Power to the people!✊🏴
Those are usually the Jedi who were raised in exile
No, they aren’t.
Why the hell don’t Star Wars fans understand Star Wars, it’s not that deep and even when they go looking they splash around in the shallow end of the pool
The replies to this comment sum up to
But jedi are the good guys cause they say they are the good guys.
Good one, didn’t think of Batman in this light. Btw it’s raison d’être
guys, it’s raisin’ the etcher
It’s not just Batman. This is a common trope in the superhero genre. Pop Culture Detective has a great video on the subject: https://youtu.be/LpitmEnaYeU
Brazil (1985)
Willy Wonka (Or Charlie) and the Chocolate Factory. And not because of Charlie, but because of Wonka.
The dude’s basically a slave owner, paying his workers in cocoa beans, he nearly drowns a kid, poisons another, throws a third into an incinerator, and disfigures a fourth.
He’s not a good person.
Willy Wonka/Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is almost like a kid-friendly horror movie.
He’s also pawning off a ton of OSHA violations the year that OSHA was created, likely seeing such a regulatory body in Britain being likely
Those kids deserved it tho
on the one hand, their crime was being kids, on the other hand, their crime was being kids
Their crime was being one-dimensional.
I’ve got one that’s a gem and hasn’t been mentioned yet, for once!
Upgrade (2018)
A guy and his wife are attacked, his wife is murdered and he just barely survives. With the help of a super-chip implanted into his body by a billionaire, he sets out to get revenge. But at what cost?
A stylish, savage techno-action film, basically John Wick but with AI chip. The ending is rightly haunting. Well worth watching!
Such a badass underrated movie!
Intriguing. Is the ending possibly traumatizing ?
Without spoiling too much, the ending is not entirely traumatising in my view, but it personally left me rather depressed, with an acute feeling of loss and hopelessness. Though wouldn’t say that any standard trigger/content warnings apply to the ending (the rest of the movie does get rather bloody though)
Ok thanks that’s exactly what I meant. I can probably watch it then 😁
Hope you enjoy it! Here’s one of the spoiler-free content guides I found for it just to give an idea. Violence, blood and gore are at the top of the list, as expected ;)
Fallen. Denzel sets a very neat trap for the demon… but not neat enough.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog as well. While the Doc may have been mostly noble and Hammer mostly awful, it ends (somewhat ambiguously) with the Doc actually turning into a villain.
Fallen was the one I was going to add. Glad to see it here!
I guess my mind automatically excluded it because of the demon aspect being somewhat horror related (though it’s a completely mild movie in terms of graphic violence) but it definitely deserves to be on this list. Partner watched it for the first time few months back and loved it (they hate horror and generally prefer family genre), just a generally great movie that keeps you intrigued and was a great change from stream-binging style entertainment.
I’m still disappointed we never got the Dr. Horrible sequel…
There will be blood. Oil mogul thrives while america plunges into depression. Plainview and people like him will go on to be more influential down the line. Like prescott bush or hw bush.
Oceans 11
Just a reminder for people casually browsing that unmarked spoilers are present here!
A Scanner Darkly, the drug epidemic is controlled by the pharmaceutical companies and they are still rich at the end.
spoiler
But the movie ends with the brainfried undercover cop picking a drug-producing flower to send to his friends as a gift. It’s implied that’s what they need to bring the drug empire down.
It’s implied that it could go either way, but the ending it has ended before that could be decided. Also that undercover cop burned out his brain for a cause he never really signed up for.
If I remember right, The Usual Suspects
The Usual Suspects is the first one that comes to mind that isn’t horror and the villain winning by getting away. Does that fit the ‘evil wins’ concept you are looking for?
Would Reservoir Dogs also count in that case?
None of the thieves got away at the end of Reservoir Dogs.
This is not to say that “good” triumphed at the end either.
Mr Pink walked away with the diamonds before the police arrived. It’s not clear if he was caught or not but he did walk away. https://youtu.be/0GQc_SwSp_U?si=1XjXFxckgrvR_6EV
It’s pretty clear to me given the cops shooting, then shouting orders, and Mr. Pink saying he’s been shot, that he does not in fact get away.
I know there’s theories on the Internet about this, and he may not have died, but at the very least he’s been caught and does not keep the diamonds.
Time Bandits
It’s a fucked up movie for damn sure.
It has one of my favorite lines though: “SLUGS! He invented slugs! They can’t hear, they can’t speak; they can’t operate machinery! I mean, are we not in the hands of a lunatic?!”
Primal Fear (1996). It’s arguable whether or not the antagonist is truly evil though.
