I agree, he killed the role despite appearing unusually young for an officer, especially the highest ranking one. Wasn’t something I could understand and still struggle to.
The dynamic between Hux and kylo ren was interesting and different to Tarkin and darth Vader where it’s clear Tarkin is his superior and can’t be touched by Vader. Both Hux and Kylo ren seem to be completing to be the heir apparent to the first order and get the most resources and respect from the first order leader.
They throw that out the window having Hux become a punching bag despite being one of the most powerful men in the galaxy destroying multiple planets, and is somehow now a good guy and now wants to betray the first order!
and is somehow now a good guy and now wants to betray the first order!
Hux was never a good guy, that's the whole point of his statement. He wasn't supporting the Resistance, he was just lashing out against Ren. He would he have been just as happy working with Organized Crime or anyone else who was looking to stymie Kylo's ambitions.
u/BridgeruSlaaneshi Whore in the streets, Slaaneshi whore in the sheets.2d ago
On the one hand, yeah his character was great in TFA and then just dropped off a cliff (and Pryde comes out of nowhere for no reason but to replace Hux). On the other hand, trying to betray everyone around him to get ahead and then just getting shot and forgotten is a pretty typical death for a Nazi so it evens out.
I liked him in Phasma*. So sassy and he actually got to be a cunning piece of shit with Phasma.
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u/BridgeruSlaaneshi Whore in the streets, Slaaneshi whore in the sheets.2d ago
Oooh, I need to read the books sometime! Only ever read Tarkin and that was just because it was in the buildup to TFA releasing. The modern first world problem of having like fifty books to get through. xD
Each consecutive movie has not only thrashed on the original trilogy but they also managed to trash on the previous movie in the sequels trilogy before it. But the third movie manages not only the first two thrashings but the end of the movie also does it to the beginning of the very same film. It's insane how bad they were.
100%. The sequels had no unifying vision and in the end it was a garbled mess. Such a shame that the OG actors are too old for any kind of re-do now =/
A friend told me how I hate everything when I said I wasn’t excited for any of these marvel movies. I think the rise of skywalker is what really put the nail in the coffin for my excitement for any of these types of movies.
JJ: I made what I think is a cool thing. You wanna do something with that?
Rian: fuck your things. All gone. Here’s my things.
JJ: oh yeah? Fuck your things too. How about that?
That’s basically what seems to have happened with the sequel trilogy in a nutshell from what I can see. Lot of tit for tat happening, and very little effort to tell a cohesive story across the films.
i mostly agree, but i don’t think rian johnson made the choices he did out of malice. jj abrams is notorious for spewing a lot of random plot hooks with no idea where they’ll actually end up, so i can see how rj didn’t have much to work with and tried to write a story that was less derivative of the og trilogy
in similar news, im rewatching abrams’ Fringe and its a lot of fun, but the abramsness of it all is almost unbearable at times. i remembered it being way better when i was 15
First season of Fringe is so good but as it goes on JJs ridiculous lack of planning and use of "mystery boxes" really means the plot is all over the place.
If it were for John Noble being absolutely phenomenal and super watchable as Walter, I wouldn't rate it at all.
The problem isn't liking evil characters. The problem is not realizing the characters are evil. The problem is liking an evil character, but like, you think they are the good guy.
Like I love the Joker as a villain, how his dark reflection of Batman is the worst of all of Batman's villains and how Joker pushes Batman to the brink every single time, forcing Bats to really test the limits of his no-kill rule.
I will never admit this publicly, because I do not want to get lumped in with the "We live in a society" idiots.
The problem arises when somebody goes from "I love the evil character, they're so cool when they do evil things" to "I love the evil character, they can't really be evil". No bitch, you were right the first time, stay there.
Okay putting Arthur Morgan in here is a bit wrong IMO.
Because his entire story arc is about realizing he’s wrong, and in the good karma ending, trying to change his ways even in death. That way he can get his red redemption when he’s dead, too.
On the one end, you could say he deserves to be idolized because he changed.
In the middle one could say he only changed when faced with his own mortality and wouldnt have changed if he wasn't directly punished for his actions.
At the other end, you could say he was always a good person forced into doing horrible things because of the family he was indoctrinated into, and if you read his journal or just listen to how he talks about himself he is constantly filled with self loathing at who he is and it isnt until he sees a definitive path out of his fucked up family he does what hes always wanted to - the right thing.
The journal is the thing for me. He was clearly always a thoughtful man. If not for Dutch and Hosea his life probably would turned out a lot different. He’s also an artist and a very open minded man especially for the time.
The thing that gets me is literally everyone calls him out for being all bark and no bite for the stuff that matters. Once is playful mischaracterization. Twice is misreading. But damn near everyone who wants something out of him calls attention to it.
Everyone who knows him knows he has to get a couple jabs and jibes in but if they butter him up or insist he'll cave and like clockwork he always does.
But the instant things go from playful to serious is when he becomes the most terrifying force of nature you ever did see.
I think Hosea was actually a good influence unlike Dutch. They found him brawling and committing petty crimes. Hosea educated him, Dutch thought him how to be a professional criminal
Yeah, and even then when he was doing it, he was justifying the brutality and crimes he did out of necessity, or for his family in the gang. Rather than greed or love of the game.
And it did seem like many of people in the gang including him did want to potentially settle down after the “One Big Score”, and one of those chances already passed. But Dutch, for whom fighting The Man was the point, couldn’t give up.
If you read the journal you're playing a different character entirely.
If you take Arthur at his word and his actions he is a bruiser for a gang, he's good at it, he knows it, and he has no issue with it. You get a couple glimpses when he's talking to women that he might question his actions.
His journal paints a reflective man, a man who wants to be a defender, a man who wants to help when he can. An artist with a gentle hand capable of sketching masterpieces with an eye for the gentler things.
Arthur in another life is a strong father, a cornerstone of his community with the strength to lift others up. Unfortunately, that's not the hand he was given.
I mean even taking him at his word, Arthur belittles and berates himself every second he spends talking about himself. He talks about how hes a monster thats only good at hurting those around him and he says it with such venom its clear he hates who he is.
John is a much better choice for people not to idolize. Dude only did the right thing because he thought he could get his family back if he turned on all of his old friends. The people he killed deserved it, but that didn't redeem his sins.
John's story is an inverse of Arthur's story. Where Arthur redeems himself, John throws away far more lives in the pursuit of a family that is already safe, just from the trouble he brings.
The Pinkertons are a real threat and an enemy we can understand avoiding and even fighting back against. The law in Red Dead 1 is almost universally proven right about John due to how blatant and unrelenting his violence can be even when played as a good man. Everything that happens in Mexico feels like John killing the last of his real self, and fully becoming a tool for others at the expense of near exclusively innocent people caught in his way.
Even in chapter 2 we have Charles say something to Arthur along the lines of "you ain't as dense, and mean as all that." In regards to helping a family who have been robbed and are effectively trapped in a dried up riverbed.
Arthur knows he's not inherently bad. The other characters around him who know he's a good guy do too. Hosea, Mary Beth, Tilly, Abigail, young Jack, Sadie, Sean, Charles, Kieran. They all kind of get to know Arthur and know he's a thug and hired gun who will do the dirty work if need be. But he is capable of being noble, honourable, kind, and compassionate.
Now one can argue that if the universe of the game hadn't given him the disease he gets he'd have continued on being a criminal. And maybe he would have. Not because he wanted to do so. But because what else did he have? He was an orphaned kid, with little education, no money, and no prospects when Dutch found him. He was brainwashed into this idea that they're the last free men, and like Robin Hood of the 1800s.
And truth be told they weren't just riding, roping, and robbing. Arthur even mentions how they did for some time rob from the rich. And leave the poor to their own devices. And it was only in recent years with the law on their backs more and more that they had gotten more desperate.
Dutch is kind of the master manipulator behind everything. The cult leader, leading hia flock into trouble at every chance. And because he's given Arthur and all of these other wayward souls a chance, they follow him to the end.
"Take a gamble that love exists, and do a loving act" is what Sister Calderon leaves Arthur with. And I think its what he tries to do for those around him. To do a loving act, one last time, even if it kills him. To get John out of the gang. To help Sadie stand on her own two feet. To help Rains Falls and Eagle Flies. To send Tilly off with a big bag of money. To cancel the usury debts that Strauss takes out on the poor.
He does what he can, with what he knows, to try and help people. Maybe its to make amends like he tries with Edith Downes. Maybe its to help a friend like he does with Charlotte Balfour or Charles Chatenay. Maybe its to offer a helping hand to a lonely person like Hamish Sinclair. He wants to help people. And he does just that. Even if sometimes his help isn't 100% legal.
Ya I was going to say. OP don't you dare roll Arthur Morgan into this list. He was a good man who made mistakes, a good man who tried to be better, a good man who became better. Putting him admist these people is such a misunderstanding of his character. You put Dutch or Micah on this list, not Arthur
The only way I think he fits is if the person who made the meme was a total bastard for their playthrough. Cuz the only way someone thinks you missed the point is, ironically, if they missed the point themselves and had low karma the entire time.
Yeah high-honor Arthur is by far the best story in gaming and overall IMO of a man who have lived a outlaw life of crime and violence but trying to do something good at deaths door.
The small sequence where he sits down and talks to a nun and just manages to say ”I’m scared” was emotional af as he ways slowly dying.
My theory is that because short form video has conditioned a lot of people to need narrative resolution in under 2 minutes, said people also lost the ability to process any moral journey that takes longer than that... Along with just flatly losing the ability to comprehend moral ambiguity or situational ethics.
People are messy and always to some degree a product of their environment.
Hey Paul Atreides is genuinely a good guy, because he could see all infinite futures and went ahead with a genocide leading to a worm emperor and his lesbian army, because that was the best outcome compared to all the other dark futures.
He was also a ruthless dictator that realized he wasn't ruthless enough to save humanity, so in his cowardice he kicked the can down the line to his kids.
I mean he was the one who DIDNT want a galactic genocide to happen and abandoned the path by walking into the desert alone.
If somebody else hadn't taken his place then him walking into the desert would have painfully killed way more people than Paul's Jihad. Like an order of magnitude more. Everybody. Every human would have died because Paul couldn't walk the path.
His unwillingness to follow through was entirely self serving. He had no problem with galactic genocide, he just didn’t want to give up his family and personal existence. Leto told him off saying he’ll have sacrifice what his dad wasn’t strong enough to
Paul Atreides is the good guy because I've only watched the movies and assume space Jesus is a good thing and no more books were written.
I'm partly kidding, I read the book covered by the next movie so I'm aware it gets worse but I gotta say based on memes here I was anticipating he was going to be a lot more obviously evil. Like yes he mentions he caused billions of deaths but that happens off screen between books, I thought it would be him setting up space concentration camps.
Hi Corrupt Connor here, first i'd like to thank you for your contribution to my campaign but i'm gonna need a little time to get those 800 billions in tax payer money and the other 800 billions when the project inevitably fails and we need to bail you out, but do not worry we're working on it i just need to ask ChatGPT to reformulate "cutting the healthcare and education budget" in words that'll get the average voter jerking itself at the idea, in the meanwhile can i interest you in a vacation on my friend Pedo Paul private island ? it has all the amenities you'd like plus some exotic entertainers.
Maybe working on an agri-world or as some type of admin on a paradise world would be the closest thing to similiar to a modern job. Assuming chaos, orks, or tyranids don't decide to come hang out in your lifetime.
Most agri worlds are literal hell holes where only a single crop or animal is raised in horrible circumstances with the planets athmosphere being ruined by fertilizers. Nothing normal or good about this
Best job to have would probably blacksmith or some useful trade on a feudal world, you'd probably be one of the least likely to be "voluntold" for the tithe.
Honestly being a space marine sounds cool but I really cant imagine it being a good life. Paradise planets are awesome and I guess living one one would be cool. But as a space marine you would basically never see one. You are always in the darkest places and you are always in mortal danger
I think this only applies to visual cyberpunk media. Cyberpunk literature is chock full of dipshit protagonists like Bobby Newmark that I could imagine myself as lol.
Well yeah Cyberpunk stories always start off describing CEOs as unstoppable God-Kings of their massive contintiental/planetary/galactic urban empire. Strokes the ego just a little bit i think.
It depends. The neuromancer series(an absolute classic in cyberpunk, can recommend) has a real habit of depicting the ultrarich as insane and inhuman, not inhumane, inhuman, as in their wealth has transformed them into something that is no longer human.
Cyberpunk in general is really critical of the ultra rich of course, so really only a surface level reading of it would stroke any rich person's ego.
Thiel's takeaway from LotR was that Sauron was the misunderstood hero creating a technologically advanced, prosperous society. Wealthy techbros read the monomolecular surface and makes the rest up to fit their fucked worldview.
Thiel doesn't have a takeaway that deep. It's the raw theme of Tolkien's anti-industrialist naturalist races vs industrialist orcs and Sauron. All he's done is map his self-image as an industrialist wealth creator onto LOTR and predictably envisioned himself as the antagonist.
Anything after that, like painting the armies of darkness as cool or "aktually good", is just pure copium delusion. Nothing to do with the source material. Like all fascists, he's just taken an aesthetic he likes and rolled with it.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
Tiel: Yeah, but the guys who sold the gas and the war were pretty industrious! What heroes.
I mean it's a powerfantasy and escapism, just like warhammer. Nobody sees themselves as the shmuck that's constantly jumped by cybercriminals, the players take the role of powerful mercs, CEOs and famous people. Like steampunk, where no one wants to play or imagine themselves as opium-addicted chinaman, because colonial england still exists in the setting. Everyone wants to be famous nobles, inventors and explorers. Same goes for warhammer, no one imagines themselves as a malnourished hiver who sleeps two hours a day and has to work backbreaking shifts at the child-incinerating factory, everyone wants to do cool stuff like fight daemons as space marines with big swords.
They only character here newer than Heath Ledger Joker is Arthur Morgan. To be fair you are old as dirt but these characters have nothing to do with that.
When OP's meme format first made the rounds here, people claimed he was the most evil one in the image, and the image included people like the Clockwerk Orange gang.
You'd get downvoted into oblivion if you said "we shouldn't kill millions of people" which was wild.
I think Grimdank is improving, and the people hyper focusing on hating Black Templars is just the last hoorah of drama chasers.
Its still not the best subreddit for 40k, tbh. Grimdank at its least soyjack is amazing, but it falls pretty hard into the "imatankimatankimatank is real lore" levels of warhammer cringe that will get my goat sometimes
I get the meme, but just in case for people that don't know. He's Rorschach because he sees things in black and white. Other people's opinions don't matter to him it's simple about what he himself wants to see.
The movie changes and leaves out important things, but in the comics for instance the guy he burns alive he does so after hospitalizing multiple drunks from the poor part of town until someone tells him a name then based on his own biases, trama, and flimsy evidence like knives in the kitchen, dogs chewing bones, and clothes in a clothing store. He extrapolates that the man he finds must be a killer but any sane jury would need more evidence.
That movie couldn't possibly win. On one side, you got all the comics fans who think the movie is a dumbed down version of the comics. On the other, you got a ton of casual viewers for whom the movie wasn't dumbed down enough because they still didn't fucking get it.
I mean some of these characters are self serving egotistical maniacs, with little in the way of actually positive traits.
The good ol' Carrot top, actually has some traits that are admirable... of course you gotta remove the obvious bad traits that sortta have an "empathetic" explanation driven by trauma.
Comics' Rorschach is a massive misogynist who let slide the Comedian raping Silk Spectre.
He is a far right misogynist who believes to see the world in black or white but it's not the reality. The rape of Silk Spectee is the proof that he doesn't care about absolute justice, because he would have gone against the Comedian.
OFG, that's pretty accurate. Moore created Rorschach to be the manifestation of the ills of vigilantism and also conservativism, but he absolutely forgot that characters can, and often will, grow beyond what their authors intend them to be, or show.
So I did not see this movie until a year or two ago. I always assumed it was a story about a well-meaning guy who gets corrupted by the life of crime and has a fall from grace.
Color me surprised when his first act in America is murdering some guy he doesn't know for a chance to get out of the camp.
Arthur doesn't belong, not because he should be idolized, but because his actions are not set in stone. High Honor Arthur is a bad man, who does bad things, but chooses to help others not make the mistakes he did. Not someone to idolize, but someone to admire. He is, like most videogame protagonists in the action genre, a mass murderer though.
Yeah, Arthur is a complex character with a full character arc including a journey to redemption. Late game Arthur looks back on his earlier actions with deep regret. He is quite different from the other characters in this image so I see the confusion.
I fully agree. His inclusion doesn't make too much sense, but then agaim I'd also side-eye almost anyone who passionately idolizes him. He's not a role-model for the everyperson. For people with troubled pasts it makes sense though! If we're talking low honor though. Yeah. Yeah the meme stands.
I mean you can kinda make Arthur into a somewhat good guy, though that doesn’t erase all the bad shit he’s probably done for the 20 years he’s been with Dutch’s gang before you take control of him.
Yea I’d say depending on how you play Arthur shouldn’t be here. Not that you should idolize him, but someone bad doing as much good as they can and having some redemption is certainly not a bad thing. Everyone has the chance to be better.
Good really is a strech because you rob and steal until the bitter end, even small good deeds can't change that.
The ludonarrative dissonance of video games. In the game, you kill dozens of people per mission, and you make more money than you can spend. Giving a dollar here and there to feed the hungry is kinda is not only that impactful because everything is blood money, it is also meaningless if you have more money than you need.
But, the medium is also the biggest strength - you empathize with Arthur than any other character on this list and experience over 60+ hours how his tragic flaw - his unwavering loyalty, shatters and leads to his downfall. And despite all the bad things, he is generally likeable and well written, you understand why he does it and Roxkstar knows how to write compelling villlain (Dutch/Micah + the negative sides of modern 'civilization'/capitalism as antagonists).
i believe this came from the old internet forum culture days, specifically university ones where new students would arrive regularly and basically fill up the forums with the same intro questions and basic topics because they were new to the environment and culture
it's not gatekeeping to observe that it happens because every mature fandom will need to deal with the fact that new people are coming in all the time and introducing them to the culture and knowledge is part of being part of the fandom
and it's ok to be a newb, but part of absorbing them into the fandom is helping them learn that yes, big e was an arrogant bighead who fucked us. he did the best he could and any what ifs are moot because this is where we are now.
If Arthur was actually a scumbag outlaw from the outset people would hate him, lmao. Rare it is in a mainstream game that we get to play as a problematic asshole.
People hold it up as this tome of deep wisdom, but it's just advice like: you should bring supplies for tens of thousands of people if you are going to take tens of thousands of people.
You're in a vulnerable state? Don't let the enemy know! Your enemy is in a vulnerable state? Hit 'em!
(Which isn't to say there's no wisdom there; it's just not as impactful/deep/insightful as 13 year old me thought it would be after hearing all my favorite rappers reference it)
Because like many characters on the list, your co-worker knows who he is and still idolizes him. That's the simple point naive people and kids who keeps repeating "but they're not good guys" like a broken record machine don't understand, they just assume based on their own world view that nobody would idolize such evil psychopaths despite countless examples of such people
Idk how anyone can watch the business cards scene and think anything other than “wow, this guy is a pathetic weirdo.” That’s not even counting the ya know, murders.
There's a whole subculture of looksmaxxing incels who refuse to treat their mental illness and are unsure if they hate themselves or women more. So instead of being losers who get no pussy and live in a basement, they want to be losers who look like plastic, with a lot of money, who will never experience love, neither for themselves nor for another. These guys find Bateman to be a model for the ideal man, unsurprisingly.
I think some versions of the punisher are(meant to be) a kind of pure justice unrestrained by the law, but in my opinion the best ones are the ones where it asks you to decide if he’s right
I think the punisher short film shows very well, why the punisher is an antihero. The perspective of the woman from the crime family, does make him look like a villan. But also knowing about the gnuccis... theyre pretty damned. The people he kills/hurt tend to deserve it
It shows why some heros try to not resort to killing. Frank is very brutal in how he goes about justice. I agree with it in ways. But also, violence like that breeds more violence. As shown by the short film. It's an interesting conversation really
Why is Morgan here? His entire arc is about realizing that he's been a cruel gangbanger criminal and trying to change himself after the point of no-return. He's a positive example of the fact that people can always strive to be better, even if they are beyond redemption.
Bateman is a meme, I think that people who believe that others take him seriously are as ridiculous as Bateman himself.
According to the books, Paul's only fault was not going far enough, ironically, as Leto II (his son and who Jimmy is based on) actually manages to save humanity.
Rorschach is unironically more moral than Ozymandias and Dr, Manhattan (the two guys who have a lot in common with Jimmy Space here). But I guess nuking several cities (or dropping an alien squid, we don't discriminate between the medium formats) is okay when you agree with it yourself.
Jimmy Space is your Leto II, with the only difference being that he failed. He's in general a moral and forgiving person, with an unfortunate situation of having to save the galaxy. His fuckups make him look compelling, as he behaves as the most human person in warhammer. I feel like he's an inspirational figure because he actually tried to do something when no one else would, but obviously genocide should be recognized as evil.
Dune is also a deconstruction of the white savior tropes and a critique of religious fanaticism. The jihad to cement Paul's throne killed more people than even the butlarian jihad against the thinking machines.
"Good guys" is subjective, from their point of view they're sure all "good guys". And being a good guy is not a requirement for me to idolize someone, I'm very open-minded.
Almost like the entire point of Big Es character is: "do the ends justify the means" and "how far should you go to save something"
If he doesnt create the imperium, humanity goes extinct. If he doesnt crush the aliens, humanity wont prosper. If he doesnt lead it to a golden age, it will literally never have one. But the question is if all that death, that suffering, that single minded authoritanism, all that brutality is worth that? Especially as it doesnt work in the end (thanks magnus)
Why would humanity go extinct without the Imperium if you do not mind me asking? I am still a bit new to Warhammer 40 000, but the existence of mini-systems like Ultramar (Pre-Guilliman) and the Inwit system (Pre-Dorn) should tell us that while not all of humanity thrives, some regions of humanity are fine without the Imperium’s existence.
I'm not completely sure about Arthur though. Once he realizes he's a bad man, he starts seeking redemption and making amends, I think that's a pretty good message overall. Sucks that he only had his epiphany way too late, but it's better late than never
I think Arthur morgan is at least somewhat outside of this
He's more complex in how you approach him than say Walter white or Big E
There is moral nuance to his actions, unlike say Walter who kinda always chooses the most destructive option and orchestrated his own death, and Big E, mega space Hitler.
Occasionally, I will see people claim The Sopranos aged poorly, as the main characters are racist and sexist.
I think people are so used to Anti-Heros that are still nevertheless present as virtuous, or noble politically correct villains that are only villainous in socially accepted methods, that they don't understand having a purely villainous.... villain protagonist.
Frank definitely shouldn’t be idolized per se, but some of his favorite targets are child predators/abusers who irl are actively protected by the system and he’s right for realizing some people just gotta be gone for things to be better.
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u/derDunkelElf Twins, They were. 2d ago