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When villains become heroes in the next movie.
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00:00Coming up with a great movie villain is no easy feat, but when the right actor is paired with a
00:05great script, filmmakers can create statuesque antagonists that'll be remembered forevermore.
00:12And so, the temptation to just bring a hit villain back to raise hell all over again in the sequel
00:18kinda speaks for itself, because why not just give the audience more of what they enjoyed the first
00:24time, right? But sometimes, in an attempt to shake things up, they end up nudged into a more heroic
00:30role instead. I'm Ewan, this is War Culture, and here are 10 movie villains who became heroes in the
00:37sequel. Number 10, Hector Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End. The original Pirates of
00:44the Caribbean introduced the deliciously villainous Captain Barbossa, played to perfection by the great
00:50Geoffrey Rush. A conniving schemer determined to break the curse placed upon him and his men,
00:56he becomes a major thorn in the side of Jack Sparrow and company, even if he's ultimately defeated come
01:02the ending. Sequel Dead Man's Chest introduced a worthy antagonist successor in Bill Nighy's Davy
01:09Jones, but the film concluded with one hell of a big twist, the return of Barbossa from the first movie.
01:16More to the point, Barbossa is reintroduced as a quasi-heroic figure, to help guide the assembled
01:22party to save Jack's soul from Davy Jones' locker. And so, in the third film, At World's End,
01:30Barbossa indeed adopts a more heroic adjacent tenor, even if by film's end, he's scarpered with
01:36the Black Pearl in search of the Fountain of Youth. Barbossa's allegiances certainly prove fluid,
01:42shall we say, throughout the rest of the franchise, though on the balance of his actions, teaming
01:47up with Jack to take down several mutual enemies, he's absolutely closer to a hero than he is a villain.
01:539. Jaws Moonraker
01:56Roger Moore's third James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, aka His Best One, introduced audiences
02:02to the instantly iconic henchman Jaws, played by Richard Keel, fondly remembered for his hulking
02:08frame and sharp, steely teeth. Though Jaws' boss, Carl Stromberg, played by Kurt Juergens,
02:14is killed at the film's end, Jaws lives on to fight another day and return in the next film,
02:20Moonraker. Here, Jaws is aligned with the evil industrialist Hugo Drax, played by Michael Lonsdale,
02:27though undergoes a change of heart later in the film.
02:30The seeds are sown when Jaws, who is presented as far more of a comic relief character this time
02:36around, falls in love with a petite, bespectacled woman by the name of Dolly, played by Blanche
02:42Rebelec. And so, after learning that neither he nor Dolly will be spared from Drax's plot to
02:47exterminate most of the human race, he's persuaded to help Bond take him out. The last time we see Jaws,
02:53he's made it back to Earth safely with Dolly. And while the pair were originally going to marry,
02:59in For Your Eyes Only, this subplot was ultimately cut, along with Jaws' entire role,
03:05in an attempt to rein in some of the silliness of the Moor era.
03:09According to director Louis Gilbert, the decision to change Jaws from a villain into a hero was
03:15motivated by scores of fan mail from young children asking why Jaws had to be a baddie.
03:21Aw, it's really cute. Imagine for you to kid, like, Jaws is your favourite Bond character.
03:26If that was you, let us know down in the comments below.
03:29The whole Jaws face turn thing is goofy as hell, but in a movie as fundamentally ridiculous
03:35as Moonraker, it doesn't really feel out of place.
03:39Number 8, Teddy Sanders, Bad Neighbors 2
03:43The quote-unquote villainy of comedy Bad Neighbors may ultimately be relatively low stakes compared
03:50to most movies on this list, but it still counts all the same.
03:54Couple Mac and Kelly, played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne respectively, are adjusting to life
03:59with their infant daughter when a hard party in fraternity, Dollar Psy Bader, moves in next door.
04:05The frat's hell-raising antics are spearheaded by its president, Teddy Sanders, played by Zac Efron,
04:11who isn't much interested in toning down the mayhem for Mac and Kelly's benefit,
04:16resulting in a war of escalation between the two sides.
04:20The matter is resolved somewhat amicably by the ending, but when Bad Neighbors 2 introduces
04:26the considerably more vicious sorority Kepa New as Mac and Kelly's new neighbours,
04:31Teddy is pulled back into the fold to help take the sorority down.
04:36Though Teddy initially sides with Kepa New and their leader Shelby, played by Chloe Grace Moretz,
04:42he eventually appreciates that they're far more chaotic than he ever was,
04:45and so becomes a force of good to help his former enemies out.
04:50Number 7, Apollo Creed, Rocky III
04:53While it would obviously be a huge stretch to say that Rocky Balboa's opponent in the first two Rocky movies
04:59is an out-and-out villain, Apollo Creed is in the very least an antagonist
05:04who stands in the way of Rocky's quest for victory.
05:07Also, gotta just take a moment to appreciate Carl Wethers here, this guy is sorely missed already.
05:14Sly Stallone's Rocky of course defeats Apollo at the end of Rocky II,
05:18and when the third film rolls around, Apollo returns to help train Rocky
05:22to take on a powerful new contender in Club Alang, played by Mr. T in one of the most 80s performances
05:30you're ever likely to come across.
05:32Despite their initial frostiness, Rocky and Apollo develop a bond throughout their training sessions,
05:38enough that they become genuine close friends,
05:41a friendship which would have likely lasted a lifetime had Apollo not been killed by Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.
05:48This is a movie death I'm never getting over.
05:51All the same, Apollo's legacy casts a long heroic shadow over the franchise,
05:56which of course pivoted to follow his son Adonis, played by Michael B. Jordan, in the recent Creed trilogy.
06:03Number 6, Mini-Me, Austin Powers in Goldmember
06:07Vern Troyer's Mini-Me is one of the most iconic characters in the Austin Powers franchise,
06:13introduced in the second film, The Spy Who Shagged Me,
06:16as a dwarf clone of the villainous Dr. Evil, of course played by Mike Myers.
06:21Throughout the film, Dr. Evil's son Scott, Seth Green, grows jealous of the paternal bond his father develops with his clone.
06:28In sequel Goldmember, however, Mini-Me decides to defect from the bad side after Dr. Evil rejects him in favor of Scott,
06:35who has begun to embrace his own evil instincts.
06:39Mini-Me doesn't just team up with Austin and company, though.
06:42He even flat-out dons his own mini-Austin uniform for good measure, and it's a great look, it must be said.
06:49But that's not all either.
06:50In the ending, Dr. Evil himself also decides to switch sides after learning that Austin is his brother,
06:57with the former nemeses teaming up to stop gold members, again, like Myers,
07:01his nefarious plot to destroy the world.
07:045. Leatherface Texas Chainsaw 3D
07:09Aside from being quite needlessly released in 3D, 2013's direct sequel to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre
07:16made one especially bold change to the series formula, turning chainsaw-wielding murderer Leatherface,
07:23played here by Dan Jaeger, into something of an anti-hero.
07:28Though much of the movie sees Leatherface ripping through anyone with a pulse, as per usual,
07:33in the second half of the story, he turns his chainsaw towards the corrupt authorities,
07:38who were responsible for his family being murdered decades prior.
07:42Moreover, sorry to bring this up again horror fans, because you'll all know this by now,
07:48Leatherface teams up with protagonist Heather, played by Alexandra Daddario,
07:52after it's revealed that they're cousins, allowing him to exact brutal justified revenge
07:58against the cops and save Heather's life in the process.
08:01And yeah, the strange alteration to Leatherface's allegiance didn't exactly go down well with
08:07Texas Chainsaw diehards, who still hear the phrase,
08:11do your thing, cuz, in their nightmares.
08:14But such is what happens when a franchise gets so blatantly long in the tooth,
08:18the producers will throw any random idea at the wall to see if it sticks.
08:23Unsurprisingly, neither of the Texas Chainsaw movies released since
08:27have tried to pull off the same gambit again.
08:304. Zed McGlunk, Police Academy 3, Back in Training
08:35Even if you haven't seen the Police Academy movies in many years, or just haven't seen them at all,
08:41you can probably still hear the unmistakably off-kilter vocal stylings of criminal turned cop
08:47Zed McGlunk, played by Bobcat Goldthwait.
08:50Zed first appeared in Police Academy 2, their first assignment, as the primary antagonist,
08:56the unhinged leader of the violent gang known as the Scullions.
09:00Zed is arrested in the ending, but because Bobcat Goldthwait's performance in the role was just so
09:06damn loved, he returned for Police Academy 3, back in training, with a reformed Zed
09:11now trying out for the Police Academy.
09:13Granted, villains can make an implausible turn for the heroic far more easily in a silly comedy
09:19that isn't tethered quite so firmly to reality, but it was nevertheless a sort of neat way to
09:24keep Goldthwait in the franchise without simply having him do the same old Zed schtick again.
09:30Better yet, for those who like these movies, he even got a love interest in Police Academy 4,
09:35citizens on patrol, because why the hell not?
09:39Number 3, Gunnar Jensen, The Expendables 2
09:43Of all his action cohorts from the 80s and 90s, I think Dolph Lundgren can probably lay the biggest
09:48claim to being the most underutilised of the bunch. I mean, seriously, this guy's screen presence is
09:55genuinely magnetic. You'll get that from watching Rocky 4 and Showdown in Little Tokyo, as well as a lot of
10:00the direct to video work he's done in the years since, but for the most part, I don't think anyone
10:05really knew what this guy had cooking. It should have been massive. I mean, he already is physically
10:10massive, but you get my meaning. One of the films that kind of exemplifies this trend is the first
10:16Expendables movie. While ok enough as a first attempt at an action legend Avengers, it definitely
10:24didn't make the most of Dolph, who plays a struggling mercenary battling drug addiction
10:29called Gunnar. Gunnar sells out his fellow Expendables after he's booted off the team for extreme
10:34violence, working with the big bad of the picture, James Monroe, played by Eric Roberts. Gunnar comes
10:41close to killing Sylvester Stallone's Barney Ross and Jet Li's Yang, but is shot, redeeming himself
10:46by giving away the whereabouts of Monroe's base of operations after dealing with his wounds.
10:51Thankfully, the Expendables 2 had the common sense to give Dolph a more heroic turn, placing a greater
10:58spotlight on a fully back-in-action Gunnar as he joins Barney and the gang to take down an evil
11:03Jean-Claude Van Damme, appropriately named Villaine, in the script, which is just some serious George
11:10Lucas seeing in the naming department there. This incarnation of Gunnar drew upon Lundgren's real
11:15life background, including his degrees in chemical engineering, and overall, he just gets way more
11:20time in the spotlight than in the previous movie, and is way better served by being an actual hero.
11:262. The T-800, Terminator 2, Judgment Day
11:30James Cameron's The Terminator introduced one of the most tenaciously terrifying villains in cinema
11:35history with the seemingly unstoppable cyborg juggernaut that was Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800.
11:41But for the sequel, Cameron came up with a novel twist. What if he brought the T-800 back,
11:47not as a killing machine intent on murdering mother to the resistance Sarah Connor,
11:51Linda Hamilton, but rather tasked with protecting her son John from another killer cyborg sent back
11:57through time. Now, this is admittedly a mild cheat in the sense that this isn't the very same T-800
12:04which pursued Sarah in the original movie, it having been crushed in a hydraulic press and all,
12:09but for all intents and purposes, T2 does nevertheless bring the original villain back
12:14and switch their allegiance. The Terminator sent from the future to protect John is another T-800
12:20machine captured by the human resistance and reprogrammed to protect him. This proved quite the
12:25shock to those lucky enough to catch T2 in cinemas without knowing the twist beforehand,
12:30and today it remains arguably the greatest instance of a character swapping sides in a follow-up.
12:351. Jin Zhansou – Ip Man 2
12:40In the biographical martial arts film Ip Man, we meet the highly skilled fighter Jin Zhansou,
12:46played by Fan Su Wong, who, while facing tough times, has become the leader of a fierce bandit gang.
12:52He's eventually defeated by the heroic Ip Man, played by Donnie Yen in a fight,
12:57who then runs him out of the city of Foshan for good measure. That seemed to be all she wrote for
13:02the character, but Jin makes a surprise reappearance in Ip Man 2 when Ip and his student Wong,
13:08played by Huang Xiaoming, are overwhelmed by a rabble of rival martial arts students.
13:13Jin shows up with his gang and helps rescue Ip and Wong, redeeming himself in the process.
13:18Fun fact though, Jin was originally shot dead by a Japanese colonel in the first Ip Man movie,
13:24but the filmmakers ultimately decided to cut his demise,
13:27leaving the door open for him to make his triumphant return in the sequel.
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