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Not every villain loses in the end. These 17 movie bad guys secretly got exactly what they wanted and you might not have even noticed.
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00:00While the hero doesn't always come out on top in movies, it's generally made abundantly clear when the bad guy wins, right?
00:07Well, every so often, movies get a little bit more sly and subtle about the villain's victory,
00:12perhaps because they don't want to downplay the hero's successes or make the movie a pure downer.
00:18I'm Ewan, this is War Culture, and here at Movie Villains, you didn't realize actually won.
00:23Robert Callahan, Big Hero 6
00:25Big Hero 6's villain is a masked man known as Yo-Kai, later revealed to be Professor Robert Callahan,
00:31played by the always brilliant James Cromwell, who faked his death as part of a revenge plot against tech madman Alistair Cray, Alan Tudyk.
00:39And though Callahan is ultimately arrested at the end of the movie, he straight up accomplished everything that he set out to do.
00:45He obliterated Cray's HQ by reactivating the teleportation portal, and most importantly, he got his daughter Abigail back,
00:52who disappeared while working as a test pilot on one of Cray's portal experiments.
00:57All in all, a few years in jail for executing his plan as intended is probably a pretty acceptable trade-off for Callahan,
01:04especially as he rescued his beloved daughter.
01:07It's just a shame that the plan inadvertently led to the death of protagonist Hero's older brother Tadashi,
01:13which Callahan at least expresses regret for.
01:16Even so, the outcome for Callahan was absolutely a net positive.
01:19Azog the Defiler, The Hobbit, The Battle of the Five Armies
01:23In Peter Jackson's less-than-necessary Hobbit trilogy, Orc War Chief Azog the Defiler's plan was to wipe out the male bloodline of Durin
01:32by killing Thorin Oakenshield and his nephews Feli and Kili.
01:36And in the third film, The Battle of the Five Armies, he absolutely succeeds.
01:41Sure, Azog also dies during his final battle on the ice with Thorin,
01:45but it's certainly anything but a victory for the Dwarven King, who also perishes from his wounds moments later.
01:52This was Azog's personal quest from the outset of the trilogy.
01:56He took an oath and, damn it, he followed through, even at the cost of his own life.
02:01And while the films might brush it under the carpet in pursuit of a more triumphant, crowd-pleasing climax,
02:06Azog totally succeeded in wiping out Thorin's bloodline just as he swore he would.
02:12If that's not winning, then what is?
02:15Freddy Krueger, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, The Dream Master
02:18Though it's fair to say that Robert England's Freddy Krueger just loves to torment young folk through their dreams,
02:24his wider operating goal since the start of the series has been to kill off the children of the parents
02:30who banded together and killed them in revenge for murdering 20 local children all those years ago.
02:36And in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, The Dream Master, Freddy finally follows through with his quest,
02:41killing the so-called last of the Elm Street children, Kristen Parker, who was burned to death midway through the movie.
02:48Kristen herself even hammers the point home by telling Freddy moments before her demise that she is the last.
02:54And while the series, of course, continued on for many more installments,
02:58for the franchise's midway point, Freddy had effectively accomplished his main mission.
03:02The rest of the souls he claims after that point are just gravy, basically,
03:07and no matter how many times he's defeated in the subsequent movies,
03:10nobody can take away from him the fact that he killed all of the original Elm Street children.
03:15President Snow, The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2
03:19Granted, there aren't many movie villains who get ripped apart by an angry mob
03:23and could still genuinely claim to coming out on top,
03:26but The Hunger Games' President Snow, Donald Sutherland, is no ordinary villain.
03:31Though Snow is murdered by a rabble of irate citizens in Mockingjay Part 2,
03:35this comes at the end of a long, successful, and enriched life.
03:40He got to live many, many decades as the autocratic ruler of Panem,
03:45and through Katniss's actions, not only avoids an official, formal execution,
03:50he also gets to see his nemesis, President Coyne, get murdered by her before he dies.
03:56Even accepting Snow's own brutal death, he literally goes out laughing,
04:01knowing that he managed to talk Katniss into killing his enemy,
04:04robbing her of the power she so desperately craved before he himself was finished off.
04:09It may be a pyrrhic victory for Snow, but it's a victory nonetheless.
04:13Terrence Fletcher, Whiplash
04:15Whiplash seemingly ends with jazz drummer Andrew Nyman, played by a career-best Miles Teller,
04:21triumphing over his abusive former instructor Terrence Fletcher, J.K. Simmons,
04:26by leading the band in a mesmerizing performance of the jazz standard caravan.
04:30This is despite Fletcher's attempts to publicly embarrass him by having the band first play a song
04:36that Andrew doesn't know.
04:38However, even beyond the debates about whether Andrew pushed himself too far in the pursuit of greatness,
04:44didn't Fletcher ultimately get what he really wanted?
04:47His own Charlie Parker.
04:49A few scenes earlier, Fletcher laments to Andrew that despite his efforts,
04:52he was never able to mould his own Charlie Parker,
04:55a genuine musical prodigy formed by his harsh, if we're being kind, methods.
05:01But with Andrew's stunning final performance, Fletcher finally got it.
05:05Andrew may think he was the real winner by subverting Fletcher's plan to embarrass him on stage,
05:10but all it did was push Andrew to give the best rendition of his life
05:14and fulfil Fletcher's own twisted ambition.
05:17Richmond Valentine.
05:19Kingsman, The Secret Service.
05:21Now, to be completely fair, Kingsman's villain, Richmond Valentine, Samuel Jackson,
05:26absolutely did not want to die at the end.
05:29But, all the same, he was ultimately far more successful in pulling off his population-curbing plan
05:35than the movie's ending or its sequel would have you believe.
05:38Valentine's hilariously over-the-top scheme involved giving away free sim cards to everyone on Earth
05:44before transmitting a signal which would turn them murderously violent,
05:48all in the pursuit of whittling down the population and stemming global warming.
05:52We see a brief display of this potential when Valentine activates a signal in the third act,
05:57causing absolute chaos around the world until the signal is stopped.
06:01People instantly start fighting and killing each other,
06:04with even parents, including Eggsy's own mother, trying to kill their own kids.
06:09And yet, director Matthew Vaughn kind of glosses over the fallout at the end of the film,
06:14no matter that surely millions, even tens of hundreds of millions of people,
06:19would have been killed globally.
06:20Especially the young, old, and vulnerable.
06:23Even with the signal only being active for such a short time,
06:26Valentine likely wiped out a decent portion of the world's population.
06:30Ozymandias, Watchmen
06:32Plenty of spirited debate, shall we say, about whether Ozymandias is Watchmen's true villain or not,
06:38but, you know, the guy kind of, sort of, murders 15 million people in his quest to unite the world
06:44against a common enemy, Dr. Manhattan.
06:46And that's not exactly heroic.
06:49There's absolutely a cruel, perverse logic to his actions,
06:52which are at least initially shown to completely succeed.
06:56The world does unite together, Manhattan is exiled from Earth,
07:01and the single dissenting hero, Rorschach, is even killed by Manhattan on his way out of the door.
07:08Some will point to the film's final scene,
07:10where Rorschach's journal ends up in the hands of a New York tabloid,
07:14as proof that Ozymandias' ruse will eventually be exposed.
07:18But think about it, who's gonna believe it?
07:20The scrawlings of a deranged vigilante have considerably less credibility
07:24than a retired superhero-turned-businessman,
07:26especially when published by a cranky, paranoid tabloid.
07:30As such, it's incredibly likely that humanity at large would posthumously dismiss Rorschach
07:35as a fringe lunatic conspiracy theorist,
07:37and Ozymandias wouldn't face any major repercussions for his actions.
07:42He won in pretty much every way that matters.
07:45Khan Noonien Singh
07:46Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan
07:48Ricardo Montalban's iconic villain, Khan Noonien Singh,
07:52may not survive the events of the greatest Star Trek movie, Wrath of Khan,
07:56but he nevertheless fulfills his primary objective,
07:59to, in his own words,
08:01do something far worse than kill Captain Kirk.
08:04Hurt him, and hurt him bad.
08:06Khan's actions end up severely damaging the Enterprise,
08:10in turn causing Spock's sacrificial death,
08:12and in Kirk's quest to resurrect Spock in the third film,
08:16also leads to the death of Kirk's son, David.
08:19On top of that, the precious Genesis device is destroyed,
08:23a ton of Starfleet personnel are dead,
08:25and because Kirk kills Klingon Kruger, Christopher Lloyd,
08:29in the third movie's climax,
08:31Klingons now hate him forevermore.
08:33And I mean, relatable, I'd also kind of hate you if you killed Klingon Christopher Lloyd.
08:37Sorry, Bill Shatner.
08:38And yeah, that's a big old mess that Khan created for Kirk,
08:42and consequently, a lot of pain,
08:44even long after Khan himself is dead.
08:47Khan cuts Kirk, and he cuts him deep.
08:51No matter that he didn't actually kill the guy,
08:53instead, he left him to live and experience the full feeling of his pain.
08:57William Ginter Reaver
08:59Spider-Man Far From Home
09:01Though Spider-Man Far From Home ends with Spidey, Tom Holland,
09:05defeating Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio,
09:07the movie elects not to mop up the army of disgruntled former Stark Industries employees
09:12who are helping Beck behind the scenes.
09:15And chief among them is Peter Billingsley's William Ginter Reaver,
09:19who first appeared in the original Iron Man,
09:22and returns here to aid Mysterio in his vengeful superheroic masquerade.
09:27What an obscenely deep, weird pull this was.
09:30After Mysterio dies, we catch one final glimpse of Reaver
09:34as he backs up a copy of Mysterio's drone software
09:36and prepares to leak Spider-Man's identity to J. Jonah Jameson.
09:41And that's the last we've seen of him today.
09:43Before Reaver disappeared into the ether,
09:46he created a massive problem for Peter Parker by exposing his identity.
09:51And though Parker eventually managed to resolve this
09:53by the end of Spider-Man No Way Home,
09:55having everyone forget who he was
09:57was certainly a less than ideal solution.
10:01Unlike Beck,
10:01Reaper not only survived,
10:03but likely also maintained his anonymity,
10:06and so was basically able to slink off into the night undetected,
10:10free to do whatever the hell he wants.
10:13The little sicko.
10:14The Underminer
10:15Incredibles 2
10:16The first Incredibles movie
10:18ended with Superville and the Underminer
10:20showing up to wreak havoc throughout Metroville,
10:22at which point the titular superheroes step in to stop him.
10:25We didn't get to see the outcome of this battle
10:28until Incredibles 2 released a staggering 14 years later.
10:32Unless, like me,
10:33you played the Incredibles Rise of the Underminer game.
10:36Most of the days.
10:37And though the Incredibles merge to stop the Underminer
10:40from destroying City Hall in the sequel,
10:42they don't actually prevent him from escaping.
10:44With a ton of money, no less.
10:47The heroes disable the villain's gigantic drill tank thing,
10:50but he nevertheless flees with all the money he siphoned from Metroville Bank.
10:54And by the end, he's never caught.
10:57More to the point,
10:58while the Underminer didn't destroy Metroville,
11:00he did cause a ton of damage.
11:03Enough that the government shuts down the superhero relocation program,
11:06leaving the power family without a financial leg to stand on.
11:10So, to recap,
11:11the Underminer messed up the city,
11:13ruined the Incredibles reputation temporarily,
11:15stole a ton of money,
11:17and got away scot-free.
11:18If that ain't weighing on the balance of circumstances,
11:21then what is?
11:22Irma Bunt
11:23On Her Majesty's Secret Service
11:25Though the James Bond franchise has been incredibly meticulous
11:29about leaving few villainous threads tied off,
11:32there is one glaring, decades-old exception,
11:35and it comes in potentially the greatest Bond movie ever made,
11:39Peter Hunt's On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
11:42The primary villain of George Lazenby's solo Bond outing
11:45may be the iconic Telly Savalas as Blofeld,
11:48who was eventually dropped down a chimney in The URIs Only,
11:51and god, that movie is weird.
11:53But anyway, his little henchwoman, Irma Bunt,
11:56is really vicious in this one.
11:58Bunt is notable for committing arguably the single most heinous transgression
12:02against Bond in any of the movies,
12:04gunning down his new bride, Tracy,
12:06the iconic Diana Rigg,
12:08at the very end of the movie.
12:09This, understandably, traumatises 007,
12:13and carries through a thread that sees him seek vengeance against Blofeld.
12:17Yet Irma?
12:18She's never actually heard from again.
12:20There is, unfortunately, a tragic reason for this,
12:23as Bunt actress Ilza Stephat passed away mere days after the film's premiere.
12:29The filmmakers had originally intended for Bunt to reappear in sequel Diamonds Are Forever,
12:34and likely receive her comeuppance,
12:36but ultimately decided to leave the character be,
12:39rather than recast her.
12:40A seismic error, in my view,
12:43which set the Bond series in a 10-year path of decline
12:46before Timothy Dalton came back to rescue things in the Living Daylights.
12:49Side note as well,
12:51On Her Majesty's Secret Service,
12:52The Living Daylights,
12:53and Licence to Kill make for a pretty awesome trilogy of Bond stories,
12:57with Dalton's portrayal very much being rooted in the former most film.
13:01But I'm getting distracted.
13:01From the evidence that we have in the films,
13:04Bunt completed her ruthless mission,
13:06was never punished for her actions,
13:07and even outlasted Blofeld himself.
13:10Avoiding the whole weird chimney thing,
13:13which I hate that I'm having to make you look at this right now.
13:16It's so bad.
13:17The only quantum of solace that fans have
13:19is that Bunt was implied to have been killed by 007
13:22in Ian Fleming's sequel novel to On Her Majesty's Secret Service,
13:26You Only Live Twice,
13:27even if this was never played out on screen.
13:29Either way, make sure you watch the movie,
13:32because it goes extremely hard.
13:33And let me know too what your favourite Bond movie is down in the comments.
13:37Britt Stevenson,
13:38Saw 5.
13:40Though the Saw franchise's ultimate villains are,
13:42of course, Tobin Bell's jigsaw and company,
13:45that's not to say the people they put through hell
13:47are all necessarily good and virtuous either.
13:50Quite the opposite in the case of Saw 5,
13:53which centers around five victims who all played a role
13:56in causing an apartment building fire that killed eight people.
13:59The ringleader of the group is Britt,
14:02played by Julie Benz,
14:03an industrious and ambitious businesswoman
14:06who hired a drug addict called Malik,
14:07played by Greg Brick,
14:09to burn the aforementioned building down
14:11in order to get her hands on the property.
14:13Despite this,
14:14both Britt and Malik actually end up surviving Jigsaw's traps,
14:18albeit at the expense of half the blood in their bodies,
14:21but you know,
14:22you can always get more of that.
14:23While the seventh movie,
14:25Saw 3D,
14:26shows Malik to be repentant of his past behaviour
14:28and even joining a Jigsaw survivor self-help group,
14:32Britt is never heard from again.
14:35Saw 5 implies that she survives,
14:37but her lack of presence at the self-help group
14:39suggests she's not exactly suffocating with Gil.
14:43Then again,
14:43given that Britt straight up admits to Malik
14:45that she knew there were people inside the building
14:47when she ordered it raised,
14:49that shouldn't be terribly surprising.
14:51The killer,
14:5212 Angry Men.
14:54In many respects,
14:55the duty of Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men
14:57is that it's not really concerned
14:59with who committed the central murder,
15:01but simply whether the jury can agree
15:03that the victim's son committed the act
15:05beyond a reasonable doubt.
15:07Yet the film's ending,
15:08where juror number eight,
15:10played by the iconic Henry Fonda,
15:12finally persuades the entire jury
15:14to return a not guilty verdict,
15:16has a pretty bleak implication
15:18for the murder investigation itself.
15:20If you accept that the boy didn't commit the murder,
15:23then the killer is still out there,
15:24escaping justice.
15:26Either way,
15:27rather than ending the movie
15:28with a tidy final scene
15:29where the killer is categorically caught,
15:31which would have sucked,
15:32FYI,
15:33the person who killed the man,
15:35wherever they are,
15:36isn't brought to justice.
15:37It's easy to gloss over this
15:38given that the film
15:39is generally focusing its energies elsewhere
15:42and basically implies a triumphant ending,
15:44no matter that someone who committed murder
15:46is walking around scot-free.
15:49Mayor Wade,
15:50Eight-Legged Freaks.
15:52The primary antagonist of Eight-Legged Freaks
15:54may be horse-sized mutant spiders,
15:57but there's also a cart-carrying human villain
15:59in the mix,
16:01Mayor Wade,
16:01played by Leon Rippey.
16:03Rippey is the man responsible for toxic waste
16:06being dumped in the town of Prosperity
16:08in the first place
16:08and causing the whole catastrophe,
16:11while showing little respect
16:12for the citizens his actions have endangered.
16:14When the perverdial spider goop hits the fan,
16:17Mayor Rippey flees to the local mines
16:19and locks the doors behind him,
16:21preventing any of the town's other citizens
16:23from joining him in safety.
16:25With blood on his hands,
16:26it certainly seems like Rippey will meet
16:28a horrifying end
16:29at the hand of an oversized tarantula,
16:31but alas,
16:32it never happens.
16:34Instead,
16:34the worst fate he suffers
16:35is having his beloved maw blown up
16:37in order to kill the spiders.
16:39And while his capital blow
16:40might seem like firm punishment for Rippey
16:42and a categorical Big L,
16:45he briefly mentions
16:46that he's going to file an insurance claim.
16:48And big business,
16:49being the chummy enterprise it is
16:51in modern America,
16:53he almost certainly recouped all his expenses.
16:56More to the point,
16:57even if Rippey's wearable ambitions
16:58likely went up in smoke in Prosperity,
17:01there was absolutely nothing
17:02stopping him from quietly slinging away
17:04and setting up shop
17:06in another rust bucket town.
17:08Maleficent in Maleficent.
17:10Even accepting that Maleficent
17:12reconfigures the iconic villainess
17:14into a more sympathetic,
17:16fleshed-out character
17:17played by Angelina Jolie,
17:19her initial vengeful plan
17:20still plays out far more successfully,
17:23and the film's sunnier ending
17:24really makes clear.
17:26Maleficent has an understandably
17:28major bone to pick
17:29with her former lover Stefan,
17:31who cuts off her wings
17:32and stages her death
17:33in an attempt to appease
17:34the current king,
17:35in turn setting himself up
17:37to become his successor.
17:39When Stefan's daughter Aurora is born,
17:41an embittered Maleficent
17:42curses the child
17:43that on her 16th birthday
17:45she will prick her finger
17:46on a spinning wheel
17:47and go to sleep forever,
17:49save for true love's kiss
17:50breaking the curse.
17:52Stefan and his wife Layla
17:54go to drastic measures
17:55to try and prevent Aurora's destiny
17:57from befalling her,
17:58sequestering her in a remote cottage
18:00until the day after her 16th birthday
18:02and having every spinning wheel
18:04in the kingdom destroyed.
18:06Which would have wreaked havoc
18:07on the kingdom's textiles industry,
18:09but I get it.
18:11In the ensuing years,
18:12Stefan becomes obsessed
18:14with killing Maleficent
18:15and loses his mind.
18:17Enough that he even refuses
18:19to see his wife on her deathbed.
18:21And even after Aurora falls into a slumber
18:23and is awakened by Maleficent's kiss
18:25on the forehead,
18:26Stefan doesn't get any time
18:28to savour his daughter's revival,
18:30his mad desire for revenge
18:32causing him to fall to his death
18:33while battling Maleficent.
18:35To summarise,
18:36Maleficent absolutely succeeded
18:37in her plan to emotionally
18:39brutalise Stefan,
18:40effectively separating him
18:41from his daughter
18:42for her entire childhood
18:43and even once the curse lifts,
18:46he's not around to enjoy it,
18:48being dead and all.
18:49While Maleficent was certainly
18:50in a better, less twisted place
18:52by film's end,
18:53her initial plot
18:54to devastate her former lover
18:55absolutely worked as intended,
18:57even if the film
18:58keenly downplays it somewhat.
19:00The Muggers
19:01Death Wish
19:02The original Death Wish
19:03sees architect Paul Kersey,
19:06played by Charles Bronson,
19:07driven to vigilantism
19:09following the murder of his wife
19:10and brutal assault of his daughter
19:12during a home invasion.
19:14As soon as they've done their stuff,
19:16the three anonymous Muggers,
19:18one of whom is played by Jeff Goldblum,
19:20leave the apartment and at the same time,
19:23the movie as a whole.
19:24Yeah, even though this act
19:26is what prompts Kersey
19:27to pick up a gun
19:28and start cleaning up
19:29New York City of his own accord,
19:31the original three assailants
19:33never actually get their comeuppance.
19:36Despite Kersey killing
19:37numerous violent criminals
19:38throughout the rest of the film,
19:39the precise men who ruined his life
19:41are never seen again,
19:42and the audience is left to assume
19:44that they simply got away with it.
19:46Though the increasingly bloodthirsty
19:48glut of sequels
19:49ensured that no bad man
19:51escaped Kersey's grasp,
19:52the somewhat more
19:53quote unquote
19:54grounded original
19:55had them simply disappear
19:57into the night,
19:58free to continue
19:59their heinous home invasions elsewhere.
20:02Because let's be honest,
20:03in a city as big as New York,
20:05even a fired up Charles Bronson
20:07can't catch everyone.
20:09The Joker,
20:10The Dark Knight
20:10The Joker's rampage
20:12in The Dark Knight
20:12is seemingly concluded
20:13when he's captured by Batman
20:15and we can assume
20:16taken to Arkham Asylum.
20:18Yet the Joker's wild acts
20:20throughout the film
20:21end up having far-reaching
20:22consequences for Gotham City,
20:24namely his success
20:25in corrupting district attorney
20:27Harvey Dent,
20:28played by Aaron Eckhart.
20:29The Cloud Prince of Crime
20:30not only facilitated Dent's downfall,
20:32but he also killed
20:33Rachel Dawes,
20:35forced Batman to kill Dent,
20:36and consequently compelled him
20:38to take the blade
20:39for Dent's rampage,
20:40in turn going into hiding.
20:42Beyond this,
20:43eight years later
20:43in The Dark Knight Rises,
20:45Bane finally exposes
20:47the truth of dense actions,
20:49in turn throwing
20:50Gotham's justice system
20:51into chaos,
20:52just as the Joker
20:53initially intended.
20:55And finally,
20:56we see Bane release
20:57the prisoners
20:57from Blackgate Penitentiary
20:59and presumably Arkham Asylum,
21:01which one assumes
21:03would most certainly
21:04include the Joker himself,
21:05who, for obvious reasons,
21:07did not appear in the sequel.
21:09On the balance of victimization
21:11and overall planned success,
21:13The Clown Prince
21:14absolutely triumphed
21:15over this incarnation of Batman,
21:17and there's a fair assumption
21:18he's still out there somewhere too.
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