00:00While the hero doesn't always come out on top in movies, it's generally made abundantly clear when
00:05the bad guy wins, right? Well, every so often, movies get a little bit more sly and subtle about
00:11the villain's victory, perhaps because they don't want to downplay the hero's successes or make the
00:16movie a pure downer. Yet, all the same, and following up on our last video on the subject,
00:21I'm Ewan, this is War Culture, and here are 8 more movie villains you didn't realize actually won.
00:278. Robert Callahan, Big Hero 6
00:31Big Hero 6's villain is a masked man known as Yo-Kai, later revealed to be Professor Robert
00:36Callahan, played by the always brilliant James Cromwell, who faked his death as part of a revenge
00:41plot against tech madman Aleister Cray, Alan Tudyk. And though Callahan is ultimately arrested at the
00:47end of the movie, he straight up accomplished everything that he set out to do. He obliterated
00:52Cray's HQ by reactivating the teleportation portal, and most importantly, he got his
00:57daughter Abigail back, who disappeared while working as a test pilot on one of Cray's portal
01:02experiments. All in all, a few years in jail for executing his plan as intended is probably
01:07a pretty acceptable trade-off for Callahan, especially as he rescued his beloved daughter.
01:13It's just a shame that the plan inadvertently led to the death of protagonist hero's older brother,
01:18Tadashi, which Callahan at least expresses regret for. Even so, the outcome for Callahan was absolutely
01:24a net positive. Number 7. Azog the Defiler
01:28The Hobbit, The Battle of the Five Armies
01:30In Peter Jackson's less-than-necessary Hobbit trilogy, Orc War Chief Azog the Defiler's plan
01:36was to wipe out the male bloodline of Durin by killing Thorin Oakenshield and his nephews,
01:42Feely and Keely. And in the third film, The Battle of the Five Armies, he absolutely succeeds.
01:48Sure, Azog also dies during his final battle on the ice with Thorin, but it's certainly anything but a
01:53victory for the Dwarven King, who also perishes from his wounds moments later.
01:59This was Azog's personal quest from the outset of the trilogy. He took an oath and damn it,
02:04he followed through, even at the cost of his own life. And while the films might brush it under the
02:09carpet in pursuit of a more triumphant, crowd-pleasing climax, Azog totally succeeded
02:14in wiping out Thorin's bloodline just as he swore he would. If that's not winning, then what is?
02:21Number 6. Freddy Krueger, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, The Dream Master
02:26Though it's fair to say that Robert England's Freddy Krueger just loves to torment young folk
02:31through their dreams, his wider operating goal since the start of the series has been to kill
02:37off the children of the parents who banded together and killed them in revenge for murdering 20 local
02:42children all those years ago. And in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, The Dream Master, Freddy finally
02:47follows through with his quest, killing the so-called last of the Elm Street children,
02:52Kristen Parker, who was burned to death midway through the movie.
02:56Kristen herself even hammers the point home by telling Freddy moments before her demise that
03:01she is the last. And while the series of course continued on for many more installments,
03:06for the franchise's midway point, Freddy had effectively accomplished his main mission.
03:11The rest of the souls he claims after that point are just gravy, basically, and no matter how many times
03:16he's defeated in the subsequent movies, nobody can take away from him the fact that he killed all
03:21of the original Elm Street children.
03:23Number 5. President Snow, The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2
03:28Granted, there aren't many movie villains who get ripped apart by an angry mob and can still
03:33genuinely claim to coming out on top. But The Hunger Games' President Snow, Donald Sutherland,
03:38is no ordinary villain. Though Snow is murdered by a rabble of irate citizens in Mockingjay Part 2,
03:44this comes at the end of a long, successful, and enriched life.
03:49He got to live many, many decades as the autocratic ruler of Panem,
03:54and through Katniss's actions, not only avoids an official, formal execution,
03:59he also gets to see his nemesis, President Coyne, get murdered by her before he dies.
04:05Even accepting Snow's own brutal death, he literally goes out laughing,
04:10knowing that he managed to talk Katniss into killing his enemy,
04:13robbing her of the power she so desperately craved before he himself was finished off.
04:18It may be a pyrrhic victory for Snow, but it's a victory nonetheless.
04:23Number 4. Terrence Fletcher, Whiplash
04:26Whiplash seemingly ends with jazz drummer Andrew Nyman, played by a career-best Miles Teller,
04:32triumphing over his abusive former instructor Terrence Fletcher, J.K. Simmons,
04:37by leading the band in a mesmerizing performance of the jazz standard caravan.
04:40This is despite Fletcher's attempts to publicly embarrass him by having the band first play a song
04:46that Andrew doesn't know.
04:48However, even beyond the debates about whether Andrew pushed himself too far in the pursuit of
04:54greatness, didn't Fletcher ultimately get what he really wanted? His own Charlie Parker.
04:59A few scenes earlier, Fletcher laments to Andrew that despite his efforts, he was never able to
05:04mould his own Charlie Parker, a genuine musical prodigy formed by his harsh, if we're being
05:10kind, methods. But with Andrew's stunning final performance, Fletcher finally got it.
05:15Andrew may think he was the real winner by subverting Fletcher's plan to embarrass him on stage,
05:20but all it did was push Andrew to give the best rendition of his life and fulfil Fletcher's own
05:26twisted ambition.
05:273. Richmond Valentine
05:30Kingsman The Secret Service
05:32Now, to be completely fair, Kingsman's villain, Richmond Valentine, Samuel Jackson,
05:37absolutely did not want to die at the end. But, all the same, he was ultimately far more
05:43successful in pulling off his population-curbing plan than the movie's ending or its sequel would
05:48have you believe. Valentine's hilariously over-the-top scheme involved giving away free
05:53sim cards to everyone on Earth before transmitting a signal which would turn them murderously violent,
05:59all in the pursuit of whittling down the population and stemming global warming.
06:03We see a brief display of this potential when Valentine activates a signal in the third act,
06:08causing absolute chaos around the world until the signal is stopped. People instantly start
06:14fighting and killing each other, with even parents, including Eggsy's own mother,
06:19trying to kill their own kids. And yet, director Matthew Vaughn kind of glossing
06:23over the fallout at the end of the film. No matter that surely millions, even tens of hundreds
06:28of millions of people would have been killed globally, especially the young, old, and vulnerable.
06:35Even with the signal only being active for such a short time, Valentine likely wiped out a decent
06:40portion of the world's population. 2. Ozymandias
06:43Watchmen
06:44Plenty of spirited debate, shall we say, about whether Ozymandias is Watchmen's true villain or not,
06:51but, you know, the guy kinda sorta murders 15 million people in his quest to unite the world
06:56against a common enemy, Dr. Manhattan. And that's not exactly heroic. There's absolutely a cruel,
07:03perverse logic to his actions, which are at least initially shown to completely succeed.
07:08The world does unite together, Manhattan is exiled from Earth, and the single dissenting
07:15hero, Rorschach, is even killed by Manhattan on his way out of the door.
07:20Some will point to the film's final scene, where Rorschach's journal ends up in the hands
07:25of a New York tabloid, as proof that Ozymandias' ruse will eventually be exposed. But think about
07:31it, who's gonna believe it? The scrawlings of a deranged vigilante have considerably less
07:36credibility than a retired superhero-turned-businessman, especially when published by a
07:41cranky, paranoid tabloid. As such, it's incredibly likely that humanity at large would posthumously
07:46dismiss Rorschach as a fringe lunatic conspiracy theorist, and Ozymandias wouldn't face any major
07:52repercussions for his actions. He won in pretty much every way that matters.
07:57And number 1. Khan Noonien Singh
08:00Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan
08:02Ricardo Montalban's iconic villain, Khan Noonien Singh, may not survive the events of
08:07the greatest Star Trek movie, Wrath of Khan, but he nevertheless fulfills his primary objective,
08:13to, in his own words, do something far worse than kill Captain Kirk. Hurt him, and hurt him bad.
08:20Khan's actions end up severely damaging the Enterprise, in turn causing Spock's sacrificial death, and in
08:27Kirk's quest to resurrect Spock in the third film, also leads to the death of Kirk's son, David.
08:33On top of that, the precious Genesis device is destroyed, a ton of Starfleet personnel are dead,
08:39and because Kirk kills Klingon Kruger, Christopher Lloyd, in the third movie's climax,
08:44Klingons now hate him forevermore, and I mean, relatable, I'd also kinda hate you if you kill
08:49Klingon Christopher Lloyd, sorry Bill Shatner. And yeah, that's a big old mess that Khan created
08:55for Kirk, and consequently, a lot of pain, even long after Khan himself is dead. Khan cuts Kirk,
09:02and he cuts him deep. No matter that he didn't actually kill the guy, instead he left him to live
09:08and experience the full feeling of his pain. And those were 8 more movie villains you didn't
09:13realize actually won. Any villains you feel secretly handed a big fan out to their opponents in a given
09:19film? Shout them out down in the comments below. Don't forget to drop the video a like if you enjoyed
09:22it, and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss another upload. Either way, thank you all for
09:26watching, I've been Ewan, this has been Watt Culture, and I'll hopefully catch you next time. Bye!
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