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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
00:05wins, 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
00:37Alistair Cray, Alan Tudyk.
00:39And though Callahan is ultimately arrested at the end of the movie, he straight up accomplished everything that he set
00:44out 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
01:03-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
01:21The Hobbit, The Battle of the Five Armies
01:23In Peter Jackson's less-than-necessary Hobbit trilogy,
01:27Orc War Chief Azog the Defiler's plan was to wipe out the male bloodline of Durin by killing Thorin Oakenshield
01:34and 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
02:47movie.
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
05:18Kingsman, The Secret Service
05:20Now, 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
05:35that 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,
05:47all 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,
06:18would 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,
06:58Manhattan is exiled from Earth,
07:01and the single dissenting hero, Rorschach,
07:04is 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.
07:17But think about it, who's gonna believe it?
07:20The scrawlings of a deranged vigilante have considerably less credibility than a retired
07:24superhero-turned-businessman, especially 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 fringed 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, do 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, even 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, Spider-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.
09:14And chief among them is Peter Billingsley's William Ginter Reaver,
09:20who 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
09:33as he banks 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.
09:50And though Parker eventually managed to resolve this by the end of Spider-Man No Way Home,
09:55having everyone forget who he was was certainly a less than ideal solution.
10:01Unlike Beck, Reaper not only survived, but 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 ended with supervillain 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 until Incredibles 2 released a staggering 14 years later.
10:32Unless, like me, you played The Incredibles Rise of the Underminer game.
10:36Most of the days.
10:37And though The Incredibles merge to stop The Underminer from destroying City Hall in the sequel,
10:42they don't actually prevent him from escaping.
10:44With a ton of money, no less.
10:46The 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, while 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.
11:09So, to recap, The Underminer messed up the city,
11:13ruined The Incredibles' reputation temporarily,
11:15stole a ton of money, and got away scot-free.
11:18If that ain't weighing on the balance of circumstances, then what is?
11:22Irma Bunt, on Her Majesty's Secret Service.
11:26Though the James Bond franchise has been incredibly meticulous about 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 may be the iconic Telly Savalas as Blofeld,
11:48who was eventually dropped down at Chimney in For Your Eyes Only,
11:51and god, that movie is weird.
11:53But anyway, his little henchwoman, Irma Bunt, is really vicious in this one.
11:58Bunt is notable for committing arguably the single most heinous transgression against Bond in any of the movies,
12:04gunning down his new bride Tracy, the iconic Diana Rigg, at the very end of the movie.
12:10This, understandably, traumatizes 007,
12:13and carries through a thread that sees him seek vengeance against Blofeld.
12:17Yet Irma? She'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, rather than recast her.
12:40A seismic error, in my view,
12:43which set the Bond series in a ten-year path of decline,
12:46before Timothy Dalton came back to rescue things in The Living Daylights.
12:49Side note as well,
12:50On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The Living Daylights,
12:53and License 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.
13:00But I'm getting distracted.
13:02From the evidence that we have in the films,
13:04Bunt completed her ruthless mission,
13:05was 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.
13:16The only quantum of solace that fans have is 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.
13:30Either 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
13:39Though the Saw franchise's ultimate villains are, of course, Tobin Bell's Jigsaw and company,
13:45that's not to say the people they put through hell are 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 in causing an apartment building fire
13:57that killed eight people.
13:59The ringleader of the group is Britt, played by Julie Benz,
14:03an industrious and ambitious businesswoman who hired a drug addict called Malik,
14:07played by Greg Brick,
14:09to burn the aforementioned building down in order to get her hands on the property.
14:13Despite this, both 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, you can always get more of that.
14:23While the seventh movie, Saw 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.
14:34Saw 5 implies that she survives,
14:37but her lack of presence at the self-help group suggests she's not exactly suffocating with Gil.
14:43That again, given that Britt straight up admits to Malik
14:45that she knew there were people inside the building when she ordered it raised,
14:49that shouldn't be terribly surprising.
14:51The Killer
14:5112 Angry Men
14:53In many respects, the duty of Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men
14:57is that it's not really concerned with who committed the central murder,
15:01but simply whether the jury can agree that the victim's son committed the act
15:05beyond a reasonable doubt.
15:07Yet the film's ending, where juror number 8, played by the iconic Henry Fonda,
15:12finally persuades the entire jury to return a not guilty verdict,
15:16has a pretty bleak implication for the murder investigation itself.
15:20If you accept that the boy didn't commit the murder,
15:23then the killer is still out there, escaping justice.
15:25Either way, rather than ending the movie with a tidy final scene
15:29where the killer is categorically caught,
15:31which would have sucked FYI,
15:33the person who killed the man, wherever they are,
15:36isn't brought to justice.
15:37It's easy to gloss over this given that the film is generally focusing its energies elsewhere,
15:41and basically implies a triumphant ending,
15:44no matter that someone who committed murder is walking around scot-free.
15:48Mayor Wade
15:498-Legged Freaks
15:51The primary antagonists of 8-Legged Freaks may be horse-sized mutant spiders,
15:57but there's also a cart-carrying human villain in the mix,
16:00Mayor Wade, played by Leon Rippey.
16:03Rippey is the man responsible for toxic waste being dumped in the town of prosperity in the first place,
16:08and causing the whole catastrophe, while showing little respect for the citizens his actions have in danger.
16:14When the perverdial spider goop hits the fan,
16:17Mayor Rippey flees to the local mines and locks the doors behind him,
16:21preventing any of the town's other citizens from joining him in safety.
16:24With blood on his hands, it certainly seems like Rippey will meet a horrifying end
16:29at the hand of an oversized tarantula.
16:31But, alas, it never happens.
16:33Instead, the worst fate he suffers is having his beloved maul blown up in order to kill the spiders.
16:39And while his capital blow might seem like firm punishment for Rippey and a categorical big L,
16:45he briefly mentions that he's going to file an insurance claim.
16:48And big business being the chummy enterprise it is in modern America,
16:53he almost certainly recouped all his expenses.
16:56More to the point, even if Rippey's wearable ambitions likely went up in smoke in prosperity,
17:00there was absolutely nothing stopping him from quietly slinging away
17:04and setting up shop in another rust bucket town.
17:08Maleficent in Maleficent.
17:10Even accepting that Maleficent reconfigures the iconic villainess
17:14into a more sympathetic fleshed-out character played by Angelina Jolie,
17:19her initial vengeful plan still plays out far more successfully,
17:23and the film's sunnier ending really makes clear.
17:26Maleficent has an understandably major bone to pick with her former lover Stefan,
17:31who cuts off her wings and stages her death in an attempt to appease the current king,
17:35in turn setting himself up to become his successor.
17:39When Stefan's daughter Aurora is born, an embittered Maleficent curses the child
17:43that on her 16th birthday she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and go to sleep forever,
17:49save for true love's kiss breaking the curse.
17:51Stefan and his wife Layla go to drastic measures to try and prevent Aurora's destiny from befalling her,
17:58sequestering her in a remote cottage until the day after her 16th birthday
18:02and having every spinning wheel in the kingdom destroyed.
18:06Which would have wreaked havoc on the kingdom's textiles industry, but I get it.
18:11In the ensuing years, Stefan becomes obsessed with killing Maleficent and loses his mind,
18:17enough that he even refuses to see his wife on her deathbed.
18:21And even after Aurora falls into a slumber and is awakened by Maleficent's kiss on the forehead,
18:27Stefan doesn't get any time to savour his daughter's revival,
18:30his mad desire for revenge causing him to fall to his death while battling Maleficent.
18:35To summarise, Maleficent absolutely succeeded in her plan to emotionally brutalise Stefan,
18:40effectively separating him from his daughter for her entire childhood,
18:43and even once the curse lifts, he's not around to enjoy it, being dead and all.
18:49While Maleficent was certainly in a better, less twisted place by film's end,
18:53her initial plot to devastate her former lover absolutely worked as intended,
18:57even if the film keenly downplays it somewhat.
19:00The Muggers.
19:01Death Wish.
19:02The original Death Wish sees architect Paul Kersey, played by Charles Bronson,
19:07driven to vigilantism following the murder of his wife and brutal assault of his daughter
19:12during a home invasion.
19:14As soon as they've done their stuff, the three anonymous Muggers,
19:18one of whom is played by Jeff Goldblum,
19:20leave the apartment and, at the same time, the movie as a whole.
19:24Yeah, even though this act is what prompts Kersey to pick up a gun and start cleaning up
19:29New York City of his own accord, the original three assailants never actually get their comeuppance.
19:35Despite Kersey killing numerous violent criminals throughout the rest of the film,
19:39the precise men who ruined his life are never seen again,
19:42and the audience is left to assume that they simply got away with it.
19:46Though the increasingly bloodthirsty glut of sequels ensured that no bad man escaped Kersey's grasp,
19:52the somewhat more quote-unquote grounded original had them simply disappear into the night,
19:58free to continue their heinous home invasions elsewhere.
20:02Because, let's be honest, in a city as big as New York,
20:05even a fired-up Charles Bronson can't catch everyone.
20:08The Joker, The Dark Knight
20:10The Joker's rampage in The Dark Knight is seemingly concluded when he's captured by Batman,
20:15and, we can assume, taken to Arkham Asylum.
20:18Yet, the Joker's wild acts throughout the film end up having far-reaching consequences for Gotham City.
20:24Namely, his success in corrupting district attorney Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart.
20:29The Cloud Prince of Crime not only facilitated Dent's downfall, but he also killed Rachel Dawes,
20:34forced Batman to kill Dent, and consequently compelled him to take the blade for Dent's rampage,
20:40in turn going into hiding.
20:42Beyond this, eight years later in The Dark Knight Rises,
20:45Bane finally exposes the truth of Dent's actions,
20:48in turn throwing Gotham's justice system into chaos, just as the Joker initially intended.
20:55And finally, we see Bane release the prisoners from Blackgate Penitentiary and, presumably, Arkham Asylum,
21:01which one assumes would most certainly include the Joker himself,
21:05who, for obvious reasons, did not appear in the sequel.
21:09On the balance of victimization and overall planned success,
21:13The Clown Prince absolutely triumphed over this incarnation of Batman,
21:17and there's a fair assumption he's still out there somewhere too.
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