There are a lot of movies in the world where audiences realize, almost too late, that the character they are rooting for is actually a really bad person. There are movies featuring antiheroes, but this presents a distinct dynamic. This is the case where the protagonist in the film is actually the antagonist in the world around them.

These are mostly prevalent in crime dramas, where viewers are asked to follow a person’s rise to power and their eventual fall. However, the person the film wants the audience to cheer for is a bad person who does bad things. Whether in The Godfather or some surprising comedies, these bad people end up as the “heroes.”

The Town – Doug MacRay

Doug MacRay is the main protagonist in the Ben Affleck movie The Town. Affleck himself plays the role of this flawed villain, a man who leads a crew of thieves and works for a mob boss named Fergus Colm (Pete Postlethwaite). The movie makes him sympathetic, as a man loyal to his friends and who isn’t as bad as others.

However, while he might not be as bad as some other people around him, including his own friends, he is still a bad person. He even develops a relationship with a woman his crew took hostage, making his story even more complicated.

However, even as the main character and protagonist, it becomes clear as the film progresses that he is not a good person, despite the audience’s desire for him to have a happy ending. Having him battle the mobsters in the end to seek his freedom doesn’t redeem him at all, and the movie ends with him still a fugitive.

Donnie Brasco – Lefty

The main character in Donnie Brasco is Joseph D. Pistone, an FBI agent who goes undercover as the тιтular character. However, the character that the audience ultimately starts to root for is Lefty, the veteran mafia enforcer who vouches for Donnie and brings him into the Bonanno crime family.

Letty is a bad person, and he has done many bad things in his lifetime. He is a mobster and a killer, but in Donnie Brasco, he is an aging enforcer who not only trusts Donnie but also puts his life in this man’s hands. The fact that Donnie betrays him is ultimately heartbreaking.

This is a tough one because Donnie is the “hero,” and the man who brings down the Bonanno crime family. However, the film does not spare Lefty, and he walks into what is likely his death scene, although it happens off-screen. Interestingly, this isn’t what happened to the real Lefty, and it seems cruel in the movie.

The Godfather – Michael Corleone

The journey of Michael Corleone is a tragic one. As seen in The Godfather: Part II, Michael wanted to join the army and make something of his life, away from the criminal empire his father had built. In the first movie, he returned as a war hero, only to end up getting sucked into the family’s criminal empire anyway.

By the end of the third movie, Michael had become more evil than his father, who, by all means, was at least honorable. That is a mᴀssive swing since the first movie painted him as a good man who was sucked into a bad situation. However, as it all turned out, fans were rooting for an evil man all along.

Michael Corleone could have been a good person, but he had no chance ot escaping from the evil that his family had brought upon the Corleone name. By the end of the first film, when Michael had all his father’s old rival crime bosses executed, he was far from the war hero he had opened the story as.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – Ferris Bueller

Not all bad people who take the lead in movies are crime lords, thieves, or murderers. Sometimes, they are just arrogant, egotistical high school jerks. That is the case with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Matthew Broderick stars as Ferris Bueller, a high school student who decides to skip school and have a day on the town.

He then gets his girlfriend and best friend involved and proceeds to practically ruin their lives. When he causes his best friend to finally go over the edge with the destruction of his dad’s car, Ferris laughs it off. By this time, it is clear that Ferris Bueller is a sociopath.

Everything Ferris does is for selfish reasons, and the way he smugly talks to the audience by breaking the fourth wall makes him even more guilty. The principal is painted as the villain, and he does go too far, but this is a case of the audience cheering on a villain, all the way to the end.

Scarface – Tony Montana

Scarface is a movie where no one should have expected the protagonist to be a good person. The film was a remake of a classic 1932 gangster movie about a criminal who rises through the ranks of the crime organizations and eventually achieves mᴀssive success, only to fall victim to his own greed.

However, the Oliver Stone script does something interesting with the character by making people start to want to see Tony Montana (Al Pacino) succeed. This is impressive, since it isn’t the quiet and cunning Michael Corleone, but a brash and outspoken loudmouth who should be instantly unlikable.

That said, when Tony is gunned down in his home in the end, it seems like a fitting conclusion, while also ending the life of someone that viewers actually cheered for as he rose up the ranks of the criminal underworld.

Nightcrawler – Lou Bloom

Nightcrawler is a slow-burning heel turn by someone who was a bad person from the start, but who became a horrible person by the end. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Lou Bloom, a petty thief who is caught stealing and then escapes, only to find a new career path. While it seemed legitimate, Bloom doesn’t do it the right way.

After the opening theft, he comes across a car crash and sees freelance pH๏τographers filming the police pulling a woman from a burning car. One of the pH๏τographers explains that they sell the footage to local news stations. Instead of doing it the right way, Lou then begins to break numerous laws to get better footage.

Whether he is tampering with crime scenes to get better sH๏τs or causing accidents himself, he does the most despicable things imaginable to become a success. By the end, anyone who cheered him on in the movie felt the gut punch when Lou turned out to be worse than any criminal he sH๏τ footage of.

Joker – Arthur Fleck

While the movie is тιтled Joker and is based on the DC Comics character, it is not technically the same Joker as the onefrom the Batman comics. Instead, this is almost an Elseworlds story about a failed comedian who has delusions and suffers from mental health issues, leading him to commit heinous acts.

Arthur Fleck is a man who aspires to be a comedian, and he has an affliction that causes him to laugh uncontrollably when he gets nervous. However, when he finds a woman who cares about him and sees a chance to succeed in comedy, he begins to influence the people around him in the community.

By the end, viewers realize that his success, including the woman, is in his imagination. He is actually a broken and flawed man. He ultimately ends up going down in the end, which leads to the sequel where he stands trial for his crimes. However, he was clearly the villain in the first movie, even as the protagonist.

Pulp Fiction – Vincent Vega & Jules Winfield

Pulp Fiction is a movie where there are no good characters, and even the best of them, the boxer named Butch, is in it for himself with no aspirations of being a decent human being. The two main characters are Vincent Vega and Jules Winfield, and audiences are asked to follow them and ultimately cheer for them.

However, Vincent and Jules are stone-cold killers, and they show as much when they murder a room full of young men dumb enough to cross their boss. The fact that Jules taunts the young men with scripture that he made up before gunning them down shows that these are very bad people.

There is nothing redeemable about these two men, and even when Jules allows two petty thieves to escape with their lives in the diner, it isn’t enough to pay for all his sins. These are brutal killers, and the audience is just along for the ride.

Saw X – Jigsaw

There was no doubt by the time that Saw X was released that Jigsaw was a villain. He and his acolytes had spent the last nine movies killing people. While the films were morality tales, and most of these people deserved punishment, the fact that Jigsaw made them pay with their lives was always extreme.

However, the big twist in Saw X was that Jigsaw was the protagonist this time around. This is a prequel movie and shows John Kramer when he learns he has cancer. When an unethical corporation lies to him and makes him think they can cure him, they rip him off for his money and leave him to die.

This movie depicts John seeking revenge against those who preyed on the most vulnerable. What makes Saw X so memorable is that the audience sympathizes with Jigsaw. Despite knowing he would murder countless people, they cheer for this villain and want to see him exact his revenge.

There Will Be Blood – Daniel Plainview

There Will Be Blood was a fascinating movie because it was both a historical epic and a horror film. What this Paul Thomas Anderson movie does well is that it has oil stand in as a metaphor for blood, and the hero, Daniel Plainview, is a vampire, bleeding a town dry before leaving it ᴅᴇᴀᴅ in his path.

Of course, Daniel is not a literal vampire, but this is a figurative story that even involves his battle with religion. While Anderson sets up Eli Sunday as the villain, as he opposes Daniel, who was established as the protagonist from the start, neither of these characters is inherently good.

In the end, Daniel has destroyed another town and tried to destroy his own adopted son. The last scenes show him in his home, sitting in a bowling lane, and beating Eli to death with a pin. There Will Be Blood is a story of a bad man doing bad things, and the audience is expected to follow him.