23 Movie Bad Guys Who Are Actually Good Guys

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from E.L. James, and it really might just be the one, it’s that nobody likes shades of gray in their entertainment. We get enough of that in real life, when we have to interrogate whether we were really in the wrong for driving alone in the carpool lane or not returning to the store after discovering we’d accidentally stolen something in the act of self-checkout. When the house lights go down, we can’t handle anything heavier than popcorn, so we like our good guys good and our bad guys bad.

But sometimes, screenwriters don’t realize that they’ve gotten the two mixed up. The “good guys” are actually just losers who suck or actively terrible people, and the “bad guys” are just trying to do their necessary jobs or keep society from falling apart at the expense of a solipsistic character’s whims. That’s why user WidowofBielsa asked r/AskReddit, “What’s a story where the ‘bad guys’ are actually, completely, 100 percent right, to the point where it’s weird the story keeps calling them the bad guys?”

23 The Wizard of Oz

22 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

21 Mrs. Doubtfire

20 Dirty Dancing

19 The Road to El Dorado

18 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

17 Wish

16 School of Rock

15 Frosty the Snowman

14 Battleship

13 Top Gun

12 The Jungle Book

11 Old School

10 The Devil Wears Prada

9 Father of the Bride

8 Toy Story

7 High School Musical

6 Ratatouille

5 Karate Kid

4 Jaws

3 Jurassic Park

2 Ghostbusters

1 Bee Movie