When villains become heroes in the next movie.
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00:00Coming up with a great movie villain is no easy feat, but when the right actor is paired with a
00:05great script, filmmakers can create statuesque antagonists that'll be remembered forevermore.
00:12And so, the temptation to just bring a hit villain back to raise hell all over again in the sequel
00:18kinda speaks for itself, because why not just give the audience more of what they enjoyed
00:23the first time, right? But sometimes, in an attempt to shake things up, they end up nudged
00:29into a more heroic role instead. I'm Ewan, this is WhatCulture, and here are 10 Movie Villains
00:35Who Became Heroes In The Sequel.
00:3810. Hector Barbosa – Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End
00:43The original Pirates of the Caribbean introduced the deliciously villainous Captain Barbosa,
00:48played to perfection by the great Geoffrey Rush. A conniving schemer determined to break the curse
00:54placed upon him and his men, he becomes a major thorn in the side of Jack Sparrow and company,
01:00even if he's ultimately defeated come the ending. Sequel Dead Man's Chest introduced a worthy
01:06antagonist successor in Bill Nighy's Davy Jones, but the film concluded with one hell of a big
01:12twist – the return of Barbosa from the first movie. More to the point, Barbosa is reintroduced
01:18as a quasi-heroic figure, to help guide the assembled party to save Jack's soul from Davy
01:24Jones' locker. And so, in the third film, at World's End, Barbosa indeed adopts a more heroic
01:32adjacent tenor, even if by film's end, he's scarping with the Black Pearl in search of the
01:37Fountain of Youth. Barbosa's allegiances certainly prove fluid, shall we say, throughout the rest of
01:43the franchise, though on the balance of his actions, teaming up with Jack to take down
01:48several mutual enemies, he's absolutely closer to hero than he is villain.
01:539. Jaws – Moonraker
01:56Roger Moore's third James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, aka his best one,
02:01introduced audiences to the instantly iconic henchman Jaws, played by Richard Keel,
02:06fondly remembered for his hulking frame and sharp, steely teeth. Though Jaws' boss,
02:12Karl Stromberg, played by Kurt Juergens, is killed at the film's end, Jaws lives on to fight
02:18another day and return in the next film, Moonraker. Here, Jaws is aligned with the evil industrialist
02:24Hugo Drax, played by Michael Lonsdale, though undergoes a change of heart later in the film.
02:30The seeds are sown when Jaws, who is presented as far more of a comic relief character this time
02:36around, falls in love with a petite, prospective woman by the name of Dolly, played by Blanche
02:42Rebelec. And so, after learning that neither he nor Dolly will be spared from Drax's plot to
02:47exterminate most of the human race, he's persuaded to help Bond take him out. The last time we see
02:53Jaws, he's made it back to Earth safely with Dolly. And while the pair were originally going
02:59to marry in For Your Eyes Only, this subplot was ultimately cut, along with Jaws' entire role,
03:05in an attempt to rein in some of the silliness of the Moore era. According to director Lewis
03:11Gilbert, the decision to change Jaws from a villain into a hero was motivated by scores
03:16of fan mail from young children asking why Jaws had to be a baddie. Aw, it's really cute. Imagine
03:23being a kid and letting Jaws as your favourite Bond character. If that was you, let us know down
03:28in the comments below. The whole Jaws face turn thing is goofy as all hell, but in a movie as
03:34fundamentally ridiculous as Moonraker, it doesn't really feel out of place.
03:408. Teddy Sanders – Bad Neighbours 2
03:44The quote-unquote villainy of comedy Bad Neighbours may ultimately be relatively low
03:49stakes compared to most movies on this list, but it still counts all the same.
03:54Couple Mac and Kelly, played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne respectively, are adjusting to life
03:59with their infant daughter when a hard-partying fraternity, Delta Psi Beta, moves in next door.
04:05The frat's hell-raising antics are spearheaded by its president, Teddy Sanders, played by Zac Efron,
04:11who isn't much interested in toning down the mayhem for Mac and Kelly's benefit,
04:16resulting in a war of escalation between the two sides.
04:20The matter is resolved somewhat amicably by the ending, but when Bad Neighbours 2 introduces the
04:26considerably more vicious sorority, Kappa Nu, as Mac and Kelly's new neighbours,
04:32Teddy is pulled back into the fold to help take the sorority down.
04:36Though Teddy initially sides with Kappa Nu and their leader Shelby, played by Chloe Grace Moretz,
04:42he eventually appreciates that they're far more chaotic than he ever was,
04:45and so becomes a force of good to help his former enemies out.
04:507. Apollo Creed – Rocky III
04:53While it would obviously be a huge stretch to say that Rocky Balboa's opponent in the
04:58first two Rocky movies is an out-and-out villain, Apollo Creed is, in the very least,
05:03an antagonist who stands in the way of Rocky's quest for victory.
05:07Also, gotta just take a moment to appreciate Carl Weathers here, this guy is sorely missed already.
05:14Sly Stallone's Rocky of course defeats Apollo at the end of Rocky II,
05:18and when the third film rolls around, Apollo returns to help train Rocky
05:22to take on a powerful new contender in Clubber Lang, played by Mr. T in one of the most 80s
05:30performances you're ever likely to come across. Despite their initial frostiness,
05:35Rocky and Apollo develop a bond throughout their training sessions,
05:38enough that they become genuine close friends. A friendship which would've likely lasted a lifetime
05:43had Apollo not been killed by Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. This is a movie death I'm never getting over.
05:51All the same, Apollo's legacy casts a long, heroic shadow over the franchise,
05:56which of course pivoted to follow his son Adonis, played by Michael B. Jordan,
06:01in the recent Creed trilogy.
06:036. Mini-Me – Austin Powers in Goldmember
06:07Verne Troyer's Mini-Me is one of the most iconic characters in the Austin Powers franchise,
06:13introduced in the second film, The Spy Who Shacked Me,
06:16as a dwarf clone of the villainous Dr. Evil, of course played by Mike Myers.
06:21Throughout the film, Dr. Evil's son Scott, Seth Green, grows jealous of the paternal bond his
06:27father developed with his clone. In sequel Goldmember, however, Mini-Me decides to defect
06:32from the bad side after Dr. Evil rejects him in favour of Scott, who has begun to embrace his
06:38own evil instincts. Mini-Me doesn't just team up with Austin and company, though. He even flat-out
06:43dons his own mini-Austin uniform for good measure, and it's a great look, it must be said.
06:49But that's not all either. In the ending, Dr. Evil himself also decides to switch sides after
06:55learning that Austin is his brother. With the former nemeses teaming up to stop Goldmembers,
07:00again, like Myers, nefarious plot to destroy the world.
07:045. Leatherface – Texas Chainsaw 3D
07:08Aside from being quite needlessly released in 3D, 2013's direct sequel to the original Texas
07:15Chainsaw Massacre made one especially bold change to the series' formula, turning chainsaw-wielding
07:22murderer Leatherface, played here by Dan Jaeger, into something of an anti-hero. Though much of the
07:28movie sees Leatherface ripping through anyone with a pulse, as per usual, in the second half of the
07:34story he turns his chainsaw towards the corrupt authorities who were responsible for his family
07:40being murdered decades prior. Moreover, and sorry to bring this up again, horror fans, because
07:46you'll all know this by now, Leatherface teams up with protagonist Heather, played by Alexandra
07:51Daddario, after it's revealed that they're cousins, allowing him to exact brutal, justified
07:57revenge against the cops and save Heather's life in the process. And yeah, the strange alteration
08:03to Leatherface's allegiance didn't exactly go down well with Texas Chainsaw diehards,
08:09who still hear the phrase, do your thing cuz, in their nightmares. But such is what happens
08:15when a franchise gets so blatantly long in the tooth, the producers will throw any random idea
08:21at the wall to see if it sticks. Unsurprisingly, neither of the Texas Chainsaw movies released since
08:27have tried to pull off the same gambit again.
08:304. Zed McGlunk – Police Academy 3 – Back in Training
08:35Even if you haven't seen the Police Academy movies in many years, or just haven't seen them at all,
08:41you can probably still hear the unmistakably off-kilter vocal stylings of criminal-turned-cop
08:47Zed McGlunk, played by Bobcat Goldthwait. Zed first appeared in Police Academy 2,
08:53their first assignment, as the primary antagonist, the unhinged leader of the
08:57violent gang known as the Scullions. Zed is arrested in the ending, but because Bobcat
09:03Goldthwait's performance in the role was just so damn loved, he returned for Police Academy 3,
09:09Back in Training, with a reformed Zed now trying out for the Police Academy.
09:13Granted, villains can make an implausible turn for the heroic far more easily in a silly comedy
09:19that isn't tethered quite so firmly to reality, but it was nevertheless a sort of neat way to
09:24keep Goldthwait in the franchise, without simply having him do the same old Zed schtick again.
09:30Better yet, for those who like these movies, we even got a love interest in Police Academy 4,
09:35Citizens on Patrol, because why the hell not?
09:43Of all his action cohorts from the 80s and 90s, I think Dolph Lundgren can probably lay the
09:47biggest claim to being the most underutilised of the bunch. I mean, seriously, this guy's
09:53screen presence is genuinely magnetic. You'll get that from watching Rocky IV and Showdown
09:59in Little Tokyo, as well as a lot of the direct-to-video work he's done in the years since,
10:02but for the most part, I don't think anyone really knew what this guy had cooking.
10:07It should have been massive. I mean, he already is physically massive, but you get my meaning.
10:12One of the films that kind of exemplifies this trend is the first Expendables movie.
10:18While okay enough as a first attempt at an action legend avengers, it definitely didn't
10:24make the most of Dolph, who plays a struggling mercenary battling drug addiction called Gunner.
10:30Gunner sells out his fellow Expendables after he's booted off the team for extreme violence,
10:35working with the big bad of the picture, James Monroe, played by Eric Roberts.
10:40Gunner comes close to killing Sylvester Stallone's Barney Ross and Jet Li's Yang,
10:44but is shot, redeeming himself by giving away the whereabouts of Monroe's base of operations
10:49after dealing with his wounds. Thankfully, the Expendables 2 had the common sense to give
10:55Dolph a more heroic turn, placing a greater spotlight on a fully back-in-action Gunner
11:00as he joins Barney and the gang to take down an evil Jean-Claude Van Damme,
11:04appropriately named Valaine in the script, which is just some serious George Lucas-ing in the
11:10naming department there. This incarnation of Gunner drew upon Lundgren's real-life background,
11:16including his degrees in chemical engineering, and overall, he just gets way more time in the
11:20spotlight than in the previous movie, and is way better served by being an actual hero.
11:262. The T-800 – Terminator 2 – Judgment Day
11:30James Cameron's The Terminator introduced one of the most tenaciously terrifying villains
11:34in cinema history with the seemingly unstoppable cyborg juggernaut that was Arnold Schwarzenegger's
11:40T-800. But for the sequel, Cameron came up with a novel twist. What if he brought the T-800 back,
11:47not as a killing machine intent on murdering Mother to the Resistance Sarah Connor, Linda
11:52Hamilton, but rather tasked with protecting her son John from another killer cyborg sent back
11:58through time? Now, this is admittedly a mild cheat in the sense that this isn't the very same T-800
12:04which pursued Sarah in the original movie, it having been crushed in a hydraulic press and all,
12:09but for all intents and purposes, T-2 does nevertheless bring the original villain back
12:14and switch their allegiance. The Terminator sent from the future to protect John is another
12:20T-800 machine captured by the Human Resistance and reprogrammed to protect him. This proved
12:25quite the shock to those lucky enough to catch T-2 in cinemas without knowing the twist beforehand,
12:30and today it remains arguably the greatest instance of a character swapping sides in a follow-up.
12:361. Jin Shansao – Ip Man 2
12:40In the biographical martial arts film Ip Man, we meet the highly skilled fighter Jin Shansao,
12:46played by Fan Su Wong, who, while facing tough times, has become the leader of a fierce bandit
12:52gang. He's eventually defeated by the heroic Ip Man, played by Donnie Yen, in a fight,
12:57who then runs him out of the city of Fo Shan for good measure. That seemed to be all she wrote for
13:02the character, but Jin makes a surprise reappearance in Ip Man 2 when Ip and his
13:07student Wong, played by Huang Xiaoming, are overwhelmed by a rabble of rival martial arts
13:12students. Jin shows up with his gang and helps rescue Ip and Wong, redeeming himself in the
13:17process. Fun fact though, Jin was originally shot dead by a Japanese colonel in the first Ip Man
13:24movie, but the filmmakers ultimately decided to cut his demise, leaving the door open for him to
13:29make his triumphant return in the sequel.