Killmonger may have been right. Magneto may be the good guy. And Walter Peck might have a really good point about the Ghostbusters. From renegade nuclear reactors to the depressing truth of the Matrix, these sci-fi villains were not as wrong as we thought.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Killmonger may have been right, Magneto may be the good guy, and Walter Peck might have
00:05a really good point about the Ghostbusters.
00:07From renegade nuclear reactors to the depressing truth of the Matrix, these sci-fi villains
00:12were not as wrong as we thought.
00:13Let's start right off with the man, the myth, the villain, who's been proven right
00:17ever since he was introduced in 1963's X-Men 1 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
00:22The movies give him a similar platform.
00:24Eric Magneto-Lyncher, played by Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender, barely survives the
00:29Holocaust at Auschwitz in X-Men First Class, while being abused and manipulated for his
00:33mutant potential.
00:35As both Jewish and mutant, Eric can't help but be keenly aware of the perils new generations
00:39of mutants face every day.
00:41Magneto's friend and nemesis, Professor Xavier, isn't wrong to try and create a peaceful
00:45bond between humans and mutants, but it's never going to be easy.
00:49Along the way, Magneto's cynicism is validated, as Sentinels claim the possible future in
00:53Days of Future Past, William Stryker nearly destroys all the mutants in the world by X2,
00:58and by the time of Logan, they're almost entirely extinct.
01:01I don't want to hear about it anymore.
01:04Michael B. Jordan's Eric Stevens, aka Killmonger, is a villain with a good backstory, maybe
01:09one of the best.
01:10While his methods are a bit immoral, he does have some just points in his ambitions, especially
01:15after seeing where he's come from.
01:17Stevens is forced to grow up as an exile from the isolationist country of Wakanda.
01:21Instead of the opportunities he could have had as a child of nobility, he lived in Oakland,
01:26during a period where economic oppression and violence against black families was at
01:29its highest.
01:30To find a way out, Eric joins the US military, where he hones his gifts for combat.
01:35Eric is rightfully furious with the land of his birth.
01:38While Wakanda thrives in secrecy, black cultures across the globe are disenfranchised and oppressed.
01:43Wakanda isn't wrong to want to protect itself from colonialism, but as strong as the nation
01:47may be, its rulers could do more, and Killmonger isn't alone in his point of view.
01:53Nakia, played by Lupita Nyong'o, also fights to do more beyond Wakanda's borders.
01:58The difference is that she doesn't choose to overthrow the king and force the realm
02:01to support violent revolution across the world.
02:04Killmonger does exactly that without sympathy or hesitation, internalizing the worst lessons
02:08the military taught him.
02:10In the end, though, he wins.
02:12Wakanda is no longer isolated from the world.
02:15Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty is what humanity made of him, literally in this case.
02:20As a replicant with an artificially short lifespan, he leaves the throwaway military
02:23service he was relegated to and visits Earth, the world of his maker.
02:27This is all to look his creator in the eye and demand more of him.
02:31More life.
02:32More humanity.
02:33Answers to the biggest questions of his existence.
02:35What's more human than questioning the world around us?
02:38Who among us would not take the chance to corner our god and get a few answers?
02:42Batty and his fellow replicants can be violent, even murderous.
02:44In his case, that's what he was made to be.
02:48Humans on Earth are outlaws that can be killed on sight, which doesn't help Batty's antagonistic
02:52programming.
02:53He kills Tyrell, while Deckard, the man who's been hunting him all along, earns Batty's
02:58mercy.
02:59This is the moment where Roy is more human than many actual humans.
03:01He turns against his nature and chooses to spare life.
03:05Roy was right to fight for his fellow replicants.
03:07I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
03:15With a lineup of top-shelf but eccentric scientists and one incredibly competent regular guy,
03:19the Ghostbusters do their part in keeping the world safe from unsettled supernatural
03:23phenomena.
03:24Yet, there's plenty of arrogance on display, mostly due to Bill Murray's Venkman and his
03:29abrasive good nature.
03:30There's no getting around the fact that they have an unlicensed nuclear reactor under Ghostbusters
03:34HQ, and that's a five-star red alert public threat.
03:38Walter Peck, played by William Atherton, doesn't come across as likable, but look at it from
03:43his point of view.
03:44This is a private, unlicensed, unsupervised nuclear reactor under New York City.
03:48Yes, it's that simple.
03:51It's quite a choice to make the EPA the bad guys here, especially with their history of
03:54being undermined by lobbyists and politicians.
03:57The EPA is charged with cleaning up hazardous spills and reining in dangerous chemicals
04:01tainting our food and water.
04:02And yeah, they're the guys with a plan if a nuclear source, whether deliberate or accidental,
04:07causes an emergency.
04:08Sorry, Venkman.
04:09Peck may be a jerk, but he's right to be upset.
04:13Like Hugo Weavings, Agent Smith has a lot to say about his disdain for humanity.
04:18It's a high-class riff on late comedian Bill Hicks, who famously ranted that humans were
04:22a, quote, virus with shoes.
04:25Smith elaborates on his views to Lawrence Fishburne's Morpheus, talking about our tendency
04:29to exploit and consume all the natural resources available to us.
04:33What's worse?
04:34He tells what seems to be the truth about the Matrix itself.
04:37It's depressing and oppressive because it imprisons humans better.
04:40We thrive under hardship, which is why a utopian Matrix quickly fell apart.
04:45Smith is vicious and hateful, far beyond the limits of his programming.
04:49But there's plenty of truth in what he says, at least from his angle.
04:52It wasn't the machines that blackened the sky.
04:55Humans did that with Operation Dark Storm.
04:57The second Renaissance short film showed how we scorched the atmosphere in an attempt to
05:01halt the feed of solar power to the machines.
05:04Worse yet, the machines were a slave class in the pre-Matrix years.
05:07Their fight to be recognized as more led to violence and, ultimately, war.
05:12DC's Gotham has existed since 1939, and was officially named in 1940's Batman No. 4 by
05:18Bill Finger and Bob Kane.
05:21It's the black mirror of New York City, a shadowed world of crime and sometimes occult
05:24happenings.
05:25Too much of Gotham is economically devastated, fostering a crime world that's the envy of
05:30bad guys everywhere.
05:31When Christopher Nolan's Batman begins, Ra's al Ghul, played by Liam Neeson, takes a young
05:36Bruce Wayne under his wing.
05:38It's not until later that Bruce understands al Ghul's final goal is an escalated form
05:42of environmentalism.
05:44Gotham cannot be redeemed, so it must be wiped away.
05:47While al Ghul's genocide can't ever be applauded, the city has resisted decades, if not centuries,
05:52of rehabilitation and redemption.
05:54To date, there's no long-term solution, no plan, and no hope for Gotham.
05:59Al Ghul's plan sucks, but man, he's not wrong to feel like Gotham just can't be saved.
06:05As Thor opens, we meet the young God of Thunder for the first time, and he's kind of a dick.
06:10He's boastful, hammy, far too ready to get into a brawl, and Odin is about to make him
06:14king anyway.
06:16His brother Loki is the only person able to see that Thor's not ready for the responsibility.
06:20Now, Loki's method of getting everyone to slow down and at least maybe wait on the coronation
06:25sucks.
06:26It also kicks off a cascade event that ruins his own sanity, and sets him up to be the
06:30first big villain that the Marvel Cinematic Universe will have to collectively contend
06:34with.
06:35On top of that, his plan lands Thor in a situation where he has to grow up if he ever wants to
06:39come home.
06:40Loki has an ironic tendency to be right about a lot of things, only he addresses them in
06:44awful ways.
06:45He's right that Odin is a hypocritical king in the Dark World.
06:48He's right that S.H.I.E.L.D. has no moral superiority in the Avengers.
06:52Heck, even his alternate self is right to question the role of the Time Variance Authority
06:56in quashing free will.
07:00The world of Tron has been lighting the imaginations of kids and software engineers since 1982,
07:05when debut director Joseph Kaczynski, of Top Gun Maverick fame, brought back the Grid
07:09in 2010 for the delightful neon-bright Tron Legacy.
07:13The story also reminded viewers that the programs that populate the Grid are still programs,
07:17they're going to stick to what they know how to do.
07:19And it's a heavy realization to learn that Clu wouldn't be the way he is without Kevin
07:23Flynn's well-intentioned guidance.
07:25Clu started off right, it was to make the Grid into a utopia, to hone it into a perfect
07:30system safe from dangerous variables.
07:33When spontaneous AI programs, the ISO, come into being, Flynn recognizes them as a new
07:38evolution.
07:39The computer world is always going to have a hard time with random variables, unlike
07:43humans.
07:44But Clu is bound by his programming, and saw the ISOs as a viral invasion capable of reproducing
07:49without user permission.
07:51Adhering to his program turns Clu into a fascist.
07:53He has no choice.
07:55The only person that was in the wrong, Kevin Flynn, knew that, and eventually returned
07:59to end poor Clu and his authoritarian regime.
08:02Godzilla had a fun day out in 2019, thrashing King Ghidorah and meeting up with old friend
08:07Mothra.
08:08But he only got the chance because a bunch of eco-terrorists decided the planet needed
08:11a bit of a reset.
08:13We assume at first that Jonah is the main villain here, mostly because he's played
08:16by Charles Dance, who always gives great baddie performances.
08:20However, it's actually Emma, played by Vera Farmiga, the ex-spouse of our annoying lead
08:24guy Dr. Russell, who's mostly fixed on releasing the Sleeping Titans.
08:29If this scenario was possible in the real world, it's not hard to find the idea appealing.
08:33Not because Godzilla and his kin are super cool, they are, but because our planet could
08:38use some big ecological help.
08:40The risk is in how much human collateral damage the Titans could cause.
08:43Emma thinks it could be mitigated, but she also doesn't care too much until her daughter
08:47is one of them.
08:48Very political of her.
08:50In the end, Emma gets a redeeming death, and her terrorist acts earn her a final vindication.
08:55The Titans are the key to a renewed ecological harmony, so long as Godzilla's in charge.
09:00Go go Godzilla.