Worst examples of designated heroes/villains

[I am lizard]

For those of you who don't know what a designated hero or villain is:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DesignatedHero http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DesignatedVillain

[R. U. Sirius]

Designated Heroes: Richard Cypher/Rahl from the "Sword of Truth" series. Not only a designated hero, but a Marty Stu; he is introduced shirtless and his attractiveness is frequently brought up, as well as constantly developing skills his background doesn't support as the plot demands and having every attractive female he meets fall for him. As the series progresses, he becomes more and more a mouthpiece for Terry Goodkind's Objectivist views, even deliberately committing every crime any sane society has a law for other than rape, all while saying he's justified because he's protecting his people. No thought is given to whether the villains believe they have similar justification.

ALL of the human protagonists in the "Legacy of the Aldenata" series eventually turn into bloodthirsty, genocidal maniacs, if they weren't to start off. This can be somewhat justified by the fact that the alien invaders want to devour the entire human species, but it can get REAL iffy when the aliens are shown putting more ethical thought into their actions than the humans, even though their standards of ethics are, well, alien to us.

I can't think of any good "Designated Villain" examples.

[Witchyjoshy]

http://www.cracked.com/article_20069_5-classic-superman-comics-that-prove-he-used-to-be-dick.html

Superman for "Designated Hero"

[wrightway]

Rick Grimes is not well liked by the fandom right now, and the character won the best anti-hero award at some show recently, despite the fact he's supposed to be the designated hero of The Walking Dead.

[TheUnknown]

While I haven't read the series itself, I've heard many say this about Eragon (hero) and Galbatorix (villain) from the Eragon series. 

It's also a complaint I've seen lodged at the Lost World: Jurassic Park film.  Basically, the 'heroes' repeatedly make dumb decisions throughout the film (like bringing a crying baby t-rex to their camp) and use tactics that constantly put other people in danger (like setting a bunch of caged dinosaurs loose), while the 'villains', or specifically Roland Tembo, actually saved the lives of the 'heroes' when they could've just left them to die.  And how are they repaid?  The 'heroes' steal the ammo out of an anti-t-rex gun needed to defend themselves after the 'heroes' have already buggered off the island.  As for the incident with the baby t-rex, there's apparently a deleted scene that shows the leg was broken accidentally, and was purposefully cut out in order to make the 'villains' more villainous, which enforces the 'designated' status even further.  There's also a deleted scene where the Tembo saves a waitress being sexually harassed.  So to sum up, we have 'villains' who were present because they were legally hired to retrieve corporate property, show concern for everyone in their party, and rescue the 'heroes' despite knowing they oppose them; meanwhile, or 'heroes' make dumbass decisions, sabotage the very people who saved their lives including making sure they're defenseless against a t-rex, and indirectly cause most of the human deaths in the film.

[Witchyjoshy]

Having read the books, Galbatorix was definitely a tyrannical villain (though even some of the "good guys" admitted that some of his policies made sense, such as controlling magic use.) and Eragon was most definitely a hero - so nauseatingly much a hero.

Angsty hero, but not even an anti-hero.  That might've made him have some actual depth instead of the artificial depth he had.

[Askold]

Tembo was a cool character and the deleted scenes turn him into an outright hero. That saboteur the heroes brought with them is a mass murdered but the movie pretends that he is a hero because he respects the freedom of animals more than the lives of humans. (I mean, apart from Tembo wanting to kill one T-Rex no other dinosaur would have been killed. They were trying to capture them all alive to be taken into another Jurassic park.)

[Katsuro]

I think quite a lot of action movie heroes fit the Designated Hero bill (I'm not talking about ones where the hero is clearly supposed to be an anti-hero nor ones where the hero is supposed to have some kind of mental health issue, ala the Rambo movies even though Rambo doesn't kill anyone in the 1st movie).

So many of them are borderline psychopathic, completely unaffected by the acts of mass slaughter they commit against hordes of hired security goons who are just doing their job to perhaps, for all we know, to support a family (in some cases said goons might not even really know what the bad guy is even up to and they're just trying to stop this homicidal maniac who's burst into the building and started shooting and stabbing everyone in sight).  Sometimes the security people even look like they work for a security firm rather than the bad guy persoanlly. Yeah, the hero might not have much choice but to carve his way through these people to get to the bad guy, but some acknowledgment on the part of hero of the bloodbath he's created would be nice to see.  And if you make a smart ass quip when you (sometimes accidentally) kill someone in a horrific manner, yeah you're kind of fucked up (btw I know Bond was orginally supposed to be a a bit of a psychopathe but plenty of other action heroes do the same).

One example that's always bothered me is in Die Hard 3 when McClane shoots a goon who says something to him in German a  split second before he gets shot and McClane says, "What was that?" in a sarky tone.  One of the secondary bad guys appears out of no where, hits McClane and says, "He said don't shoot."  and Mclane doesn't react in any way to that, ever.  Not even a slight hint of "Oh fuck, oops." Nothing.  I know Mclane is meant to be a bit of an asshole, but fucking hell.  He's just semi-accidentally kiled a guy who had surrendered and he straight up doesn't give a fuck.

Another designated hero is Captain Archer in Enterprise.  He commits several, unecessary acts of genocide and mass murder which, if the show addresses the morality at all, get justified with a hand-waving single line of dialogue that rarely, if ever, actually justifies anything.  There's even one episode where he chucks someone in an airlock and threatens to open it if he doesn't tell him what he wants to know - after the scene is over it's never mentioned again, like it didn't happen.  For contrast, as far as I remember Piccard was able to get through all kinds of situations without psycologically torturing or threatening to murder anyone.  I don't think even Kirk didn anything comparable.  Archer also seems to be constantly angry/annoyed and shouting at people, and if he's not shouting he's being sarky and condescending.  He's also bored by astrological phenomena and kind of a racist.  I know it's meant to be the early days of Earth-Alien relations so it makes sense a lot of the characters are a little bit racist towards aliens, but not the fucking Captain.  He should be leading by example and he should be the person the viewer wishes he was.  Call me mad but I don't aspire to be an angry, sarcastic, murdering racist.

[TheUnknown]

I think quite a lot of action movie heroes fit the Designated Hero bill.  So many of them are borderline psychopathic, completely unaffected by the acts of mass slaughter they commit against hordes of hired security goons who are just doing their job to perhaps, for all we know, to support a family (in some cases said goons might not even really know what the bad guy is even up to and they're just trying to stop this homicidal maniac who's burst into the building and started shooting and stabbing everyone in sight).  Sometimes the security people even look like they work for a security firm rather than the bad guy persoanlly. Yeah, the hero might not have much choice but to carve his way through these people to get to the bad guy, but some acknowledgment on the part of hero of the bloodbath he's created would be nice to see.  And if you make a smart ass quip when you (sometimes accidentally) kill someone in a horrific manner, yeah you're kind of fucked up (btw I know Bond was orginally supposed to be a a bit of a psychopathe but plenty of other action heroes do the same).

One example that's always bothered me is in Die Hard 3 when McClane shoots a goon who says something to him in German a  split second before he gets shot and McClane says, "What was that?" in a sarky tone.  One of the secondary bad guys appears out of no where, hits McClane and says, "He said don't shoot."  and Mclane doesn't react in any way to that, ever.  Not even a slight hint of "Oh fuck, oops." Nothing.  I know Mclane is meant to be a bit of an asshole, but fucking hell.  He's just semi-accidentally kiled a guy who had surrendered and he straight up doesn't give a fuck.

Another designated hero is Captain Archer in Enterprise.  He commits several, unecessary acts of genocide and mass murder which, if the show addresses the morality at all, get justified with a hand-waving single line of dialogue that rarely, if ever, actually justifies anything.  There's even one episode where he chucks someone in an airlock and threatens to open it if he doesn't tell him what he wants to know - after the scene is over it's never mentioned again, like it didn't happen.  For contrast, as far as I remember Piccard was able to get through all kinds of situations without psycologically torturing or threatening to murder anyone.  I don't think even Kirk didn anything comparable.  Archer also seems to be constantly angry/annoyed and shouting at people, and if he's not shouting he's being sarky and condescending.  He's also bored by astrological phenomena and kind of a racist.  I know it's meant to be the early days of Earth-Alien relations so it makes sense a lot of the characters are a little bit racist towards aliens, but not the fucking Captain.  He should be leading by example and he should be the person the viewer wishes he was.  Call me mad but I don't aspire to be an angry, sarcastic, murdering racist.

If SFDebris's reviews are anything to go by, Captain Kathryn Janeway from Voyager also qualifies.  I believe this little parody in one of his reviews sums it up:

"Janeway, Captain Janeway, I'm the best captain in history! Stranding, all my people, their lives are filled with grief and misery!"

[Katsuro]

If SFDebris's reviews are anything to go by, Captain Kathryn Janeway from Voyager also qualifies.  I believe this little parody in one of his reviews sums it up:

"Janeway, Captain Janeway, I'm the best captain in history! Stranding, all my people, their lives are filled with grief and misery!"

Yeah in many episodes Janeway would definately qualify, but she ain't got shit on Archer.  At least Janeway wasn't constantly and consistantly a complete and total fucking asshole.  She had moments where I didn't completely hate her; Archer has no such moments.  Everything he says and does makes me hate him.  And some of Janeway's qualifying moments, to me, felt more like really bad or stupid judgment calls rather than just straight  up being a fuckwad.

Edit: Would it derail the thread too much if I was to ask was there any good reason why Janeway stranded her crew btw?  Why couldn't she have left a timed explosive device, or sacrificed herself or a volunteer to stay behind and make sure the explosion went off, whilst sendng everyone else back to the alpha quadrent?  She's a Starfleet Captain - Piccard and Kirk would have died for their crew like that.

[Patches]

The movie "Megamind" pretty much deconstructs this trope.  The whole premise of the movie is that Megamind was a good kid, but weird-looking, so society told him he was bad and he simply lived up to their expectations.  Same with Metro Man, who was a little prick, but was strong and handsome so society told him he was a hero, and he milked it.  The rest of the movie is about what happens when both of them get tired of the roles they've been expected to play because it doesn't mesh with their inner character.

[Katsuro]

Tembo was a cool character and the deleted scenes turn him into an outright hero. That saboteur the heroes brought with them is a mass murdered but the movie pretends that he is a hero because he respects the freedom of animals more than the lives of humans.

Are you talking about Vince Vaughn's character?  If so, don't forget as well that by his own admission he joined Greenpeace soley because with so many female members he thought he was bound to get to sleep with some of them.  So he's a multi-layered scumbag.

[Askold]

Tembo was a cool character and the deleted scenes turn him into an outright hero. That saboteur the heroes brought with them is a mass murdered but the movie pretends that he is a hero because he respects the freedom of animals more than the lives of humans.

Are you talking about Vince Vaughn's character?  If so, don't forget as well that by his own admission he joined Greenpeace soley because with so many female members he thought he was bound to get to sleep with some of them.  So he's a multi-layered scumbag.

*Checks wikipedia*

Yes. That guy was responsible for all the deaths in the movie.

[chitoryu12]

Tembo was a cool character and the deleted scenes turn him into an outright hero. That saboteur the heroes brought with them is a mass murdered but the movie pretends that he is a hero because he respects the freedom of animals more than the lives of humans.

Are you talking about Vince Vaughn's character?  If so, don't forget as well that by his own admission he joined Greenpeace soley because with so many female members he thought he was bound to get to sleep with some of them.  So he's a multi-layered scumbag.

*Checks wikipedia*

Yes. That guy was responsible for all the deaths in the movie.

Absolutely. I'm a big fan of Jurassic Park, which is why I was so upset with how the two sequels went about their business. The most offensive part of The Lost World is that everything is played straight: there's no hidden message about the good guys really being the bad guys and vice versa, no deconstruction of the idea of the Designated Hero and Designated Villain. The writers really did write it so that Vince Vaughn's eco-terrorist was the good guy and the evil hunters and corporate suits who wanted to put dinosaurs in a zoo were bad guys.

I'd love to do a tabletop RPG campaign heavily inspired by The Lost World, but placing the PCs in the role of the heavily armed yet relatively moral hunters and guards vs. a rag-tag bunch of wannabe good guys who are really just clueless photographers and paleontologists (accompanied by a plucky, annoying kid) who are helping an eco-terrorist because they're too dumb to figure out what's going on.

[kefkaownsall]

Minor but Bioshock spoilers

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Daisy Fitzroy since in the timeline where you kill her she might have lost her way due to that universes booker dying.  I dunno the game didnt do the best job