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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 the first
00:24time, right? But sometimes, in an attempt to shake things up, they end up nudged into a more heroic
00:30role instead. I'm Ewan, this is War Culture, and here are 10 movie villains who became heroes in the
00:37sequel. Number 10, Hector Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End. The original Pirates of
00:44the Caribbean introduced the deliciously villainous Captain Barbossa, played to perfection by the great
00:50Geoffrey Rush. A conniving schemer determined to break the curse placed upon him and his men,
00:56he becomes a major thorn in the side of Jack Sparrow and company, even if he's ultimately defeated come
01:02the ending. Sequel Dead Man's Chest introduced a worthy antagonist successor in Bill Nighy's Davy
01:09Jones, but the film concluded with one hell of a big twist, the return of Barbossa from the first movie.
01:16More to the point, Barbossa is reintroduced as a quasi-heroic figure, to help guide the assembled
01:22party to save Jack's soul from Davy Jones' locker. And so, in the third film, At World's End,
01:30Barbossa indeed adopts a more heroic adjacent tenor, even if by film's end, he's scarpered with
01:36the Black Pearl in search of the Fountain of Youth. Barbossa's allegiances certainly prove fluid,
01:42shall we say, throughout the rest of the franchise, though on the balance of his actions, teaming
01:47up with Jack to take down several mutual enemies, he's absolutely closer to a hero than he is a villain.
01:539. Jaws Moonraker
01:56Roger Moore's third James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, aka His Best One, introduced audiences
02:02to the instantly iconic henchman Jaws, played by Richard Keel, fondly remembered for his hulking
02:08frame and sharp, steely teeth. Though Jaws' boss, Carl Stromberg, played by Kurt Juergens,
02:14is killed at the film's end, Jaws lives on to fight another day and return in the next film,
02:20Moonraker. Here, Jaws is aligned with the evil industrialist Hugo Drax, played by Michael Lonsdale,
02:27though 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, bespectacled 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 Jaws,
02:53he's made it back to Earth safely with Dolly. And while the pair were originally going to marry,
02:59in 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 Moor era.
03:09According to director Louis Gilbert, the decision to change Jaws from a villain into a hero was
03:15motivated by scores of fan mail from young children asking why Jaws had to be a baddie.
03:21Aw, it's really cute. Imagine for you to kid, like, Jaws is your favourite Bond character.
03:26If that was you, let us know down in the comments below.
03:29The whole Jaws face turn thing is goofy as hell, but in a movie as fundamentally ridiculous
03:35as Moonraker, it doesn't really feel out of place.
03:39Number 8, Teddy Sanders, Bad Neighbours 2
03:43The quote-unquote villainy of comedy Bad Neighbours may ultimately be relatively low stakes compared
03:50to most movies on this list, but it still counts all the same. Couple Mac and Kelly,
03:55played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne respectively, are adjusting to life with their infant daughter
04:00when a hard party in fraternity, Delta Psi Beta, moves in next door.
04:06The 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, resulting
04:16in a war of escalation between the two sides.
04:20The matter is resolved somewhat amicably by the ending, but when Bad Neighbours 2 introduces
04:26the considerably more vicious sorority Cap Anew, 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 Cap Anew 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.
04:50Number 7, 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 an antagonist
05:04who 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, and when the third film
05:19rolls around, Apollo returns to help train Rocky to take on a powerful new contender
05:25in Club Alang, played by Mr. T, in one of the most 80s performances you're ever likely to come across.
05:32Despite their initial frostiness, Rocky and Apollo develop a bond throughout their training sessions,
05:38enough that they become genuine close friends, a friendship which would have likely lasted a
05:43lifetime had Apollo not been killed by Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.
05:48This 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, in the recent Creed trilogy.
06:03Number 6, 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 Shagged Me, as a dwarf clone of the villainous Dr. Evil,
06:19of course played by Mike Myers.
06:21Throughout the film, Dr. Evil's son Scott, Seth Green, grows jealous of the paternal bond
06:27his father develops with his clone.
06:29In sequel Goldmember, however, Mini-Me decides to defect from the bad side after Dr. Evil rejects
06:34him in favour of Scott, who has begun to embrace his own evil instincts.
06:39Mini-Me doesn't just team up with Austin and company, though.
06:43He even flat out dons his own Mini-Austin uniform for good measure, and it's a great look,
06:48it must be said.
06:49But that's not all either.
06:51In the ending, Dr. Evil himself also decides to switch sides after learning that Austin is
06:56his brother, with the former nemeses teaming up to stop Gold members, again, Mike Myers,
07:01his nefarious plot to destroy the world.
07:04Number 5, Leatherface, Texas Chainsaw 3D.
07:09Aside from being quite needlessly released in 3D, 2013's direct sequel to the original
07:14Texas Chainsaw Massacre made one especially bold change to the series formula, turning chainsaw-wielding
07:22murderer Leatherface, played here by Dan Yeager, into something of an anti-hero.
07:27Though much of the movie sees Leatherface ripping through anyone with a pulse, as per usual,
07:33in the second half of the story, he turns his chainsaw towards the corrupt authorities
07:38who were responsible for his family being murdered decades prior.
07:42Moreover, and sorry to bring this up again horror fans because you'll all know this by
07:47now, Leatherface teams up with protagonist Heather, played by Alexandra Daddario, after it's
07:53revealed that they're cousins, allowing him to exact brutal, justified revenge against
07:58the cops and save Heather's life in the process.
08:01And yeah, the strange alteration to Leatherface's allegiance didn't exactly go down well with
08:07Texas Chainsaw diehards, who still hear the phrase,
08:10do your thing, cuz, in their nightmares.
08:14But such is what happens when a franchise gets so blatantly long in the tooth, the producers
08:19will throw any random idea at the wall to see if it sticks.
08:23Unsurprisingly, neither of the Texas Chainsaw movies released since have tried to pull off
08:28the 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
08:40them at all, you can probably still hear the unmistakably off-kilter vocal stylings of
08:45criminal-turned-cop Zed McGlunk, played by Bobcat Goldthwaite.
08:50Zed first appeared in Police Academy 2, their first assignment, as the primary antagonist,
08:56the unhinged leader of the violent gang known as the Scullions.
09:00Zed is arrested in the ending, but because Bobcat Goldthwaite's performance in the role
09:05was just so damn loved, he returned for Police Academy 3, back in training, with a reformed
09:11Zed now trying out for the Police Academy.
09:13Granted, villains can make an implausible turn for the heroic far more easily in a silly
09:18comedy that isn't tethered quite so firmly to reality, but it was nevertheless a sort
09:23of neat way to keep Goldthwaite in the franchise without simply having him do the same old Zed
09:29schtick again.
09:30Better yet, for those who like these movies, he even got a love interest in Police Academy
09:354, Citizens on Patrol, because why the hell not?
09:39Number 3, Gunnar Jensen, The Expendables 2
09:43Of all his action cohorts from the 80s and 90s, I think Dolph Lundgren can probably lay
09:47the biggest claim to being the most underutilised of the bunch.
09:51I mean, seriously, this guy's screen presence is genuinely magnetic.
09:56You'll get that from watching Rocky 4 and Showdown in Little Tokyo, as well as a lot of
10:00the direct-to-video work he's done in the years since, but for the most part, I don't
10:04think anyone really knew what this guy had cooking.
10:07It should have been massive.
10:09I 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 Gunnar.
10:30Gunnar 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 Munro, played by Eric Roberts.
10:40Gunnar comes close to killing Sylvester Stallone's Barney Ross and Jet Li Xiang, but is shot, redeeming
10:46himself by giving away the whereabouts of Munro's base of operations after dealing with his wounds.
10:51Thankfully, the Expendables 2 had the common sense to give Dolph a more heroic turn, placing
10:57a greater spotlight on a fully back-in-action Gunnar as he joins Barney and the gang to take
11:02down an evil Jean-Claude Van Damme, appropriately named Valaine, in the script.
11:12This incarnation of Gunnar drew upon Lundgren's real-life background, including his degrees
11:16in chemical engineering, and overall, he just gets way more time in the spotlight than in
11:21the previous movie, and is way better served by being an actual hero.
11:262.
11:27The T-800 – Terminator 2 – Judgment Day James Cameron's The Terminator introduced one
11:32of the most tenaciously terrifying villains in cinema history with the seemingly unstoppable
11:37Cyborg Juggernaut that was Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800.
11:40But, for the sequel, Cameron came up with a novel twist.
11:45What if he brought the T-800 back, not as a killing machine intent on murdering mother
11:50to the resistance Sarah Connor , but rather tasked with protecting her son John
11:55from another killer Cyborg sent back through time.
11:58Now, this is admittedly a mild cheat in the sense that this isn't the very same T-800 which
12:04pursued Sarah in the original movie, it having been crushed in a hydraulic press and all,
12:09but for all intents and purposes, T2 does nevertheless bring the original villain back and switch
12:15their allegiance.
12:16The Terminator sent from the future to protect John is another T-800 machine captured by the
12:22human resistance and reprogrammed to protect him.
12:25This proved quite the shock to those lucky enough to catch T2 in cinemas without knowing
12:29the twist beforehand, and today it remains arguably the greatest instance of a character swapping
12:34sides in a follow-up.
12:36And number 1, 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.
12:53He is eventually defeated by the heroic Ip Man, played by Donnie Yen in a fight, who then runs
12:58him out of the city of Foshan for good measure.
13:00That seemed to be all she wrote for the character, but Jin makes a surprise reappearance in Ip Man
13:062 when Ip and his student Wong, played by Huang Xiaoming, are overwhelmed by a rabble of rival
13:12martial arts students.
13:13Jin shows up with his gang and helps rescue Ip and Wong, redeeming himself in the process.
13:18Fun fact though, Jin was originally shot dead by a Japanese colonel in the first Ip Man movie,
13:24but the filmmakers ultimately decided to cut his demise, leaving the door open for him
13:28to make his triumphant return in the sequel.
13:31Jin.
13:32Jin.
13:33Jin.
13:34Jin.
13:35Jin.
13:36Jin.
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