Who needs a villain in their movie when you’ve got main characters as objectively awful as these?
Flawed, complex characters and anti-heroes are staples of cinema. Audiences love to root for a protagonist who is complicated and imperfect — or even a little evil — so long as they’ve got the motive and charisma to back up their misbehavior.
But some fan-favorite movie main characters are such terrible people or do such crappy things to others that they warrant a deeper look, challenging viewers to ponder why they ever rooted for them in the first place.
Let’s look at Mean Girls’ Cady Heron, for instance. The formerly home-schooled teenage heroine of the 2004 teen comedy is highly relatable, and certainly not a capital-B bad person, but her character arc involves her not-so-nice descent into the very same mean behavior that the 2000s cult classic pokes fun at. She becomes so horrible at one point in the film that it seems the only friend she has left is us — the audience.
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Then there’s Grandpa Joe, the patriarchal figure at the center of Charlie Bucket’s impoverished home life in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. He’s presented as jovial and lovable, but he’s actually quite selfish, opportunistic, and reckless, even going so far as to endanger Charlie’s life and risk him the factory prize.
And don’t get me started on Clark Griswold. Chevy Chase’s perpetually strung-out upper-middle-class dad/husband in 1983’s National Lampoon’s Vacation represents suburban rage at its most hostile, with the character’s self-centeredness and void of empathy masked by his supposed dedication to taking his family on the perfect vacation — at any cost.
So, while they aren’t outright evil by any means, and their misdeeds may be symptomatic of their environment, circumstances, lack of self-reflection, or even age, these main characters are the freakin’ worst when you really think about it.
Movies Where the Main Character Is Actually the Worst
They’re not exactly evil, and they’re not even the antagonists or official “bad guys” of their movies, but these main characters are so terrible or unlikable they could be considered villains.
Gallery Credit: Erica Russell
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Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky