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9 movie 'heroes' who are actually the worst

Photo credit: Warner Bros.
Photo credit: Warner Bros.

From Digital Spy

We've all heard of the anti-hero, the tragic hero and the pragmatic hero. But people rarely refer to a surprisingly prevalent sub-type – the d-bag hero.

Some movies will do their best to sell you on how charming, witty, brave or hilarious their protagonist is... but it doesn't take too much scrutiny to realise that they are in actual fact a terrible person who you wouldn't trust to take out the trash, let alone save the world.

1. Edward Cullen – Twilight

Photo credit: Summit Entertainment
Photo credit: Summit Entertainment

It's kind of scary to think that one of the most popular books among a generation of young women has this 100-year-old paedophile as its romantic hero. Sparkly vampire Edward Cullen likes to while away his decades going back to high school, where he meets Bella, who is so hot and passive that he just has to break into her room at night and watch her sleep while he encourages her to ditch all her other friends.

Edward won't have sex with Bella because he doesn't want to hurt her, but forgets about this when he decides to marry her, because presumably it doesn't matter once she's his wife.

(Don't think we're Team Jacob either. He imprints on Bella's newborn and rapidly ageing child, because in Twilight it doesn't matter how old you are, just how old you look. Ick.)

2. James Bond

Photo credit: Columbia Pictures
Photo credit: Columbia Pictures

Do we really need to explain why the emotionless, sex-crazed murderer for hire is a complete monster?

Perhaps we can do so in a pithy one-liner as you are sent to your gruesome and not at all amusing demise.

3. Jack Sparrow – Pirates of the Caribbean

Photo credit: Disney
Photo credit: Disney

Why is Johnny Depp's Captain Jack the hero again? The drama of the Pirates of the Caribbean series consistently revolves around what an awful shit he is, ruining lives left right and centre – usually with the help of the horrible curses he attracts like flies to a corpse.

He's a trickster and a fraud, but we could probably forgive all that if it wasn't for the endless hours of gurning and muttering he has subjects us to over the years.

4. Superman – Man of Steel/Batman v Superman

Photo credit: Warner Bros.
Photo credit: Warner Bros.

Superman has classically been portrayed as a "big blue boy scout", but Henry Cavill's version is more of a "big blue wall of barely suppressed murderous rage" whose desire to punch things cannot be controlled for long. Upset him, and he'll destroy your truck (and presumably your livelihood). Man of Steel follows Superman as he consistently takes his brutal battles into the most populous areas he can find.

Most of the action of Batman v Superman revolves around the fact that he can't be bothered to talk things through with the Dark Knight. And did we mention that he's the worst journalist ever?

5. Daniel LaRusso – The Karate Kid

Photo credit: Columbia Pictures
Photo credit: Columbia Pictures

Wax on, wax off and all that, right? Karate Kid is a childhood classic.

...A childhood classic about an unstable sociopath who wants to learn martial arts in order to more efficiently beat up the kids from his new school that he doesn't like. He wins the day by kicking someone in the face. Don't believe us? Check this out.

6. Daniel Hillard – Mrs Doubtfire

Photo credit: 20th Century Fox
Photo credit: 20th Century Fox

Nothing says "I love you" like spinning a huge deception in order to trick your family into allowing you into their home under false pretences. Deadbeat dad Robin Williams does just that, pretending to be Mrs Doubtfire in order to spend time with his kids (not that they're aware it's him, of course).

It also offers the perfect opportunity to try to split up his ex-wife and her boyfriend, including a small case of attempted murder. Your visitation rights are hereby revoked, you lunatic.

7. Jim Preston – Passengers

Photo credit: Columbia Pictures
Photo credit: Columbia Pictures

Okay, so we get Chris Pratt's Jim has been consigned to living and dying alone on a colony ship full of thousands of sleeping people, and are willing to understand that he breaks, and wakes up another person.

But everything else he does around that is so unbearably creepy. He basically falls in love with Jennifer Lawrence's Aurora because he read her diary. He lies to her, seduces her, and when she finds out the truth and rightly rejects him, he bothers her over the ship's announcement system like the horrible stalker that he is.

Naturally, she falls in love with him all over again.

8. Ferris Bueller – Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Photo credit: Paramount
Photo credit: Paramount

We're glad to see that many revisionists have had the scales drop from their eyes and now see that Ferris – far from being a free-spirited, charismatic bad boy – is actually just an arrogant, selfish, duplicitous bully. He lies to his parents, taunts his teacher, goads his sister, then steals his best friend's Dad's car and goes off on a jaunt, ostensibly (yeah right) to show his bestie how to have fun.

Nah. He's the kind of entitled jock you'd love to have thumped at school.

The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads – they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.

We don't.

9. Albus Dumbledore – Harry Potter

Photo credit: Warner Bros.
Photo credit: Warner Bros.

To be fair, he has got a big beard and a pet Phoenix and he's the head of Hogwarts, but secretly Dumbledore is, um, kind of a dick. Leaving Harry as a baby on a doorstep, allowing ridiculously dangerous traditions like the Triwizard Tournament to take place, the fact that his school is built right next to an incredibly dangerous forest packed with killer monsters, keeping a deadly tree on school grounds (and a three-headed dog in the basement, but let's not get caught up) – these are not the acts of a caring and responsible adult.

But his biggest act of knobbery is not telling Harry ANYTHING when quite a bit of that info – ie Harry's impending death, Snape actually being okay, etc might have been kind of pertinent.

Instead, he grooms a group of ill-informed child warriors in the battle against deadly evil wizards – inexpertly, we might add. Call OFSTED!


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