This is why Zuko is a popular character. He so desperately wants Ozai's approval but Iroh gives him a moral compass and in the end he choses to ditch Ozai and help defeat him because he realizes that his father's approval is worth less to him than doing what's right. Zuko was always a good person who was just blinded daddy issues.
The best thing about it is even though he betrayed his uncle he got everything he wanted, most other shows would make the character regret taking such a selfish action but this show didn’t. Which makes Zuko going on the good side even better.
@@fun_police8011 that’s true, but I’m mostly focusing on the show giving him what he wanted instead of punishing him for picking his desires over morals. It makes Zuko an even more powerful character for doing what is morally right even if that means throwing everything away.
Can we also take a moment to talk about Iroh here? Who hates Iroh? Who says Iroh is an uninteresting character? NOBODY! We all love Iroh. And we know he is always striving towards doing what is morally correct. What we can also gather as we get pieces of Iroh's background story is that he wasn't always like this. He was a bad person back in the day, who killed, and did things far worse than what Zuko ever did. The lost of his son as a direct consequence of his own actions was Iroh's slap back into reality and ever since he has ALWAYS strived towards being as good of a person as he possibly can be. He never lowers himself to Zhao's level even when he's angry, and treats his own robber very kindly. He is a character with a very dark past and background story. but is still seeking to do good and setting a good example by BEING this example himself. He took responsibility for his own failures and thus aimed at doing better. And Zuko learned that from him and did the same. And Aang is also a character with a very good heart, but he makes mistakes, cause he's a kid... His journey though isn't to become bitter. His journey is to admit to his mistakes, knowing that there are things in life that hurt and not everything is easy. And STILL stay true to his moral principles leading into the final battle and the final solution.
You nailed it dude. For some reason, the overly critical and overly negative among us have fooled people into thinking theyre smarter. Which is strange, because when you look at extremely brilliant people in our society, and historically, many of them were extremely optimistic and helpful humans who worked hard to make the world a good place.
@@SuperSneakySniper so very true.. it's ironic too, they deemed the morally good people as cringey while they themselves are acting cringe by calling themselves the "intelligent"
Lord of the Rings is the best argument against the whole "good characters are boring". The whole books is about good characters fighting against evil and temptation. Aragorn is a hell of a character and is as much as a boy scout as golden age Superman.
The issue with LotR is that movies are great, but the books are some of the dullest and boringest books I've ever tried to read. Had to drop halfway through, during the description of battle of isengard, because it was just shite.
@@deriznohappehquite Tolkien waxes poetic about things that are not important to the story. I've read Anne freaking Rice, the queen of purple prose, and I struggle with LOTR.
A character morally good ≠ Mary Sue A character who is flawless (or everything they do wrong has no negative consequences or even positive consequences) and has the universe change its rules to suit said character = Mary Sue Those two concepts are not the same people
Even the most powerful characters in fiction didn't usually have the world change rules to suit them,but they instead have to obey the rules of their world.
People who write Mary sues think all male heroes are Steven Seagal characters and don't see the struggle they go through, just the situation, and the resolution.
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain." Ursula K. LeGuin. She knew what was up.
I still remember the Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas being an optional reading in high school, and every year that passes by, I get more and more grateful to my English professor for making us read that one.
God I miss her. She was a wonderful light even in her last years when she was in poor health. I was lucky enough to meet her at a SF convention in the 80s and strike up a friendship. Did you know she was also an avid gamer? She loved the idea behind the City of Heroes MMO
@@justinhart2831 Maybe the search for pleasure isn't really a search for happiness. Or maybe stories of evil and pain give us some pleasure we can't get elsewhere.
I think a great counter to that argument is shounen anime there are plenty of protagonists who are basically wholey good while still being interesting and loved such as Edward Elric, Monkey D. Luffy and Naruto Uzumaki
@@wilbert9567 Naruto I find especially interesting as he basically starts out as a delinquent and then changes overtime to someone people highly respect. He gets a ton of flack too due to actually wanting to help people. It's kind of hilarious honestly in restrospective that some people hate that.
Ehhhh. Yes and no. The public is very cynical and someone like a Superman would jive with the public. I mean look at Batman and especially the joker the movie. Cynical takes on characters and did millions
If I have learned anything of late, it's that morally grey or evil characters are not inherently more interesting than morally good ones. I'd argue the opposite. Anyone can have a goal. Having principles that stand in the way of that goal and force you to try and work around them to achieve your goal without compromising your ideals? Literally baked into a moral characters nature. Evil characters are just those who have lost, or twisted their principles. So they are the second most compelling. While Amoral characters are dead last, as they literally lack any kind of nuance, or guiding principle beyond their end goals. They are essentially the most brain dead possible character template, plus you get the bonus of stroking the egos of the smoothbrains who think amorality = moral complexity.
Because that beacon of light will just end up blinding the people who live in that darkness, further keeping them in the dark. Aside from literality, a gritty character in a dark setting is fitting because they prioritize survival, and understand how to navigate the environment they are placed in; having a morally good character in that dark environment would often times result in them being made a martyr where their principles and beliefs would die with them; and if by some miracle they don’t die, their optimism is often viewed as naivety with no way of making their ideals come true or serve the many; Which is why most people will follow the gritty character, as that character have experienced what they experienced and can empathize with them; in contrast to the good character that would relay positive words intended to raise their spirits only to fall short ignorant of the people’s circumstance and conditions.
You know how people like to say, “Evil isn’t born. It’s made” Well, the opposite is also true. Good Characters aren’t good just because. As we get older, it can get harder and harder for us to maintain some kind of morality. We get hurt, our faiths and morals are tested, etc, but movie media likes to portray that as only ignorance or stupidity when it should also be the molding of a good person. People like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien did not just appear out of thin air. They had to go through trials in their lives before they even started writing anything, and it was only after their trials that they began to both document what they learned in their works and also predict the future of how society will act today (Read Abolition of Man for example. People thought it was ludicrous for a time, but the book is extremely similar to the attitude of certain people now)
I think what you said about how we get tested as we get older can actually explain why people are so interested in the morally grey kinds of characters. Many people can relate to that, and I can say that some of my beliefs and morals have changed from like 5 years ago. A lot of young adults feel the pressures of everyday life and all the bad news and end up becoming more cynical. I know I have. But it also explains why I love Spider-Man and Obi-Wan so much. They always do the right thing. I saw some one on twitter said characters like that could be unrealistic, but that’s not necessarily the point. The point is more so the idea to always do the right thing. And that’s why I love those characters. If I were Peter in Spider-Man 2, idk if would have went back to being a superhero after seeing how my life got so much better. But seeing Peter still do it and persevering fills me with a lot of hope and happiness. It makes me want to do that same thing. Mark, from Invincible, had just went through the most traumatic experience of his life because of his father and told him “You dad, I’d still have you” with tears flowing down his face. Seeing characters like that make me feel like I want to persevere myself. It’s quite a powerful emotion when I sit back and think about it.
I 100% agree with everything he said in this video. Sadly, those negative criticisms he received are from people who are victims of this societal decay. In a world where abortion is considered moral, polyamory is "normal", and "child love" is an "orientation", it's no wonder we are at where we are. People are suffering. They've lost their sense of right and wrong. Their sense of good and evil. Their sense of truth and fiction. It's increasingly become obvious this is all a symptom of post modernism and the break down of the nuclear family in our society. More and more people suffer from existential despair and fail to realize the cause of it all. And unfortunately, it's not just the culture that creates this environment. Our government only encourages and exacerbates this framework by feeding into it and validating it.
But the thing is, yes, it's nice to see an always good character but if they just stay the same good all their life then we start to get the impression it's less that they're pure and more that they never changed as a person. You can be a good person all your life but that doesn't mean your views cant change and your morality evolve.
But aren't a lot of hero's mainly good because they were presented/given an opportunity to be better? For example Demon Slayer. Tanjiro was only becoming better because his sister was manage to survive and get back her senses and Giyuu allowed them to get the help they needed where as someone like Gyutaro and Daki only had struggle and disapointment and in the end it was a demon that saved them. Or how about Naruto, he didn't turn dark because Iruka was the first to start believing in him and was next given chances to prove he is capable of being better but Gaara wasn't and he later became a heartless monster. In short, hero's are presented with a better chance cause someone was there to help them while other's were basically doom to fall cause no one was there to save them when they really need it. Do you think Captain America would still be Captain America if he was never given that serum?
I’m kind of getting burnt out on dystopian stories. Whereas it can be inspiring to occasionally see a character do the right thing despite the world overwhelmingly being wrong, sometimes I miss a “Star Trek” type world where, despite our flaws, we eventually turned out ok.
What about Percy Jackson? Those characters all have fatal flaws. Percy: Loyalty Annabeth: Pride Thalia: Temptation Nico: Holding Grudges All those characters had these flaws but overall the learned to control them and they still are heroes
Same here. I despise dystopia, unless it is used as a cautionary tale such as 1984 or Brave new World. I never understood the appeal of The hunger games, or the giver, and a show like squid game positively sickens me
@@peskylisa but as the host says you can't judge other's for example if I killed someone because they caused a close family member of mine deep trauma both physical and mental. Does that make me a murderer? If your a homeless child and you sneak into hotels on stolen credit cards because homeless kids are 4 times more likely to be assaulted or killed go look at a homeless shelter you'll hardly see kids there because they get beaten out and have to sleep out in the cold.
Nowadays entertainment is full of immorality.. and strangely it's a popular thing... I hope groups of people will act on toxic entertainments and make it wholesome
They're practically the ones lobbying up to make them in the first place, so no, I don't trust them. I wouldn't trust Hollywood's definition of morality too given their biases and how it hides and cloaks the fact that their industry isn't moral to the slightest. I would trust the indie movies' grasp on morality if it's formal and has been up in a standard most can agree with.
Because modern cosmopolitan Liberalism has embraced cognitive and moral relativism. As they abandon traditional views and belief that have seen humans endure and prosper, even in the worst of times... The modernist's new God is mainstream media propaganda... These types have no idea that they are cattle being led into a slaughter house, in the not so distant future.
@_____ The thing is objective morality in fact does not exist, but we shouldn't act like that. When i say we, i mainly think of general population who does not think about these topics too deeply because when you hear that there is no objective morality and you dont think about it deeply, you will end up with the conclusion that there is absolutely no meaning, that there are no borders, that everything is "right" and you will have mass surge of ideologies, very destructive ones who wont think that way of themselves. Sure, everything is fine, if you want to end up with a civilization that is digging its own grave. What we are seeing today is actually a pretty scary form of nihilism that has spread across the nations.
@_____ Those are not objective morals. Objective morality, if existed, wouldn't care about conditions of earth or humans or whoever, it would just be there. If morality changes due the circumstances, then its not objective. Morality is a human issue, created by humans. In nature, you really don't need it. The purpose of the species is to prolong it in any way possible, to reproduce, to eat, to survive. Different beings have different means, social beings have to socialize and cooperate in order to do all from the above. So the "good" thing that we can do is whatever improves and prolongs the life of a human civilization. The "bad" thing is the reversed. Pretty simple concept. The problem is people are not too happy with it because we effectively became too conscious, we started asking questions that really were never intended to be answered, they dont have an answer. In this case, ignorance to certain degree is really a bliss. But since we are in the information era, thats impossible, we cant use ignorance as a shield anymore. We need to re-learn the art of living, we need to learn to change a relationship with these cursed questions without answers, because, ultimately, they are the source of destruction. Acceptance is pretty hard in this case, but really thats the best cure, accept reality for what it is and live it. Nihilism is expected, i see it as a bridge towards something better. Nihilism in my opinion is mostly caused by scientific discoveries and generally growth of science over religion and mysticism. Religion, in one way or another, was a very firm foundation that humans all around the globe could rely onto and get some comforting answers since forever, but in the relatively new history, we started losing the touch with it because obviously, majority of people realized its bullshit. It used us well. It caused a lot of trouble too, but it was very useful for keeping the humanity sane up until this moment. Science is not a good enough replacement, so we need to find new ways of coping with reality.
Not that simple, mate. If I get punched in the face for bullying or punching someone unprovoked, maybe the right answer is not punching back as much as I may want to. Like it or not, many if not most moral decissions aren't black or white and believing only you know the "right thing to do" can lead to you doing a bad thing.
@@theboombody Just for a second, imagine its the reverse: you're a patriotic, loudmouth American in the 2000's who fully supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, surrounded by resentful refugees o said countries. The only thing stopping them from tearing you to pieces, besides law enforcement, may be your ability to either shut up...or be diplomatic, listen to their viewpoints and consider that maybe your posture is wrong, while in reality no one may fully be in the right. That's moral relativism for ya. The ability to consider you're a finite human being and that your "stone-set morals" may be wrong, therefore being capable of not tearing someone else to pieces over moral disagreements. That's the basis of the modern society you folks take for granted, ignoring how we killed each other back when we believe we were could definitely not be morally wrong ever.
The idea that morally wholesome characters are "Mary Sues" is nonsense. That's not what the term "Mary Sue" means. That's not a mere difference of opinion.
@@howardmurphy8019 Maybe they don’t like good characters because it makes them feel bad? Seeing bad characters probably makes them justify their immorality? Edit: typo
This is why it's such a loss that high school kids never read The Classics in literature. They don't understand the importance literary stories of history or Philosophy.
I would also add Matt Murdock to the list of interesting and heroic characters my favorite line is when he refuses to kill Kingpin and he said with all of the passion he could muster "You don't get to destroy who I am"
this is what I hate about heroes though I would rather have an antihero cause they get rid of those bad guys permanently sure the daredevil is good but damn I wanted him to kill sometimes like come on you can still beat up lesser criminals but these real big threats shouldn't be left unchecked
Even as someone who really likes much darker stories, I would have to agree. Most modern dark films don't just depict flawed people in an awful world, but people who are downright evil, and they're the ones who we're supposed to root for. Hollywood seems to have forgotten that for a flawed character to work, they have to have strong redeeming qualities or a motivation anyone can understand, even if the actions taken are what we would consider to be too far. John Wick was a man emotionally destroyed by his years of work as a hitman, and we can understand to some extent what effect the amount of lives he's taken can have on someone. He then lost his only anchor, the only thing keeping him sane, his wife. Plenty of us can understand the pain of losing a loved one, and it's only compounded when they were someone you relied on for emotional support. He didn't just go on a murderous rampage because he hated the Russian mob. He did it because he had nothing left in his life but a desire for revenge against the people who had taken what little he did have left, and he didn't even care if he lived or died. He was never meant to be a good person, he was meant to be a broken, self destructive man who finds a reason to live by the end of the movie
While reverence for heroes is important, so is empathising with bad characters. I like dark stories. So long as there's either A) at least a side character to serve as a positive example that the show is self aware of or B) the creation or cause of a villain we can empathise with. Empathising with people we're suppose to see as enemies is as equally important as glorifying those who would combat them, lest we pursue inevitable and cyclical conflict with those we can not agree with.
I liked the Joker movie overall but I do get worried by the comments I read where the people are actually happy he murders people like “that guy had it coming.”
@@viktoriyaserebryakov2755 Exactly my point. That's why Generation War is one of my favorite pieces of film ever. Not just because it's amazingly written with incredible acting and showing a side of the war we never see normally, but because most of the characters start out as avowed Nazis, and that becomes a huge point of conflict for them throughout the series. Wilhelm struggles with reconciling the Prussian military ideals his father raised him with, with the Nazi ideology his generation was surrounded by. Charlotte struggles with her duty as a nurse, being to help people, conflicting with her duties to the Reich, duties she once relished performing. There's also some interesting thematic elements in the characters. Julia, the Ukrainian Jew that that Charlotte ends up recruiting without knowing she's Jewish, is basically Charlotte's ideal self. She has a strong, loving family, she's selfless and will help the people who want her and her family dead, simply because they are people, too. A simple thing like that adds so much more weight to every decision made by both of them. Friedhelm is basically the distillation of the "just following orders" narrative, while Schneider is the polar opposite, a hardcore ideologue able to rationalize the murder of a child because she was probably Jewish. Wilhelm is meant to show what was likely the situation for the vast majority of German soldiers. He falls somewhere in the middle, between the two extremes of Friedhelm and Schneider. Viktor, the group's Jewish friend, also serves to break down the glorification of the partisans that fought the Nazis. They were fighting people worse than them, yes, but they were far from good people
I forget what comic it was Some girl with horns She finds a plastic bag, and then proceeds to beat the crud out of a man working a register who had the same logo as the bag And I was just like How do I cheer for this person
Again all these beliefs come from our own selfish interpretation of what is good, and what is evil, which is why it’s going to clash with those who find your interpretations to be the opposite of theirs. Remember these films are written by people, and directed by people. These people have their own interpretation of what they deem “good”, and others will mock it by both this comment and video. You want your “good character”, you’re going to have make it yourself. Just don’t be surprised when you face backlash from the same level of beliefs you’ve displayed here.
To be honest, a lot of kids just want a clear cut answer of the good guy and the bad guy. When rewatching stuff I liked as a kid as an adult I come to realise how I never usually understood why the bad guys were evil, I just knew they were and needed to be stopped. You don't question if the bad guy has a point or if the good guy is flawed. There is something nice about the simplicity of it.
@@ryonalionthunder The impression I got was he was talking about just any character in the show as they are too young to know a maon character is a main character. But I am just guessing.
Most kids shows have bad guys. Thunder cats had mummra, stingray had titan, Care Bears had coldheart, looney tunes had yosemite sam, dreamstone had zordrak, and iron man had mandarin
Spiderman is one of my favorite moral characters. He's talented, powerful and good but he's constantly losing. This is because he makes the moral, harder choice. it hurts initially but he makes his world better and he has his moral principle to stand by at the end of the day.
He is constantly losing because Marvel writers have a fetish to make his life a torture porn. They think that Peter being mature and facing new challenge in his life as a successful person and a family man “isn’t interesting enough” so they keep torturing him. That’s why we got ridiculous issues like One More Day, Gwen getting raped by Green Goblin who possessed Peter’s body, Peter killing MJ with his radioactive semen or MJ cheating on Peter. They can’t help themselves in making Peter miserable. What’s the point in writing a superhero comic if the hero always loses and the villains always win? What moral message will the audience get from this?
@@nont18411 "What’s the point in writing a superhero comic if the hero always loses and the villains always win? What moral message will the audience get from this?" To teach people how to respond to failure. I think you can have a long running series in which the hero rarely wins. I think Charlie Brown is like that.
@@williamfinch9858 Except that Spider-Man always loses. If the point of the story is to inspired people, at least the writer needs to show the benefits from doing good, not just showing the punishment from it.
There can be many nuances to the personalities of different moral characters. My favorite example is Sam from The Lord of the Rings, he is shown to be morally exceptional with his greatest trait being his loyalty. I believe that the problem right now is that it takes a truly moral person to write a great hero, and it’s hard to find people like that. You make a good point that there is a problem with depicting heroic characters as naive, every person that I’ve met with those characteristics is aware of the great evil in the world but they still strive against it.
I like the belgariad. the main group of characters all have varying views and moralities as befits a bunch of different people from differing backgrounds a princess, to a thousand+ year old sorcerer, knight, thef/spy, a warrior/berzerker, an escaped slave, to a religious zealot you have characters like Silk(/Prince Kheldar) is a good guy in spite of him being a spy, thief, assassin, merchant, and smuggler. at one point he's asked about money and tells the main character its not about the money. money is only a way of keeping score it's about the game. Durnik a simple blacksmith, he's rational and practical and always does his best at one point he is asked why he's working so hard at a piece for the underside of a local merchants cart and tells the mc even if no one else ever sees what I'm working on I will know its there and I will be aware of it every time I see this cart sir mandorellen vo mimbre I think this quote describes mandorellan "My lance, my sword, and my good right arm stand ever at thy service, and, forasmuch as I am--as all the world doth know--the mightiest knight on life, I doubt not that the overthrow of these miscreant knights shall be but a light task, which I gladly undertake, and my skill and my prowess are such that, barring accident, I may confidently assure thee that their overthrow shall not do them permanent injury."
There are pleeenty of "morally ambiguous" characters that are also very boring. It's funny that all the youtube channels I watch for media reviews, from all over the political spectrum (such as FEE, Lily Orchard and the Critical Drinker) all come to the same conclusion: writers can't write good protagonists if they themselves are not good people to begin with.
@Ethnic Nationalist yes but there are good ones too, just bcuz some are bad doesn't mean all of them or most of them are generally "bad" characters, at the end it's about the execution not about the actual concept itself
I hated the protagonist of Squid Games. I tried watching it but simply couldn't. Every time I seen him outside of one of the "games", I hated every moment he was on screen. It was like that feeling you get when someone is doing something incredibly stupid in a horror movie, and you want to tell them "don't do that, you fucking idiot", but it was constant. My point is, if he was actually a good guy I probably would have liked him, but he was a deadbeat dad that gambled his mom's money away. How am I supposed to give a shit what happens to him? If Walter White was a total piece of shit before his escapades, I never would have finished the show. Sometimes you actually NEED your protagonist to be morally upstanding for them to be able to be empathized with, I think.
I don't know if you know much about Indian cinema but a life of criminality is glorified on a grand scale and we can see the kind of devastating impact it had on the personal conduct and behaviour of the youth.
I suppose it's the same in any kind of modern cinema. Characters who aren't labelled immediately as "cringey" or "need-to-mature" usually have some (too many) bones in their closet. And those who are kind-hearted, happy, positive towards life are left jarred by the time the dust settles. It's like, we are incapable of preserving something good. I started watching Korean dramas a year ago and immediately realized that apart from handful of romantic-comedy dramas (or movies) the number of cheerful characters or characters with a positive outlook of people around them (or society or life, in general) were near non-existent. Every character had to have a tear-jerking (and honestly, rather cliche) backstory. All of them went through some shit as a child or has something in their past that will eventually tear them apart when the truth is revealed. And that's what generally drives these stories. They were all so repetitive and boring, honestly, I correctly predicted the "twist" pretty much in every show I watched, doesn't matter what genre or what the storyline was. And they are mostly consumed (outside of Korea) by teenagers to young adults who watch these "dramas" for the most obvious of reasons-the pretty faces. I mean, just think back the last time one must have come across a person so fucked up emotionally, psychologically and try to picture what they looked like. That's not to say that people with trauma aren't beautiful but having to go through that much shit is bound to leave you either physically scarred or would be visible on your person some or other way. But I digress. God I hate how much negativity has been normalized, especially in movies/shows/music. I understand the world is shitty and brutal and hateful (I suppose) but if the reality is what I have to watch, I'd read a fucking newspaper.
@@anonme_ I mean, there are kdramas with main characters who do have a tear jerking backstory and yet are morally good. Older kdramas tend to have more characters with more positive outlooks on life, while newer ones are a bit more diverse. This isn't a bad thing. And positive characters can be found easily where you look for it. It's not a bad thing to portray characters with negative experiences who turn out okay in the end, since that's something people can relate to and it can give them hope.
This is why I like My Hero Academia, the characters have genuine moral compasses and the whole show is about how they sacrifice and struggle to live by that moral standard. The show has so many beautifully inspiring episodes
@Elizabeth Bennett "The heroes work for a corrupt government but they're always portrayed as the greatest good. It makes no sense that the government and hero society, which is fundamentally corrupt and flawed, is never challenged by a less corrupt group and ideology. All groups that challenge them are written just corrupt enough that you have to side with the heroes. It's sending a bad message." this you said is a cultural diference, japan is a coletive society were the group is more important than the individual. therefore the govermment is always right in a moral frame of work. you has an outsider perceive to be wrong due to the focus in the your christian. even if you dont go to church or you may not even consider yourself a christian... it doesnt matter, cause the west is bluilt in a christian frame of work.
@@bradastra6111 Japan is a unified culture, not a collective. Overall there’s no force into conformity as most Japanese understand societal implications of breaking cultural unity (given that they learn it as they grow up).
It's a vicious cycle: storytelling gets increasingly focused on nihilism and immorality, then all those who consume these stories internalize them and make the world around them more nihilistic and immoral, then as society loses sight of its morals and values, the aforementioned trend in storytelling becomes normalized and dominates entertainment media.
There's a virtuous cycle that goes along with that. The more people reject nihilism and immorality, the more people around them notice this and start to change their behavior and beliefs to something more positive.
@@AcesMaven hmm in the general scope I would say the 90s were the same minus the amazing wonders of technology like there hasn't been a major cultural change, things are just going in the same direction
Goodness isn't boring. It's difficult. It takes effort. That's why Hollywood writers don't like it, because they feel entitled to have everything they want served on a plate to them with no effort. A nihilistic world where evil people prey on good is the ideal playground for these nasty people. They also value cheap shocks and think that having the Bad Guy Win all of the time is a good way to establish their artistic credentials. Unfortunately, having the bad guys always win is a good way to induce audience apathy, and have them turn elsewhere for their entertainment. No one gets shocked by the bad guy winning or by the entire cast being assholes if every show does it all of the time.
@lepapercastle i see your point. but that defintion is heavilh based upon one's perception. For example if i lied what does that make me? a liar. so if i did evil that will make me evil. but as humans we are given the gift and responsibility of free will, where we are not bound to our past. this whole discussion about morally grey to nihilistic characters i think points out the major flaw. it is not the fact it is boring but it is shallow. people with this mindset probably have a more simplistic philosophy than the naive hero. it is wuite hyprocritical in that regard
I'm not sure if I agree with the quote, "We need to believe that everyone is basically good." I think the better way to phrase it is that everyone is flawed, but we all have great potential to do good. When we act upon opportunities to do or be good, that is when person has good morals. Many people have the desire to do good and we must and encourage and put hope in our fellow man to act upon that desire; however, many deny those opportunities.
@GG BG Mathew 10:16 "Look! I am sending you out as sheep among wolves; so prove yourselves cautious as serpents and yet innocent as doves." Jesus Christ himself advised to be cautious about other people do, for our sakes so you are right from a Christian perspective. We need to be innocent, but also wise enough to grant people the benefit of the doubt without putting ourselves in danger. But assuming somebody is innocent until proven guilty is only fair and compassionate. Is what we should all aspire to be. Failing to behave like that is proven to produce a huge unnecessary amount of suffering.
@GG BG @GG BG Mathew 10:16 "Look! I am sending you out as sheep among wolves; so prove yourselves cautious as serpents and yet innocent as doves." Jesus Christ himself advised to be cautious about other people for our sakes, so you are right from a Christian perspective. We need to be innocent, but also wise enough to grant people the benefit of the doubt without putting ourselves in danger. But assuming somebody is innocent until proven guilty is only fair and compassionate. Is what we should all aspire to be. Failing to behave like that is proven to produce a huge unnecessary amount of suffering. That is why our entire judicial system is based on that idea, it is a miracle we even got to that point and we shouldn't lose hold of that unbelievable right. The right of being innocent until PROVEN guilty. I think that is what John Locke actually meant.
@GG BG *John Locke WAS wrong. We are closer to evil than good (but not entirely either).* That doesn't mean anything. The only reason that view can sustain itself is because life is not some universal covenant between critters for the assurance of each other's hedonism, but instead, a constant cycle of renewal between competing entities in an ever-changing, unstopping stage. This is what man and all other beings came from and this is the only context in which they can properly function. Nothing else is fit for them.
This is an accurate observation. Sometimes we miss the point of Evil characters because we respect them to much. They become the interesting ones, The way to fix this: Right better characters who have good morals, not uninteresting slapdicks.
listen in life every person has a sob story to tell you, something that makes you pity them, even the worst people, humans are prone to this. all of the things this guy says are bullshit, you dont have to dig very far into psychology to find that out. but, if you would like there is a series called generation kill, it is about soldiers in the Iraq war, it is very realistic and portrays what people in such environments actually do, so if you find that you think the soldiers are assholes you will know you have a very naive look on humans and cant tolerate ACTUAL people.
Everybody respects and praises the villain until they become their victim, we even see this in real life history, people praise the revolutionaries as heroes, even going so far as excusing their brutality against the opposition, until the revolutionaries come to power and become dictators....this happened to Leon Trotsky, he passionately defended the brutality of the Bolsheviks in the second Russian Revolution, defended the systematic oppression of the Soviet Union even praising them, until they decided to paint a target on his back...it's one thing to admire the philosophical ideas of villains, even to somewhat understand them and relate to them, but to go as far as to say "they were right" or "Thanos was a hero"...yeah if Thanos was real, I doubt those people would be singing the same song especially if his actions directly affected their lives....you saw this with the pandemic as well, prior to the pandemic people were saying "we need a new plague, there's too many humans, humans are a disease" well the plague came, and those exact same people feared for their lives.
@@cyborgchicken3502 y'know what would be an ironic end? if said villains suffered the exact same way they made others suffered, and complained or cried for help about it
I was lucky. I grew up in the era when "the hero's journey" was still important. One director every film student should be made to study is Clint Eastwood. Just mentioning three. The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Unforgiven, Gran Turino. All are hero's journeys from different life perspectives. Well written, well directed, well acted. So you can do an interesting movie with an actual protagonist. It doesn't have to be nihilistic.
the Unforgiven is a deconstruction of the heroic tales of westerns that were done before. It was like anti western propaganda to the western when it was made. Part of the point was that there were no real heroes
@@nuckygulliver9607 GREAT Supplement to this video, cause it explains the reason why many look at Reality as if it's all dark: 'Our Popcoorn Dystopia' by 'Some More News'.
@@nuckygulliver9607 Yeah, Unforgiven is not a hero's journey, it's pretty much every grimdark thing this video is calling out. Clint hasn't exactly been a big believer in human goodness for a long time now, and that movie bugged me, because the characters weren't even realistically evil, they were more like going out of their way to cause the most pain and suffering possible, and the writers made sure that every death came with a laundry list of fear and regret, where realism would have most deaths pass by without last words at all. It's a similar thing with Game of Thrones. People write incredibly dark movies under the guise of "realism", when reality is almost never that dark, and that leads audiences to unquestioningly believe that humans are just that evil in reality. Even in the Holocaust, there were heroes, self-sacrifice, stoic deaths, faith, and little acts of kindness, and when you strip all of those little good things from humanity, it's not realism, it's misanthropy.
@@knightoffailure1869 You seem to forget that Unforgiven is actually based on a real person who was an outlaw and had a hard life. To be true to the story requires acknowledging that life on the frontier was harsh, particularly when vigilantism was the norm rather than the exception. I will not comment on A Song of Fire and Ice (ie Game of Thrones for those who have not read the book it is based on) as I think the author lost his way since he hasn't even finished it. As for the Holocaust, yes we like to remember the good guys like Oscar Schindler or Chiune Sugihara. But they were the rare exception, not the norm. There is a reason why the list of Righteous among the Nations is a small group. By and large, the banality of evil as Hannah Ardent observed was the norm. And if anything, that callousness makes the acts of those righteous few that much brighter.
@@davidford3115 I'm sorry, but you are absolutely, rather offensively wrong about the Holocaust. Not only is the list of documented heroes in that situation incredibly long (there were whole networks of people smugglers, neighbors risking everything to protect their neighbors, not to mention the actual soldiers who liberated the camps), but there are countless anecdotes about the prisoners within the camps putting the lives of others ahead of their own, and even aside from actual actions, many held an indomitable sense of hope that carried them through to the end. Little acts of kindness, self-sacrifice, and simple hope, whether in a higher power, or simply for its own sake, are not rare. As for Unforgiven, it is not based on a true story, not sure where you got that from. It draws from some true stories, but to say it faithfully follows any of them to any meaningful degree is neither true, nor has it ever been claimed by Eastwood et al. It's a work of fiction, and while claiming to be realistic, it makes a conscious choice to go grim-dark, in some ways actively forgoing realism in order to portray the world as senseless and cruel. I've read plenty of actual western outlaw stories, and frankly none of them are as depressing as Unforgiven, because reality isn't grimdark. The American frontier was a place of violence, brutality, treachery, vice, skill, faith, loyalty, beauty, opportunity, love, hope, dreams, and innovations. The choice to focus only on the negative aspects, when the entire breadth of human vice and virtue was on prominent display, is deliberate and subversive, not honest, as you claim. It's just as editorial and moralizing as the idealized western of yore, but made into a cautionary tale of what not to do, rather than a heroic tale of what is good to do. Not sure why you tried to correct me to A Song of Ice and Fire, when I was talking about Game of Thrones, the TV show, specifically (I suspect you just like correcting people, because there really wasn't any other reason to do so). I've read the ASOIAF books, and they don't have nearly as big a problem with grim-darkness, nor do they have as much reach among the general public, many of whom now believe that real medieval times were filled to the brim with brother-sister incest, sibling murder, completely unscrupulous leaders, and child killing, because they cannot separate grimdark fantasy from historical fact, which as a rule resembles ordinary reality, in all its shades of gray, and not some idealized black or white. Frankly, you sound like someone who gets most of their history from movies. Try reading some firsthand accounts of any of these events. I think it'll be eye-opening how much more human and less grimdark the people of our past really were than you seem to assume. Little acts of kindness and love are speckled across all of human history, even if Hollywood doesn't feel like it's thematically appropriate to include them in their grand tales of heroes and villains and rise and ruin.
Don't let media form you. Problem solved. Have resolve. Your an individual. If you let negativity into you that's a choice. Teach your kids, lest media will.
I feel like "Breaking Bad", "Joker", and "Game of Thrones" WERE cautionary tales. When you really look at them, pretty much all the morally-wrong characters in those works ended up dead or far worse off than they started. People just got so swept up in rooting for dubious anti-heroes or villain protagonists that they lost sight of that.
Idk about game of thrones but I can say breaking bad was definitely a cautionary tale that people dream about being like being people dream about money and power
Im scared that people forget about Cautionary Tales exists. Nobody talked about fairy tales, and only popular shows to ship some characters instead of learning.
Was Jon Snow ever morally dubious? The man who refused to have pre martial sex because he was concerned about making a bastard? And this because he knew how bastards like himself were treated? The man who stood up and fought three men for bullying a friend? Sounds like a hero.
Smiling Friends is a great antidote to the nihilistic type of modern media we get nowadays. It’s about two friends who try to make people happy and they usually succeed. The show isn’t afraid to depict bleak situations but they always end happily with a good message. One of the reasons why Smiling Friends blew up in popularity was because its happy outlook was a great breath of fresh air in a society that is growing too nihilistic. The characters are likeable and the people the titular Smiling Friends help end up in a better position than they were before.
@@TheAzureNightmare Because 1. The general ideas about morality and the desire for it in media is wrongheaded and pathetic 2. Seriously getting upset or glad at the prospect of consuming media, and seeing this consumption as an end in it of itself as opposed to creating something is a tragic way to live.
I found the one and only "Dracula" novel by Bram Stoker to be an inspiring Gothic horror tale of human who descend into darkness to fight a physically and psychologically intimidating antagonist before they emerge in the sun. Jonathan Harker nearly goes insane with a brain fever, but he musters up courage to claw his way out of Dracula's castle. Quincey Morris and Dr. Jack Seward donate their blood to Lucy, even though she declined their marriage proposals. Arthur Holmwood is devastated when Lucy becomes a vampire but he doesn't shirk at the moment he must stake her, allowing Lucy to "rejoin the angels in heaven". Dr. Van Helsing becomes frustrated when Dracula thwarts their plans, but he soldiers on doggedly as the elderly wise mentor of the team. As for the wonderful "Madam Mina", she is a thoughtful and intelligent woman whose presence inspires everyone around her to fight on and protect her from the encompassing darkness.
Right! The original book is better than any of the movies. Genuinely scary but the morally good are triumph. It's an inherently biblical narrative tho and Hollywood hates Christianity and Christian morals.
The original Dracula was far better than I expected it to be when I read it. I was reading the Lord of the Rings for school and I couldn't help seeing comparisons, like how the vampire corruption was similar to the corruption that Sauron's rings caused. Mina as a moral person inspiring others reminded me of the way Tolkien wrote women like Galadriel and Arwen. Mina even asks the others to be forgiving towards Dracula, whilst stopping his evil, similar to how Frodo wanted to forgive Gollum, because Gollum could barely help himself.
@@MegaKnight2012 Excellent analysis, well said. I didn't realize how much Mina's forgiving nature was similar to Frodo until you pointed it out. In both stories you have an unlikely band of heroes who volunteer on a mission to save the world from a dark antagonist. Good literature allows us to expand our minds and see patterns and resemblances in other great works.
Glorification of a character is extremely personal. No one is writing these stories with horrible events and terrible people knowing they will be glorified. It's a personal choice.
Starting in the 1990s, there has been a trend towards darker "grittier" stories where everyone is morally grey, as this was seen to be more realistic and more intelligent storytelling. It's not, it's just as skewed as a 50s cowboy show with white hats vs black hats, or the comically-evil villains of an 80s cartoon. But I think over the last 5 or 10 years, writers in Hollywood have genuinely lost the understanding of what a hero *_is_* - now half of their protagonists either have a completely-flat character arc, or the origin story of a supervillain.
I think another issue is the constant grind of pumping out movies and merchandise with the corporate model of avoiding risk and maximizing profits. Writers have become jaded and consumers have become nihilistic.
To be fair, the 1990s and 2000s also had their fair share of uplifting lighthearted optimistic fun films as well and a few of those still hold up to this very day. Cases in point: Rugrats in Paris, Shrek, Anastasia, and The Prince of Egypt.
So what’s your solution Russ? That every character come from a backstory of your average Joe? Wouldn’t that also be considered “boring”, by your own definition? Most humans like complexity, because humans are rather complex beings who all don’t share the same backstory. Now if you dislike stale character design, that’s one thing, but that depends on the creators to actually make their characters interesting, and not just some guy, who’s also a good person, with ethics, blah blah blah. What exactly is your interpretation of what makes a good person? Because not everyone will share the same beliefs bud.
@@malbasedvalentine3210 Did you eat a lot of paint chips as a kid? Darker and grittier is *_not_* more complex, it just appears that way to nihilist morons trying to justify their anger at- and hatred of- the world. The complexity comes from showing what a morally good character has to give up, the sacrifices, the hard choices to do what's _right_ rather than what's _easy_; or an evil character having to go beyond what they thought they were capable of doing when their scheme doesn't go to plan. You certainly don't write a *_hero_* as someone obsessed with grief/loss, or with a lust for power/money/revenge.
@@russwilliams4777 humans are morally grey people, only do civilizations create perceptions of what makes you good and others evil. I for one know this concept, but I personally don’t care to follow it to the T. I will still point out my perceived evil, because ultimately I want to win so my vision of progression takes fold.
Honestly this entire video makes me think extremely about Vinland Saga, the manga basically tells this entire story of wanting to become a better person and how hard it can be to do so in a world that believes that the answer to all their problems is violence, if anyone reads this I'd highly recommend reading it and giving it at least to the 3rd arc where it's true message begins to take shape.
“Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.” ― George Sand
@@neo-filthyfrank1347 i mean "art for the sake of art" is the kinda logic that made "Cuties". a product devoid of the nuances of what actually making it would be in relation to the message we are told it attempts to convey purely due to the fact that on paper it might sound artsy and out-of-box
@@_Sage967_ I'm no expert on cuties but from my understanding it's the exact opposite. A show made for the purpose of feverishly pushing some ideological agenda intimately tied to politics and society.
@@neo-filthyfrank1347 "Art for Art's sake" comes across as "form over substance" and Cuties perfectly encapsulates the common negative form of the to an egregious degree. yes, cuties is meant to push a political agenda BUT if it CARED about its message it would not be "Cuties" because the execution is in direct contradiction of its message in the eyes of (hopefully) most people. The form and image of what the movie was to be superseded any potential concerns that may have ever been brought up and it was lauded and praised by people not simply for its message but for how it conveyed that message despite doing so flying in the face of its themes. TL:DR what i meant was that the message of Cuties didn't seem to matter to the creator or else it wouldn't be made like it was. any movie could've had this theme but in order to stand out, especially as a small-time film it was given a particular form and thus the theme wouldn't matter beyond guaranteeing a certain level of support, or at least that's how ive always interpreted its situation (not much of a TL:DR though)
@@_Sage967_ You've lost me. Are you suggesting that the show's message was NOT an endorsement of the sexualization of children? Because I had in mind that it very much was. But more to the central point art does not need any reason to exist, and the exploration of all manner of ideas and notions within it is certainly good, but art is not to be subservient to crafting works that endorse whatever values happen to be the societally accepted at the time. The function of art is a lot more versatile and profound than trying to effect "positive" social change.
This is just my two cents, but I feel as though the reason “morally grey” characters are so mainstream nowadays is because our outlook as a society has become increasingly jaded and nihilistic. People nowadays are simply unable or unwilling to see the good around us, and we are forgetting what it means to be happy. There are many factors behind this, but I think the biggest one so far is the flood of negativity spouting from social media and other sources like it. Just my opinion.
I think the biggest problem is that the world actually is really shit, and nobody is fixing it, and right now it's actively getting worse. But because that doesn't affect a lot of you, you get to just act like everyone is whining.
@@pleasegoawaydude Whining doesn't help does it? The only thing making humanity striving still until now is the positive mindset it has and the possibility of a far better future. Remembering the bad of the world reminds us the good we can do to subdue it, and keeping death in mind can help us knowing what Life can truly offers. However, embracing this apocalyptic and nihilistic mindset of negative morality and the lawless nature of men is not giving us a chance of embracing that good future. We are instead spiralling down to the abyss of despair because we are willing to do so. People whine and they will throw themselves down that moral abyss.
@@kirionj.a.w1147 I have to disagree with you on this one chief. The US government is the biggest example of this where a previous led republican owned senate made it so 3 republicans were voted for the Supreme Court through their SHOULD-BE ILLEGAL way of not letting a hearing during Obama’s presidency. Edit: I should probably clarify but I’m talking about the sentiment that people are just letting the world become bad. Otherwise I mostly agree with your comment! 😂
This is why spider-man is amazing, he’s a paragon that has gone through so much tragedy and has done bad things but still tries to do the right thing even when it hurts
Yeah I mean look at Insomniac’s Spider-Man or the movie No Way Home, in one of them, his choices and actions lead to a multitude of events that makes the first mission of the game make more sense, in the other, his decision to erase/rectify people’s memories with a constant add-ons to his list causing a multiverse wide event to happen, only once he lost his aunt, did he know what he had to do, make the right choice. In the game, save everyone else to develop a vaccine, in the movie save the lives of the villains. This is why Spider-Man will be one the best example of a true hero and a good person on the side.
@@12345Micki Absolutely agree. People want to revise his character as corny or dorky, but only Tobey's Peter Parker fills me with that feeling of warmth and hope to the fullest extent. Also hurts the hardest when he has such huge shortcomings throughout the story!
Then you have Miles, bro is ready to destroy the universes of any number of other Spider-Men as long as he spares himself the pain of the normal course of events
Audiences crave characters who are flawed and have an arc that gives them at least a chance at redemption. Frodo wasn’t born a hero, he became one. Tony Stark was an alcoholic, misogynist arms dealer who became a hero. Characters who aren’t flawed aren’t relatable.
You can still be a good person yet not born a hero. Peter Parker is a great example of this. Yeah he's human so he doesn't always perfectly make the most moral choice. In versions where he's a teenager in highschool he frequently attempts to use her powers for social leverage with his peer group instead of focusing on the actual issues at hand. That's the whole point of his live interest Mary Jane. She's not just a sex symbol and eye candy for men. She's Peter's anima, the judging female constantly assessing his social worth as a human being and as a potential mate. But despite his social desperation and sexual proclivities, Peter was always still a Good person. He never MALICIOUSLY chooses to gratify his own desires over the needs of others. And in fact, when he even CONSIDERS doing so he is severely punished by the writers. Tries to use his power to impress Mary Jane? Now's she's in danger and it's his fault. Trying to impress his classmates? Well now the bad guys have the upper hand because he was preoccupied with trying to look cool. Instead of this being considered "unfair" to Peter because we "expect him to be too perfect" people LOVE when Peter is punished for trying to gratify himself at the expense of others because he LEARNS. He feels GUILTY. Because HE IS MORAL. What's even better is that Peter STARTED OUT as a good kid. But grew up in a world that punished goodness, his parents were killed in an effort to take down Red Skull, Peter was bullied for years for being 'square' and a 'nerd', he makes friends who constantly try to use and abuse him because they see him as an equal loser who has no where else to go. Peter by all means should be an emo anti-hero the shoots up his school and gets put into a suicide squad-esque project by the US government after the spider bites him. But despite all of the shitty parts of his life, Peter is a moral person who makes good decisions and tries his best if not perfect as a hero. He maintains his morals no matter how shitty things get and constantly maintains his position as "Your friendly Neighborhood Spiderman" no matter who watches or what consequences that brings. And kids especially love Peter. We also see the exact same thing in his heir, Miles Morales (Ironically MORAL IS IN HIS NAME) who also is constantly trying to apply morality to his decision-making if sometimes it's difficult on him as a human. You don't need to be born a hero to be a good person and in fact there is a prominent philosophy that most humans are born good but the evils of the world corrupt them and if you keep those evils away from the child and prepare them to prevent them from succumbing to evil, they will remain good. A lot of heros started out as just good people before ever becoming heroes with the call to adventure just being a call to fight evil. Good people are flawed because they are human, but being human doesn't prevent you from being a good person. Another great example is Miss Honey from Matilda. Miss Honey is a good person, she loves her students, she is practically the only ray of sunshine in Matilda's life, she cares deeply about all people and is constantly punished for her good nature by the horrible characters in the book, save the kids. But you wouldn't call Miss Honey a mary-sue. It's not that she's just given everything she needs to fuck up her aunt's life or that she wants to do so. In fact, it's her being a good person is what makes her the biggest victim in the movie because unlike the other adults who either don't care or actively make things worse she tries to love everyone and everything. Even her enemies. And that makes her extremely vulnerable to them. Yeah she can verbally tell them off but she could never raise a hand to even defend herself from her fellow humans even if she wanted to. Because she's a good person. But again no one looks at Miss Honey as flat, boring or worthy of scratching criticism despite her consistent morality. She wasn't born to be a hero but she literally saves Matilda from a life of neglect and suffering despite Matilda being the one with the psychic powers. Yeah having an arc is cool and I think media has done a good job of creating characters who do bad things for good, Often extremely personal and trauma informed, reasons and then realize what they were doing was self gratifying and not actually a good thing. Think about Zuko from ATLA. He was chasing and even trying to kill a group of kids just to please his father and resolve his family trauma. However as the show progresses he realizes that all he was doing was gratifying himself. He wasn't doing this because he actually believed in the war or the cause or The Fire Nation Empire. It was personal. Most "anti-hero" or "morally grey" characters boil down to that. Something traumatic happens to the character, instead of healing and moving on, the character wallows in their trauma and seeks to commit some kind of action, usually criminal, violent or immoral, as reparation to their trauma. Part way through they meet innocent human beings that their acts of reparation are harming, sometimes those innocents die or become permanently attached to the "morally grey" character. The innocent then shifts their moral compass from morally grey to good as they finally get closure from their trauma and heal without the reparative actions. I understand the appeal, quite a few people in the real world struggle with trauma and narratives that mirror that trauma and the journey to healing as well as showing that violence, criminality and harm as wrong regardless, are extremely relatable to that population. But guess what? MOST PEOPLE AREN'T TRAUMATIZED. Most people don't have daddy issues like Zuko, most people aren't in toxic relationships like Harley Quinn with The Joker, most people aren't constantly surrounded by death and pain like action movie protags. Most people are normal. They lead normal lives, have normal families, and work normal jobs. And you know what else is normal? Being a good person. I understand that a lot of media, social and traditional, probably make you think otherwise. But seriously, go to your local coffee shop, sit around, and you'll be amazed at how few stabbings, robberies, murders, rapes and the like are happening around you. In fact, ask the barista if she noticed anyone do something kind today and they could tell you a bunch of things they've seen. Probably even things they personally did to be nice and kind to people. A vast majority of people are good. A small handful are evil and the morally grey are an ever vanishing population. Arcs are fine, but you don't need to turn a sow's ear into a skill purse every fucking movie because most people are already silk purses from the beginning and the sow's ear is kinda gross and uncomfortable to be around even if you constantly turn it into a silk purse. Yeah we liked Tony Stark but you don't need to turn WANDA into fem!Tony Stark. Wanda was a good person so making her do objectively evil things to then give her a weird redemption arc that shouldn't even be needed because she shouldn't have done the evil things or at least regret any evil things she did and make it right, is just stupid. Same with most of these morally grey characters nowadays. It's either evil people basically trying to convince us normies that they're right and we're wrong only to completely fail, or good people doing evil things for no reason and then asking for redemption for no reason and the audience being extremely confused as to why anything happened in the movie at all because it was entirely arbitrary. We just need good people who remain good people who make some human mistakes but still try their best to be good. That's what the video is talking about.
It’s not even about shows featuring a dark world. It’s about characters with good morals inherently not being able to survive in it. If the lesson of every show is that you can’t strive while being good, that’s how you get an ultra individualistic society where noone does good for the sake of it.
It's funny, but the coiner of the term 'Grimdark' bears out the need for the good guys to get wins in. The most widely popular stories in all of Warhammer 40k? Ciaphas Cain. A good man with a horribly warped self image, who gets wins and does the right thing no matter how much he denies his actual motive for doing it. The second most? Eisenhorn. A good man trying desperately to be good while facing the worst the setting has to offer, and struggling to remain a good person. He wins. Often not without costs and with terrible struggle. He makes sacrifices and second guesses his decisions. But the reader, if they could speak with him? Would reassure him he hasn't crossed the line, that he's still good, because he keeps worrying about if he has crossed it.
I had a similar conversation with my philosophy teacher. About the cyclical nature of history and people on a morality. My response was you choose to rise above it all. You chose to not do as everyone else. You choose to be a good person and you break free from the wheel of repeating events. You overcome the fear that binds people to do evil and be morally corruptible. And with this you perish because you've overcome the fear of death and have risen above all others. The lesson is complete and hopefully you found God along the way.
@@nickthepick8043 I was 25 at the time and I assure you almost no-one has thought about or knows this. Even the professor hadn't thought of it. In his mind it was an inescapable cycle of events. Because the thought of someone dying/put their life on the line to remain a good person was inconceivable.
Frickin' nailed it. I said as much months ago as a comment on the arcane video: I'm legitimately bored of morally grey characters. They're way overplayed, unrealistic, and teach an unhealthy worldview. When everything is grey, there's no contrast! Any visual artist worth a dang knows how important contrast is to making a visually interesting piece. Why can't hollywood understand that the same is true of writing and of character? There are so many "good-guy doing good things" scenarios hollywood won't explore because they think we don't want it. That's simply untrue.
I think it's more than that they think we don't want it, at the risk of sounding conspiratorial, I think Hollywood has, for some time now, been deliberate in the overarching messages and themes they are trying to champion in their films. Good people who understand right and wrong are inherently harder to boss around and manipulate than people who are in it only for themselves.
I only care when it’s the villain. Morally grey characters are still fun because it’s interesting to see where a person draws a line when consistently written. Villains though are always “Saddam Stalin von hitlerstein ethnically cleansed a nation…but his dad hit him and he has generic mental health issues 😢.” Because somehow society has equated that if sad things happen to someone them choosing to be absurdly evil makes it morally ambivalent.
They're way overplayed, unrealistic, and teach an unhealthy worldview. What about 'Gray' characters are unrealistic? There have been multiple IRL people who were gray, read any Western Biography. You got robbers becoming lawmen in other states; valued in their community but still marauding in a county a few miles away.
@@zatchbell5678 what I've never met a person who is easy to manipulate and boss around that is bad never like you got it the opposite way morally good people you can manipulate them far easier because you can use there moral code against them believe it or not it's easier to break someone who has morals it isn't like movies or TV shows where the good guy will not change no matter what they can be broken
Hollywood: “No one should ever have firearms!!!” Also: *Several hundred thousand depictions of when firearms being incredibly useful for defending one’s or others lives* 🎩 🐍no step on Snek! 🇺🇸🇭🇰
@@JorenMathews are you misconstruing Hollywood actors and the characters they play in movies? Also, most people are advocating for stricter gun regulation not an outright ban
I think people would rather watch characters that make them feel good about themselves than be forced to consider their own goodness through the lens of an ideal. It reminds me of the classic homer/Flanders dichotomy. Homer hates Flanders because he makes him feel worse about himself. Ideally, he'd recognize Flanders good qualities, imitate them, to a degree and become a better person overall. Since Homer is comedically immature, he does none of this and decides to hate on a good guy. This Is exactly what these cynical writers and viewers do when they produce and defend this kind of storytelling.
CS Lewis once said: “Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” That sums up the core message of this video, and I'm very glad you decided to make it. I once had to present a speech about moral relativism in the media for a college class, and I ended up speaking far too much simply because I had so many examples I felt that I needed to flesh out and explain. I tried to communicate my appreciation for certain characters like Luke Skywalker (pre 2010s), Silver Surfer, Optimus Prime, Spider-Man, Captain America, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Caesar (from Planet of the Apes), Aragorn, Black Bolt, and others. They were interesting. More than that, they were inspirational. One of the reasons I liked these characters is because they all exemplified values or attitudes which reminded me of my parents. Nowadays, I don't see much of my parents on TV. My favorite Arcane character turned out to be Vander. He was a broken man who seemed to be bearing the responsibility of protecting his people, even though he had done awful things in the past. I appreciated the way his character was written, even if he was only used as a short-lived plot device for everyone else's development. A solution to this moral deficiency might be to train young people in these morals (which, of course, should start at home, but what do I know about the modern home?) and then encourage them to create. Create movies, books, art, whatever they can do to bring more real good into the world, even if it goes nowhere. My friends and I have had several lengthy conversations about this topic (similar to the lengthy essay I'm typing into the comments) and we feel like we should do some kind of animating or story-writing ourselves, even if it isn't very much. Can't change much by talking, right? Thanks for the video.
@@idunno7516 The main character goes through a heavy and emotional journey from a naive boy, to a rage filled child soldier and eventually growing into a mature adult who finally understands war, being very similar to Vander. It's a series about Vikings and I could never do it justice in a comment section, but it has some of the greatest character writing and development I have seen in years. I urge you to at least give it a shot.
This video and comment made me really appreciate how I grew up watching and playing morally good characters like Spider-Man and Sonic, and then watched more morally ambiguous stuff like Breaking Bad when I got older Now I'm someone who hopes for the best but can also expect for the worst, and I think that's a fine way to balance things out since how pessimistic and nihilistic the world is now
I chuckle at the notion that good and bad don't exist when clearly they do. And most of the people that make this claim do so because they have chosen to do bad things and don't want to be punished for doing them.
I always ask these same people "Is murder bad?" And if they say "Yes because it's good for our species," or some supposedly innate biological desire, and then I ask them "Why is it good for that desire to be good?" And they always remain stumped.
Evil can't be scientifically defined: it's an illusory moral concept that doesn't exist in nature. Its origins and connotations have been inextricably been linked to religion and mythology. Spencer Reid Also is it murder when animals kill prey?
I feel the exact same way. The same people seem to think that there's no such thing as objective good and evil, and when I ask someone "is human trafficking wrong?" and they say "Yes, it is wrong", then that proves that there IS some objective morality in reality. Not everything is morally objective, but not everything is morally relative either.
It's rather simple to explain. People are falling for the oldest sin in the book. Sloth. It takes 5 minutes to do irreparable evil, but it takes effort to be a good person or do a good deed or create something good. People are lazy to build up their character, so when they see characters that are similar to them they identify with them. Characters made by equally lazy people, mind you. And so it goes, down the ever shrinking spiral, until it reaches a singularity of evil.
@@christophermonteith2774 Sloth is the most damning. Not to mention that Tristitia - Melancholy AKA Depression is folded into Sloth. Sure, Pride, Envy, and Wrath are predominantly active, Sloth is Passive.
As bleak as I believe our world is, we need stories about righteous heroes to inspire us. I remember the 2006 era of Bionicle novels I read as a kid. The heroes, the Inika, were morally good characters but what made them intriguing was their struggle to live up to the grand legacies of the heroes who came before them-- even dealing with inferiority complexes at times. This is the kind of internal conflict that can make "morally good" characters interesting.
Never thought I'd see a Bionicle reference in a place like this, but I totally agree. And you may recall those characters were not perfect. They had their own flaws and they argued and they failed. The struggle to do good is interesting, and I'm starting to think those who don't find even a little joy in a piece of media unless someone is dying or suffering is either a psychopath or just a bitter a**hole.
In my case, I remember something something similar; namely Hero Factory which had heroes that are very much like you described. Additionally, I have also remembered Bionicle's heroes, well before I started reading about the exploits of Menelaus and Odysseus.
I’m curious how old you are, that you think the world is so bleak. I grew up during the Cold War, with a father who fought in WWII, and I would not say the world today is bleak at all. Yes, there are a few people trying really hard to stay in power by “othering” minorities and spewing hatred, but it seems to me that overall this is a very positive time, especially compared to 50 years ago, with the specter of nuclear annihilation, or 90 years ago(when my dad was a kid) with the Great Depression and the threat of another world war,
As an old shadowrunner i can tell you most of these morally questionable characters simply arent. They arent questionable they are villian protagonists. You have to be heroic to be a hero.
This whole video proves why Top Gun: Maverick is so insanely popular right now. People are getting tired of the dystopian dark worlds being lived in by morally questionable dark characters. We’ve seen it so much over the years that when we finally see a movie about morally good characters fighting the good fight for what’s right and get that happy ending it feels incredibly refreshing. It’s why a lot of movies (not all but a lot) from the 2000s and before have this aura of innocence surrounding it. The world has always been dark but the movies have helped give us a proper escape, but these days it’s like a lot show creators want to bring all the harshness of the world into our living rooms 24/7. The problem isn’t that shows and movie like this exist, the problem is that there an increasing number of these shows and movies like Top Gun: Maverick are getting few and far between.
It was also why I really enjoyed a Denziel Washington action movie called the Equalizer. He was always a good person and never faltered from it. He took violent action when needed, but he was always a good person, even down to the fact that he didn’t swear and encouraged his co-workers not to swear. (Not that the movie avoided profanity from others), and would love to see more of that. And I say this as someone who loves villain protagonists. Though I also like when you can just admit and make the main character a bad person instead did a “morally grey” one.
Not to get too political but recent events really called in some heavy handed propaganda in major media conglomerates and the entertainment industry. There are too many examples to really be blind to it and this moral relativism is a channel to "enlighten" their viewpoint is good and what they believe to be bad. Then factor in the HUGE drop off in television viewership from the sub 50 year old demographic. The people who invested and own these industries in order to perform social engineering have been pushing this crap through the pipeline. They don't care if it doesn't sell, they don't care if 90% of people hate it. As long as they can influence 10% of the millions that watch it. It's a success to them even if its a net loss.
If everyone believes everyone around them is horrible, it allows them to justify any horrible acts against said "horrible people" because "they deserve it"
My favorite type of setting is "Noble Dark" or "World Half Full" A world with heroes that are morally good and strive to fix the world, and despite how dark and cruel or bad off the world is, still do what is right to try and make a difference. Even a "Knight in Sour Armor" ends up being fun, even if they're bitter about the world and soured about it, they still believe there's something worth fighting for, that a better world is possible, instead of merely being in it for themselves or falling to the dark and wanting to just be the bigger boot stomping around.
@@andrewryan4417 Yes, but I initially got into it from WH40K and seeing the Grimdark/Noblebright discussions on /tg/ and /v/ before finding the TVTRopes pages, in which I gleaned the terms "World Half Full" and ":Knight In Sour Armor" for the purpose of conveying it in a way one can read more and get examples easily. Love TVTropes.
Really FEE? Just because my room is filled with posters of characters who like to murder people, and I only go to costume parties dressed as villans like the joker, and every movie I've streamed in the past 10 years is about anti heros bucking the trends of society and doing the "wrong thing", and I only agree with news that tells me violent protestors are good people, and all my music is made by people who brag about having broken the law and is about commiting crime, doesnt mean I'm going to end up like a bad person. I dont need to see someone saying murder is wrong to know murder is wrong. Now excuse me while I go binge watch Dexter for the 12th time. So stunning and brave how he kills all those people.
Everytime I hear "good characters are borong" or "never struggle", I think of ruroni kenshin. A story about a man that was a former assassin in the Japanese Civil War that afterwards swore to never kill again, yet because it's his only means of causing change continues go fight. The tension in every fight, the inherent conflict is fascinating and proves both statements wrong.
I think of Spider-Man or Vash the Stampede, I also think those people who state such things just don’t look for the media containing such characters or simply ignore them.
This is why My Name Is Earl will always be one of my favorite shows. It's a comedy about a felon who finds out about Karma and realizes his life sucks because of all the bad things he did, so he makes a list of all his misdeeds and tries to make up for them, one by one.
I'd call the abundance of "morally gray" shows with lots of edge, gratuitous violence, etc. is a sort of "reverse escapism". People now, at least in the West, live such risk-free and privileged lives that they wish to be transported to a more brutal world through fiction, as their lives have lost most of their purpose.
I think, we had over the last decades too many good characters who where just very naive and wouldn't have survived 5 minutes without plot armor. That's really just boring to watch, because it's an absolute naive and unrealistic fantasy. I would like to see more morally gray and complex characters who are still good People like Tyrion Lannister from game of thrones, but instead the new "heros" are basically an adult version of King Joffrey.
7:23, in Harry Potter, Dumbledore proclaims that the other characters will soon find themselves confronted with having to make the choice between what is right and what is easy
Well, it depends on what lens of interpretation you're view it from. Nietzche also said "God is dead" but there was more context to it than just the plain, one-dimensional 3-word phrase everyone loves to quote. "God is dead within modern mainstream 'western' culture" is closer to the truth of it, but viewed through the right context/lens of interpretation, the original phrase makes sense under the larger intended meaning.
@mikeexits but when you realize that what is occurring in these places and throughout the world is fulfilled Prophesy that God had spoken before Hand. That "God is dead", saying is just ridiculous.
I've always liked the dyed in the wool hero types in stories. Guys like Captain America, Superman, Jon Snow, Luke Skywalker, etc I think people dismissing these characters as 'boring' have forgotten how to understand heroic storytelling. Nothing ever came easy to any of these characters. All people out of place or out of time and all alone but finding their inner Perceval and doing the right thing despite how easy it would be to simply turn to the dark side. When Batman kills the Joker, he's not Batman anymore. Thank you for this video. We need more of this.
I think people who say moral characters are inherently boring have a morality problem. Heroes aways were a fundamental part of storytelling and humanity in general, and the fact there are people who hate the Idea of virtuous characters is a sign of the problems in our society.
They haven't "forgotten" anything. They hate and despise decency wherever they see it, because they hate themselves most of all. ... and they hate themselves because they are aware of their own moral inadequacy and cowardice. Whereas we see the most inspirational in a Perceval, they only see an accusing finger of judgement; but it is only their own finger pointing back at them.
a lot of morally good charecters in the way your talking are just absurdly powerful to compensate kind of mitigating the risk thing which makes them boring. Superman is just absurdly powerful and is boring to watch like oh gee I wonder who is gonna win or what superman will do when he fights his villains.
@@fbibarbie The thing about superman, though, is that he can do whatever he wants. He could end all war, famine, global warming, but he doesn't force himself on the people. Superman is a great character because of the emotional, mental and moral dilemmas he goes through. Like in "All-star superman". He's dying, but still just keeps doing what always did despite his own problems. And in the end, he died. But he set an example.
Just like someone of mediocre intellect will have a hard time writing the story or dialogue of a genius, someone who is not a very moral person themselves will have a hard time writing truly good and moral characters. I too, at best, can only write about the person that I wish myself to be...
@@fosphor8920 GREAT Supplement to this video, cause it explains the reason why many look at Reality as if it's all dark: 'Our Popcorn Dystopia' by 'Some More News'.
"Good character's aren't interesting" --- *WORDS SPOKEN BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER WATCHED DR. WHO* "Never be cruel. Never be cowardly. Never eat pears. Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind." -- The Doctor
Super Man. My favorite comic character of all time. No one has really known how to write him for decades. For me it's never been about how powerful he is and that he can do anything. It's been that he IS so powerful yet never compromises his morality.
Me too, Superman is not only powerful, he is compassionate, honest and noble, so much so that he doesn't seem human, that was exploited very well in Superman III when he had to face himself. But there are people who hate it because it is not Super Politically Correct, they would like to deconstruct it, I will tell you that at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia there is a science fiction story contest annually that is later published in a volume, the UPC Anthologies , in one of those anthologies there was a depressing and sinister account of Superman, now a private detective after falling from grace by killing a man, in reality the man was a pedophile and his last victim is in the same room after being abused, Superman gets really angry and uses too much force, after that he becomes a private detective enduring hatred and prejudice about him, he is hired by a pharmaceutical company to investigate a very strange murder, which seems to have been committed by someone super powerful like himself, In the end it is revealed that everything is related to him, the pharmaceutical scientists had been studying him for a long time and one of them makes him see that he should not exist, he tells him that they wondered for months if the color of his eyes was related to his powers and they fell into account that his entire origin story was ridiculous, he is Caucasian, if he had fallen in Africa or Asia he would have been treated like a bug weird, the fact that a couple of childless farmers found him is absurdly convenient, the answer is devastating, he is not from another planet, he is not a real living being, he is the creation of unknown entities that made him in the image and likeness of the humans to mix with humanity for unknown purposes....
"Being a good person is a heck of a lot harder..." True. I agreed with the points of this video. It makes it tempting to embrace Luddism. Ever fantasize about what life might be like without Hollywood and the internet?
@@neo-filthyfrank1347 Good isn't about working for others without receiving anything in return, being good is about having the power and opportunity to commit evil and choosing to do good instead in spite of that temptation.
@@ghoul4748 Good isn't even a coherent concept and it certainly is not binding in any capacity. The argument the video presented about "good being harder" is not only wrongheaded from many angles but also makes no sense as motivation for someone to be good. Torturing yourself to death is also hard, that doesn't mean one should do it.
nope it's not you ever actually done something bad to someone else when you been brought up to be good it isn't a good feeling while your doing it and it a takes a while for your brain to wrap around what you just did and find a way to move past it
I just have to say as sort of a counter argument, yes morally good characters can be well written, but I enjoy watching Tony Stark’s journey from a narcissist playboy to a selfless hero more than I enjoy watching Steve Rogers stay morally good through thick and thin. It makes me feel like as a flawed person (as we all are) that I can keep working at myself to become a better person. Edit: Just to clarify, I didn't say Steve was uninteresting, but in my personal taste I found Tony's arc more entertaining BECAUSE he was flawed to begin with. Also, technically Tony might have had good in him to start, but it doesn't negate that we was acting like a bad person to start.
I saw a comment that went like this: The most selfish guy turned out to be the most selfless (Iron Man) And the most selfless guy turned out to be the most Selfish guy (Capt)
Well, tony stark is still heroic. Just flawed. And Steve Rogers goes through his own character arc as well. He learns that just because something is lawful does not mean it is good. Steve is an interesting character. Just because he doesn't have some "fatal flaw" or whatever doesn't make him not interesting.
@@coppermoth6069 When the Accords was made he dint think once about civilian causality whatever his reasons be. When he heard from Tony that Tony was keeping Wanda he got all emotional cause he wanted to clap then cheeks. Second, in the end he went to the oast for his selfish desire to clap agent Carter cheeks. Third, he meber told Tony Bucky was the one behind his parents tragic encounter cause he wanted to clap Buckys cheeks. Fourth, he failed in clapping any cheeks
The morality I play video games with growing up has effected me in my adult life. I believed that helping other people would be the longer and more challenging route, but in the end was not only better for the other person but for me I kinda stopped watching tv after the age of breaking bad because I thought tho breaking bad was groundbreaking, other shows were using the bad guy lead for ratings and revenue and the interesting but evil lead was becoming over saturated
Crazy being told that video games make people violent when there are stats for RPG games that show a large majority of people choose good options over evil ones. Personally I find it very hard to do "evil playthroughs".
Bad characters are meant to highlight the opposite of good, to be a problem, to have someone to blame for all the problems. The problem isn't the fact that bad characters exist. They can really enhance storytelling but it's problematic when the villains become shown as heros without any actual transformation.
the Thanos “plan” makes even less sense when you remember, oh yeah, he has a magic glove that controls reality. why not just make MORE resources rather than kill half of everyone? also, how does an infinite universe not have infinite resources? i mean, beings travel across the universe all the time, going this way and that all throughout our infinite universe, but we need to worry about over population and running out of resources... in infinity? that’s just dumb. seriously, who the hell wrote that?
It stems back to the 1980's. Of course, the original source material involved Thanos trying to seduce Lady Death via Malthusian Ethics as opposed to being on a crusade about halving the entire population of the universe.
@@kylekatarn5964 I know his original origin and they should kept it hat way. Being a simp for Death at least makes more sense than what they did in the movies.
While I disagree with a lot of points you have raised so far, I have to agree on one thing. This “””Morally Gray””” bullshit’s got to go. It is overdone, uninteresting and tiring. If all your characters are “morally gray”, you are left with the same gray slop instead of a beautiful picture drawn in ink.
@@brainderp808 Really? I didn't get the vibe that they were trying to make her sympathetic or good in Multiverse of Madness. Seemed to me they were trying to do the Anti-Villain theme, someone who wants nice goals, such as motherhood, but uses ultimately bad or evil means to accomplish said goal. I can't really think of a time where they tried to say she was sympathetic. They just made her a person instead of a comic evil villain. That movie isn't great and suffers from dozens of other problems, but I think any sympathy for her is a product of our empathy for someone wanting motherhood, not because the movie forced us to be sympathetic towards her. At least, that's how I remember it.
Which is why Top Gun: Maverick may be one of my fave films in the last 5-10 years. Straightforward, not agenda pushing, easy to understand characters and a good Ole fashioned hero's journey
@@SirBlackReeds And yet it's one of those rare cases where the world is a better place because if happened, the sequel nobody asked for and yet we all needed.
Evil characters can be liked because they have valid motivations, but a show should always express why their believes are wrong and have them face consequences
I discovered this channel almost 2 years ago, and videos like these are I why I subscribed. Good storytelling has always had an effect on me, whether it is a video game, movie, or TV show; and character morality has often been a determinate for me liking a character or not. The overabundance of amoral or evil protagonists is actually one of the reasons I quit watching the Walking Dead in 2016. One of the last moral compasses, Glen - my favorite character, was killed; and most of the surviving characters were amoral or evil. I did not like the survivors any more, and the series' situations were too frustrating to watch.
So true. If the TWD social media didn't make the post that people who didn't accept LGBT as morally right to leave the franchise, the destruction of all moral characters would be the absolute last straw.
One thing that disturbed me greatly when I was still watching it was that so many people idolized Neegan. I would see this attitude in comment sections attached to videos or articles about the show. Rick, Herschel and Glen were my favorite characters; I watched maybe two seasons after Glenn got killed off (and hardly remember them, aside from how much I despised Neegan), but the show - and the characters - had changed too much. It seemed to shift from an emphasis around the positive moral strength of characters like Rick, Herschel and Glenn, to the moral bankruptcy of those such as Carol, Eugene and Neegan. It's hard to recall at exactly what point, but I remember thinking that the writers had turned even Rick into a character that I hardly recognized. Since he was the only character I really cared about at that point, I just stopped watching, and haven't seen an episode since.
Oh yeah, Glenn's death was the reason why I stopped watching it too. My dad watched a few more episodes, and then he had to stop. It was just getting too bad.
I've always thought the people who idolize Scarface and Walter White are either not intelligent enough, or not morally-grounded enough to understand that some media is made as a "cautionary tale" and not something to aspire to be. I've always loved movies and shows depicted this way, but it's the heroes that I have always seen myself in and related to.
You know something? Whenever I see someone calling people "not intelligent enough" whilst at the same time claiming they're intelligent, be it in the comment itself, or in their username, I can't help but think they're anything but. I'm writing it here for no particular reason, definitely.
My favorite kinds of characters are good characters who manage to stay good despite the attempts by the story to make them bad. The movie “Death to Smoochy” is a great example of this. The main character manages to remain a good man despite the attempts of his industry to make him “accept reality”.
The TV shows that I would encourage everyone who hasn’t watched already is Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. It taught great values in a very mature way.
@Roberta Andreea I meant the animated cartoons. I do not like the live action movies. Zack Snyder did a good job in Watchmen though. His greatest strengths are edgy movies for moody teenagers. He does not understand DC characters at all.
Audiences: "Thanos was right, we all deserve to die -- so long as it's not me" "Life is horrible, death is a welcome release" "The world is a horrible place, humanity is irredeemable" "Good people are boring" "No one is morally good, all of us will do the same bad things under the same conditions" "The world is too complicated for standards" "Good and bad don't really exist, anyways" "Nothing matters" God: "Hi, kids....so...how's that 'new secular enlightenment' going?"
@@agsilverradio2225 'Partially agree' works just fine, since the 3rd one isn't about inherent goodness, but 'irredeemable'. God definitely doesn't think that about people. Inherently, all people are fallen, flawed, but everyone has the possibility of being redeemed. Well, maybe. We hope.
I don't disagree with all of those. You can argue that we're all inherently bad in a way. I just don't think most people actually know how to handle that realisation. The pursuit of perfection is not something we're suppose to achieve. It's not something we're supposed to give up on either. We see enough what happens when people refuse to believe they have a single bad bone in their body.
@@viktoriyaserebryakov2755 I think you meant "perfection" isn't something we're supposed to achieve, not "pursuit of perfection". Otherwise I agree. I'm not American, but this makes me think of the "pursuit of happiness" in the American constitution (I think? Maybe some other document?). Those people know whats up w the human condition. They're poets. Edit: forgot a word.
I recently rewatched The Two Towers again, and Sam’s speech resonated with me more than it ever has before. A hopefulness while staring into the abyss that things can get better. A message everyone needs to hear these days.
It can once people stop finding excuses to be shit for no reason not to mention actually acknowledging that their actions were only good for some and not many or all.
Thomas Sowell and Hans Rosling also proved Thanos wrong. The key to population control is a society where men and women can fill their lives with things besides having kids, like a thriving first world society.
It might be better to frame it as "moral aspirations" than "moral code". If you bake it into the character's wants and objectives, it becomes a personal thing to the characters.
This is spot on. Most shows today pander to the fantasy of ultimate "freedom" without any consequences by creating a nihilistic world where everyone is a selfish, shortsighted and animalistic bastard; and is rewarded for this behavior. Increasingly, these hyper-realistic "fictional" stories are set in the real world and showcase "realistic" characters - such that a young, impressionable mind may not be able to discern fact from fantasy and may end up believing that the amoral values so gleefully paraded and embraced in the content they consume are really a reflection of the state of the world they live in. This would (and has to some degree) in turn create a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
A good example of a morally good character being more interesting is aang vs kora. aang is so torn and emotional about the things people want him to do that he knows to be wrong and him finding solutions that fit within his morality was one of the best parts of the show. as opposed to kora whose actions are constantly justified as the greater good.
Aang literally prioritized his own Airbender morals over the lives of innocents, he completely refused to kill Ozai, without understanding that his existence means more people will die in war. Korra’s an idiot, but at least she wanted to do her job
@@projectpems8304 Aang did do his job. If it’s his job to keep balance then he gets to decide how to handle Ozai. There was nothing wrong with his decision to not kill Ozai as long as he was prepared to handle the fall out of said decision. What’s even more interesting is that everyone wanted Aang to kill Ozai yet no one else wanted to kill Ozai because of “the balance.” So you could argue that everyone else’s reluctance to kill Ozai in place of Aang is just as ridiculous.
If I could “like” this video a million times, I would. Anybody who has talked with me about TV in the past ten years has heard me express these very ideas. The dearth of Good protagonists in our media is simultaneously baffling to me (I don’t want to spend time watching horrible people do horrible things) and worrying. Cultural rot is real and well underway, and it has real consequences. Thanks for everything you’ve done with this series and everything you’ll do moving forward.
@Damon Gargoyle Do you have 0 Intellectual Intgerity, to the point of Obviousness where you can literally not even watch videos that may or may not disagree with you maybe?
@Damon Gargoyle - You're utterly mischaracterizing this video. I'm amazed how people want to hand-wave this away as superficial moralizing. This isn't "Think of the children," it isn't condemning video games and rock and roll and D&D. It's asserting very clearly that stories are instructive, and we should be mindful of the lessons they're teaching. That isn't a carpet dismissal of harsh content, or even challenging protagonists. It's a caution against protagonists void of a more compass.
@Damon Gargoyle - Hard disagree. Insert midwit meme here. There's a shallow way to defend moral protagonists, and there's a deeper way, but they point in the same direction. Media needs Good protagonists. Society draws lessons from the popular narratives we craft and consume. And if we're proliferating stories of "heroes" void of personal virtue, then we'll see fewer of those people in society. Protagonists who win by exploiting and hurting others will popularize exploitation and harm. Cultural rot is real, and one of the chief threats to our civilization.
In simple terms you are what you consume mentally; physically ; emotionally consume positive things You become positive Consume negative things and you become negative.
this is the reason why the characters in lotr and the hobbit are top tier morally good characters especially how men are represented in this stories, men don’t hurt others or become violent when they get overwhelmed, men comfort each other, hug, cry, connect, form bonds and friendships, i also love how aragorn is a gentle person despite being being a ranger and ultimately a king, characters have priorities and personality despite being kind and heroic too.
This is why Zuko is a popular character. He so desperately wants Ozai's approval but Iroh gives him a moral compass and in the end he choses to ditch Ozai and help defeat him because he realizes that his father's approval is worth less to him than doing what's right. Zuko was always a good person who was just blinded daddy issues.
The best thing about it is even though he betrayed his uncle he got everything he wanted, most other shows would make the character regret taking such a selfish action but this show didn’t. Which makes Zuko going on the good side even better.
@@Drawingsagespaz But he did regret betraying his uncle. He says so to Azula right after doing it and to The Gang before he reunites with Iroh.
@@fun_police8011 that’s true, but I’m mostly focusing on the show giving him what he wanted instead of punishing him for picking his desires over morals. It makes Zuko an even more powerful character for doing what is morally right even if that means throwing everything away.
That's Phoenix King Ozai for you
Can we also take a moment to talk about Iroh here?
Who hates Iroh? Who says Iroh is an uninteresting character? NOBODY! We all love Iroh. And we know he is always striving towards doing what is morally correct.
What we can also gather as we get pieces of Iroh's background story is that he wasn't always like this. He was a bad person back in the day, who killed, and did things far worse than what Zuko ever did. The lost of his son as a direct consequence of his own actions was Iroh's slap back into reality and ever since he has ALWAYS strived towards being as good of a person as he possibly can be.
He never lowers himself to Zhao's level even when he's angry, and treats his own robber very kindly.
He is a character with a very dark past and background story. but is still seeking to do good and setting a good example by BEING this example himself. He took responsibility for his own failures and thus aimed at doing better.
And Zuko learned that from him and did the same.
And Aang is also a character with a very good heart, but he makes mistakes, cause he's a kid... His journey though isn't to become bitter. His journey is to admit to his mistakes, knowing that there are things in life that hurt and not everything is easy. And STILL stay true to his moral principles leading into the final battle and the final solution.
Somewhere along the line, people started conflating "intelligence" with a casual hatred for humanity.
We have lost our way
"Casual", my ass. It's an active and focused hatred.
Cynicism as well.
You nailed it dude. For some reason, the overly critical and overly negative among us have fooled people into thinking theyre smarter. Which is strange, because when you look at extremely brilliant people in our society, and historically, many of them were extremely optimistic and helpful humans who worked hard to make the world a good place.
@@SuperSneakySniper so very true.. it's ironic too, they deemed the morally good people as cringey while they themselves are acting cringe by calling themselves the "intelligent"
Lord of the Rings is the best argument against the whole "good characters are boring". The whole books is about good characters fighting against evil and temptation. Aragorn is a hell of a character and is as much as a boy scout as golden age Superman.
The issue with LotR is that movies are great, but the books are some of the dullest and boringest books I've ever tried to read. Had to drop halfway through, during the description of battle of isengard, because it was just shite.
@@rubbers3 Then you can just watch the movies, no need to read the books if you don't enjoy it
@@rubbers3 tell me you are an ADHD zoomer without telling me you are an ADHD zoomer.
@@deriznohappehquite Books without pictures are HARD!
@@deriznohappehquite Tolkien waxes poetic about things that are not important to the story. I've read Anne freaking Rice, the queen of purple prose, and I struggle with LOTR.
"There's some good in this world Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for".
"Sam! You can't swim!"
I was expecting them to use Sam in this video, but they used him in another one.
I can't carry the ring Mr Frodo...but I can carry Yooooou.!!!
"There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil."
This right here.
A character morally good ≠ Mary Sue
A character who is flawless (or everything they do wrong has no negative consequences or even positive consequences) and has the universe change its rules to suit said character = Mary Sue
Those two concepts are not the same people
Even the most powerful characters in fiction didn't usually have the world change rules to suit them,but they instead have to obey the rules of their world.
GREAT Supplement to this video,
cause it explains the reason why many look at Reality as if it's all dark:
'Our Popcorn Dystopia' by 'Some More News'.
@@darkzeroprojects4245 Featherine Umineko is a Mary Sue side character.
People who write Mary sues think all male heroes are Steven Seagal characters and don't see the struggle they go through, just the situation, and the resolution.
EXACTLY. Dante from Devil May Cry doesn't pretend to be a virtuos person. But he still help people EVEN if he doesn't get paid.
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."
Ursula K. LeGuin. She knew what was up.
I still remember the Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas being an optional reading in high school, and every year that passes by, I get more and more grateful to my English professor for making us read that one.
God I miss her. She was a wonderful light even in her last years when she was in poor health. I was lucky enough to meet her at a SF convention in the 80s and strike up a friendship.
Did you know she was also an avid gamer? She loved the idea behind the City of Heroes MMO
Wait a second. I thought the problem with our current immoral age was that we all value pleasure too highly.
@@justinhart2831 Maybe the search for pleasure isn't really a search for happiness. Or maybe stories of evil and pain give us some pleasure we can't get elsewhere.
@@smartalec2001 the point is, what should I feel bad about?
"Good character's aren't interesting." - No. You're just bad at writing interesting characters.
I think a great counter to that argument is shounen anime there are plenty of protagonists who are basically wholey good while still being interesting and loved such as Edward Elric, Monkey D. Luffy and Naruto Uzumaki
They need to go watch Everything Everywhere All At Once🤯
@@wilbert9567 Naruto I find especially interesting as he basically starts out as a delinquent and then changes overtime to someone people highly respect.
He gets a ton of flack too due to actually wanting to help people. It's kind of hilarious honestly in restrospective that some people hate that.
Ehhhh. Yes and no. The public is very cynical and someone like a Superman would jive with the public. I mean look at Batman and especially the joker the movie. Cynical takes on characters and did millions
If I have learned anything of late, it's that morally grey or evil characters are not inherently more interesting than morally good ones. I'd argue the opposite. Anyone can have a goal. Having principles that stand in the way of that goal and force you to try and work around them to achieve your goal without compromising your ideals? Literally baked into a moral characters nature. Evil characters are just those who have lost, or twisted their principles. So they are the second most compelling. While Amoral characters are dead last, as they literally lack any kind of nuance, or guiding principle beyond their end goals. They are essentially the most brain dead possible character template, plus you get the bonus of stroking the egos of the smoothbrains who think amorality = moral complexity.
It's easier to write a gritty character in dark settings than writing a beacon of light in a world of darkness.
Nah. I don't think either is necessarily the case. Good writing is tough writing.
Nah...Good writing is tough..it can be on good gray or bad characters
idk that kinda seems pretty interesting though. Like how would it play out?
I say dark setting need both. I see artistic beauty in contrasts.
Because that beacon of light will just end up blinding the people who live in that darkness, further keeping them in the dark.
Aside from literality, a gritty character in a dark setting is fitting because they prioritize survival, and understand how to navigate the environment they are placed in;
having a morally good character in that dark environment would often times result in them being made a martyr where their principles and beliefs would die with them; and if by some miracle they don’t die, their optimism is often viewed as naivety with no way of making their ideals come true or serve the many;
Which is why most people will follow the gritty character, as that character have experienced what they experienced and can empathize with them; in contrast to the good character that would relay positive words intended to raise their spirits only to fall short ignorant of the people’s circumstance and conditions.
“To destroy a society, you must first sever their roots.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
@Damon Gargoyle What is absurd about this video?
@Damon Gargoyle Please explain your point.
@Damon Gargoyle Read what? I don't see any other comment from you..
@Damon Gargoyle Sorry, it seems your second comment has disappeared.
@Damon Gargoyle i disagree with this quote :)
You know how people like to say, “Evil isn’t born. It’s made”
Well, the opposite is also true. Good Characters aren’t good just because. As we get older, it can get harder and harder for us to maintain some kind of morality. We get hurt, our faiths and morals are tested, etc, but movie media likes to portray that as only ignorance or stupidity when it should also be the molding of a good person. People like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien did not just appear out of thin air. They had to go through trials in their lives before they even started writing anything, and it was only after their trials that they began to both document what they learned in their works and also predict the future of how society will act today (Read Abolition of Man for example. People thought it was ludicrous for a time, but the book is extremely similar to the attitude of certain people now)
I think what you said about how we get tested as we get older can actually explain why people are so interested in the morally grey kinds of characters. Many people can relate to that, and I can say that some of my beliefs and morals have changed from like 5 years ago. A lot of young adults feel the pressures of everyday life and all the bad news and end up becoming more cynical. I know I have. But it also explains why I love Spider-Man and Obi-Wan so much. They always do the right thing. I saw some one on twitter said characters like that could be unrealistic, but that’s not necessarily the point. The point is more so the idea to always do the right thing. And that’s why I love those characters. If I were Peter in Spider-Man 2, idk if would have went back to being a superhero after seeing how my life got so much better. But seeing Peter still do it and persevering fills me with a lot of hope and happiness. It makes me want to do that same thing. Mark, from Invincible, had just went through the most traumatic experience of his life because of his father and told him “You dad, I’d still have you” with tears flowing down his face. Seeing characters like that make me feel like I want to persevere myself. It’s quite a powerful emotion when I sit back and think about it.
I 100% agree with everything he said in this video. Sadly, those negative criticisms he received are from people who are victims of this societal decay.
In a world where abortion is considered moral, polyamory is "normal", and "child love" is an "orientation", it's no wonder we are at where we are.
People are suffering. They've lost their sense of right and wrong. Their sense of good and evil. Their sense of truth and fiction. It's increasingly become obvious this is all a symptom of post modernism and the break down of the nuclear family in our society. More and more people suffer from existential despair and fail to realize the cause of it all.
And unfortunately, it's not just the culture that creates this environment. Our government only encourages and exacerbates this framework by feeding into it and validating it.
But the thing is, yes, it's nice to see an always good character but if they just stay the same good all their life then we start to get the impression it's less that they're pure and more that they never changed as a person. You can be a good person all your life but that doesn't mean your views cant change and your morality evolve.
But aren't a lot of hero's mainly good because they were presented/given an opportunity to be better? For example Demon Slayer. Tanjiro was only becoming better because his sister was manage to survive and get back her senses and Giyuu allowed them to get the help they needed where as someone like Gyutaro and Daki only had struggle and disapointment and in the end it was a demon that saved them. Or how about Naruto, he didn't turn dark because Iruka was the first to start believing in him and was next given chances to prove he is capable of being better but Gaara wasn't and he later became a heartless monster. In short, hero's are presented with a better chance cause someone was there to help them while other's were basically doom to fall cause no one was there to save them when they really need it. Do you think Captain America would still be Captain America if he was never given that serum?
Yep, a good person either needs respect (which is well ment ignorance) or a good understanding of it's surroundings and others perspectives.
I’m kind of getting burnt out on dystopian stories. Whereas it can be inspiring to occasionally see a character do the right thing despite the world overwhelmingly being wrong, sometimes I miss a “Star Trek” type world where, despite our flaws, we eventually turned out ok.
Me too man. Just like I'm burned out on Marvel films, I'm getting tired of these dystopian films.
As dystopian stories become more normal, a dystopia becomes more normal
What about Percy Jackson? Those characters all have fatal flaws.
Percy: Loyalty
Annabeth: Pride
Thalia: Temptation
Nico: Holding Grudges
All those characters had these flaws but overall the learned to control them and they still are heroes
Same here. I despise dystopia, unless it is used as a cautionary tale such as 1984 or Brave new World. I never understood the appeal of The hunger games, or the giver, and a show like squid game positively sickens me
@@peskylisa but as the host says you can't judge other's for example if I killed someone because they caused a close family member of mine deep trauma both physical and mental. Does that make me a murderer? If your a homeless child and you sneak into hotels on stolen credit cards because homeless kids are 4 times more likely to be assaulted or killed go look at a homeless shelter you'll hardly see kids there because they get beaten out and have to sleep out in the cold.
Nowadays entertainment is full of immorality.. and strangely it's a popular thing... I hope groups of people will act on toxic entertainments and make it wholesome
Yeah…I don’t typically trust groups of people
Morality is overrated. Whats funny though is that these leftwing activists always cry about morality when it comes to "social justice".
They're practically the ones lobbying up to make them in the first place, so no, I don't trust them.
I wouldn't trust Hollywood's definition of morality too given their biases and how it hides and cloaks the fact that their industry isn't moral to the slightest.
I would trust the indie movies' grasp on morality if it's formal and has been up in a standard most can agree with.
Modern morality - "There is no such thing as objective good and evil"
Also modern morality - "I'm going to protest that x is unfair"
Because modern cosmopolitan Liberalism has embraced cognitive and moral relativism. As they abandon traditional views and belief that have seen humans endure and prosper, even in the worst of times... The modernist's new God is mainstream media propaganda... These types have no idea that they are cattle being led into a slaughter house, in the not so distant future.
To be fair, this isn't inconsistent, one could be a non cognitivist.
@_____ The thing is objective morality in fact does not exist, but we shouldn't act like that. When i say we, i mainly think of general population who does not think about these topics too deeply because when you hear that there is no objective morality and you dont think about it deeply, you will end up with the conclusion that there is absolutely no meaning, that there are no borders, that everything is "right" and you will have mass surge of ideologies, very destructive ones who wont think that way of themselves. Sure, everything is fine, if you want to end up with a civilization that is digging its own grave. What we are seeing today is actually a pretty scary form of nihilism that has spread across the nations.
@_____ Those are not objective morals. Objective morality, if existed, wouldn't care about conditions of earth or humans or whoever, it would just be there. If morality changes due the circumstances, then its not objective.
Morality is a human issue, created by humans. In nature, you really don't need it. The purpose of the species is to prolong it in any way possible, to reproduce, to eat, to survive. Different beings have different means, social beings have to socialize and cooperate in order to do all from the above. So the "good" thing that we can do is whatever improves and prolongs the life of a human civilization. The "bad" thing is the reversed. Pretty simple concept.
The problem is people are not too happy with it because we effectively became too conscious, we started asking questions that really were never intended to be answered, they dont have an answer.
In this case, ignorance to certain degree is really a bliss. But since we are in the information era, thats impossible, we cant use ignorance as a shield anymore.
We need to re-learn the art of living, we need to learn to change a relationship with these cursed questions without answers, because, ultimately, they are the source of destruction.
Acceptance is pretty hard in this case, but really thats the best cure, accept reality for what it is and live it.
Nihilism is expected, i see it as a bridge towards something better. Nihilism in my opinion is mostly caused by scientific discoveries and generally growth of science over religion and mysticism. Religion, in one way or another, was a very firm foundation that humans all around the globe could rely onto and get some comforting answers since forever, but in the relatively new history, we started losing the touch with it because obviously, majority of people realized its bullshit.
It used us well. It caused a lot of trouble too, but it was very useful for keeping the humanity sane up until this moment.
Science is not a good enough replacement, so we need to find new ways of coping with reality.
GREAT Supplement to this video,
cause it explains the reason why many look at Reality as if it's all dark:
'Our Popcorn Dystopia' by 'Some More News'.
“Everyone is a moral relativist until they get punched in the face” - Mike Tyson, probably
Wasn’t expecting to see you here
Not that simple, mate. If I get punched in the face for bullying or punching someone unprovoked, maybe the right answer is not punching back as much as I may want to.
Like it or not, many if not most moral decissions aren't black or white and believing only you know the "right thing to do" can lead to you doing a bad thing.
Well said. No one's a moral relativist when they think they're right and they're in a room full of people they think are wrong.
its a lie, its for people who can't control their emotions
@@theboombody Just for a second, imagine its the reverse: you're a patriotic, loudmouth American in the 2000's who fully supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, surrounded by resentful refugees o said countries. The only thing stopping them from tearing you to pieces, besides law enforcement, may be your ability to either shut up...or be diplomatic, listen to their viewpoints and consider that maybe your posture is wrong, while in reality no one may fully be in the right.
That's moral relativism for ya. The ability to consider you're a finite human being and that your "stone-set morals" may be wrong, therefore being capable of not tearing someone else to pieces over moral disagreements. That's the basis of the modern society you folks take for granted, ignoring how we killed each other back when we believe we were could definitely not be morally wrong ever.
The idea that morally wholesome characters are "Mary Sues" is nonsense. That's not what the term "Mary Sue" means. That's not a mere difference of opinion.
However a Mary Sue is often what results from the attempt to create a morally upright character by individuals whose moral compass has been corrupted.
MARY SUES JUST WANT TO HANG OUT WITH THEIR HEROES.
To say it like that is to imply doing the right thing is a god-given talent, and not something anyone could choose do.
@@howardmurphy8019 Maybe they don’t like good characters because it makes them feel bad? Seeing bad characters probably makes them justify their immorality?
Edit: typo
@@hideoeduardokojima8340 Bingo
This is why it's such a loss that high school kids never read The Classics in literature. They don't understand the importance literary stories of history or Philosophy.
What do you consider to be those?
I would also add Matt Murdock to the list of interesting and heroic characters my favorite line is when he refuses to kill Kingpin and he said with all of the passion he could muster "You don't get to destroy who I am"
I think doctor who would be a good example too. (Until recent seasons at least)
Agree
Him and Nelson
this is what I hate about heroes though I would rather have an antihero cause they get rid of those bad guys permanently sure the daredevil is good but damn I wanted him to kill sometimes like come on you can still beat up lesser criminals but these real big threats shouldn't be left unchecked
Excellent scene
Even as someone who really likes much darker stories, I would have to agree. Most modern dark films don't just depict flawed people in an awful world, but people who are downright evil, and they're the ones who we're supposed to root for. Hollywood seems to have forgotten that for a flawed character to work, they have to have strong redeeming qualities or a motivation anyone can understand, even if the actions taken are what we would consider to be too far. John Wick was a man emotionally destroyed by his years of work as a hitman, and we can understand to some extent what effect the amount of lives he's taken can have on someone. He then lost his only anchor, the only thing keeping him sane, his wife. Plenty of us can understand the pain of losing a loved one, and it's only compounded when they were someone you relied on for emotional support. He didn't just go on a murderous rampage because he hated the Russian mob. He did it because he had nothing left in his life but a desire for revenge against the people who had taken what little he did have left, and he didn't even care if he lived or died. He was never meant to be a good person, he was meant to be a broken, self destructive man who finds a reason to live by the end of the movie
While reverence for heroes is important, so is empathising with bad characters. I like dark stories. So long as there's either A) at least a side character to serve as a positive example that the show is self aware of or B) the creation or cause of a villain we can empathise with. Empathising with people we're suppose to see as enemies is as equally important as glorifying those who would combat them, lest we pursue inevitable and cyclical conflict with those we can not agree with.
I liked the Joker movie overall but I do get worried by the comments I read where the people are actually happy he murders people like “that guy had it coming.”
@@viktoriyaserebryakov2755 Exactly my point. That's why Generation War is one of my favorite pieces of film ever. Not just because it's amazingly written with incredible acting and showing a side of the war we never see normally, but because most of the characters start out as avowed Nazis, and that becomes a huge point of conflict for them throughout the series. Wilhelm struggles with reconciling the Prussian military ideals his father raised him with, with the Nazi ideology his generation was surrounded by. Charlotte struggles with her duty as a nurse, being to help people, conflicting with her duties to the Reich, duties she once relished performing. There's also some interesting thematic elements in the characters. Julia, the Ukrainian Jew that that Charlotte ends up recruiting without knowing she's Jewish, is basically Charlotte's ideal self. She has a strong, loving family, she's selfless and will help the people who want her and her family dead, simply because they are people, too. A simple thing like that adds so much more weight to every decision made by both of them. Friedhelm is basically the distillation of the "just following orders" narrative, while Schneider is the polar opposite, a hardcore ideologue able to rationalize the murder of a child because she was probably Jewish. Wilhelm is meant to show what was likely the situation for the vast majority of German soldiers. He falls somewhere in the middle, between the two extremes of Friedhelm and Schneider. Viktor, the group's Jewish friend, also serves to break down the glorification of the partisans that fought the Nazis. They were fighting people worse than them, yes, but they were far from good people
I forget what comic it was
Some girl with horns
She finds a plastic bag, and then proceeds to beat the crud out of a man working a register who had the same logo as the bag
And I was just like
How do I cheer for this person
Again all these beliefs come from our own selfish interpretation of what is good, and what is evil, which is why it’s going to clash with those who find your interpretations to be the opposite of theirs.
Remember these films are written by people, and directed by people. These people have their own interpretation of what they deem “good”, and others will mock it by both this comment and video. You want your “good character”, you’re going to have make it yourself. Just don’t be surprised when you face backlash from the same level of beliefs you’ve displayed here.
My 3yo son starts every new show with "is he a good guy" or "is he a bad guy" question because even a child knows some things matter.
To be honest, a lot of kids just want a clear cut answer of the good guy and the bad guy. When rewatching stuff I liked as a kid as an adult I come to realise how I never usually understood why the bad guys were evil, I just knew they were and needed to be stopped. You don't question if the bad guy has a point or if the good guy is flawed. There is something nice about the simplicity of it.
Sorry but… what shows is a 3yo watching that star a bad guy?
@@ryonalionthunder The impression I got was he was talking about just any character in the show as they are too young to know a maon character is a main character. But I am just guessing.
Yes 3 year olds have a more simplistic idea of good and evil duh
Most kids shows have bad guys. Thunder cats had mummra, stingray had titan, Care Bears had coldheart, looney tunes had yosemite sam, dreamstone had zordrak, and iron man had mandarin
"Good characters are boring"
*laughs in Lord of the Rings*
Boromir: "Am I a joke to you?"
Spiderman is one of my favorite moral characters. He's talented, powerful and good but he's constantly losing. This is because he makes the moral, harder choice. it hurts initially but he makes his world better and he has his moral principle to stand by at the end of the day.
He is constantly losing because Marvel writers have a fetish to make his life a torture porn. They think that Peter being mature and facing new challenge in his life as a successful person and a family man “isn’t interesting enough” so they keep torturing him. That’s why we got ridiculous issues like One More Day, Gwen getting raped by Green Goblin who possessed Peter’s body, Peter killing MJ with his radioactive semen or MJ cheating on Peter. They can’t help themselves in making Peter miserable.
What’s the point in writing a superhero comic if the hero always loses and the villains always win? What moral message will the audience get from this?
@@nont18411 "What’s the point in writing a superhero comic if the hero always loses and the villains always win? What moral message will the audience get from this?" To teach people how to respond to failure. I think you can have a long running series in which the hero rarely wins. I think Charlie Brown is like that.
Peter Parker is just a guy that wanted to help. There is no other spiderman without Peter Parker who is still the most popular.
@@williamfinch9858 Except that Spider-Man always loses. If the point of the story is to inspired people, at least the writer needs to show the benefits from doing good, not just showing the punishment from it.
@@nont18411 It does not matter whether or not there are benefits from doing good. A good deed should be it's own reward.
There can be many nuances to the personalities of different moral characters. My favorite example is Sam from The Lord of the Rings, he is shown to be morally exceptional with his greatest trait being his loyalty. I believe that the problem right now is that it takes a truly moral person to write a great hero, and it’s hard to find people like that. You make a good point that there is a problem with depicting heroic characters as naive, every person that I’ve met with those characteristics is aware of the great evil in the world but they still strive against it.
“I can’t carry it for, you but I can carry you!”
jrr tolkien was a very smart man he also knew and interacted with the elites, his book can be read as a warning to all of us
I would modify not a truly moral person but rather a moral person who strives and struggles to be a better man then he is currently.
Dude, Sam is the best good guy, hands down.
I like the belgariad. the main group of characters all have varying views and moralities as befits a bunch of different people from differing backgrounds a princess, to a thousand+ year old sorcerer, knight, thef/spy, a warrior/berzerker, an escaped slave, to a religious zealot
you have characters like Silk(/Prince Kheldar) is a good guy in spite of him being a spy, thief, assassin, merchant, and smuggler. at one point he's asked about money and tells the main character its not about the money. money is only a way of keeping score it's about the game.
Durnik a simple blacksmith, he's rational and practical and always does his best at one point he is asked why he's working so hard at a piece for the underside of a local merchants cart and tells the mc even if no one else ever sees what I'm working on I will know its there and I will be aware of it every time I see this cart
sir mandorellen vo mimbre I think this quote describes mandorellan "My lance, my sword, and my good right arm stand ever at thy service, and, forasmuch as I am--as all the world doth know--the mightiest knight on life, I doubt not that the overthrow of these miscreant knights shall be but a light task, which I gladly undertake, and my skill and my prowess are such that, barring accident, I may confidently assure thee that their overthrow shall not do them permanent injury."
There are pleeenty of "morally ambiguous" characters that are also very boring.
It's funny that all the youtube channels I watch for media reviews, from all over the political spectrum (such as FEE, Lily Orchard and the Critical Drinker) all come to the same conclusion: writers can't write good protagonists if they themselves are not good people to begin with.
"Writers cannot write good protagonists if they themselves are not good people to begin with."
It's this. It's 10000% this.
@Ethnic Nationalist yes but there are good ones too, just bcuz some are bad doesn't mean all of them or most of them are generally "bad" characters, at the end it's about the execution not about the actual concept itself
I hated the protagonist of Squid Games. I tried watching it but simply couldn't. Every time I seen him outside of one of the "games", I hated every moment he was on screen. It was like that feeling you get when someone is doing something incredibly stupid in a horror movie, and you want to tell them "don't do that, you fucking idiot", but it was constant. My point is, if he was actually a good guy I probably would have liked him, but he was a deadbeat dad that gambled his mom's money away. How am I supposed to give a shit what happens to him? If Walter White was a total piece of shit before his escapades, I never would have finished the show. Sometimes you actually NEED your protagonist to be morally upstanding for them to be able to be empathized with, I think.
*COUGH* Hollywood is full of pedos! *COUGH*
@Ethnic Nationalist why there should be that way tho?
I don't know if you know much about Indian cinema but a life of criminality is glorified on a grand scale and we can see the kind of devastating impact it had on the personal conduct and behaviour of the youth.
I suppose it's the same in any kind of modern cinema. Characters who aren't labelled immediately as "cringey" or "need-to-mature" usually have some (too many) bones in their closet. And those who are kind-hearted, happy, positive towards life are left jarred by the time the dust settles. It's like, we are incapable of preserving something good. I started watching Korean dramas a year ago and immediately realized that apart from handful of romantic-comedy dramas (or movies) the number of cheerful characters or characters with a positive outlook of people around them (or society or life, in general) were near non-existent. Every character had to have a tear-jerking (and honestly, rather cliche) backstory. All of them went through some shit as a child or has something in their past that will eventually tear them apart when the truth is revealed. And that's what generally drives these stories. They were all so repetitive and boring, honestly, I correctly predicted the "twist" pretty much in every show I watched, doesn't matter what genre or what the storyline was. And they are mostly consumed (outside of Korea) by teenagers to young adults who watch these "dramas" for the most obvious of reasons-the pretty faces. I mean, just think back the last time one must have come across a person so fucked up emotionally, psychologically and try to picture what they looked like. That's not to say that people with trauma aren't beautiful but having to go through that much shit is bound to leave you either physically scarred or would be visible on your person some or other way. But I digress. God I hate how much negativity has been normalized, especially in movies/shows/music. I understand the world is shitty and brutal and hateful (I suppose) but if the reality is what I have to watch, I'd read a fucking newspaper.
@@anonme_ I mean, there are kdramas with main characters who do have a tear jerking backstory and yet are morally good. Older kdramas tend to have more characters with more positive outlooks on life, while newer ones are a bit more diverse. This isn't a bad thing. And positive characters can be found easily where you look for it. It's not a bad thing to portray characters with negative experiences who turn out okay in the end, since that's something people can relate to and it can give them hope.
1000 ~ 2011 no subs \ lists been rather 'silent' say more re "cinema"
\ youth
This is why I like My Hero Academia, the characters have genuine moral compasses and the whole show is about how they sacrifice and struggle to live by that moral standard. The show has so many beautifully inspiring episodes
also morally grey. the heroes aren't all out and out good, and the villains aren't all out and out evil. could be better balanced maybe
@Elizabeth Bennett "The heroes work for a corrupt government but they're always portrayed as the greatest good. It makes no sense that the government and hero society, which is fundamentally corrupt and flawed, is never challenged by a less corrupt group and ideology. All groups that challenge them are written just corrupt enough that you have to side with the heroes. It's sending a bad message."
this you said is a cultural diference, japan is a coletive society were the group is more important than the individual. therefore the govermment is always right in a moral frame of work. you has an outsider perceive to be wrong due to the focus in the your christian. even if you dont go to church or you may not even consider yourself a christian... it doesnt matter, cause the west is bluilt in a christian frame of work.
It's only deku and mirio and All might and does it for selfless reasons and the ones that has a moral compass.
@Ethnic Nationalist Good ol' Talk no jutsu.
@@bradastra6111 Japan is a unified culture, not a collective. Overall there’s no force into conformity as most Japanese understand societal implications of breaking cultural unity (given that they learn it as they grow up).
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."
Isaiah
It's crazy that something Isaiah wrote almost 3000 years ago is still that relevant. One could almost call it prophetic...
It's a vicious cycle: storytelling gets increasingly focused on nihilism and immorality, then all those who consume these stories internalize them and make the world around them more nihilistic and immoral, then as society loses sight of its morals and values, the aforementioned trend in storytelling becomes normalized and dominates entertainment media.
and the end result is you have violent leftists being killed by street thugs my cousin in PA saw 3 street thugs kill 2 woke leftists
when was the world better than this exactly?
@@EntelSidious_gamzeylmz I know I'm a typical 90s kid, but I felt the world in the 90s was better.
There's a virtuous cycle that goes along with that. The more people reject nihilism and immorality, the more people around them notice this and start to change their behavior and beliefs to something more positive.
@@AcesMaven hmm in the general scope I would say the 90s were the same minus the amazing wonders of technology
like there hasn't been a major cultural change, things are just going in the same direction
Goodness isn't boring. It's difficult. It takes effort. That's why Hollywood writers don't like it, because they feel entitled to have everything they want served on a plate to them with no effort. A nihilistic world where evil people prey on good is the ideal playground for these nasty people. They also value cheap shocks and think that having the Bad Guy Win all of the time is a good way to establish their artistic credentials. Unfortunately, having the bad guys always win is a good way to induce audience apathy, and have them turn elsewhere for their entertainment. No one gets shocked by the bad guy winning or by the entire cast being assholes if every show does it all of the time.
Hollywood writers have no idea what being good looks like, except an occasional glimpse from the outside.
There's no such thing as an evil person. Only people doing evil things. No person is so lacking in complexity that they can be one thing completely.
@lepapercastle i see your point. but that defintion is heavilh based upon one's perception. For example if i lied what does that make me? a liar. so if i did evil that will make me evil.
but as humans we are given the gift and responsibility of free will, where we are not bound to our past.
this whole discussion about morally grey to nihilistic characters i think points out the major flaw. it is not the fact it is boring but it is shallow. people with this mindset probably have a more simplistic philosophy than the naive hero. it is wuite hyprocritical in that regard
@@hecticfunentertainment9373 Free will? Cool. I will myself to spout wings and fly
@@lepapercastle see you had the free will to take my comment out of context. because i gave the context of free will
I'm not sure if I agree with the quote, "We need to believe that everyone is basically good." I think the better way to phrase it is that everyone is flawed, but we all have great potential to do good. When we act upon opportunities to do or be good, that is when person has good morals. Many people have the desire to do good and we must and encourage and put hope in our fellow man to act upon that desire; however, many deny those opportunities.
@GG BG Mathew 10:16 "Look! I am sending you out as sheep among wolves; so prove yourselves cautious as serpents and yet innocent as doves." Jesus Christ himself advised to be cautious about other people do, for our sakes so you are right from a Christian perspective. We need to be innocent, but also wise enough to grant people the benefit of the doubt without putting ourselves in danger. But assuming somebody is innocent until proven guilty is only fair and compassionate. Is what we should all aspire to be. Failing to behave like that is proven to produce a huge unnecessary amount of suffering.
@GG BG @GG BG Mathew 10:16 "Look! I am sending you out as sheep among wolves; so prove yourselves cautious as serpents and yet innocent as doves." Jesus Christ himself advised to be cautious about other people for our sakes, so you are right from a Christian perspective. We need to be innocent, but also wise enough to grant people the benefit of the doubt without putting ourselves in danger. But assuming somebody is innocent until proven guilty is only fair and compassionate. Is what we should all aspire to be. Failing to behave like that is proven to produce a huge unnecessary amount of suffering. That is why our entire judicial system is based on that idea, it is a miracle we even got to that point and we shouldn't lose hold of that unbelievable right. The right of being innocent until PROVEN guilty. I think that is what John Locke actually meant.
Aspiring to be a "good person" is supremely pathetic behavior as well as those who promote and vindicate such an endeavor.
@@troythedeconstructionist1382 What makes you think that? Would the world be better if everybody thought like that?
@GG BG
*John Locke WAS wrong. We are closer to evil than good (but not entirely either).*
That doesn't mean anything. The only reason that view can sustain itself is because life is not some universal covenant between critters for the assurance of each other's hedonism, but instead, a constant cycle of renewal between competing entities in an ever-changing, unstopping stage. This is what man and all other beings came from and this is the only context in which they can properly function. Nothing else is fit for them.
This is an accurate observation. Sometimes we miss the point of Evil characters because we respect them to much. They become the interesting ones, The way to fix this: Right better characters who have good morals, not uninteresting slapdicks.
listen in life every person has a sob story to tell you, something that makes you pity them, even the worst people, humans are prone to this. all of the things this guy says are bullshit, you dont have to dig very far into psychology to find that out.
but, if you would like there is a series called generation kill, it is about soldiers in the Iraq war, it is very realistic and portrays what people in such environments actually do, so if you find that you think the soldiers are assholes you will know you have a very naive look on humans and cant tolerate ACTUAL people.
Or they could make the protagonists equals to the hero, or sidegrades, having abilities the villain doesn't
Everybody respects and praises the villain until they become their victim, we even see this in real life history, people praise the revolutionaries as heroes, even going so far as excusing their brutality against the opposition, until the revolutionaries come to power and become dictators....this happened to Leon Trotsky, he passionately defended the brutality of the Bolsheviks in the second Russian Revolution, defended the systematic oppression of the Soviet Union even praising them, until they decided to paint a target on his back...it's one thing to admire the philosophical ideas of villains, even to somewhat understand them and relate to them, but to go as far as to say "they were right" or "Thanos was a hero"...yeah if Thanos was real, I doubt those people would be singing the same song especially if his actions directly affected their lives....you saw this with the pandemic as well, prior to the pandemic people were saying "we need a new plague, there's too many humans, humans are a disease" well the plague came, and those exact same people feared for their lives.
@@cyborgchicken3502 y'know what would be an ironic end? if said villains suffered the exact same way they made others suffered, and complained or cried for help about it
@@federalcasemaker I think you missed the point of my comment but you are right though
I was lucky. I grew up in the era when "the hero's journey" was still important. One director every film student should be made to study is Clint Eastwood. Just mentioning three. The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Unforgiven, Gran Turino. All are hero's journeys from different life perspectives. Well written, well directed, well acted. So you can do an interesting movie with an actual protagonist. It doesn't have to be nihilistic.
the Unforgiven is a deconstruction of the heroic tales of westerns that were done before. It was like anti western propaganda to the western when it was made.
Part of the point was that there were no real heroes
@@nuckygulliver9607 GREAT Supplement to this video,
cause it explains the reason why many look at Reality as if it's all dark:
'Our Popcoorn Dystopia' by 'Some More News'.
@@nuckygulliver9607 Yeah, Unforgiven is not a hero's journey, it's pretty much every grimdark thing this video is calling out. Clint hasn't exactly been a big believer in human goodness for a long time now, and that movie bugged me, because the characters weren't even realistically evil, they were more like going out of their way to cause the most pain and suffering possible, and the writers made sure that every death came with a laundry list of fear and regret, where realism would have most deaths pass by without last words at all. It's a similar thing with Game of Thrones. People write incredibly dark movies under the guise of "realism", when reality is almost never that dark, and that leads audiences to unquestioningly believe that humans are just that evil in reality. Even in the Holocaust, there were heroes, self-sacrifice, stoic deaths, faith, and little acts of kindness, and when you strip all of those little good things from humanity, it's not realism, it's misanthropy.
@@knightoffailure1869 You seem to forget that Unforgiven is actually based on a real person who was an outlaw and had a hard life. To be true to the story requires acknowledging that life on the frontier was harsh, particularly when vigilantism was the norm rather than the exception.
I will not comment on A Song of Fire and Ice (ie Game of Thrones for those who have not read the book it is based on) as I think the author lost his way since he hasn't even finished it.
As for the Holocaust, yes we like to remember the good guys like Oscar Schindler or Chiune Sugihara. But they were the rare exception, not the norm. There is a reason why the list of Righteous among the Nations is a small group. By and large, the banality of evil as Hannah Ardent observed was the norm. And if anything, that callousness makes the acts of those righteous few that much brighter.
@@davidford3115 I'm sorry, but you are absolutely, rather offensively wrong about the Holocaust. Not only is the list of documented heroes in that situation incredibly long (there were whole networks of people smugglers, neighbors risking everything to protect their neighbors, not to mention the actual soldiers who liberated the camps), but there are countless anecdotes about the prisoners within the camps putting the lives of others ahead of their own, and even aside from actual actions, many held an indomitable sense of hope that carried them through to the end. Little acts of kindness, self-sacrifice, and simple hope, whether in a higher power, or simply for its own sake, are not rare.
As for Unforgiven, it is not based on a true story, not sure where you got that from. It draws from some true stories, but to say it faithfully follows any of them to any meaningful degree is neither true, nor has it ever been claimed by Eastwood et al. It's a work of fiction, and while claiming to be realistic, it makes a conscious choice to go grim-dark, in some ways actively forgoing realism in order to portray the world as senseless and cruel. I've read plenty of actual western outlaw stories, and frankly none of them are as depressing as Unforgiven, because reality isn't grimdark. The American frontier was a place of violence, brutality, treachery, vice, skill, faith, loyalty, beauty, opportunity, love, hope, dreams, and innovations. The choice to focus only on the negative aspects, when the entire breadth of human vice and virtue was on prominent display, is deliberate and subversive, not honest, as you claim. It's just as editorial and moralizing as the idealized western of yore, but made into a cautionary tale of what not to do, rather than a heroic tale of what is good to do.
Not sure why you tried to correct me to A Song of Ice and Fire, when I was talking about Game of Thrones, the TV show, specifically (I suspect you just like correcting people, because there really wasn't any other reason to do so). I've read the ASOIAF books, and they don't have nearly as big a problem with grim-darkness, nor do they have as much reach among the general public, many of whom now believe that real medieval times were filled to the brim with brother-sister incest, sibling murder, completely unscrupulous leaders, and child killing, because they cannot separate grimdark fantasy from historical fact, which as a rule resembles ordinary reality, in all its shades of gray, and not some idealized black or white.
Frankly, you sound like someone who gets most of their history from movies. Try reading some firsthand accounts of any of these events. I think it'll be eye-opening how much more human and less grimdark the people of our past really were than you seem to assume. Little acts of kindness and love are speckled across all of human history, even if Hollywood doesn't feel like it's thematically appropriate to include them in their grand tales of heroes and villains and rise and ruin.
Don't let media form you.
Problem solved.
Have resolve. Your an individual. If you let negativity into you that's a choice.
Teach your kids, lest media will.
I feel like "Breaking Bad", "Joker", and "Game of Thrones" WERE cautionary tales. When you really look at them, pretty much all the morally-wrong characters in those works ended up dead or far worse off than they started. People just got so swept up in rooting for dubious anti-heroes or villain protagonists that they lost sight of that.
Idk about game of thrones but I can say breaking bad was definitely a cautionary tale that people dream about being like being people dream about money and power
Exactly, and Jesse, while not perfect, is clearly the moral compass of the show
Im scared that people forget about Cautionary Tales exists.
Nobody talked about fairy tales, and only popular shows to ship some characters instead of learning.
Was Jon Snow ever morally dubious? The man who refused to have pre martial sex because he was concerned about making a bastard? And this because he knew how bastards like himself were treated? The man who stood up and fought three men for bullying a friend? Sounds like a hero.
Thankfully Game of Thrones does have a "good" moral character throughout, Jon Snow, but they neuter him towards the end.
Smiling Friends is a great antidote to the nihilistic type of modern media we get nowadays.
It’s about two friends who try to make people happy and they usually succeed. The show isn’t afraid to depict bleak situations but they always end happily with a good message.
One of the reasons why Smiling Friends blew up in popularity was because its happy outlook was a great breath of fresh air in a society that is growing too nihilistic.
The characters are likeable and the people the titular Smiling Friends help end up in a better position than they were before.
This entire video and the comments within it are strikingly unintelligent and cringe.
@@neo-filthyfrank1347 For what reason?
@@TheAzureNightmare Because
1. The general ideas about morality and the desire for it in media is wrongheaded and pathetic
2. Seriously getting upset or glad at the prospect of consuming media, and seeing this consumption as an end in it of itself as opposed to creating something is a tragic way to live.
Yeah, but they don’t care what happens to other in order to complete their task. So do the ends justify the means.
@@neo-filthyfrank1347 shut up with the mental gymnastics
I found the one and only "Dracula" novel by Bram Stoker to be an inspiring Gothic horror tale of human who descend into darkness to fight a physically and psychologically intimidating antagonist before they emerge in the sun. Jonathan Harker nearly goes insane with a brain fever, but he musters up courage to claw his way out of Dracula's castle. Quincey Morris and Dr. Jack Seward donate their blood to Lucy, even though she declined their marriage proposals. Arthur Holmwood is devastated when Lucy becomes a vampire but he doesn't shirk at the moment he must stake her, allowing Lucy to "rejoin the angels in heaven". Dr. Van Helsing becomes frustrated when Dracula thwarts their plans, but he soldiers on doggedly as the elderly wise mentor of the team. As for the wonderful "Madam Mina", she is a thoughtful and intelligent woman whose presence inspires everyone around her to fight on and protect her from the encompassing darkness.
Right! The original book is better than any of the movies. Genuinely scary but the morally good are triumph. It's an inherently biblical narrative tho and Hollywood hates Christianity and Christian morals.
Sometimes it feels as if Mina was just using people blindly but yea she’s cool though
The original Dracula was far better than I expected it to be when I read it. I was reading the Lord of the Rings for school and I couldn't help seeing comparisons, like how the vampire corruption was similar to the corruption that Sauron's rings caused. Mina as a moral person inspiring others reminded me of the way Tolkien wrote women like Galadriel and Arwen. Mina even asks the others to be forgiving towards Dracula, whilst stopping his evil, similar to how Frodo wanted to forgive Gollum, because Gollum could barely help himself.
@@MegaKnight2012 Excellent analysis, well said. I didn't realize how much Mina's forgiving nature was similar to Frodo until you pointed it out. In both stories you have an unlikely band of heroes who volunteer on a mission to save the world from a dark antagonist. Good literature allows us to expand our minds and see patterns and resemblances in other great works.
@@Rosefire Very astute
Glorification of a character is extremely personal.
No one is writing these stories with horrible events and terrible people knowing they will be glorified.
It's a personal choice.
Starting in the 1990s, there has been a trend towards darker "grittier" stories where everyone is morally grey, as this was seen to be more realistic and more intelligent storytelling. It's not, it's just as skewed as a 50s cowboy show with white hats vs black hats, or the comically-evil villains of an 80s cartoon. But I think over the last 5 or 10 years, writers in Hollywood have genuinely lost the understanding of what a hero *_is_* - now half of their protagonists either have a completely-flat character arc, or the origin story of a supervillain.
I think another issue is the constant grind of pumping out movies and merchandise with the corporate model of avoiding risk and maximizing profits. Writers have become jaded and consumers have become nihilistic.
To be fair, the 1990s and 2000s also had their fair share of uplifting lighthearted optimistic fun films as well and a few of those still hold up to this very day. Cases in point: Rugrats in Paris, Shrek, Anastasia, and The Prince of Egypt.
So what’s your solution Russ? That every character come from a backstory of your average Joe? Wouldn’t that also be considered “boring”, by your own definition?
Most humans like complexity, because humans are rather complex beings who all don’t share the same backstory. Now if you dislike stale character design, that’s one thing, but that depends on the creators to actually make their characters interesting, and not just some guy, who’s also a good person, with ethics, blah blah blah.
What exactly is your interpretation of what makes a good person? Because not everyone will share the same beliefs bud.
@@malbasedvalentine3210 Did you eat a lot of paint chips as a kid? Darker and grittier is *_not_* more complex, it just appears that way to nihilist morons trying to justify their anger at- and hatred of- the world.
The complexity comes from showing what a morally good character has to give up, the sacrifices, the hard choices to do what's _right_ rather than what's _easy_; or an evil character having to go beyond what they thought they were capable of doing when their scheme doesn't go to plan.
You certainly don't write a *_hero_* as someone obsessed with grief/loss, or with a lust for power/money/revenge.
@@russwilliams4777 humans are morally grey people, only do civilizations create perceptions of what makes you good and others evil. I for one know this concept, but I personally don’t care to follow it to the T. I will still point out my perceived evil, because ultimately I want to win so my vision of progression takes fold.
The problem is that people are getting “Good characters” confused with “Perfect characters”
Honestly this entire video makes me think extremely about Vinland Saga, the manga basically tells this entire story of wanting to become a better person and how hard it can be to do so in a world that believes that the answer to all their problems is violence, if anyone reads this I'd highly recommend reading it and giving it at least to the 3rd arc where it's true message begins to take shape.
Yeah, and the meaning of Thor's words: A true warrior doesnt need a sword.
Dude. You just sold me on Vinland Saga, I just saw the first couple episodes and lost interest. I will pick it up again now, thanks.
"I have no enemies"
@@JavierGomezX it's great. the anime was just the prologue. After that the character development that thorfinn gets is some of the best i've read.
@@JavierGomezX season 2 will be fucking bonkers just you wait
“You don’t understand this character is deep and super intelligent”
Meanwhile the character: blatant nihilistic atheist with overconfidence
“Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.”
― George Sand
Absolute cringe
@@neo-filthyfrank1347 i mean "art for the sake of art" is the kinda logic that made "Cuties". a product devoid of the nuances of what actually making it would be in relation to the message we are told it attempts to convey purely due to the fact that on paper it might sound artsy and out-of-box
@@_Sage967_ I'm no expert on cuties but from my understanding it's the exact opposite. A show made for the purpose of feverishly pushing some ideological agenda intimately tied to politics and society.
@@neo-filthyfrank1347 "Art for Art's sake" comes across as "form over substance" and Cuties perfectly encapsulates the common negative form of the to an egregious degree. yes, cuties is meant to push a political agenda BUT if it CARED about its message it would not be "Cuties" because the execution is in direct contradiction of its message in the eyes of (hopefully) most people. The form and image of what the movie was to be superseded any potential concerns that may have ever been brought up and it was lauded and praised by people not simply for its message but for how it conveyed that message despite doing so flying in the face of its themes.
TL:DR what i meant was that the message of Cuties didn't seem to matter to the creator or else it wouldn't be made like it was. any movie could've had this theme but in order to stand out, especially as a small-time film it was given a particular form and thus the theme wouldn't matter beyond guaranteeing a certain level of support, or at least that's how ive always interpreted its situation (not much of a TL:DR though)
@@_Sage967_ You've lost me. Are you suggesting that the show's message was NOT an endorsement of the sexualization of children? Because I had in mind that it very much was.
But more to the central point art does not need any reason to exist, and the exploration of all manner of ideas and notions within it is certainly good, but art is not to be subservient to crafting works that endorse whatever values happen to be the societally accepted at the time. The function of art is a lot more versatile and profound than trying to effect "positive" social change.
This is just my two cents, but I feel as though the reason “morally grey” characters are so mainstream nowadays is because our outlook as a society has become increasingly jaded and nihilistic. People nowadays are simply unable or unwilling to see the good around us, and we are forgetting what it means to be happy. There are many factors behind this, but I think the biggest one so far is the flood of negativity spouting from social media and other sources like it. Just my opinion.
I think the biggest problem is that the world actually is really shit, and nobody is fixing it, and right now it's actively getting worse. But because that doesn't affect a lot of you, you get to just act like everyone is whining.
@@pleasegoawaydude Whining doesn't help does it? The only thing making humanity striving still until now is the positive mindset it has and the possibility of a far better future. Remembering the bad of the world reminds us the good we can do to subdue it, and keeping death in mind can help us knowing what Life can truly offers. However, embracing this apocalyptic and nihilistic mindset of negative morality and the lawless nature of men is not giving us a chance of embracing that good future. We are instead spiralling down to the abyss of despair because we are willing to do so. People whine and they will throw themselves down that moral abyss.
Yeah but if issues of the past never got fully resolved and keeps repeating in the present then we're never gonna have actual peace.
@Jacqueline Davis You don't know what the word whining means lol
@@kirionj.a.w1147 I have to disagree with you on this one chief. The US government is the biggest example of this where a previous led republican owned senate made it so 3 republicans were voted for the Supreme Court through their SHOULD-BE ILLEGAL way of not letting a hearing during Obama’s presidency.
Edit: I should probably clarify but I’m talking about the sentiment that people are just letting the world become bad. Otherwise I mostly agree with your comment! 😂
This is why spider-man is amazing, he’s a paragon that has gone through so much tragedy and has done bad things but still tries to do the right thing even when it hurts
Yeah I mean look at Insomniac’s Spider-Man or the movie No Way Home, in one of them, his choices and actions lead to a multitude of events that makes the first mission of the game make more sense, in the other, his decision to erase/rectify people’s memories with a constant add-ons to his list causing a multiverse wide event to happen, only once he lost his aunt, did he know what he had to do, make the right choice. In the game, save everyone else to develop a vaccine, in the movie save the lives of the villains. This is why Spider-Man will be one the best example of a true hero and a good person on the side.
I maintain original Toby MacGuire Spiderman is best. Keeps getting kicked down, but seeks to always be good.
@@12345Micki Absolutely agree. People want to revise his character as corny or dorky, but only Tobey's Peter Parker fills me with that feeling of warmth and hope to the fullest extent. Also hurts the hardest when he has such huge shortcomings throughout the story!
Then you have Miles, bro is ready to destroy the universes of any number of other Spider-Men as long as he spares himself the pain of the normal course of events
Batman too
Audiences crave characters who are flawed and have an arc that gives them at least a chance at redemption. Frodo wasn’t born a hero, he became one. Tony Stark was an alcoholic, misogynist arms dealer who became a hero. Characters who aren’t flawed aren’t relatable.
Agreed wholeheartedly, I wish there were more comments like this here.
How was Tony Stark mysognystic? Stop throwing that word around. He is a Playboy doesn't mean He is mysognystic.
Therefore it is disappointing when said characters continuously and actively throw away said chances again and again all the time.
You can still be a good person yet not born a hero. Peter Parker is a great example of this. Yeah he's human so he doesn't always perfectly make the most moral choice. In versions where he's a teenager in highschool he frequently attempts to use her powers for social leverage with his peer group instead of focusing on the actual issues at hand. That's the whole point of his live interest Mary Jane. She's not just a sex symbol and eye candy for men. She's Peter's anima, the judging female constantly assessing his social worth as a human being and as a potential mate.
But despite his social desperation and sexual proclivities, Peter was always still a Good person. He never MALICIOUSLY chooses to gratify his own desires over the needs of others. And in fact, when he even CONSIDERS doing so he is severely punished by the writers. Tries to use his power to impress Mary Jane? Now's she's in danger and it's his fault. Trying to impress his classmates? Well now the bad guys have the upper hand because he was preoccupied with trying to look cool. Instead of this being considered "unfair" to Peter because we "expect him to be too perfect" people LOVE when Peter is punished for trying to gratify himself at the expense of others because he LEARNS. He feels GUILTY. Because HE IS MORAL. What's even better is that Peter STARTED OUT as a good kid. But grew up in a world that punished goodness, his parents were killed in an effort to take down Red Skull, Peter was bullied for years for being 'square' and a 'nerd', he makes friends who constantly try to use and abuse him because they see him as an equal loser who has no where else to go. Peter by all means should be an emo anti-hero the shoots up his school and gets put into a suicide squad-esque project by the US government after the spider bites him. But despite all of the shitty parts of his life, Peter is a moral person who makes good decisions and tries his best if not perfect as a hero. He maintains his morals no matter how shitty things get and constantly maintains his position as "Your friendly Neighborhood Spiderman" no matter who watches or what consequences that brings. And kids especially love Peter.
We also see the exact same thing in his heir, Miles Morales (Ironically MORAL IS IN HIS NAME) who also is constantly trying to apply morality to his decision-making if sometimes it's difficult on him as a human.
You don't need to be born a hero to be a good person and in fact there is a prominent philosophy that most humans are born good but the evils of the world corrupt them and if you keep those evils away from the child and prepare them to prevent them from succumbing to evil, they will remain good. A lot of heros started out as just good people before ever becoming heroes with the call to adventure just being a call to fight evil. Good people are flawed because they are human, but being human doesn't prevent you from being a good person.
Another great example is Miss Honey from Matilda. Miss Honey is a good person, she loves her students, she is practically the only ray of sunshine in Matilda's life, she cares deeply about all people and is constantly punished for her good nature by the horrible characters in the book, save the kids. But you wouldn't call Miss Honey a mary-sue. It's not that she's just given everything she needs to fuck up her aunt's life or that she wants to do so. In fact, it's her being a good person is what makes her the biggest victim in the movie because unlike the other adults who either don't care or actively make things worse she tries to love everyone and everything. Even her enemies. And that makes her extremely vulnerable to them. Yeah she can verbally tell them off but she could never raise a hand to even defend herself from her fellow humans even if she wanted to. Because she's a good person. But again no one looks at Miss Honey as flat, boring or worthy of scratching criticism despite her consistent morality. She wasn't born to be a hero but she literally saves Matilda from a life of neglect and suffering despite Matilda being the one with the psychic powers.
Yeah having an arc is cool and I think media has done a good job of creating characters who do bad things for good, Often extremely personal and trauma informed, reasons and then realize what they were doing was self gratifying and not actually a good thing. Think about Zuko from ATLA. He was chasing and even trying to kill a group of kids just to please his father and resolve his family trauma. However as the show progresses he realizes that all he was doing was gratifying himself. He wasn't doing this because he actually believed in the war or the cause or The Fire Nation Empire. It was personal.
Most "anti-hero" or "morally grey" characters boil down to that. Something traumatic happens to the character, instead of healing and moving on, the character wallows in their trauma and seeks to commit some kind of action, usually criminal, violent or immoral, as reparation to their trauma. Part way through they meet innocent human beings that their acts of reparation are harming, sometimes those innocents die or become permanently attached to the "morally grey" character. The innocent then shifts their moral compass from morally grey to good as they finally get closure from their trauma and heal without the reparative actions.
I understand the appeal, quite a few people in the real world struggle with trauma and narratives that mirror that trauma and the journey to healing as well as showing that violence, criminality and harm as wrong regardless, are extremely relatable to that population. But guess what? MOST PEOPLE AREN'T TRAUMATIZED. Most people don't have daddy issues like Zuko, most people aren't in toxic relationships like Harley Quinn with The Joker, most people aren't constantly surrounded by death and pain like action movie protags. Most people are normal. They lead normal lives, have normal families, and work normal jobs. And you know what else is normal? Being a good person.
I understand that a lot of media, social and traditional, probably make you think otherwise. But seriously, go to your local coffee shop, sit around, and you'll be amazed at how few stabbings, robberies, murders, rapes and the like are happening around you. In fact, ask the barista if she noticed anyone do something kind today and they could tell you a bunch of things they've seen. Probably even things they personally did to be nice and kind to people. A vast majority of people are good. A small handful are evil and the morally grey are an ever vanishing population.
Arcs are fine, but you don't need to turn a sow's ear into a skill purse every fucking movie because most people are already silk purses from the beginning and the sow's ear is kinda gross and uncomfortable to be around even if you constantly turn it into a silk purse.
Yeah we liked Tony Stark but you don't need to turn WANDA into fem!Tony Stark. Wanda was a good person so making her do objectively evil things to then give her a weird redemption arc that shouldn't even be needed because she shouldn't have done the evil things or at least regret any evil things she did and make it right, is just stupid. Same with most of these morally grey characters nowadays. It's either evil people basically trying to convince us normies that they're right and we're wrong only to completely fail, or good people doing evil things for no reason and then asking for redemption for no reason and the audience being extremely confused as to why anything happened in the movie at all because it was entirely arbitrary.
We just need good people who remain good people who make some human mistakes but still try their best to be good. That's what the video is talking about.
As a an alcoholic, misogynist arms dealer myself i feel this
It’s not even about shows featuring a dark world. It’s about characters with good morals inherently not being able to survive in it. If the lesson of every show is that you can’t strive while being good, that’s how you get an ultra individualistic society where noone does good for the sake of it.
Or the ultra gregarian societies (Japan) where an individual is stomped and buried to the ground
It's funny, but the coiner of the term 'Grimdark' bears out the need for the good guys to get wins in. The most widely popular stories in all of Warhammer 40k? Ciaphas Cain. A good man with a horribly warped self image, who gets wins and does the right thing no matter how much he denies his actual motive for doing it. The second most? Eisenhorn. A good man trying desperately to be good while facing the worst the setting has to offer, and struggling to remain a good person. He wins. Often not without costs and with terrible struggle. He makes sacrifices and second guesses his decisions. But the reader, if they could speak with him? Would reassure him he hasn't crossed the line, that he's still good, because he keeps worrying about if he has crossed it.
I had a similar conversation with my philosophy teacher. About the cyclical nature of history and people on a morality. My response was you choose to rise above it all. You chose to not do as everyone else. You choose to be a good person and you break free from the wheel of repeating events. You overcome the fear that binds people to do evil and be morally corruptible. And with this you perish because you've overcome the fear of death and have risen above all others.
The lesson is complete and hopefully you found God along the way.
It's good to know that some people still understand this. It's something I want to capture and prove otherwise in my graphic novel project.
@@nickthepick8043 I was 25 at the time and I assure you almost no-one has thought about or knows this. Even the professor hadn't thought of it. In his mind it was an inescapable cycle of events. Because the thought of someone dying/put their life on the line to remain a good person was inconceivable.
Frickin' nailed it. I said as much months ago as a comment on the arcane video: I'm legitimately bored of morally grey characters. They're way overplayed, unrealistic, and teach an unhealthy worldview. When everything is grey, there's no contrast! Any visual artist worth a dang knows how important contrast is to making a visually interesting piece. Why can't hollywood understand that the same is true of writing and of character? There are so many "good-guy doing good things" scenarios hollywood won't explore because they think we don't want it. That's simply untrue.
I think it's more than that they think we don't want it, at the risk of sounding conspiratorial, I think Hollywood has, for some time now, been deliberate in the overarching messages and themes they are trying to champion in their films.
Good people who understand right and wrong are inherently harder to boss around and manipulate than people who are in it only for themselves.
I only care when it’s the villain. Morally grey characters are still fun because it’s interesting to see where a person draws a line when consistently written. Villains though are always “Saddam Stalin von hitlerstein ethnically cleansed a nation…but his dad hit him and he has generic mental health issues 😢.” Because somehow society has equated that if sad things happen to someone them choosing to be absurdly evil makes it morally ambivalent.
They're way overplayed, unrealistic, and teach an unhealthy worldview.
What about 'Gray' characters are unrealistic? There have been multiple IRL people who were gray, read any Western Biography. You got robbers becoming lawmen in other states; valued in their community but still marauding in a county a few miles away.
@@zatchbell5678 what I've never met a person who is easy to manipulate and boss around that is bad never like you got it the opposite way morally good people you can manipulate them far easier because you can use there moral code against them believe it or not it's easier to break someone who has morals it isn't like movies or TV shows where the good guy will not change no matter what they can be broken
@@ryanthereaper5032 you are very naïve
Hollywood: “No one should ever have firearms!!!”
Also: *Several hundred thousand depictions of when firearms being incredibly useful for defending one’s or others lives*
🎩
🐍no step on Snek! 🇺🇸🇭🇰
definition of irony.
How does Hollywood say no one should have firearms?
@@krustyknight2943 By and large you'll find Hollywood types supporting gun control (for everyone but their private security of course).
@@krustyknight2943 What rock have you been living under?
@@JorenMathews are you misconstruing Hollywood actors and the characters they play in movies?
Also, most people are advocating for stricter gun regulation not an outright ban
I think people would rather watch characters that make them feel good about themselves than be forced to consider their own goodness through the lens of an ideal. It reminds me of the classic homer/Flanders dichotomy. Homer hates Flanders because he makes him feel worse about himself. Ideally, he'd recognize Flanders good qualities, imitate them, to a degree and become a better person overall. Since Homer is comedically immature, he does none of this and decides to hate on a good guy. This Is exactly what these cynical writers and viewers do when they produce and defend this kind of storytelling.
CS Lewis once said: “Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”
That sums up the core message of this video, and I'm very glad you decided to make it.
I once had to present a speech about moral relativism in the media for a college class, and I ended up speaking far too much simply because I had so many examples I felt that I needed to flesh out and explain. I tried to communicate my appreciation for certain characters like Luke Skywalker (pre 2010s), Silver Surfer, Optimus Prime, Spider-Man, Captain America, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Caesar (from Planet of the Apes), Aragorn, Black Bolt, and others. They were interesting. More than that, they were inspirational. One of the reasons I liked these characters is because they all exemplified values or attitudes which reminded me of my parents.
Nowadays, I don't see much of my parents on TV.
My favorite Arcane character turned out to be Vander. He was a broken man who seemed to be bearing the responsibility of protecting his people, even though he had done awful things in the past. I appreciated the way his character was written, even if he was only used as a short-lived plot device for everyone else's development.
A solution to this moral deficiency might be to train young people in these morals (which, of course, should start at home, but what do I know about the modern home?) and then encourage them to create. Create movies, books, art, whatever they can do to bring more real good into the world, even if it goes nowhere. My friends and I have had several lengthy conversations about this topic (similar to the lengthy essay I'm typing into the comments) and we feel like we should do some kind of animating or story-writing ourselves, even if it isn't very much. Can't change much by talking, right?
Thanks for the video.
Please, please read or watch the manga/anime Vinland Saga, I have a feeling you will love it a lot.
@@dislikereporter2271 Really? Why's that? I'm curious.
@@idunno7516 The main character goes through a heavy and emotional journey from a naive boy, to a rage filled child soldier and eventually growing into a mature adult who finally understands war, being very similar to Vander.
It's a series about Vikings and I could never do it justice in a comment section, but it has some of the greatest character writing and development I have seen in years. I urge you to at least give it a shot.
@@dislikereporter2271 I'm always glad to hear about good stories. I'll watch it. Thanks for the tip!
This video and comment made me really appreciate how I grew up watching and playing morally good characters like Spider-Man and Sonic, and then watched more morally ambiguous stuff like Breaking Bad when I got older
Now I'm someone who hopes for the best but can also expect for the worst, and I think that's a fine way to balance things out since how pessimistic and nihilistic the world is now
I chuckle at the notion that good and bad don't exist when clearly they do. And most of the people that make this claim do so because they have chosen to do bad things and don't want to be punished for doing them.
I always ask these same people "Is murder bad?" And if they say "Yes because it's good for our species," or some supposedly innate biological desire, and then I ask them "Why is it good for that desire to be good?" And they always remain stumped.
Evil can't be scientifically defined: it's an illusory moral concept that doesn't exist in nature. Its origins and connotations have been inextricably been linked to religion and mythology.
Spencer Reid
Also is it murder when animals kill prey?
I feel the exact same way. The same people seem to think that there's no such thing as objective good and evil, and when I ask someone "is human trafficking wrong?" and they say "Yes, it is wrong", then that proves that there IS some objective morality in reality.
Not everything is morally objective, but not everything is morally relative either.
It's rather simple to explain. People are falling for the oldest sin in the book. Sloth.
It takes 5 minutes to do irreparable evil, but it takes effort to be a good person or do a good deed or create something good. People are lazy to build up their character, so when they see characters that are similar to them they identify with them. Characters made by equally lazy people, mind you. And so it goes, down the ever shrinking spiral, until it reaches a singularity of evil.
isn't sloth one of the very last sins among the 7? like probably 4th or 5th? wouldn't it be pride, envy and wrath first?
@@christophermonteith2774 Sloth is the most damning. Not to mention that Tristitia - Melancholy AKA Depression is folded into Sloth. Sure, Pride, Envy, and Wrath are predominantly active, Sloth is Passive.
Fun fact: The saying "You are what you eat" is not actually about food but is actually about the media you consume.
As bleak as I believe our world is, we need stories about righteous heroes to inspire us.
I remember the 2006 era of Bionicle novels I read as a kid. The heroes, the Inika, were morally good characters but what made them intriguing was their struggle to live up to the grand legacies of the heroes who came before them-- even dealing with inferiority complexes at times. This is the kind of internal conflict that can make "morally good" characters interesting.
Never thought I'd see a Bionicle reference in a place like this, but I totally agree. And you may recall those characters were not perfect. They had their own flaws and they argued and they failed. The struggle to do good is interesting, and I'm starting to think those who don't find even a little joy in a piece of media unless someone is dying or suffering is either a psychopath or just a bitter a**hole.
In my case, I remember something something similar; namely Hero Factory which had heroes that are very much like you described. Additionally, I have also remembered Bionicle's heroes, well before I started reading about the exploits of Menelaus and Odysseus.
I’m curious how old you are, that you think the world is so bleak. I grew up during the Cold War, with a father who fought in WWII, and I would not say the world today is bleak at all. Yes, there are a few people trying really hard to stay in power by “othering” minorities and spewing hatred, but it seems to me that overall this is a very positive time, especially compared to 50 years ago, with the specter of nuclear annihilation, or 90 years ago(when my dad was a kid) with the Great Depression and the threat of another world war,
Agreed
We have plenty of those. Real stories. We just don't want to talk about them.
As an old shadowrunner i can tell you most of these morally questionable characters simply arent. They arent questionable they are villian protagonists. You have to be heroic to be a hero.
This whole video proves why Top Gun: Maverick is so insanely popular right now. People are getting tired of the dystopian dark worlds being lived in by morally questionable dark characters. We’ve seen it so much over the years that when we finally see a movie about morally good characters fighting the good fight for what’s right and get that happy ending it feels incredibly refreshing. It’s why a lot of movies (not all but a lot) from the 2000s and before have this aura of innocence surrounding it. The world has always been dark but the movies have helped give us a proper escape, but these days it’s like a lot show creators want to bring all the harshness of the world into our living rooms 24/7. The problem isn’t that shows and movie like this exist, the problem is that there an increasing number of these shows and movies like Top Gun: Maverick are getting few and far between.
Keep in mind, the US military is ONLY involved in films over which they have editorial control. They're recruitment ads.
It was also why I really enjoyed a Denziel Washington action movie called the Equalizer. He was always a good person and never faltered from it. He took violent action when needed, but he was always a good person, even down to the fact that he didn’t swear and encouraged his co-workers not to swear. (Not that the movie avoided profanity from others), and would love to see more of that. And I say this as someone who loves villain protagonists. Though I also like when you can just admit and make the main character a bad person instead did a “morally grey” one.
New top gun is navy propaganda
Not to get too political but recent events really called in some heavy handed propaganda in major media conglomerates and the entertainment industry. There are too many examples to really be blind to it and this moral relativism is a channel to "enlighten" their viewpoint is good and what they believe to be bad. Then factor in the HUGE drop off in television viewership from the sub 50 year old demographic.
The people who invested and own these industries in order to perform social engineering have been pushing this crap through the pipeline. They don't care if it doesn't sell, they don't care if 90% of people hate it. As long as they can influence 10% of the millions that watch it. It's a success to them even if its a net loss.
@@dhdhejehuwbs843 all movies are propaganda, at least top gun has a few good lessons.
If everyone believes everyone around them is horrible, it allows them to justify any horrible acts against said "horrible people" because "they deserve it"
My favorite type of setting is "Noble Dark" or "World Half Full"
A world with heroes that are morally good and strive to fix the world, and despite how dark and cruel or bad off the world is, still do what is right to try and make a difference.
Even a "Knight in Sour Armor" ends up being fun, even if they're bitter about the world and soured about it, they still believe there's something worth fighting for, that a better world is possible, instead of merely being in it for themselves or falling to the dark and wanting to just be the bigger boot stomping around.
probably berserk could fit in that description
I like that where the hero and villains are trying to do what they think is best but have different perspectives on how to navigate in a harsh world.
Berserk
The world is very dark but damn there are many wholesome and lighthearted moments
Hey, these terms sound familiar.
I don't suppose you also read the pages of TVTropes to an unhealthy degree too?
@@andrewryan4417 Yes, but I initially got into it from WH40K and seeing the Grimdark/Noblebright discussions on /tg/ and /v/ before finding the TVTRopes pages, in which I gleaned the terms "World Half Full" and ":Knight In Sour Armor" for the purpose of conveying it in a way one can read more and get examples easily.
Love TVTropes.
Really FEE? Just because my room is filled with posters of characters who like to murder people, and I only go to costume parties dressed as villans like the joker, and every movie I've streamed in the past 10 years is about anti heros bucking the trends of society and doing the "wrong thing", and I only agree with news that tells me violent protestors are good people, and all my music is made by people who brag about having broken the law and is about commiting crime, doesnt mean I'm going to end up like a bad person. I dont need to see someone saying murder is wrong to know murder is wrong. Now excuse me while I go binge watch Dexter for the 12th time. So stunning and brave how he kills all those people.
You don't exactly make a good case for yourself.
@@SirBlackReeds sarcasm, my friend.
Everytime I hear "good characters are borong" or "never struggle", I think of ruroni kenshin. A story about a man that was a former assassin in the Japanese Civil War that afterwards swore to never kill again, yet because it's his only means of causing change continues go fight. The tension in every fight, the inherent conflict is fascinating and proves both statements wrong.
I think of Spider-Man or Vash the Stampede, I also think those people who state such things just don’t look for the media containing such characters or simply ignore them.
Batusai?
Far as I know, he kept his promise of not killing again.
@@silverhawkscape2677 Yes and he was based on a real Japanese man.
Dororo
I generally don't like good characters that never struggle, because that struggle is what makes them good.
James Stewart in most of his movies was a "GOOD Character" who was also entertaining. He didn't bow to bullies and stood for the downtrodden.
Great example!
This is why My Name Is Earl will always be one of my favorite shows. It's a comedy about a felon who finds out about Karma and realizes his life sucks because of all the bad things he did, so he makes a list of all his misdeeds and tries to make up for them, one by one.
Great show.
I'd call the abundance of "morally gray" shows with lots of edge, gratuitous violence, etc. is a sort of "reverse escapism". People now, at least in the West, live such risk-free and privileged lives that they wish to be transported to a more brutal world through fiction, as their lives have lost most of their purpose.
I think, we had over the last decades too many good characters who where just very naive and wouldn't have survived 5 minutes without plot armor. That's really just boring to watch, because it's an absolute naive and unrealistic fantasy. I would like to see more morally gray and complex characters who are still good People like Tyrion Lannister from game of thrones, but instead the new "heros" are basically an adult version of King Joffrey.
@@Shadow25720 Human beings seem to typically adhere to black and white extremes and polar opposites even when it causes unnecessary issues.
Most of those morally grey stories aren't even grey. They're just black. That's their problem.
That's a very interesting and insightful perspective. I think you might've hit the nail on the head with this one.
@@Shadow25720 Tyrion had loads of plot armor though.
7:23, in Harry Potter, Dumbledore proclaims that the other characters will soon find themselves confronted with having to make the choice between what is right and what is easy
A minor correction to the title:
Morality is _not_ dead. It's just dead for _certain people._
Well, it depends on what lens of interpretation you're view it from. Nietzche also said "God is dead" but there was more context to it than just the plain, one-dimensional 3-word phrase everyone loves to quote. "God is dead within modern mainstream 'western' culture" is closer to the truth of it, but viewed through the right context/lens of interpretation, the original phrase makes sense under the larger intended meaning.
@mikeexits but when you realize that what is occurring in these places and throughout the world is fulfilled Prophesy that God had spoken before Hand. That "God is dead", saying is just ridiculous.
I've always liked the dyed in the wool hero types in stories. Guys like Captain America, Superman, Jon Snow, Luke Skywalker, etc
I think people dismissing these characters as 'boring' have forgotten how to understand heroic storytelling. Nothing ever came easy to any of these characters. All people out of place or out of time and all alone but finding their inner Perceval and doing the right thing despite how easy it would be to simply turn to the dark side.
When Batman kills the Joker, he's not Batman anymore.
Thank you for this video. We need more of this.
I like how you tried to sneak in Jon Snow among those actually well written characters.
I think people who say moral characters are inherently boring have a morality problem. Heroes aways were a fundamental part of storytelling and humanity in general, and the fact there are people who hate the Idea of virtuous characters is a sign of the problems in our society.
They haven't "forgotten" anything. They hate and despise decency wherever they see it, because they hate themselves most of all.
... and they hate themselves because they are aware of their own moral inadequacy and cowardice.
Whereas we see the most inspirational in a Perceval, they only see an accusing finger of judgement; but it is only their own finger pointing back at them.
a lot of morally good charecters in the way your talking are just absurdly powerful to compensate kind of mitigating the risk thing which makes them boring. Superman is just absurdly powerful and is boring to watch like oh gee I wonder who is gonna win or what superman will do when he fights his villains.
@@fbibarbie The thing about superman, though, is that he can do whatever he wants. He could end all war, famine, global warming, but he doesn't force himself on the people. Superman is a great character because of the emotional, mental and moral dilemmas he goes through. Like in "All-star superman". He's dying, but still just keeps doing what always did despite his own problems. And in the end, he died. But he set an example.
Just like someone of mediocre intellect will have a hard time writing the story or dialogue of a genius, someone who is not a very moral person themselves will have a hard time writing truly good and moral characters.
I too, at best, can only write about the person that I wish myself to be...
Don't underestimate creativity bro, including your own
@@fosphor8920 He said "have a hard time", not that it can't be done.
@@NewLenses okay? I can read his comment myself... why did you reply to me?
@@fosphor8920 GREAT Supplement to this video,
cause it explains the reason why many look at Reality as if it's all dark:
'Our Popcorn Dystopia' by 'Some More News'.
Don give up dude on your writing or being the person you want to be.
Some people live so much drama and toxicity that they think that's all there is.
The exact reason I deleted twitter and being less on social media.
"Good character's aren't interesting" --- *WORDS SPOKEN BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NEVER WATCHED DR. WHO*
"Never be cruel. Never be cowardly. Never eat pears. Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind." -- The Doctor
Who-pre Chibnall at least
Agree with everything, except I love pears
Dr. Who is so old dont feel like getting g into it
"What is better - to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?"
-Paarthurnax, the Old One
(The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)
th-cam.com/video/IrZLGrnsgMk/w-d-xo.html since you mentioned Skyrim I had to post 😆
@Ethnic Nationalist I now, I just thought it was a good quote from a character who's a good example of an interesting morally good character.
@Ethnic Nationalist well, some can be.
@Ethnic Nationalist I agree, people are also not supposed to be deconstructed to the point when they embrace evil either, but they do.
@Ethnic Nationalist I was talking about how actual people get to the point where they become evil.
Invincible is also a great example of a Morally Good character in a dark story.
Super Man. My favorite comic character of all time. No one has really known how to write him for decades. For me it's never been about how powerful he is and that he can do anything. It's been that he IS so powerful yet never compromises his morality.
Me too, Superman is not only powerful, he is compassionate, honest and noble, so much so that he doesn't seem human, that was exploited very well in Superman III when he had to face himself. But there are people who hate it because it is not Super Politically Correct, they would like to deconstruct it, I will tell you that at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia there is a science fiction story contest annually that is later published in a volume, the UPC Anthologies , in one of those anthologies there was a depressing and sinister account of Superman, now a private detective after falling from grace by killing a man, in reality the man was a pedophile and his last victim is in the same room after being abused, Superman gets really angry and uses too much force, after that he becomes a private detective enduring hatred and prejudice about him, he is hired by a pharmaceutical company to investigate a very strange murder, which seems to have been committed by someone super powerful like himself, In the end it is revealed that everything is related to him, the pharmaceutical scientists had been studying him for a long time and one of them makes him see that he should not exist, he tells him that they wondered for months if the color of his eyes was related to his powers and they fell into account that his entire origin story was ridiculous, he is Caucasian, if he had fallen in Africa or Asia he would have been treated like a bug weird, the fact that a couple of childless farmers found him is absurdly convenient, the answer is devastating, he is not from another planet, he is not a real living being, he is the creation of unknown entities that made him in the image and likeness of the humans to mix with humanity for unknown purposes....
Except in "injustice " 😅
@@eastsidemuu Plus Kingdom Come
"The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man" -Solzhenitsyn
That quote is a warning, not an excuse
"Being a good person is a heck of a lot harder..." True. I agreed with the points of this video. It makes it tempting to embrace Luddism. Ever fantasize about what life might be like without Hollywood and the internet?
There is nothing enviable or admirable in living a life breaking one's back for others.
@@neo-filthyfrank1347 Good isn't about working for others without receiving anything in return, being good is about having the power and opportunity to commit evil and choosing to do good instead in spite of that temptation.
@@ghoul4748 Good isn't even a coherent concept and it certainly is not binding in any capacity.
The argument the video presented about "good being harder" is not only wrongheaded from many angles but also makes no sense as motivation for someone to be good. Torturing yourself to death is also hard, that doesn't mean one should do it.
nope it's not you ever actually done something bad to someone else when you been brought up to be good it isn't a good feeling while your doing it and it a takes a while for your brain to wrap around what you just did and find a way to move past it
The heroic Mr Inventor VS the evil Dr Luddite, who seeks to destroy civilization.
I just have to say as sort of a counter argument, yes morally good characters can be well written, but I enjoy watching Tony Stark’s journey from a narcissist playboy to a selfless hero more than I enjoy watching Steve Rogers stay morally good through thick and thin. It makes me feel like as a flawed person (as we all are) that I can keep working at myself to become a better person.
Edit: Just to clarify, I didn't say Steve was uninteresting, but in my personal taste I found Tony's arc more entertaining BECAUSE he was flawed to begin with. Also, technically Tony might have had good in him to start, but it doesn't negate that we was acting like a bad person to start.
I saw a comment that went like this:
The most selfish guy turned out to be the most selfless (Iron Man)
And the most selfless guy turned out to be the most Selfish guy (Capt)
@@unknowninfinium4353 that’s interesting but really true if I think about it.
Well, tony stark is still heroic. Just flawed.
And Steve Rogers goes through his own character arc as well. He learns that just because something is lawful does not mean it is good.
Steve is an interesting character. Just because he doesn't have some "fatal flaw" or whatever doesn't make him not interesting.
How was captain America selfish?
@@coppermoth6069 When the Accords was made he dint think once about civilian causality whatever his reasons be. When he heard from Tony that Tony was keeping Wanda he got all emotional cause he wanted to clap then cheeks.
Second, in the end he went to the oast for his selfish desire to clap agent Carter cheeks.
Third, he meber told Tony Bucky was the one behind his parents tragic encounter cause he wanted to clap Buckys cheeks.
Fourth, he failed in clapping any cheeks
I am one of those people who believes humanity is irredeemable
That said Hollywood didn’t solely ruin morality we didn’t help..
The morality I play video games with growing up has effected me in my adult life. I believed that helping other people would be the longer and more challenging route, but in the end was not only better for the other person but for me
I kinda stopped watching tv after the age of breaking bad because I thought tho breaking bad was groundbreaking, other shows were using the bad guy lead for ratings and revenue and the interesting but evil lead was becoming over saturated
Crazy being told that video games make people violent when there are stats for RPG games that show a large majority of people choose good options over evil ones. Personally I find it very hard to do "evil playthroughs".
@@TheFireFox36 "Video games are evil" mfers when they play Undertale genocide route (They are being actively punished for being evil)
bad characters can be interesting and good characters can be interesting. it takes talent to do either.
and hollywood is a black hole of talent
Bad characters are meant to highlight the opposite of good, to be a problem, to have someone to blame for all the problems. The problem isn't the fact that bad characters exist. They can really enhance storytelling but it's problematic when the villains become shown as heros without any actual transformation.
the Thanos “plan” makes even less sense when you remember, oh yeah, he has a magic glove that controls reality. why not just make MORE resources rather than kill half of everyone?
also, how does an infinite universe not have infinite resources? i mean, beings travel across the universe all the time, going this way and that all throughout our infinite universe, but we need to worry about over population and running out of resources... in infinity? that’s just dumb. seriously, who the hell wrote that?
It stems back to the 1980's. Of course, the original source material involved Thanos trying to seduce Lady Death via Malthusian Ethics as opposed to being on a crusade about halving the entire population of the universe.
I mean it works because evil people don't see things as they really are or they wouldn't be evil, but yeah, it doesn't check out lol
PLOT HOLE IN NUTSHELL
The Avengers unsnapping everyone and that's it made even less sense than Thanos killing half of all life in the universe.
@@kylekatarn5964 I know his original origin and they should kept it hat way. Being a simp for Death at least makes more sense than what they did in the movies.
I am from India and your videos are bright light in lots of darkness. World media is trying to become extremely morally ambivalent and negative.
While I disagree with a lot of points you have raised so far, I have to agree on one thing. This “””Morally Gray””” bullshit’s got to go. It is overdone, uninteresting and tiring. If all your characters are “morally gray”, you are left with the same gray slop instead of a beautiful picture drawn in ink.
But you have the admit that human begins are complicated.
There are few people who are unflinchingly good and unwavering in their moral standing
@@brainderp808 that’s just bad writing. Not indicative of morally grey characters as a trope or writing device being overused and ineffective anymore
@@brainderp808 Really? I didn't get the vibe that they were trying to make her sympathetic or good in Multiverse of Madness. Seemed to me they were trying to do the Anti-Villain theme, someone who wants nice goals, such as motherhood, but uses ultimately bad or evil means to accomplish said goal. I can't really think of a time where they tried to say she was sympathetic. They just made her a person instead of a comic evil villain.
That movie isn't great and suffers from dozens of other problems, but I think any sympathy for her is a product of our empathy for someone wanting motherhood, not because the movie forced us to be sympathetic towards her. At least, that's how I remember it.
@@brainderp808 Exactly, It's ridiculous. It'sike the other characters don't matter.
@@justjoshua5759 But the trope is still overused.
Which is why Top Gun: Maverick may be one of my fave films in the last 5-10 years. Straightforward, not agenda pushing, easy to understand characters and a good Ole fashioned hero's journey
It's still a sequel that absolutely didn't need to exist.
@@SirBlackReeds but it is something the hollywood needs right now
@@seyio1717 Never seen it yet.
@@SirBlackReeds And yet it's one of those rare cases where the world is a better place because if happened, the sequel nobody asked for and yet we all needed.
"not agenda pushing" it's supported by the U.S military, just as the original one ways. Of course it pushes an agenda.
What Gareth Edwards means is:
Genes = Hardware
Memes = Software
Moral relativism is the cancer of society. Straight from the pits of hell.
Evil characters can be liked because they have valid motivations, but a show should always express why their believes are wrong and have them face consequences
I discovered this channel almost 2 years ago, and videos like these are I why I subscribed. Good storytelling has always had an effect on me, whether it is a video game, movie, or TV show; and character morality has often been a determinate for me liking a character or not.
The overabundance of amoral or evil protagonists is actually one of the reasons I quit watching the Walking Dead in 2016. One of the last moral compasses, Glen - my favorite character, was killed; and most of the surviving characters were amoral or evil. I did not like the survivors any more, and the series' situations were too frustrating to watch.
So true. If the TWD social media didn't make the post that people who didn't accept LGBT as morally right to leave the franchise, the destruction of all moral characters would be the absolute last straw.
One thing that disturbed me greatly when I was still watching it was that so many people idolized Neegan. I would see this attitude in comment sections attached to videos or articles about the show.
Rick, Herschel and Glen were my favorite characters; I watched maybe two seasons after Glenn got killed off (and hardly remember them, aside from how much I despised Neegan), but the show - and the characters - had changed too much. It seemed to shift from an emphasis around the positive moral strength of characters like Rick, Herschel and Glenn, to the moral bankruptcy of those such as Carol, Eugene and Neegan.
It's hard to recall at exactly what point, but I remember thinking that the writers had turned even Rick into a character that I hardly recognized. Since he was the only character I really cared about at that point, I just stopped watching, and haven't seen an episode since.
Looking back, I suppose I should have been able to predict Neegan's popularity, considering how popular Merle was.
Oh yeah, Glenn's death was the reason why I stopped watching it too. My dad watched a few more episodes, and then he had to stop. It was just getting too bad.
I've always thought the people who idolize Scarface and Walter White are either not intelligent enough, or not morally-grounded enough to understand that some media is made as a "cautionary tale" and not something to aspire to be. I've always loved movies and shows depicted this way, but it's the heroes that I have always seen myself in and related to.
All the point of Breaking Bad is that Walter is absolutelly wrong
Breaking Bad has the episode “Ozymandias” for a reason, to show how Walt’s actions ended up ruining everyone, especially Walter himself.
You know something? Whenever I see someone calling people "not intelligent enough" whilst at the same time claiming they're intelligent, be it in the comment itself, or in their username, I can't help but think they're anything but. I'm writing it here for no particular reason, definitely.
@@rubbers3 Duly noted.
Or maybe they understand the intention just well and decide to go againts it? Food for thought
My favorite kinds of characters are good characters who manage to stay good despite the attempts by the story to make them bad. The movie “Death to Smoochy” is a great example of this. The main character manages to remain a good man despite the attempts of his industry to make him “accept reality”.
The TV shows that I would encourage everyone who hasn’t watched already is Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. It taught great values in a very mature way.
I watch these with my 3yo.
Can not agree more! These shows are amazing! I long for the day we can get a DC movie half as good as the stories they tell in the cartoons!
@Roberta Andreea I meant the animated cartoons. I do not like the live action movies. Zack Snyder did a good job in Watchmen though. His greatest strengths are edgy movies for moody teenagers. He does not understand DC characters at all.
“How many of us do you have to kill, to keep us safe?” - favorite line from the JLU
@@EPICoutcast24 "Who guards the guardians?"
Audiences:
"Thanos was right, we all deserve to die -- so long as it's not me"
"Life is horrible, death is a welcome release"
"The world is a horrible place, humanity is irredeemable"
"Good people are boring"
"No one is morally good, all of us will do the same bad things under the same conditions"
"The world is too complicated for standards"
"Good and bad don't really exist, anyways"
"Nothing matters"
God: "Hi, kids....so...how's that 'new secular enlightenment' going?"
Good one!
Though, I think God would partially agree with the 3rd to last one, that humans are not inherently good.
@@agsilverradio2225 'Partially agree' works just fine, since the 3rd one isn't about inherent goodness, but 'irredeemable'. God definitely doesn't think that about people. Inherently, all people are fallen, flawed, but everyone has the possibility of being redeemed. Well, maybe. We hope.
I don't disagree with all of those. You can argue that we're all inherently bad in a way. I just don't think most people actually know how to handle that realisation. The pursuit of perfection is not something we're suppose to achieve. It's not something we're supposed to give up on either. We see enough what happens when people refuse to believe they have a single bad bone in their body.
@@viktoriyaserebryakov2755 I think you meant "perfection" isn't something we're supposed to achieve, not "pursuit of perfection". Otherwise I agree.
I'm not American, but this makes me think of the "pursuit of happiness" in the American constitution (I think? Maybe some other document?). Those people know whats up w the human condition. They're poets.
Edit: forgot a word.
NOT GOOD AT ALL!! But thanks for asking.
I recently rewatched The Two Towers again, and Sam’s speech resonated with me more than it ever has before. A hopefulness while staring into the abyss that things can get better. A message everyone needs to hear these days.
It's a very Christian worldview and is one that I yearn to see in movies today.
It can once people stop finding excuses to be shit for no reason not to mention actually acknowledging that their actions were only good for some and not many or all.
Hope is fool's gold. It's for children. For adults, the only goal is fearlessness. That's it.
@@DBAnthony009 In Christianity you don't act to make things better, you just try to safe your ass into the afterlife.
@@straightfacts5352 You must be a delightful person to be around
Thanks for this video, I'm glad someone called out this cliched trend of glorifying dark immoral characters.
Thomas Sowell and Hans Rosling also proved Thanos wrong. The key to population control is a society where men and women can fill their lives with things besides having kids, like a thriving first world society.
This is why I like anti-heros, I love the idea that anyone, no matter how bad, can become good.
Redemption arc
Harley Quinn
Zuko
I forgot other good characters who get a redemption arc.
@@daniboy4153 Darth vader?
It might be better to frame it as "moral aspirations" than "moral code". If you bake it into the character's wants and objectives, it becomes a personal thing to the characters.
This is spot on.
Most shows today pander to the fantasy of ultimate "freedom" without any consequences by creating a nihilistic world where everyone is a selfish, shortsighted and animalistic bastard; and is rewarded for this behavior.
Increasingly, these hyper-realistic "fictional" stories are set in the real world and showcase "realistic" characters - such that a young, impressionable mind may not be able to discern fact from fantasy and may end up believing that the amoral values so gleefully paraded and embraced in the content they consume are really a reflection of the state of the world they live in.
This would (and has to some degree) in turn create a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
A good example of a morally good character being more interesting is aang vs kora. aang is so torn and emotional about the things people want him to do that he knows to be wrong and him finding solutions that fit within his morality was one of the best parts of the show. as opposed to kora whose actions are constantly justified as the greater good.
If you read the comic " The Promise " A lot of the issues in the comic could've been solved if Aang hadn't ran away 100 years ago.
Aang literally prioritized his own Airbender morals over the lives of innocents, he completely refused to kill Ozai, without understanding that his existence means more people will die in war.
Korra’s an idiot, but at least she wanted to do her job
@@projectpems8304 Aang did do his job. If it’s his job to keep balance then he gets to decide how to handle Ozai. There was nothing wrong with his decision to not kill Ozai as long as he was prepared to handle the fall out of said decision. What’s even more interesting is that everyone wanted Aang to kill Ozai yet no one else wanted to kill Ozai because of “the balance.” So you could argue that everyone else’s reluctance to kill Ozai in place of Aang is just as ridiculous.
If I could “like” this video a million times, I would. Anybody who has talked with me about TV in the past ten years has heard me express these very ideas. The dearth of Good protagonists in our media is simultaneously baffling to me (I don’t want to spend time watching horrible people do horrible things) and worrying. Cultural rot is real and well underway, and it has real consequences. Thanks for everything you’ve done with this series and everything you’ll do moving forward.
GREAT Supplement to this video,
cause it explains the reason why many look at Reality as if it's all dark:
'Our Popcorn Dystopia' by 'Some More News'.
@Damon Gargoyle Do you have 0 Intellectual Intgerity, to the point of Obviousness where you can literally not even watch videos that may or may not disagree with you maybe?
@Damon Gargoyle - You're utterly mischaracterizing this video. I'm amazed how people want to hand-wave this away as superficial moralizing. This isn't "Think of the children," it isn't condemning video games and rock and roll and D&D. It's asserting very clearly that stories are instructive, and we should be mindful of the lessons they're teaching. That isn't a carpet dismissal of harsh content, or even challenging protagonists. It's a caution against protagonists void of a more compass.
@Damon Gargoyle - Hard disagree. Insert midwit meme here. There's a shallow way to defend moral protagonists, and there's a deeper way, but they point in the same direction. Media needs Good protagonists. Society draws lessons from the popular narratives we craft and consume. And if we're proliferating stories of "heroes" void of personal virtue, then we'll see fewer of those people in society. Protagonists who win by exploiting and hurting others will popularize exploitation and harm. Cultural rot is real, and one of the chief threats to our civilization.
In simple terms you are what you consume
mentally; physically ; emotionally
consume positive things
You become positive
Consume negative things and you become negative.
5:30 Hollywood can't create stories about morally good characters because it forgot what is morality or good.
this is the reason why the characters in lotr and the hobbit are top tier morally good characters
especially how men are represented in this stories, men don’t hurt others or become violent when they get overwhelmed, men comfort each other, hug, cry, connect, form bonds and friendships, i also love how aragorn is a gentle person despite being being a ranger and ultimately a king, characters have priorities and personality despite being kind and heroic too.
Aragorn is also quite competent and able to hold his own in a fight, but would prefer not to ever have to.
@@FEEonline yesss exactly, also thank you for the highlight and this video was magnificent and eye-opening
Unfortuned that is not real life, men to not act that way. But I would love it if they did
@@alien777take off your feminst glass and go touch some grass.