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Evil No Longer
Five convincing bad-to-good transitions
The Moon and Antarctigru (Photo: Universal Pictures)
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In Despicable Me, Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) is a supervillian whose exploits include stealing the Times Square Jumbotron and the Statue of Liberty—the miniature version in Las Vegas, that is. But these are just baby steps towards Gru’s main goal: To shrink and steal the moon. In order for his plan to work, though, he has to adopt three little girls from an orphanage (it makes more sense once you’ve actually seen the film).
It’s not giving away too much to say that the Evil Gru becomes Good Gru by the conclusion of the film. This is Hollywood, after all. But the movie does a convincing job of showing us Gru’s evolution from villain to hero, unlike, say, Sayid’s near-instantaneous transition from killer to bomb-stealing martyr on Lost.
Here are five shows and movies that have successfully made their Big Bads into Good Guys.
#5.
Tommy Oliver
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
This one isn’t as well known as the others, but Tommy going from Rita Repulsa’s evil Green Ranger in seasons one and two to the honorable White Ranger in three blew my mind as a kid. I was used to the bad guys staying bad, and never winning because of it. In 2000, the actor who played the Green/White Ranger, Jason David Frank, would appear on an episode of Undressed with Alyson Kiperman, a fellow Power Rangers: Wild Force cast member. That didn’t blow my mind; it just made me uncomfortable.
#4.
Captain Louis Renault
Casablanca
A.k.a. “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” If not for Renault, Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine never would have made it out of Casablanca (although we don’t see Rick and Renault leaving in the film, the captain suggests they join the Free French Forces). True, it’s Renault who calls the police to the airport in the first place, but he distracts them by ordering, “Round up the usual suspects.” Which then led to this.
#3.
T-800
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Eleven years after the events of the first film, Sarah Connor is in a hospital for the criminally insane due to an attempted bombing of a building and all that rambling about Skynet (it’s real, people!). Her son, John, is living with foster parents and causing havoc around Los Angles, as resistance leaders are wont to do. Then a T-1000 arrives from the future comes to kill John, and there’s only one person who can stop Robert Patrick: Future John Connor, by way of T-800 (Ahnuld), which happens to be the same model—and actor—that tried to kill Sarah in the first film. If only someone from the future could have warned Robert Patrick’s character, David Scatino, on The Sopranos about an even deadlier villain: Gamblor.
#2.
Angel and Spike
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel
I couldn’t pick just one would-be Champion (although I prefer Angel as a character). Both started out as decent enough people—although Angel spent a lot of time in the company of whores and Spike made the world listen to his “bloody awful” poetry—but then they got turned into vampires, stayed bad for awhile, then went back to good (except for that time spent as Angelus…), mostly to help Buffy and, y’know, save the world from the Senior Partners.
#1.
Darth Vader
Return of the Jedi
For the first two films, Vader is the ultimate badass: Tall, dark, not handsome and willing to blow up planets just to prove how powerful the Death Star is (and yes, Grand Moff Tarkin technically does destruction, but only because Vader told him to). In Jedi, we see that Vader is really only a puppet in the Galactic Empire’s plan; the Big Bad is Emperor Palpatine, who is neither tall nor dark but extremely not handsome. The Emperor begins torturing Luke, which is too much for Vader to take. He grabs Palpatine and throws him into the Death Star’s core reactor, essentially killing himself in the process. Then this:
All his former sins are forgiven—except for the killing of nearly two billion people.
Honorable Mention:
