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Le Fou In Beauty And The Beast

The new live-action Beauty And The Beast gets super dark when ultra bro Gaston leaves bookish Belle's dad tied to a tree in the hopes that wolves will eat him alive. Again, this is a children's movie. Gaston's sidekick Le Fou isn't 100 percent on board with this murder, but he definitely doesn't stop it, which is 100 percent still accessory to attempted murder.

Le Fou then gets a fantastic chance to redeem himself when Belle's dad survives and shows up to accuse Gaston of trying to murder him. He immediately takes that chance and lovingly drop-kicks it into the sun. Again, he seems reluctant, but he still lies on Gaston's behalf, getting Belle's dad thrown into an asylum for his crazy notion that Gaston sucks. This cycle of awfulness seems to take up half the movie. I know it's called Beauty And The Beast, but an equally fitting title would be Beauty, The Beast, And Belle's Dad Who Is Having A Very Shitty Week.

It takes Gaston refusing to help Le Fou directly to finally turn him against the insane, homicidal douche. Keep in mind that this doesn't happen until they are already actively battling the Beast's appliance-people. He switches sides during the battle. It's the most 11th-hour double cross possible. An apology doesn't mean much if you say it in the middle of the punch.

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Gru In Despicable Me

I guess bald mastermind Gru isn't technically the villain of Despicable Me, but he's definitely a villain. We know he's committed multiple large-scale thefts. Sure, he's only stolen things that were objectively silly as hell, like a big TV in Times Square and the Eiffel tower (the Las Vegas version, so it's cool). But that doesn't mean those objects weren't valuable. It's tough to price a giant Eiffel Tower replica, but you have to imagine it would be somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, right? Someone has to pay for that. We never see Gru return it. I'm not sure what he would say if he did. "I just found it lying in the street" doesn't really work in that scenario. Maybe "I caught that guy who stole your Eiffel Tower who wasn't me. But I got him real good, because if he was me, I wouldn't have gotten him real good. And I got him real good. It wasn't me."

The most disturbing part about Gru's past evil deeds is when he jokes about murdering his neighbor's dog. He complains to the neighbor about the dog pooping in his yard, and the neighbor blows him off, saying, "Oh, you know dogs, they go where they want to go." Gru responds, "Unless they're dead." Later in the movie, he is seen with a pair of spy binoculars disguised as a dog. Is it a robot dog? Is it a taxidermied dog? Is it that neighbor's yard-pooping dog? We never see the offending dog, so absent of other evidence, I assume dog murder has occurred.

All this and another 40ish years of off-screen villainy go without punishment for Gru. As soon as he makes the decision to adopt a few little girls, all of his past indiscretions seem to be magically not problematic anymore. Being a dad is ... his punishment, I guess? For your continuous acts of terrorism around the world, you're sentenced to a lifetime of child-rearing.

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Draco Malfoy In The Harry Potter Series

Here's another great example of switching teams at the last possible second. Malfoy was a terrible wizard racist who was best friends with wizard Hitler for a few years. He's so hated by Harry Potter fans (at least, the ones who don't want to fuck him) that you can find an almost unlimited amount of YouTube videos devoted to the clip in which Hermione punches him in the face, and I watched all of them. If you're wondering what I'm doing at any given time, put money on "watching the Hermione-punches-Draco clip."

There are innumerable instances of Draco being shitty in this series, probably the worst being his many attempted murders of Dumbledore in Half-Blood Prince. He doesn't end up going through with it, of course, but remember when he attempts to curse Dumbledore and ends up torturing Katie Bell instead? Then he tries to poison Dumbledore with wine and puts Ron in the hospital. That's two counts of attempted murder, punishable by life in prison in England, that are never addressed. Not even with a "Hey, remember when you tried to assassinate the most famous wizard in the world? That was a tad mean."

He switches sides during the final battle at Hogwarts and his family members do a few small things along the way to help Harry and company, because the Malfoys aren't really evil. They're total cowards. They play for whatever team looks like it's winning at the time. By doing this, they avoid almost all consequences of being on Team Evil for generations. But they make some sad faces at the end, so I guess the real punishment is deeper frown lines.

Malfoy ends the Harry Potter series in the same happy place as Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who were consistently on the side of good. This sends a weird positive message about the benefits of being a shit weasel. You too can grow up to be a rich piece of ass litter who looks like an evil used car salesmen, as long as you habitually flip-flop between Evil and Too Much Of A Coward To Be Evil. And if you're on the latter side when Good ultimately makes the touchdown, you're in the clear.

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