10 Movie Heroes Who Didn’t Know They Were The Villains

10. John Preston - Equilibrium

Before he nearly tore out his voice box playing Batman for three movies, Christian Bale took on the role of the Gun kata expert John Preston in the amazingly underrated sci-fi shoot-em-up Equilibrium.

In a world where human emotion is prohibited; John Preston roams the totalitarian streets as an enforcer for totalitarian laws until one day he stops taking his medication and begins to feel. Once empathy takes over, he rallies with a resistance of fellow sense-offenders in an effort to destroy the oppressive force governing his people.

The realization that he is part of the problem does not stop John from killing innocent lives though. If we are to assume that the endless horde of sentries he mows down have not been feeling emotions for a very long time, John is willfully and skillfully executing people who have very little context as to why it's all happening.

The sentries he encounters are effectively doing as they are told with absolutely no reason to question the commands. They are slaves to the very system he seeks to destroy, and even when he succeeds, John's merciless brutality is no better than leading cows to the slaughter.

Speaking of people who kill the blissfully unaware...