20 Absolutely Insufferable Film Characters Who Didn't Deserve THAT
They might've been awful, but that's no capital offence!
Since film began, one of the many ways in which this medium has delighted audiences is by presenting stories where heroic characters triumph while the villains and jerks get their comeuppance. That sure as hell doesn't happen all the time in real life, and this serves as an undeniably cathartic escape from the norm.
Frequently, when obnoxious characters appear on-screen, viewers will likely be crossing their fingers for something bad to happen to them and there's no shame in that. It's an absolutely universal phenomenon, as any horror buff will tell you. Having said that, it's not always a good idea, as these following twenty examples prove.
All of the following characters - which include widely-disliked side characters, intimidating gangsters and, of course, plenty of horror movie victims - were monumentally unlikable, but those who wished for something bad to happen to them probably regretted it. Such was the brutality of these characters' fates that most viewers will instead start to feel sorry for them.
Cinema has always been a tool for wish-fulfilment and so, let these following films serve as a reaffirmation of that age-old saying: be careful what you wish for...
20. Hot Fuzz - Martin Blower & Eve Draper
Starting off, we've got a case where the disproportionate punishment was absolutely part of the joke.
In this murder mystery / action-comedy, the first two victims are Martin Blower (David Threlfall) and his significantly younger mistress Eve Draper (Lucy Punch), a hilariously cringey pair. They are decapitated in their dressing room after giving terrible performances in an amateur production of Romeo and Juliet... but why? Surely not just because they were tiresome? Yep, that's exactly why.
Hot Fuzz is an ingenious parody, and one of the many things it cleverly sends up is how the villains in action films are usually driven by something big. One would've assumed that would be driving the killings here, and, in fact, protagonist Sgt. Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) comes up with a theory that, in another example of Hot Fuzz's brilliant writing, actually makes perfect sense. This theory involved the sale of valuable land, which both of the victims could've been linked to (he was a solicitor, she was on the council's planning department).
But no. In a hilarious twist, it turns out that the killers are trying to make sure that Sandford, their village, wins Village of the Year, and they're killing anyone who remotely spoils the village's idyllic aesthetic. Martin and Eve were killed for being appalling actors, and also because Eve had a famously annoying laugh.
As it should hopefully go without saying, those villains were definitely taking that contest too seriously. Just a bit, you know?