9 Movie Heroes Who Stupidly Turned Evil For The Sequel
For when you've ran out of all other ideas.
Try to picture this scene for a moment; at the end of Return Of The Jedi Luke Skywalker reunites with his sister and friends after the fall of the empire, and then suddenly pulls out his lightsaber and proceeds to slaughter them all without mercy, the cute little Ewoks included; then, in the last moments, he dons Darth Vader’s mask and takes a deep, rasping breath before the credits roll.
That would be a pretty surprising way to end the saga, right? The only issue is it would completely contradict Luke’s actions throughout, and what we know of him as a character; he’s brave, loyal and committed to destroying the dark side. So while his sudden switch to evil would have been shocking, fans would have been rightfully outraged since it wouldn’t make a lick of sense.
It’s a shame not every franchise takes this message onboard, because there are many examples of hero characters suddenly doing a dramatic heel turn for a sequel. This is often done purely for the shock value, and it doesn’t matter if this switch completely ignores their personality from past instalments; here are a few movies that are guilty of this particular sin.
9. Jill Valentine - Resident Evil: Retribution
Hardcore fans of the Resident Evil series aren’t big fond of the movies, and can hardly blame them given the huge liberties they take with the story and characters. While Paul W.S. Anderson might know how to make the movie’s look slick and glossy, he couldn’t write a decent script if his life depended on it, which he proved beyond a doubt with the fifth movie, Retribution.
Sure the action was fun, but it had a non-existent story and calling the characters thinly sketched is an insult to thin sketches. The movie brought back a bunch of deceased characters from earlier movies – for no real purpose in terms of the narrative – and series heroine Jill Valentine also returned, only, this time, she was a brainwashed Umbrella assassin.
This twist happened in the fifth game too, where it at least made some kind of sense, but here it’s really just an excuse to get the actress in a skin-tight leather outfit and have her fight Milla Jovovich. Then she becomes good again, everybody is happy and fans of the game start cursing at the screen in a frothing rage.