10 Movie Villains Who Turned Heroes Evil

We hear that "You either die a hero..." line all the time thanks to its memeification, but it unfortunately has ended up detracting from the heartbreak of its original context.

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy reimagined what comic book movies could be. Before then, we had to deal with the goofiness of X-Men, Raimi's Spiderman series, or heaven forbid - The Fantastic Four.

The second film, and the trilogy's namesake, showed an established Batman working with Gotham's police department to put a stop to the city's extensive crime network. It gave us exceptional cinematography, storytelling, and of course Heath Ledger's extraordinary rendition of the Joker. Leto who? Pheonix what now?? Ledger is the best thing to have happened to the character, save for maybe Mark Hamill's voice acting version.

Ledger's Joker is cruel, non-nonsensical, and downright mad - exactly who the character should be. There is no backstory or romance that could, or should, excuse his murderous tendencies.

The audience already knows his ruthless ways by the time he murders Bruce Wayne's ex-gf Rachel. Seeing him put Batman in a 50/50 scenario between saving her or her new boyfriend (all round Good Guy Harvey Dent) puts that knot in your stomach as you watch helplessly just hoping that he'll make it in time. Of course, in the twistiest of twists, Joker sends Batman to the wrong address, He's in time to save Dent, but they both hear Rachel's last words before she' blown to kingdom come.

We're not idiots: we knew Harvey Dent was going to go through some kind of trauma and become the classic villain Two Face somehow. But with the amount of mob-rivalry going on in The Dark Knight, it was easy to lean towards some kind of acid-slinging spat like we see in the comics. In this film, Dent is practically an innocent bystander, dragged into the Joker's fear-mongering feud.What's more, the Joker goes to great lengths to manipulate Harvey into going rogue with an unsolicited hospital visit.

The Joker's orchestration of Harvey Dent's downfall, from the kidnap to the final push over the edge, is true chaotic evil. Everyone, including Harvey Dent himself, would have rather seen him die in the explosion than witness the evil that followed.