20 Movie Characters Who Never Got The Comeuppance They Deserved

And finally, it's time to talk about one of the most emotionally affecting, heartfelt movies of them all. It's a Wonderful Life is the Christmas movie to end them all, an inspirational slice of cinematic joy that'll leave entire cinemas in floods of tears. Still, every classic has a flaw or two - such is the nature of any piece of art - and here is the biggest one with It's a Wonderful Life: where was the comeuppance for Mr Potter? 

Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore) is the insidiously vile villain of the piece, a greedy banker who repeatedly tries to destroy the town of Bedford Falls and ruin the life of George Bailey (James Stewart), a good man who spends his time trying to protect the townsfolk from Mr. Potter. During the film's legendary third act, an angel shows a now-suicidal George what the world would be like if he'd never existed, and it turns out Mr. Potter took over the town and turned it into a vision of genuine Hell.

Thanks in no small part to Barrymore's skin-crawling performance, Potter is one of those purely hateable characters who everyone detested, so it does suck that he never gets his just desserts. He's only shown very briefly when George returns to the present, and as beautiful as the movie's ending is, the total absence of any punishment for this odious scumbag has always been distracting.