movies

It's not a movie but if you are into games I Highly recommend Final Fantasy 14. Expansion's Shadowbringers and Endwalker are some of the best story telling I have ever partaken in. In my opinion it gives GoT a run for it's money. It is a time investment though so I get it. Also don't pay for a story skip.

Not a movie but Arcane s1.

Silco wants the undercity to govern themselves because the wealthy elites of Pilotver can't be bothered to care about the people down there. Every time there's an uprising it's beat back down with police force and the cycle continues.

It's fantastic because when he's first introduced the writers play on stereotypes to make you think he's just a run of the mill villain with a weird facial feature. No, he's trying to achieve revolution.

Not to say he doesn't do some fucked up things to achieve this dream. But that's why he's an actual villain not just a misunderstood good guy. One whose motivations make complete sense.

If the "bad guys" are not relatable; then they generally come off as cartoonishly evil, and unrealistic.

Think the bad guys in Avatar, going after the unobtainum or whale brain juice. They are evil for the sake of the suffering, getting the macuffin is seemingly secondary to that; and thus are a joke.

If they are totally two dimensional, they don't make good villains.

Great villains; have merit to their plans, it is the methods they use and the suffering they cause in pursuit of those goals that marks them as bad.

Look at Killmonger, in Black Panther. He is 100% correct, his view that Wakanda's isolation has caused great suffering is true, his plan to open it up to the rest of the world is what happens in the end; just not by him....it is his methods that mark him as a bad guy.

I really sympathized with Mr Wink and Mr Fibb in the Kids Next Door pilot. Filthy children actually do not belong in swimming pools, Mr. Fibb.

IDK. All the movies/shows I watch seem to be playing with exactly that theme, be it The Orville, Hacks, Slow Horses, Poker Face...

Atomic blonde

Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen. My husband and I watched it and towards the end, it tries to make Hagen this honorable man despite being a child murderer and a traitor. I was on Kriemhilds side the entire time, and the Attila and his Huns were way cooler than the Nibelungen.

'The Battle of Lake Changjin' is based on the eponymous events where the US - under MacArthur - occupies the role of the aggressor nation. The movie itself wasn't noteworthy as it's equivalent to standard Hollywood mediocrity, however my confused mind railed against accepting that the US can be anything other than the protagonist and so served to expand my limited worldview as my media consumption was admittedly US-centric.