Ozymandias' victory was more water-tight than you think.
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00:00While the hero doesn't always come out on top in movies, it's generally made abundantly clear when the bad guy wins, right?
00:07Well, every so often, movies get a little bit more sly and subtle about the villain's victory,
00:12perhaps because they don't want to downplay the hero's successes or make the movie a pure downer.
00:18Yet, all the same, and following up on our last video on the subject,
00:21I'm Ewan, this is War Culture, and here are 8 more movie villains you didn't realize actually won.
00:278. Robert Callahan, Big Hero 6
00:31Big Hero 6's villain is a masked man known as Yo-Kai, later revealed to be Professor Robert Callahan,
00:37played by the always brilliant James Cromwell, who faked his death as part of a revenge plot against
00:42tech madman Alistair Cray, Alan Tudyk. And though Callahan is ultimately arrested at the end of the
00:47movie, he straight up accomplished everything that he set out to do. He obliterated Cray's HQ by
00:53reactivating the teleportation portal, and most importantly, he got his daughter Abigail back,
00:58who disappeared while working as a test pilot on one of Cray's portal experiments.
01:03All in all, a few years in jail for executing his plan as intended is probably a pretty acceptable
01:09trade-off for Callahan, especially as he rescued his beloved daughter. It's just a shame that the
01:14plan inadvertently led to the death of protagonist hero's older brother Tadashi,
01:18which Callahan at least expresses regret for. Even so, the outcome for Callahan was absolutely
01:24a net positive. 7. Azog the Defiler
01:28The Hobbit, The Battle of the Five Armies
01:30In Peter Jackson's less-than-necessary Hobbit trilogy, Orc War Chief Azog the Defiler's plan
01:36was to wipe out the male bloodline of Durin by killing Thorin Oakenshield and his nephews,
01:42Feely and Keely. And in the third film, The Battle of the Five Armies, he absolutely succeeds.
01:47Sure, Azog also dies during his final battle on the ice with Thorin, but it's certainly anything
01:53but a victory for the Dwarven King, who also perishes from his wounds moments later.
01:59This was Azog's personal quest from the outset of the trilogy. He took an oath and damn it,
02:04he followed through, even at the cost of his own life. And while the films might brush it under
02:09the carpet in pursuit of a more triumphant, crowd-pleasing climax, Azog totally succeeded
02:14in wiping out Thorin's bloodline just as he swore he would. If that's not winning, then what is?
02:226. Freddy Krueger
02:24A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, The Dream Master
02:27Though it's fair to say that Robert England's Freddy Krueger just loves to torment young folk
02:31through their dreams, his wider operating goal since the start of the series has been to kill
02:37off the children of the parents who banded together and killed them in revenge for murdering 20 local
02:42children all those years ago. And in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, The Dream Master, Freddy finally
02:47follows through with this quest, killing the so-called last of the Elm Street children, Kristen
02:52Parker, who was burned to death midway through the movie. Kristen herself even hammers the point home
02:58by telling Freddy moments before her demise that she is the last. And while the series of course
03:03continued on for many more installments, for the franchise's midway point, Freddy had effectively
03:09accomplished his main mission. The rest of the souls he claims after that point are just gravy,
03:14basically, and no matter how many times he's defeated in the subsequent movies, nobody can
03:19take away from him the fact that he killed all of the original Elm Street children.
03:235. President Snow
03:25The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2
03:28Granted, there aren't many movie villains who get ripped apart by an angry mob and could still
03:33genuinely claim to coming out on top. But The Hunger Games President Snow, Donald Sutherland,
03:38is no ordinary villain. Though Snow is murdered by a rabble of irate citizens in Mockingjay Part 2,
03:44this comes at the end of a long, successful, and enriched life.
03:49He got to live many, many decades as the autocratic ruler of Panem, and through Katniss's actions,
03:56not only avoids an official, formal execution,
03:59he also gets to see his nemesis, President Coyne, get murdered by her before he dies.
04:05Even accepting Snow's own brutal death, he literally goes out laughing, knowing that he
04:10managed to talk Katniss into killing his enemy, robbing her of the power she so desperately craved,
04:16before he himself was finished off. It may be a pyrrhic victory for Snow, but it's a victory nonetheless.
04:224. Terrence Fletcher
04:26Whiplash seemingly ends with jazz drummer Andrew Nyman, played by a career-best Miles Teller,
04:31triumphing over his abusive former instructor Terrence Fletcher, J.K. Simmons, by leading the
04:37band in a mesmerizing performance at the Jazz Standard Caravan. This is despite Fletcher's
04:42attempts to publicly embarrass him by having the band first play a song that Andrew doesn't know.
04:48However, even beyond the debates about whether Andrew pushed himself too far in the pursuit of
04:53greatness, didn't Fletcher ultimately get what he really wanted? His own Charlie Parker. A few scenes
05:00earlier, Fletcher laments to Andrew that despite his efforts, he was never able to mould his own
05:04Charlie Parker, a genuine musical prodigy formed by his harsh, if we're being kind, methods.
05:11But with Andrew's stunning final performance, Fletcher finally got it. Andrew may think he was the real
05:17winner by subverting Fletcher's plan to embarrass him on stage, but all it did was push Andrew to
05:22give the best rendition of his life and fulfil Fletcher's own twisted ambition.
05:273. Richmond Valentine
05:30Kingsman, The Secret Service
05:32Now, to be completely fair, Kingsman's villain, Richmond Valentine, Samuel Jackson, absolutely did
05:38not want to die at the end. But all the same, he was ultimately far more successful in pulling off his
05:44population curbing plan that the movie's ending or its sequel would have you believe.
05:49Valentine's hilariously over-the-top scheme involved giving away free SIM cards to everyone
05:54on Earth before transmitting a signal which would turn them murderously violent, all in the pursuit
06:00of whittling down the population and stemming global warming. We see a brief display of this
06:05potential when Valentine activates a signal in the third act, causing absolute chaos around the world
06:11until the signal is stopped. People instantly start fighting and killing each other, with even
06:16parents, including Eggsy's own mother, trying to kill their own kids. And yet, director Matthew
06:22Vaughn kind of glosses over the fallout at the end of the film, no matter that surely millions,
06:27even tens of hundreds of millions of people would have been killed globally, especially the young,
06:33old and vulnerable. Even with the signal only being active for such a short time, Valentine likely wiped
06:39out a decent portion of the world's population. 2. Ozymandias
06:44Watchman Plenty of spirited debate, shall we say,
06:47about whether Ozymandias is Watchman's true villain or not. But, you know, the guy kinda murders 15
06:54million people in his quest to unite the world against a common enemy, Dr. Manhattan. And that's
07:00not exactly heroic. There's absolutely a cruel, perverse logic to his actions, which are at least
07:06initially shown to completely succeed. The world does unite together, Manhattan is exiled from Earth,
07:13and the single dissenting hero, Rorschach, is even killed by Manhattan on his way out of the door.
07:20Some will point to the film's final scene, where Rorschach's journal ends up in the hands of a New
07:25York tabloid, as proof that Ozymandias' ruse will eventually be exposed. But think about it,
07:31who's going to believe it? The scrawlings of a deranged vigilante have considerably less
07:36credibility than a retired superhero turned businessman, especially when published by a
07:40cranky, paranoid tabloid. As such, it's incredibly likely that humanity at large would posthumously
07:46dismiss Rorschach as a fringe lunatic conspiracy theorist, and Ozymandias wouldn't face any major
07:52repercussions for his actions. He won in pretty much every way that matters.
07:571. Khan Noonien Singh – Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan
08:02Ricardo Montalban's iconic villain Khan Noonien Singh may not survive the events of the
08:07greatest Star Trek movie, Wrath of Khan, but he nevertheless fulfills his primary objective,
08:13to, in his own words, do something far worse than kill Captain Kirk. Hurt him, and hurt him bad.
08:20Khan's actions end up severely damaging the Enterprise, in turn causing Spock's sacrificial death,
08:26and in Kirk's quest to resurrect Spock in the third film, also leads to the death of Kirk's son,
08:32David. On top of that, the precious Genesis device is destroyed, a ton of Starfleet personnel
08:38are dead, and because Kirk kills Klingon Kruger, Christopher Lloyd, in the third movie's climax,
08:44Klingons now hate him forevermore. And I mean, relatable, I'd also kind of hate you if you kill
08:49Klingon Christopher Lloyd. Sorry, Bill Shatner. And yeah, that's a big old mess that Khan created for
08:55Kirk, and consequently a lot of pain even long after Khan himself is dead. Khan cuts Kirk,
09:02and he cuts him deep. No matter that he didn't actually kill the guy, instead he left him to
09:08live and experience the full feeling of his pain. And those were eight more movie villains you didn't
09:13realise actually won. Any villains you feel secretly handed a big fan out to their opponents in a given
09:19film? Shout them out down in the comments below. Don't forget to drop the video a like if you enjoyed it,
09:22and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss another upload. Either way, thank you all for
09:26watching. I've been Ewan, this has been WhatCulture, and I'll hopefully catch you next time. Bye!