Every movie or show I see with this trope makes me hate it just a little bit. The simple fact is if 99% of us could find the person that murdered our whole family we would give him cranial lead poisoning and then go to the new combo IHOP/Applebees and get apps.
It’s unrelatable and disingenuous to carve through 200 henchmen to stop at the guy that caused it all.
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Agreed. Plus, if you know for a fact that if you let this guy go he’s going to keep killing people and you don’t put a stop to it because you don’t want blood on your own hands, then anyone they kill from that moment forward is on you.
“If you kill a killer, the number of killers in the world stays the same.”
“That’s why I won’t limit myself to just one.”
It’s not relatable to you, but that kind of thing is heavily debated. The idea of “are we not as bad as them if we drop to their level” or “does the ends justify a means”.
The problem isn’t that it doesn’t happen. It’s quite common for people to not want revenge or be conflicted about dropping to levels like that. The problem, which is popular, is simply they’ll kill a bunch of henchmen who aren’t directly related or just trying to earn a paycheck, but won’t kill the main dude.
I always hated this trope! Like “noooo don’t kill the guy committing mass murder or you’re just as bad” or whatever
Fuck that, you’re a bad person if you don’t do something.
Like how many people would be alive rn if Batman would just pull a gun on Joker, right? I guess it’s ok if they die so Batman can hold his moral high ground? Such a silly way to write characters, especially ones we’re trying to claim are the good guys.
I also feel like this sentiment has real-world implications that we’re all currently dealing with.
Pacifism is a privilege retained by those who feel comfortable they won’t be on the receiving end of something bad. If you’re neutral when bad things go down, you’re spineless and part of the problem at best, and at worst you’re outsourcing the work of stopping the problem onto someone who doesn’t have the privilege of taking the high road.
Sometimes we gotta just actually get rid of the bad guy to stop the problem.
You seem to be talking about fiction. The point is a story, not victory.
Technically not true, though I don’t think this is an unpopular opinion at all. I think most of us think like this.
That henchmen thing though is SPOT on,
We all know that the guy who killed Hitler was just as bad as Hitler.
I kind of agree. A no kill rule, or a believing that killing should be avoided when at all possible doesn’t bother me. If a character decides to base their morality off of a set of deontological principles and one of them is that killing/murder is always wrong, then that is fairly rational and defensible position that I could see a good kind hearted protagonist having. However it drives me crazy when they murder dozens of foot soldiers, henchmen, etc. and then when they have the actual maniac ring leader gun point they decide to spare them because they all of a sudden are against killing.