Moral Event Horizon/Film: Difference between revisions

* It's obvious from his first appearance that Captain Vidal of ''[[Pan's Labyrinth]]'' is a very unpleasant man. At first, it almost seems a little ''too'' [[Kick the Dog|obvious]]. But there might have been a softer side lurking there somewhere. But after he crushed the skull of an innocent boy with a bottle and shot both him and his father with a mixture of boredom and vague pleasure, it was made clear how evil he was. Note, this is just when he ''crossed'' the horizon. He kept right on going. He's a moral Magellan, really.

** To expand on the above, Vidal was interrogating a pair of civilians caught near his home, who claim to be simply out hunting rabbits. Vidal does not believe them, and suspects them of being rebels. He then kills them both, as described above. When he opens their bag and discovers that they ''were'' innocent rabbit hunters, he simply tells his men to search suspects better before wasting his time. [[Even Evil Has Standards|Even though he's the most evil character in the film, he still doesn't like finding out he had killed innocent civilians and is upset with his own men because he didn't believe the suspects before killing them.]] But then he takes advantage of his discovery and steals the quarry his victims had bagged for dinner.

* Clu from ''[[Tron: Legacy]]'' has his at varying parts in the movie, his first coming when he ordered {{spoiler|the genocide of the ISO population.}} They just keep on getting more extreme until the final showdown on the bridge. {{spoiler|Kevin Flynn, [[Despair Event Horizon|who suffered from being trapped in the Grid for an equivalent of]] '''[[Despair Event Horizon|1,000 years]],''' finally faces his own program. [[Evil Gloating|While Clu gloats about how he created the perfect system,]] Flynn reveals that Clu's purpose was a mistake; in other words, perfection is impossible to achieve. Unable to accept this, Clu approaches his creator ''and kicks him to the ground.'' And then he turns his attention to Quorra and Sam with the intent of killing them both IN FRONT OF HIS OWN CREATOR.}} If Clu didn't cross the line by that point, he surely did after that.

* [[John Wayne]], in ''[[The Searchers]]'' ("Stand aside, Martin.") Words fail me...

* Initially, we can sympathize with [[Law Abiding Citizen|Clyde Shelton's]] desire to kill [[Asshole Victim|Darby]] as vengence for killing his wife and kids. But then there's how he goes about it: paralyzing his body, taking him to his lab and chopping of his limbs with a chainsaw, making a video of this, and sending the video to Nick Rice.

* It's hard to tell when [[Avatar (film)|Quaritch]] crosses this, but going from just being portrayed as a mentor earlier on to being portrayed as an irredeemable psychopath later on suggested that he must have crossed it during the movie. Here are some possible moments:

** {{spoiler|Or maybe when he decides to gas the crowd of Na'vi while they are gathered. The way it's carried out, one cannot help but be reminded of [[Godwin's Law|the Nazi gassing of Jews]].}}

** {{spoiler|Then when his own troops defect from the mission, Quaritch shoots a ship that has Sully's human form and Trudy on it. It's the first time in the film he directly tries to murder his own soldiers, but at this point it isn't much of a surprise.}}

* Tony Montana from ''[[Scarface]]'' may have crossed either this or the [[Despair Event Horizon]] when he unleashed his little friend on {{spoiler|Manny}} for getting too friendly with Gina, though he does subliminally regret the action toward the end of the film. Sosa's hitman, however, ''does'' cross the line by insisting on blowing up Gutierrez's wife and kids with him when they get into the same car he's driving. [[Even Evil Has Standards|Tony takes offense and]] [[Pet the Dog|Pets The Dog]] [[Asshole Victim|in a spectacularly gory fashion]] ''at literally the last second.''

* Warden Drumgoole in ''[[Lock Up]]'' crosses it by keeping Frank Leone locked up beyond his sentence for the sole purpose of getting back at him for humiliating him all those years ago. And if simple revenge doesn't push him past the line, then wait until you see all the hell he has in store for Leone, and that ''Goddam electric chair''!

* Sylvia Ganush in ''[[Drag Me to Hell]]'' establishes how evil she is when she condemns someone for stealing a necklace that was quickly returned to her, a reaction that would be understandable from someone like her ''if the thief wasn't 10 years old''.

* In ''[[Missing in Action]] 2: The Beginning'', Colonel Yin loses all respect when he reveals with a headshot to one prisoner that he only used empty guns in previous "executions" to bluff the others into thinking he's bluffing when he tells a prisoner he'll kill him for crimes against Vietnam. The worst part about it is, by the time that poor guy's head gets blown off, ''all'' the prisoners were completely fooled. He loses what little respect he has left some time later when he betrays Braddock's trust by convincing him to confess his guilt against Vietnam so he can administer some medicine to Franklin only to poison him, and when Frankiln's all ''but'' dead Yin burns him alive on a funeral pyre as Braddock watches and yells for him to stop it.

* Viktor in ''[[Underworld Rise of the Lycans]]'' crosses it when, with {{spoiler|''his own daughter's life''}} at stake, {{spoiler|he votes "aye", thus sealing her unanimous death sentence--and does so without pity despite Lucian calling him on it}}. And while the fact that he did regret ''that'' in the long run would normally disqualify it as a MEH, he then accuses Lucian of murdering {{spoiler|her}} ''even though he was present and chained up to the point where he couldn't even TOUCH {{spoiler|her}}''. Is it any wonder that you'd be polarized concerning the vampires and Lycans if you saw this installment in addition to one of the first two installments?

* Johns has two in ''[[Pitch Black]]''. The first is when he steals the morfine from the crashed spaceship, so Fry's friend has to die in screaming agony. The second is when he suggests he and Riddick kill Jack and use her as bait for the creatures.

* [[Limitless]]: NTZ is a drug that gives you [[Super Intelligence]]. Another secondary effect of NZT is to let the user ignore the [[Moral Event Horizon]]:

* The bullies (especially the male ones, particulary their leader Anders, Paul, and few others) and, by extension, almost ''the entire class'' from the Estonian film ''Klass'', cross this line. Their treatment towards Joseph and Kasparr is very cruel and despicable, even for bullies. In the beginning of movie, they bully and belittle Joseph in a basketball game, then fully undress him and push him into the girl's changing room. This was so bad that it made Kaspar, one of the bullies, [[Heel Face Turn|have a change of heart]] and become Joseph's friend after realizing what he has been doing. Then the bullies begin targeting both Joseph and Kaspar and their bullying gets worse: stealing Joseph's notebook and not giving him it back, later forcing Joseph to apologise for telling the teacher about their bullying, cutting and stealing his shoes, assaulting him both at school and out of it, calling Joseph and Kaspar homosexuals because they are friends, sending them insulting notes, framing Kaspar for Joseph's bullying. Later, they begin beating Joseph and Anders kicks him in the stomach several times. After that, they still want to force Joseph to apologise for telling about their bullying. The girls of the class also join the bullying by laughing at Joseph's suffering, insulting him, and supporting the bullies. After Joseph consequently tells his parents about their bullying and they inform the school about the class bullying Joseph, the class choose to blame Joseph for everything, despite the fact that they were the ones who started bullying Joseph. Wanting revenge, they call both Kaspar and Joseph into going to beach by writing emails to them showing each other as the fake sender. If you don't think they have crossed the [[Moral Event Horizon]] a while ago, you most likely see this point as crossing that crucial line for the remotest of antagonist sympathy. They {{spoiler|force Kaspar to fellate Joseph at knife point and photograph the sexual act without showing the knife}}, emotionally breaking both Kaspar and Joseph by doing this, and they simply laugh at their suffering. Even worse, before doing this, Paul, one of the bullies, thinks that '''''this is not evil enough'''''. This finally pushes Joseph and Kaspar over the edge and thus leads them to {{spoiler|stealing the guns from Joseph's father, going into the school, and killing the bullies to avenge themselves}}. While the ending is terrifying, {{spoiler|the class brought it on themselves, and those who escaped the shooting will have to deal with the fact that the people they cruelly bullied almost killed them}}. The only people from Joseph's class who escape this territory are Joseph and Kaspar, Kaspar's ex-girlfriend Thea (although she's no saint herself as she broke up with Kaspar because he was protecting Joseph and participated in their bullying herself), who was disgusted with the aforementioned {{spoiler|fellating}}, and Kerli, the goth girl of the class and the only one who did not participate in the class bullying of Joseph and Kaspar and was disgusted with the class' treatment of the two boys (a few scenes indicating that the class teased her too due to this). Joseph and Kaspar {{spoiler|allow her to leave the cafeteria, before they begin to shoot the bullies}}. Made worse by the fact that the film was based on [[Real Life]] events.

** Joseph and Kaspar themselves arguably crossed it with their {{spoiler|school shooting}}, though it's not ''at all'' hard to see how and why they came to it.

** Donald Menken from the same film also had one of these moments: he not only framed Harry for Max Dillon's accident, but {{spoiler|got him fired from Oscorp, leaving him to die a penniless wreck while taunting him about his approaching death from Norman's inheritable disease like the slimy asshole he is.}}

* From Sam Raimi's ''[[Spider-Man]]'' films, we had the Green Goblin/Norman Osborn cross it in the first movie when he forced Spider-Man to choose between saving Mary-Jane or a lift full of ''children'' from falling to their deaths. He had other moments that could qualify such as setting a building on fire to lure Spider-Man to him or hospitalizing Aunt May, a ''harmless old woman'' to get to Peter, but it was this [[Sadistic Choice]] that showed how low the Goblin could sink when it comes to hurting Spider-Man.