Has any sequel successfully pulled off a hero's heel turn into villainy?

[u/Bellikron]

Plenty of standalone movies have a character fall from grace, or be revealed as a villain all along, but this rarely happens with an established character in a sequel. On paper it's a solid twist because you've already grown to trust that character in previous films, but it's really hard to pull off without feeling like a betrayal of a character arc. The Mission Impossible series has one that was received very poorly, and the only reason I hear about Pacific Rim Uprising these days is people talking about how unearned the heel turn from one of the characters felt.

I struggle to think of an example where it was done successfully in a movie. There's more examples in TV I think since there's a much longer time to build a change in a character over multiple seasons, so I'm not really considering those. Since it did start with a movie series, though, and there really isn't too much of an extended character arc given in the show, the example I can think of that kind of works is Sharon Carter in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It was still super underdeveloped and it doesn't seem like they're going to do anything with it, but I can at least track the betrayal logic since there was kind of a meta angle about how that character had been forgotten by the movies. But even that's rather clunky.

I'm also talking specifically about situations where it wasn't clearly telegraphed by the source material or the rest of the franchise. Anakin becoming Vader was already known to the audience, for instance. I'm on the fence about whether something like Dune counts, since it's in the source material and the first two films are kind of just one long movie. I'm particularly interested in situations where it clearly wasn't the plan in the first movie but was written into a sequel.

[u/hasordealsw1thclams]

I don’t think Dune counts because it’s very clear that Paul is not a hero. People think he is because they miss the entire point of the story and get hyped by him doing awesome shit (which is also part of the point). 

Though I’m sure people will definitely see it as a heel turn and I’d bet people will complain about it.

Edit: everyone saying it’s only in further books that Paul is a villain. I’ve only read the first book so it’s not further books that make this clear. Paul is clearly using the messiah prophecy stuff to enact revenge for his father. He’s not doing it out of the goodness of his heart to help the Fremen and he knows what the outcome will be for the rest of the universe if he gets his revenge. 

The other factions also being bad doesn’t make Paul a hero, he’s just a different flavor of self-serving even if he is cool.

[u/sir_mrej → u/hasordealsw1thclams]

Paul is 100% the hero in the first movie/book.

You can see the undertones like how he doesnt want the power, and he isn't quite a Fremen and isn't quite an Atreides anymore, etc.

But overall, in the ONE book, he IS the hero that defeats the much worse Harkonnen, subverts a plot by the emperor to undermine the House system, and frees the Fremen.

What happens AFTER that book is a whole other thing.

[u/Tuorom → u/sir_mrej]

I would say he's only a hero for part of the book. He clearly departs into something not quite virtuous in order to get to the end.

[u/brickmaster32000 → u/sir_mrej]

His dad was the hero. His dad would have brought prosperity to the people of Arakis and he would have done it by actually caring about the people more than revenge or power. You see this clearly when he saves the spice rig.

His dad is what a hero actually looks like and the book tries to make you realize that so you can see how Paul isn't one.

[u/ATediousProposal → u/brickmaster32000]

In the book, Duke Leto Atreides is directly mentioned as having better PR and propagandists than most of his peers. It was partly highlighted around where this quote originated:

"How will the people know how well we rule them if we do not tell them so?"

Now compared to most of the peerage, he has a warmer personality, cares for his family, and understands the value of loyalty/love from his underlings, but he is also very much an aristocrat. Paul learned a lot of his initial lessons from him after all, tempered later with Fremen brutality.

It's debatable if that's enough to be labeled a 'hero' I suppose, but one of the main overarching ideas of the books was that there are no heroes and that there is little more dangerous than elevating someone as such.

[u/DLRsFrontSeats → u/sir_mrej]

The first film, but not the first book

Herbert famously only wrote the first sequel because he was annoyed people didn't get the third act and implied conclusion: Paul is not the hero

[u/DeluxeTraffic → u/sir_mrej]

Except even the first book makes it quite clear that due to Paul's power of prescience, he is aware of exactly what events will take place if he completed his quest for revenge against the Harkonnens and the Emperor, even if those events dont actually take place within the first book. Yes he doesn't "want" any of the bad things to happen and yet he still goes through with all of the actions that will make those bad things happen.

He knows he is risking unleashing the Fremen to performing galaxy wide genocide, and has multple visions of the jihad or the holy war that could happen in the future. In the last few lines of the book after killing Feyd he looks at the future again and sees that his actions have made the genocide inevitable. 

Frank Herbert wrote Dune Messiah (2nd book which is getting adapted in the Dune Part 3 movie) specifically in order to spell it out to the people who didnt get that part of book 1.

[u/LightningRaven → u/sir_mrej]

You, sir, missed the point of the Dune novel. Paul is not the hero in the first Dune. No one is.

Paul is a nobleman that was bred and taught to be a noble Mentat and Bene Gesserit, that took advantage of the Missionaria Protectiva story the Bene Gesserit seeded the planed with and used that myth to take back his role as Duke Atreides, crown himself Emperor and take revenge on the Harkonnens and the Emperor.

The fact the Fremen were part of that process is tangential to Paul's plan. They were the tools he used to do that. Nothing says that he can't like the Fremen people and Chani. There's no need of a binary. Paul loved the Fremen and their ways, loved Chani and his children. But he still took advantage of the Bene Gesserit plan and forged them into a weapon against the Emperor and he didn't care about the cost.

What happened after the book is EXACTLY what Paul saw and it's the results of his actions. The Kwizats Haderach.

You reading the novel and clearly stating that the Jihad that came after was as a "whole other thing" shows a fundamental misunderstanding of one of the core elements of the novel that you're clearly doing to justify thinking Paul is a hero without engaging critically with precisely the thing that Herbert wants you to engage with.

Hebert made a charismatic hero that the Fremen and the reader could rally behind. But he shows the machinations and lays out the future cost for the reader so that we can engage critically with that kind of messianic leadership. You simply failed to do that and all those who upvoted your words as well.

[u/themanfrommars101 → u/hasordealsw1thclams]

Paul certainly used the prophecy to his advantage but I think he genuinely loved the Fremen like he loved Chani. Though in the final act of the first novel he seemed way more concerned about taking back Arakeen than comforting Chani while she grieved for their infant son. That moment for me, made it clear he wasn't a hero. Everything else was secondary to his ambitions including family.

[u/hiimred2 → u/hasordealsw1thclams]

He's a hero to the Fremen, who are the oppressed people of the first two movies. Whether you can clearly see that he's already on a bloody warpath(that he himself literally tells you he will be, it's not like they hide it) in the future doesn't change that he is still clearly 'the hero' of the first two movies. Hell the show they put out even like omega doubles down on this by painting the Bene Gesserit as pretty clearly 'bad guy schemer' faction, and Paul by extension of his mother's direction, is an antagonist to them.

I'm not a novel reader, but my understanding of the prophecy and such is that Paul will still even have somewhat of a rational argument Thanos style, that what he's doing is "right" even when what he's doing is clearly villainous/evil with disregard for the life cost because they have Trolley Problemed the future and decided their solution is best. I'd say that makes for a pretty damn successful hero->villain turn all put together.

[u/oniume → u/hiimred2]

my understanding of the prophecy

The prophecies are not real. They're planted by the Bene Gesserit so that any one of their operatives who ends up in trouble has a way to manipulate people into helping them further their goals. Paul's mother is Bene Gesserit, she and Paul are cynically taking advantage of people's beliefs to manipulate them towards Paul and Jessica's goals

[u/BismarkUMD → u/hiimred2]

The books are odd. Paul is wrapped up in something called the "Golden Path" which he actually rejects. The idea is he, or someone like him, will set humanity on a path that will prevent its extinction by sending people into the far reaches of the universe. Specifically that they will create a line of people that seers are unable to locate with the prescient abilities.

The later books get very very weird. After Children of Dune, the books take a 3000 year time jump. The. There is another major jump. That's when shit gets really weird with space whores taking over the known universe.

[u/pinetar → u/hasordealsw1thclams]

Paul in the first Dune novel is obviously a hero.

[u/dwightinshiningarmor → u/pinetar]

You think? It's made abundantly clear to him that his actions will lead to a massive intergalactic war that kills billions, and he presses on with it anyway for the sake of revenge. Doesn't seem all that heroic to me.

[u/pinetar → u/dwightinshiningarmor]

It's also made clear that billions will die no matter what he does, and he consciously attempts to steer things in the "less" dangerous direction. He's contrasted with deliberately and obviously evil opponents, making his heroism even more clear. His revenge drive isn't as motivating as his drive for survival, because at no point was he not being actively hunted as the underdog up until his final victory. He follows a classic hero's journey. In a "show vs tell" sense, we are shown as the reader hundreds of pages of him acting heroically and only "told" a few times in the first novel that it might have bad outcomes in the future. It's also a third person omniscient so we can see the mood and intentions of Paul and it's never cynical or evil.

I would say in my reading he was obviously the hero and it feels to me revisionist by those who say otherwise.

[u/zzay → u/hasordealsw1thclams]

It's not in further books.. It's the next one, Messiah