The Movie Villain / The Actual Villain

About

The Movie Villain / The Actual Villain refers to a series of tweets which pit the villains of films next to what the poster suggests is the film's "actual villain." The "actual villain" is usually the protagonist of the film, suggesting that with an alternate reading of the film, the "villain" was actually in the right.

Origin

On May 20th, 2020, Twitter user @chuuzus^[1] posted a tweet saying the "movie villain" of High School Musical was Sharpay Evans, but the "actual villains" were Troy and Gabriela, gaining over 25,000 retweets and 117,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

The tweet inspired others to make similar tweets regarding film villains. One popular example is a tweet by @obislens,^[2] who made the joke with characters from The Devil Wears Prada, gaining over 28,000 retweets and 91,000 likes (shown below, left). Official Twitter accounts for films also made examples of the meme. The Twitter account for Twilight ^[3] made the joke posing the baby from Breaking Dawn as the "actual" villain, gaining over 1,300 retweets and 7,000 likes (shown below, right). The meme was covered by StayHipp.^[4]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References