User blog comment:JonTheVGNerd/PE Proposal: Hopper (A Bug's Life)/@comment-39032584-20190624180256

Well, I can't say I'm surprised this guy's being brought up here again since he's one of those divisive and controversial cases, and unlike that other wiki that keeps tabs on such things, there's no solid rules in place here to keep him from being proposed by newer users. Anyway, I doubt how I vote or what I write will influence anyone else's opinions, let alone the outcome, but I've had some strong feelings about Hopper myself for quite some time now, and I never feel like I had the opportunity to vent them since most people I know don't analyze things the same way I do. However, since people who use this wiki obviously do care about such things to at leats some degree, this feels like a good opportunity to finally express them, and I'd be very interested if anyone else here agrees or disagrees with my thoughts:

To be honest, I've always found Hopper to be one of the few truly frustrating cases of a non-CM/PE villain that I've come across; yes, him keeping his promise to his late mother to not kill Molt is technically a redeeming feature... but that's the thing that bugs me (pardon the pun) right there; it feels like a technicality. The fact that he's threatens his only sibling at all over the heinous crime of annoying him always gave me the impression of  "wow, this guy is psychotic", rather than "oh, so he has a good side to him as well". Frankly, I also think that's exactly what the creators had in mind when writing that part, because what better way to establish how much you don't want to mess with an antagonist than by showing that he's a hair away from slaughtering his own brother, and is only being held back from doing so by a promise he made on his mother's death bed... which is kind of a big deal. And this, coming from someone in an animated G-rated picture about bugs? Between stuff like this and his outright admitance that they don't need ants bringing them food for survival, but rather, because they "need to be kept in line", I'm utterly flabergasted that anyone can label him as a "tame" villain, or "just a bully". He's a xenophobic slave-driver/supremacist who is capable of killing his own troops for reasons as minor as making a visual point to the rest of them, will brutalize and kill any ants that stand up to them (or in the queen's case, for the purpose of intimidating them further), and the best thing you can say about him is he doesn't slaughter his own brother on an angry whim because he feels obligated to keep a promise his mother made him make shortly before passing on.

...ahem. In short, I completely understand why this is seen as a mitigating quality, but considering he even considers doing such a repulsive thing on the flimsiest and ridiculous of pretenses, I've always had a really hard time seeing it that way. Again, especially so when it's clear to me that the film-makers included that bit in the first place to further establish what an unstable psycho he is, rather than as something to admire about him among all his bad qualities. But whatever. I guess if I'm voting, I'll have to go with "abstain", since I personally can't say "no" to a character with those combination of traits with a single quality that's technically redeeming, but I also don't want to seem like I'm disregarding the "absolutely no mitigating qualities" requirement. Sorry for the rant-like post, but I really wanted to put my feelings out there in case anyone feels similarly or strongly disagrees for their own reasons. It would be nice to know if anyone feels the way I do, and by the same token, it would be very interesting if someone gave a different perspective on why they see it differently.