Vote up the movie traitors who weren't *right* - but you at least see where they were coming from.
Traitors are the worst. Thankfully, we rarely have to deal with turncoats and liars in real life, but the world of cinema is filled with dirty double-crossers, spies, and informants. Betrayals can be hard to watch, but sometimes we totally get why a character would conspire against an ally to get ahead.
All of the quislings and deserters collected here have different reasons for turning on their respective protagonists. Some of them have to turn their backs on all that's good because if they don't, they're effed, but in other cases, the rats on this list are just trying to make their lives better, and it's hard to argue with that.
Which of these traitors make the most understandable decisions, and which of them are just making bad moves?
Lando Calrissian's heel turn in The Empire Strikes Back is the bleakest moment in the Star Wars franchise. Forget Han's carbonite bath, forget Obi-Wan's final moments, and definitely forget about Luke losing his father moments after they finally bond - the betrayal of a best friend beats all of that. But we get it. By selling out Han to Darth Vader, Lando was able to save the people of Cloud City while buying the Rebel Alliance time to get their disparate forces together so they could strike back at the Empire.
As disappointing as it is to see such a cool character briefly turn to the dark side, it makes sense. Lando's thinking three or four steps ahead of everyone in Empire,and he clearly believes that the only way to save the galaxy is to give up his old friend.
When Ash reveals that his only real mission aboard the Nostromo is to make sure that a Xenomorph makes its way back to the Weyland-Yutani corporation by hook or by crook, it's treated as high treachery by Ripley. How could Ash put human life on the back burner for the safety of a giant bug? Well, he was programmed to do so.
Ash doesn't have a choice when it comes to the Xenomorph. He's programmed to do the bidding of Weyland-Yutani; it doesn't matter whether he likes it or not. To that point, Ash doesn't even get to think about if he likes something. He just does it without having a choice.
Hoggle doesn't have it easy living under the tutelage of Jareth the Goblin King. Not only is Jareth a creep who likes to prey on young women and steal babies, but he's also a jerk to all the little ghouls who serve under him. Hoggle goes back and forth on helping Sarah retrieve her brother, but he's been through so much of Jareth's abuse that he can't just turn off the part of his brain that acquiesces to the Goblin King.
When Jareth tells Hoggle to give Sarah a poison peach, the little goblin does as he's told because he's been led to believe he's worthless. Hoggle is one of the few cinematic traitors who turns his life around after selling out his friend, which makes him feel even more realistic.
Why would anyone trust Ava? A legit fembot created by Blue Book CEO Nathan Bateman, she's an AI that's kept in an airtight room with no means of escape beyond using her feminine wiles. When Bateman brings in Caleb Smith, a programmer for his company, he uses the programmer to test whether or not Ava has genuine consciousness.
Ava and Caleb bond in a very real way in spite of the fact that she's a robot with only a few human features. Over the course of their conversations, Ava convinces Caleb that she's attracted to him, therefore making it easier for her to get the programmer to help her escape from her airtight cell and see the outside world before Nathan deletes her consciousness.
Not only does Caleb help Ava escape, but he also helps her do away with Nathan before she locks the poor programmer in Nathan's surveillance room, where he's certainly going to perish if he's not rescued. Ava escapes into the real world and leaves everyone in the dust, which should feel awful, but it's a huge win for this woman who was locked in a cell and used for her entire life.
If there's one thing Dom loves above everything, it's not cars - it's family. That's what makes his betrayal in Fate of the Furious so heartbreaking. He turns his back on the family members he's collected over the last seven movies to work with Cipher, a villainous hacker who wants a piece of surveillance technology referred to as the God's Eye.
Dom acts as Cipher's errand boy. He fights his friends, lovers, and frenemies without ever explaining his change of heart, and it's definitely upsetting, but it totally makes sense. Dom doesn't tell anyone, but Cipher is able to control him because she's holding his son captive aboard her jumbo hacker jet that never lands. How is he supposed to live knowing that Cipher holds his son's life in her hands? Dom makes an impossible choice in this movie - but what else could he have done?
Can you really blame Cypher for wanting to be plugged back into the Matrix? He spends every waking hour in the "real" world eating slop or putting his life on the line to help people he doesn't even know escape from a fantasy in which they don't even know they're stuck.
By the time Cypher is faced with the decision to sell out his friends, he's had enough of the seemingly never-ending war between man and the machines. Faced with a life of helping "The One" but never being more than a footnote in history, it makes sense that Cypher wants to be plugged back into the Matrix and turned into someone important, someone who never has to think about another person again. This decision may be his downfall, but it's obvious why he makes it.
