when the “bad guy” is the protaginist do you view him as more of a “good guy”
and “the good guy” as the “bad guy”?
Regardless of how it’s viewed-
The main character is the protagonist
The protagonist’s opposition is the antagonist
So I say good guys are good guys and bag guys are bad guys… Depending on how well the character is writen and/or played out, you may even sympathize with his/her evil ways.
I rarely think of the protagonist bad guy as the good guy. I will, however, recognize some other aspects of their characters that are more fully developed due to being the main character. Like, take The Godfather, none of the main characters are really “good guys,” but because of how they’re presented, you do tend to sympathize with them and understand their reasoning on why they do some stuff, but the moment Michael kills the cop or orders his brother’s death, you can’t help but think “Damn. He’s a bad guy.”
But what about in something like Lupin III. Lupin is the bad guy and the protagonist. We all know he is the bad guy, and that the inspector is the good guy, but still we get lost in moment and view Lupin as the good guy.
I say that it comes down to is how willing this ‘bad guy’ is to commit cruel acts. Once we move past cruelty, its more a societal thing, and we all know that society’s rules do not define good and evil
It also depends on what you’re doing. I mean, in the MML games, the Bonne pirates are the “bad guys”, but in MoTB, they’re relatively “good guys.”
take for example a movie like Resoivoir Dogs
in that are the “bad guys”
its not about sympathy
it an unexplainable psyhcology
now another example would be the Hannibal Lecter movies
in Red Dragon he is a “bad guy”
in Silenece of the Lambs he is the “antihero”
then in Hannibal he is the “good guy” Clarice is the “anti hero” and Mason Verger is the “bad guy”