Big Goods in Animated Films and Films. Main and/or supporting heroes will become the major forces of good at some point of the plot/story, so beware of spoilers ahead.
The following have their own pages:
Other Films — Animated
- Animal Crackers: The role is split between Bob and Talia, and also Chesterfield to a lesser extent. Bob is a kind-hearted entertainer who co-founded the circus that the movie revolves around with his brother Horatio. When Horatio goes bad, Bob and Talia do everything they can to stop him from taking over the circus, even though it costs them their human forms. Chesterfield is the de facto leader of the circus between Bob's disappearance and Owen's family inheriting the circus, and he also acts as a mentor figure to Owen.
- Barbie movies:
- Barbie in the Nutcracker: The Sugar Plum Princess is the only one who can stop the Mouse King and turn the Nutcracker back into a human prince. The trope gets subverted slightly during The Reveal that the seemingly ordinary Plucky Girl hero Clara was the Princess all along.
- Barbie of Swan Lake: The Fairy Queen who presides over the Enchanted Forest and who is the foil and cousin to the Big Bad Evil Sorcerer Rothbart.
- Barbie Fairytopia: The Enchantress, the Universally Beloved Leader of Fairytopia who gifts Elina wings for saving Fairytopia.
- Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus: The Cloud Queen, a magical being who cares for Brietta after she is turned into a pegasus and helps Annika and Brietta stop Wenlock.
- Barbie: Mariposa: The queen of Flutterfield who Mariposa must save from the Big Bad.
- Blue Sky Studios movies:
- Ice Age: Manny is one to his herd and family throughout the entire series. The wider community of mammals usually seems to look to him as a figure of authority, gathering together to celebrate his family's events or following Ellie's lead in his absence.
- Robots: Bigweld is the one who Rodney and his friends follow in order to take back Bigweld Industries from Ratchet.
- Queen Tara from Epic (2013), as she is choosing a successor and her accidentally choosing the protagonist sets off the main plot. The rulers of the forest are this in general.
- Spies in Disguise: Joy Jenkins is the head of H.T.U.V. (the secret spy organization that Lance, Walter, and Marcy all work at) as well as Lance's direct superior.
- Tied in The Book of Life, between La Muerte, ruler over the Land of the Remembered who represents the positive side of the afterlife, and the Candlemaker.
- Dreamworks Animation movies:
- The Bad Guys (2022): Professor Marmalade, despite his Condescending Compassion attitude, is initially presented as this as a beloved philanthropist. After he's revealed to be Evil All Along, Governor Diane Foxington, who had been introduced as the Hero Antagonist, takes on this role, as her understanding and empathy are what allow the Bad Guys to reform for real. As the Crimson Paw, she can kick ass with the best of them, it's her arrival that gets the Bad Guys out of wrongful imprisonment, and it's thanks to her help and her arsenal of gadgets that they're able to stop the cruel mastermind.
- How to Train Your Dragon: Stoick is the Chief of Berk. In the sequel the role is taken up by Hiccup.
- Kung Fu Panda: Master Oogway, then Shifu after the former dies, serving as mentor and leader of the Furious Five (and Po).
- Madagascar: Despite their various quirks, the Penguins are certainly the most competent out of the cast, always the ones responsible for getting the plot going, generally the ones solving the 'bigger' problems (stealing the tanker ship and satisfying Alex's hunger in 1, fixing the plane in 2, and actually running the Circus in 3, though the monkeys helped with the latter two), and are always Big Damn Heroes in all three movies (or at least leading the charge).
- Megamind: Metroman is the great hero of Metro City whose absence sets the plot in motion. Towards the end, Megamind fills the role.
- Monsters vs. Aliens : General W.R. Monger, although his role is limited to capturing the monsters and then directing them to the threat.
- Rise of the Guardians: The Man in the Moon is treated as the leader of the Guardians and the source of their power, but it isn't clear how much, if any, of a role it has.
- Happily Never After: The wizard who controls the fairy tale land.
- Illumination Entertainment movies:
- Despicable Me: Silas Ramsbottom is the head of the Anti-Villain League, who is fighting for the good of humanity. But he is more of a dour and condescending example of the trope.
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Akin (and compared) to most of the Mario video games, Princess Peach plays an active role in taking the fight to Bowser, and acts as a mentor (and love interest) of sorts to Mario.
- Sausage Party has Firewater and Gum. The former is the main food who knows the truth, and the latter gives Barry the information needed to kill the "gods" and find a way back to the supermarket. Gum even joins Barry and Frank's revolution against the "gods".
- The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run: Sage is the most powerful force in the movie who aids SpongeBob and Patrick in saving Gary.
- Studio Ghibli movies:
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: Nausicaa herself. She has dedicated herself to help her people, including trying to find a cure for the miasma poison that so many suffer from. Generally, she possesses the best qualities of the trope: brave, courageous, wise, intelligent, loyal, honest, kind and compassionate.
- Howl's Moving Castle: Strangely, Madame Suliman does make plans to meet with the Prime Minister and the Minster of Defense, as well as Prince Justin to stop the war.
- Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea: Granmamare is the benevolent goddess who gives Ponyo and Sosuke their happy ending.
- UglyDolls: Ox is a green male one-eyed rabbit Uglydoll who built Uglyville so that the Dolls who get thrown away would have a good place to live and wouldn't be destroyed anymore.
Other Films — Live-Action
- King Leonidas in 300 leads the eponymous group of Spartans against the Persian army, and his legacy is what spurs on the Spartans in the current day (the movie being told In Medias Res by an Unreliable Narrator).
- The Babysitter: Killer Queen: Bee, the former Big Bad of the first movie who made her Heel–Face Turn, takes up the role by secretly setting up Cole and Phoebe to live and the cultists to fail.
- In the the 2023 live-action movie of Barbie, Weird Barbie takes up the position as the one who gives Stereotypical Barbie the direction she needs in order to fix her life and winds up leading the resistance when the Kens take over Barbieland.
- In Casablanca, Victor Laszlo. Those Wacky Nazis are willing to do just about anything, even violating Vichy "neutrality" (thus risking drawing the U.S. into the war) and letting known anti-fascist fighter Rick and Laszlo's "companion" Ilsa escape to America, if it means they can stop Laszlo.
- Godzilla (2014): In a very loose way, Godzilla is seen as this by Dr. Serizawa, who notes that the creature is humanity's best chance at survival and the only thing that can stop the MUTOs.
- Honey, I Blew Up the Kid: Dr. Clifford Sterling proves to be a kindred spirit who not only puts his trust in Wayne Szalinski in being able to shrink Adam back to normal size, but actively helps and assists him in it too.
- President Thomas Whitmore from Independence Day.
- Come the sequel, a mysterious sphere takes his place.
- Arthur from Kingsman: The Secret Service. He's the leader of the Kingsmen. Unfortunately, he makes a Face–Heel Turn and joins Valentine.
- Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road. She's the opposite to Immortan Joe's Big Bad, with her main objective being the liberation of The Wives. Angharad counts as well, as she inspired the wives to escape and caused the movie's events. George Miller has said she's Immortan Joe's true ideological opponent.
- Mars Attacks!: President Dale is the leader of the US army and one of the humans who gets the most focus in the film.
- Morpheus from the The Matrix, shifting quite quickly to Neo after he reaches The One status.
- Raiden from Mortal Kombat: The Movie and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, which most people agreed was a great use of Pragmatic Adaptation. The character in the games was not quite top-tier despite being a Physical God. (And in some non-canonical video game endings involving him, he is depicted as being evil and/or blindly destructive.)
- No Escape: The Father, who leads the peaceful Insiders. He's a fair, compassionate man who all of them look up to. This is quite a contrast with Merek, leader of the bloodthirsty Outsiders.
- Marshall Stacker Pentecost in Pacific Rim leads the Shatterdome and is the moral heart of the heroes; he refers to himself as a "fixed point" around which everyone else can focus.
- Pokémon Detective Pikachu: Surprisingly, with a healthy dose of Adaptational Heroism, Mewtwo acts as the greatest source of good in the movie, as it rescues Harry and his Pikachu on different occasions, and pushes the direly-needed Reset Button in the aftermath of Howard's evil plan.
- At the end of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Caesar has become this for the rest of the apes. He holds this position in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, attempting to keep peace between the apes and humans.
- As of Skyfall, after M dies, Gareth Mallory takes her place.
- In Suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst fills this role. She is in hiding at the time the plot takes place, and is only seen giving a Rousing Speech, after which she goes into hiding again. When some suffragettes, the protagonist Maud among them, blow up a manor house (while no one is at home, obviously, they're nonviolent), she takes the blame (or credit) for that and goes to prison. The secret service, who had been trying to convince Maud that the suffragettes consider her expendable and will do nothing to keep her out of trouble, are not happy about this.
- John Connor in the Terminator films is fated to be one of these, and in Terminator Salvation he consequently is. However as of the new timeline established in Terminator: Dark Fate the one in which John is murdered as a teenager by a T-800 named Carl while on vacation with his mother sometime after Judgment Day Dani Ramos will become this.
- In the Transformers Film Series, Optimus Prime takes on this role as leader of the Autobots. He is defined as a Martial Pacifist, a particularly brutal one fighting the Decepticons because otherwise innocents will die. But many Autobots are borderline Blood Knights themselves, which requires his leadership to keep them pointed at the right enemy. In Transformers: Age of Extinction, the surviving Autobots after The Purge are ecstatic once he comes out of hiding, with Crosshairs calling him "Leader of the free galaxy." Later in the film, him and Drift were cynical of Optimus' freeing the Dinobots to combat Galvatron's armies, only to watch Optimus take charge.Crosshairs: Ugh, you just want to die for the guy. That's leadership... or brainwashing.
Drift: No, that's Optimus Prime. - In Trauma Center (2019), Bruce Willis plays the veteran Detective Wakes, who curb-stomps any corrupt cop on his way in order to help the protagonist Madison.
- Burt Gummer is the overarching Big Good of the Tremors franchise, as he's the most resourceful character in fighting the Graboids and the things they become in their bizarre life cycle.
- Tremors 2: Aftershocks: Ortega serves this role, as he's the one recruiting the Graboid hunters and supplying them with the appropriate weaponry.
- The Trial of the Chicago 7: William Kunstler, a dedicated attorney who does all he can to defend his clients in the face of a clearly biased judge.
- TRON and Kevin Flynn in TRON split the duties. Tron is the legendary warrior and rallying point for Programs in the fight against Master Control in the first film. In TRON: Uprising, he's once again the rebellion's rallying point, with Beck taking on the symbol to fight Tesler, since Tron's too badly injured to fight himself. And in the Alternate Continuity of Tron 2.0, he's the focus of a King in the Mountain myth that states he'll return to defend the Programs in their darkest hour. note Flynn is the Big Good (or Bigger Good) in the TRON: Legacy canon, as he's essentially the system's local deity, (making this an Exaggerated Trope) overthrown and exiled by his own avatar on the digital side of the screen while his analog-world friends fight to keep the ideals he stood for going at Encom. Of course, both have been subjected to a lot of Alternate Character Interpretation
- In Valkyrie this role is filled by Ludwig Beck, the leader of the German resistance. Even when Stauffenberg assumes control of field operations, he still acknowledges Beck as his superior and the new head of state of liberated Germany.
- Glinda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz, helping Dorothy and is the opposite of the Wicked Witch of the West.
- Augustus Gibbons in the Xx X series. He is the NSA agent in charge of the XXX Program who recruits both Xander Cage and Darius Stone.
