Everyone Has Standards / Live-Action Films

Characters with standards in Films.

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• American Fiction: Sintara Golden may have become successful by writing urban fiction that taps into negative stereotypes about black people, but even she finds "Fuck" to be a soulless story full of Uncle Tomfoolery pandering.
• Austin Powers: Promiscuous as he may be, Austin will not have sex with anyone who is drunk.
• The Big Lebowski: Walter has a notorious Hair-Trigger Temper and is almost always ready to get into a heated argument with anyone about anything at the drop of a hat. However, even he doesn't care about the Jesus's opinions enough to argue with him, instead restricting himself to making casual snide comments behind his back.
• Blue Bayou: Ace might be a terrible father who tries to keep in contact with his daughter through all the wrong ways, but he is disgusted by how his partner Denny assaulted Antonio to make him miss his hearing and get deported. Ace arrests him and turns up to Antonio's deportation, not to harass anyone but to say goodbye to his daughter.
• Carrie (1976):
  • Carrie's classmates and teachers either bullied her or ignored her plight, but almost all of them appear horrified by the pig-blood prank. Tragically, Carrie was too traumatized to register this.
  • Despite not liking her at all, even Chris is horrified when Carrie kills Miss Collins.
• In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka is mostly apathetic to the danger the bratty kids put themselves in, with any warnings he gives being more about not damaging the factory. But he does come off as much more concerned for Violet when she ignores his warnings about the three-course gum.
  Violet: It's amazing! Tomato soup, I can feel it running down my throat!
  Mr. Wonka: Yeah! Spit it out!
• In The Chronicles of Riddick, while main character Richard B. Riddick is a notorious escaped convict and murderer, he has been noted to have a soft spot for children, and despite his reputation it is worth noting that everyone he has killed in the series was at least actively trying to capture if not outright kill him before he attacked them.
• In The Dark Knight, Joker thinks he can prove this wrong, but it turns into a Double Subversion, when neither the boat of convicts, nor the boat of innocent people, go for his blackmail to have the people on one boat blow up the other, lest they both get blown up; on top of it all, the boat of convicts are the first ones to refuse to do so.
• The Death of Stalin: The Soviet leadership are selfish, backstabbing tools who care only about securing their positions, but they’re all absolutely revolted by Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Secret Police and a serial rapist/pedophile who goes out of his way to have people he doesn't like and their families tortured and murdered. Unsurprisingly, they kill him the second they get the chance, and it’s probably the only point in the movie where they’re all actually united in intent.
• Demolition Man: John Spartan is a cop who is infamous for his use of excessive force. However, he draws the line at using that excessive force on petty criminals.
• In DISCO (2017), it is established by Rudy that people go to disco dance clubs to have fun and that no one can really dance. Later, Travis is drunkenly dancing so badly that everyone boos him off of the dance floor.
• In The Distinguished Gentleman, a professional Con Man gets himself elected to Congress and discovers that he's small potatoes compared to the corruption that goes on in the Capitol. He then dedicates himself to exposing them.
• Down Periscope: Brad Stepanek is a hard-core rebel and makes clear a few times that he will do anything to get kicked out of the submarine he was assigned to for some war games and out of the Navy before he starts to grow attached to the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits he's serving with, but when at one point the sub is corraled by that of the opposing force and all that would have taken for them to be discovered is, say, someone starting to yell, Stepanek doesn't does anything. When Captain Dodge points this out, Stepanek answers that he wants to only screw up his career and if the Stingray was taken out of the war game, then the careers of everybody else on the ship (which are already on thin ice as it is, which is why they were assigned to it) would have been screwed, and he wasn't going to do that.
• Elysium: The film's entire plot is triggered because the government of the titular space station, even if a mouthpiece of a living symbol of "White Flight Syndrome" taken up to eleven, still is humane enough to be utterly disgusted with the idea of killing illegal immigrants that try to approach the station willy-nilly or have such a horrifying criminal as Kruger working for them, which puts them all into conflict with Homeland Security leader Delacourt, who is willing to do all of that and a hell of a lot more for the sake of "I Did What I Had to Do".
• The Expendables don't hesitate to slaughter dozens of enemies or blow something up just to leave their mark, but when Gunnar tries to hang a captured pirate just because, as he puts it, "It's good to hang pirates." they step in to stop him.
• Freddy Got Fingered: Downplayed given the nature of this film, but when Jim repeatedly insults Betty over being in a wheelchair, Gord lashes out at him physically.
• God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness: Adam is horrified when he learns that a brick he threw in Dave's church busted a pipe and caused a gas explosion that resulted in Jude's death. Adam was vandalizing a church just because of pent up anger over Keaton breaking up with him, but he didn't want to cause destruction of that level, and he certainly didn't want anyone to die.
• In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), while Serizawa and those in Monarch have a worshipful attitude towards the Titans and disagree with the government's plan to kill the Titans while they are still sleeping, they feel that reintroducing the Titans to the modern world should be done very carefully and under strictly controlled measures to minimize the dangers to humanity. Which is why they were shocked and horrified when Dr Emma Russell, one of their own colleagues, deliberately awaken all the Titans at once to let them regain the Earth despite the billions of human lives that would be lost in the event.
• The Holy Office: The priests leading the Inquisition scold the Principal of the Royal Audiencia for suggesting to exterminate the Jews by saying Jesus wants repentants and not dead people.
• In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, after Kevin befriends the Pigeon Lady and has an epiphany about the bad and selfish things he's done throughout the film, he evokes this when deciding to foil Marv and Harry's robbery of charity money meant for a children's hospital:
  Kevin: You can mess with a lot of things... but you can't mess with kids on Christmas.
• I Shot Jesse James: Even though Jesse James was a notorious outlaw, most of the West thought it was low of Robert Ford to shoot him in the back in his own house and in front of his wife.
• James Bond series:
  • For Your Eyes Only establishes that for as much as a womanizer Bond is throughout the series he won't go after anyone who's underage like Bibi, even if said girl is trying to chase him.
  • Octopussy: When Renegade Russian General Orlov explains his plans to use the Soviet army to conquer Western Europe to his bosses, the Politburo's reaction to this is one of horror. General Gogol, knowing what could happen should the Soviets invade NATO, even calls Orlov insane, while another Politburo member warns Orlov that the military is strictly for defensive purposes, not for personal conquest.
  • The Living Daylights: KGB director Leonid Pushkin reprimands Big Bad Brad Whitaker for pretending to be a decorated general when he's just an arms dealer who was booted from West Point for cheating. Pushkin also despises him for having a collection of wax figures of infamous butchers such as Adolf Hitler, but what's even more disturbing about said statues is that these "surgeons" are sculpted to resemble Whitaker himself out of vanity.
  • Spectre: Recurring minor villain Mr. White, who had done everything from killing people in front of Bond to showcase that QUANTUM (and thus SPECTRE) has moles literally everywhere (both by forcing Vesper Lynd to become one by kidnapping her lover and later by almost getting M killed by one which was one of her own bodyguards to cause enormous ecological damage in South America by helping finance Greene Planet and had always been smug about it finally has had enough which made him quit SPECTRE, fully knowing that it would mean that Blofeld would order him to be hunted down and killed because he can't stand behind sex trafficking.
• The primary antagonist of The Karate Kid, Johnny Lawrence, may not be an out-and-out villain but he's far from a good guy: he's aggressive and pushy towards a girl he has a crush on and he bullies Daniel mercilessly, even unto the point of causing him serious harm. Even so, when his sensei orders him to perform a very illegal and potentially crippling attack during a tournament, his facial expression and body language shift instantly to wide-eyed, shocked horror, and he is stricken speechless. Even when Kreese orders Bobby Brown to perform an illegal act and get disqualified, so Daniel will be too crippled to fight Johnny, the look Johnny gives Kreese is one of pure disgust.
• In Kingsman: The Secret Service, not all the celebrities, politicians and royalty approached by Valentine agree with his scheme for whatever reason. They end up locked up in his base for all their trouble. Though it also spares them from the chaos going on around the world as well as the explosive chips that were meant to save those who did buy into Valentine's plan.
• Knives Out: Richard is a giant anti-immigrant asshole, but he makes no apologies for his nephew Jacob, who is an ardent alt-right troll.
  Richard: Kid's a fucking Nazi.
• In Legally Blonde, Brooke disregards that her and Enrique are having an affair not based on her faithfulness but because no self-respecting Delta Nu girl would sleep with a man in a thong.
• Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome: Most of the misery Max ends up enduring through the film lies in the fact that he's perfectly okay with getting involved in Auntie's power plays to get his stuff back, and is okay with fighting Blaster to the death because that's the deal he made (the fact that Blaster is trying to kill him definitely helps), but he throws the fight the very second he notices that Blaster is a man with Down Syndrome.
• Magnum Force: "Dirty" Harry Callahan may merrily tap-dance the line between being a Cowboy Cop and being a Rabid Cop, but he has always made sure to just shoot the crooks he hunts down and nobody else, and only when the crooks refuse to surrender in an armed confrontation. The titular Magnum Force (with their sociopathic lack of regard for collateral damage in their vigilantism, even killing fellow cops that get in the way) utterly disgust him.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Avengers: Endgame: Despite what Thanos committed in the previous film, Bruce thinks going back in time to murder him as a baby is just horrible (although he also notes that it wouldn't undo the Snap anyway due to the rules of time travel).
  • Eternals: After Ajak's death, Kingo clearly sees Ikaris as the leader of the team more than he does Sersi, and it's established that Kingo actually agrees with Ikaris that the Earth being destroyed is the Lesser of Two Evils as opposed to stopping a Celestial from being born. Still, he's disgusted by Ikaris having caused Ajak's death and being willing to kill any of the other Eternals who try to stop the Emergence, nearly attacking him for it and angrily saying that you don't harm your family. Even though he also doesn't agree with his fellow Eternals' plan, he refuses to fight or hurt them the way Ikaris plans to, and instead just opts out of the climactic battle altogether.
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home: Despite his continuously dismissive attitude toward Peter, even Flash is disturbed when Brad Davis supposedly takes pictures of Peter taking off his clothes while in a bathroom.
• In Monster Trucks, Doctor Jim Dowd is quoted as having stretched the truth, falsified environmental protection reports, and lied to the media in the past in the name of ensuring profit for Terravex, but he explicitly rejects the idea of killing Creach’s species just to benefit the company, to the point that he betrays Terravex to help Trip and Meredith get Creach's family home.
• Not Okay: When she realizes Harper knows the truth of her lies, Danni immediately tries to bribe her with everything from money to ensuring she gets a promotion. Harper cuts her off by making it clear that yes, she's jealous of Danni's attention and wants to get ahead, but the reason she's going to expose the truth isn't to boost her own name but because she's disgusted by Danni going around claiming to have been a victim of a terrorist attack where real people died just to be famous.
• Osmosis Jones
  • Frank may not be the best of fathers, but he does question if his brother Bob is going to be a good guardian for Shane, especially when he offhandedly claims he'll kick his niece out by the time she's 16.
  • Ironically, even Bob has better standards than Mayor Phlegmming when it comes to Frank's well-being. Bear in mind, this is the same guy who's idea of drinking fluids is "drowning a cold" with beer. But on their way to Buffalo, Bob notices Frank growing delirious and feverish. Through Frank, the Mayor tries to convince Bob he's just fine, only to find that Frank is too far gone to even speak. Bob immediately calls off their trip and takes his brother to the hospital.
  • The Police Chief has a look of surprise when Phlegmming relieves Ozzy of his badge.
• Over the Edge: Jerry Cole is a pretty self-absorbed businessman who cares more about money than about the kids in the town. However, after the kids cause a horrible riot during the parent teacher conference, Jerry tries to stop Doberman from arresting them, recognizing he's not the right person to deal with it, to no avail.
• Paddington (2014): Mr. Curry may not like Paddington but he won't see him taxidermied (he just thought Millicent would send him back to Peru).
• Colonel Tavington in The Patriot (2000) inspires this among his countrymen. Cornwallis can be called an honorable British General who respects both the laws of warfare and simply wants to reestablish British rule. He wants to maintain good if temporarily not peaceful relations with the colonials. However, he is still appalled at Tavington's brutal tactics and rightly faults him for the increasing resistance against the British from the American militia. Also, one of Tavington's men complains that there's no honor in burning down a church full of civilians, and is clearly reluctant to follow his orders to do so.
• In the Pirates of the Caribbean films, while Captain Jack Sparrow presents himself as a ruthless pirate, when faced with a choice, Jack has shown a strong reluctance to kill anyone who is not actively trying to kill him as Captain Jack Sparrow but just going after him because he's a pirate. His first duel with Will Turner only lasted so long because Will 'insisted' on the fight as Will was only fighting a pirate rather than out of a grudge against Jack, and Jack avoided killing any of the soldiers pursuing him during his escape from Buckingham Palace. On a more personal note, Jack has given up two different chances at prolonged (if not eternal) life in order to save his friend Will and his old lover Angelica from imminent death.
• The titular race of the Predator franchise may be a bunch of ruthless killers who hunt humans for sport, but they also consider killing a defenseless opponent dishonorable and when challenged to fight their prey in one-on-one combat, they will fight (relatively) fair. Their standard of “threat” is incredibly high, as while the first Predator seen killed anyone who was just holding a gun, another refused to kill a pregnant woman actively fighting back (although it did render her unconscious to ensure she couldn't continue the fight).
• In Predators, the benevolent doctor and one of the few good people on the team is thoroughly disgusted by Stans's "rapin' bitches" comment. The doctor was later revealed to have probably been faking it, considering that he was a serial killer himself.
• In The Producers, Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom are scam artists who plan to defraud a very large amount of people, most of whom are retired old ladies. However, they have absolutely no fondness for Franz Liebkind, an out-and-out Nazi, and disavow his beliefs at several points—even tossing the armbands he gives them in the trash and giving them a Spiteful Spit. Considering they're both Ambiguously Jewish, their attitude isn't too surprising.
• Promising Young Woman:
  • Cassie gets her revenge paying evil unto evil, and it's never made 100% sure just how far she's willing to go in that regard. But it's clear that while she'll make Madison believe she's been raped and Dean Walker think her daughter is undergoing the very same thing, she never actually lets anyone suffer the same fate as Nina, only tricking them into thinking it is or did happen.
  • Even Alex and Ryan seem put off by Joe. When Cassie confronts Alex, using the name Nina Fischer, Alex thinks it's some sort of sick joke by Joe. Ryan also seems annoyed at a perverted remark that Joe makes at Alex's wedding.
• The Railway Children: The two men who arrive to arrest the children's father have a moment of this between themselves while they wait at the front door.
  First man: I hate doing a job like this.
  Second man: Especially at Christmas.
• While Sid from Raising the Wind is shifty and takes advantage of a drunken Mervyn to write a song for him, he still ensures that he gets his £50 that he owes him, even though Mervyn was passed out at the time, and he could've easily left without paying him for the tune.
• RoboCop 3 sees Sgt. Reed and the rest of the Metro West cops get fed up with OCP after Johnson and McDaggett order them to force people out of their homes, leading to a self-inflicted Insignia Rip-Off Ritual where they all drop their badges in front of Johnson and McDaggett as a middle finger to them and drive to Cadillac Heights to help the Rebels defend the area.
• The Rocketeer: Eddie Valentine may be a hard-as-nails gangster, but not even he, or his gang, wants to work for a Nazi spy.
  Sinclair: Come on, Eddie, I'm paying you well; Does it matter who I work for?
  Valentine: It matters to me! I may not make an honest buck, but I'm 100% American... And I don't work for no two-bit Nazi!
• In Roustabout, the other carnies are clearly disgusted when Charlie Rogers leaves Joe Lean to spend a night in jail over a missing wallet.
• In Saving Private Ryan, the German soldier who stabbed Mellish to death in the upstairs room steps out and finds Upham crying and sobbing on the stairs. He looks down at the sight, seems to piece together that he was there the whole time and thinks he's Not Worth Killing, and then just calmly walks past him and rejoins the battle.
• Scary Movie: While describing a party at Puff Daddy's place, Brenda admits she doesn't care that her friend Buffy is a hoe, but says that banging one of the back-up dancers is disgusting.
  Brenda: That shit is nasty. That's lower than the security guard. At least security can get you backstage!
• In Snake Eyes, the protagonist Rick Santoro is a Dirty Cop who treats the Atlantic City underworld as his personal playground, routinely taking bribes, brutalizing suspects, and extorting money from criminals, all while reveling in his status of being untouchable because he's a cop. But he does have virtues, including loyalty to his friends, and he draws the line at anything that involves somebody getting killed or covering up for it. When the Secretary of Defense is assassinated at a boxing match Santoro is attending, he investigates it honestly and quick finds and begins unravelling a conspiracy. When The Conspiracy tries to buy him off, Santoro refuses, because it would mean having to stand aside while an innocent political whistleblower is murdered, and he refuses to be part of that. This newfound moral conviction holds up even when Santoro is beaten half to death while being interrogated by the conspirators.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Dr. Robotnik is such an awful person that the Pentagon generals are openly against assigning him to investigate the blackout, only doing so because he's the only person smart enough to do so. It's very telling that, despite Robotnik being a government agent, the Pentagon doesn't hesitate to abandon him and render him an Unperson when Sonic strands him in Mushroom World, nor do they plan on retaliating against Tom for his role in harming him. It might have something to do with the massive destruction in San Francisco that they did not authorize.
• The Spider-Man Trilogy's version of J. Jonah Jameson may be a Mean Boss who wants to ruin Spider Man's reputation by any means, but when Eddie Brock's incriminating photos of Spidey are revealed to be fakes, he is pissed off at this violation of journalism ethics and fires Eddie immediately. Also, in the first movie, when the Green Goblin threatens him to give him the photographer who takes the pictures of Spider-Man, he lies and says his stuff comes in the mail, clearly trying to protect Peter Parker.
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day: John Connor is an impudent teenage hooligan who skips school and steals money from ATMs. He even thoroughly enjoys siccing a T-800 war machine on two adult men for insulting him after he dismissed them for trying to help him, but is horrified when the T-800 coldly attempts to outright kill them because of this and makes his line very clear: no killing.
• Thanksgiving (2023):
  • Jessica made it clear that she did not like her stepmother Kathleen but she was as horrified as everyone else when the Carver serves her cooked corpse.
  • Also, while Jessica and friends didn't really like Evan, they were horrified when the Carver caved his skull in.
• Tommy Boy: Ray Zalinksy is a somewhat duplicitous businessman who has no problem with firing people for more money, but he draws the line at outright fraud. When Beverly is revealed to have been illegally married to Ben, and he finds out about Paul's history of fraud and deception, Zalinsky immediately has the latter arrested.
• Virus (1980): General Garland is an unhinged Warhawk, but he does have enough loyalty to not arm the automated missile system without the president's authorization, even when he could do so on his own. Unfortunately, despite his disgust for Garland, the dying president gives this authorization to humor Garland, incorrectly believing that there's no one else left alive on the planet.
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Private Detective Eddie Valant has more than enough reason to hate Toons. However, even he looks horrified when Judge Doom casually murders a Toon shoe.
• Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Even she cannot stand Veruca, even telling her off twice when she gets too annoying.
• You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah: Stacy's initial response to Lydia's betrayal is to add several embarrassing private video clips of Lydia to her bat mitzvah video. But after doing so, she decides this would be going too far and decides to just not send her the video at all. Unfortunately, her ignorant mother sends Lydia's mom the video when asked for it, resulting in Lydia being humiliated and Stacy horrified.

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