For hypothetical example; Father/son duo are criminals, harming, killing, and stealing innocent civilians. Superhero fights them, resulting in the father dying. Son is now portrayed as a sympathetic villain because all he wants is to avenge his father… despite all the fathers of children they murdered whilst comitting crimes.
Side question; do you feel sympathy for the villains portrayed like this?
I mean, they’re writing a comic book. The superhero and every other character started as a concept doodle and a story was written around them.
I’m now curious why that detail bothers you for only villains.
It doesn’t only bother me for villains, I just had villains in particular on the mind. I get it though. I was just watching TV and Aquaman came on and I’ve seen a bunch of other superho movies on TV lately, so I was just thinking a lot about the tropes I see a lot, and that particular example was at the front of my mind.
I’d also recently scene Age of Ultron, where the twins had, in my opinion, a really questionable reason for siding with Ultron.
I also love writing fiction myself, and I have a terrible habit of disecting just about every plot point I encounter in media to see what “makes them work”, or not work, to see what I can learn from them for my own writing. Makes me awful overly critical of some things.