8. The Machines – The Matrix (1999)
Theories about The Matrix‘s machines have been running rampant across the internet for years, but even putting all the fan theories aside, it’s hard to see the machines as the franchise’s villain on closer inspection.
Think about what the films themselves tell us: humans created the machines, who advanced considerably. The newly sentient machines ended up at war with the humans, who were clearly no match for them, and ended up keeping their enemies alive in a simulation far nicer than their actual reality. The Matrix franchise is about those humans waking up to their reality and killing as many machines as possible.
Are the machines really the villains of that story? After all, they’ve clearly gone to great lengths to keep the human race alive. They also didn’t ask to be created, and found themselves at war with their creators (humans, who, let’s face it, kind of suck), and they still opted not to wipe mankind off of the face of the Earth.
It could even be argued that the Matrix itself is a kindness to humans. It’s a sort of prison, but it’s a pleasant escape from the brutally bleak reality of the franchise, so maybe the machines had a pretty good point.