The edgy, experimental movies of the New Hollywood movement popularized cinematic antiheroes like Travis Bickle and Michael Corleone. In the decades that followed, this paved the way for all kinds of subversions on traditional protagonists, like Escape from New York’s eyepatch-wearing ex-con mercenary Snake Plissken and The Big Lebowski’s passive stoner hero “The Dude.”

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The films of the 2000s had a wide variety of antiheroes and non-traditional protagonists to offer, ranging from oilman Daniel Plainview to amnesiac CIA assassin Jason Bourne to swamp-dwelling ogre Shrek.

Bryan Mills (Taken)

Liam Neeson holding a gun in Taken

After roles in Schindler’s List and Gangs of New York made him one of the world’s most respected dramatic actors, Liam Neeson completely reinvented his on-screen persona as a badass action hero with his turn as vengeful father (and ex-CIA agent) Bryan Mills in Taken.

Mills uses his “very particular set of skills” to beat, bludgeon, and torture a band of Albanian sex traffickers. The audience roots for him because it’s all in the name of recovering his kidnapped daughter. The central theme of the movie is that a parent will go to any length and do whatever is necessary to protect their child.

Patrick Bateman (American Psycho)

Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman wielding an axe

Mary Harron’s film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ satirical gem American Psycho was met with the same controversy as the novel. In both incarnations of the story, the audience is asked to sympathize with a serial killer.

Patrick Bateman is a self-obsessed corporate suit who leads a double life as a murderer who commits a series of gruesome killings that might have been imagined. Christian Bale gave an iconic turn as the character, leaning heavily into Bateman’s signature smarm to darkly hysterical effect.

Hellboy (Hellboy)

Ron Perlman as Hellboy holding a revolver

The defining hallmark of Guillermo del Toro’s filmmaking is the “sympathetic monster” archetype, like an Amazonian fish-man who just wants to find love or an alcoholic carny trying to escape from a dark past. This hallmark even extends to del Toro’s adaptations.

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He framed the titular demonic antihero in the Hellboy films – played spectacularly by regular del Toro collaborator Ron Perlman – as a sympathetic figure. He’s a gun-toting beast of the apocalypse from Hell, but he just wants to fit in.

Jason Bourne (The Bourne Identity)

Jason Bourne holds two hands on a pistol in The Bourne Identity

After making his name as a sensitive dramatic performer in Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon proved his action movie chops with an even more badass version of Bond, amnesiac CIA spy Jason Bourne, in The Bourne Identity.

Unlike his tuxedo-clad English counterpart, Bourne isn’t trying to save the world; he’s just trying to figure out who he is and why he’s such a proficient, government-trained killer.

Shrek (Shrek)

Shrek and Donkey standing by a sunflower field

Thanks to its pitch-perfect satire of fairy tales and an A-list voice cast led by Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy, Shrek became one of the most beloved movie franchises of the 2000s.

In keeping with the Princess Bride tradition of fantasy satire, the Shrek movies take characters and archetypes that are usually sidelined or vilified in classical fairy tales and give them a sympathetic spotlight. The titular ogre is a prime example.

The Joker (The Dark Knight)

Heath Ledger as the Joker holding a playing card

Heath Ledger more than earned his posthumous Oscar win with a sinister yet captivating turn as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Bat-noir The Dark Knight. While the Joker is framed as the villain of the film, his philosophies are surprisingly sound. His psychotic ramblings about the facade of civilized society make a lot of sense.

Nolan and Ledger faithfully present the Joker as an agent of chaos, but he also has a few core beliefs that his reign of terror serves to prove. His main threat to Batman is an ideological one: the Clown Prince of Crime could be right about humanity.

Oh Dae-Su (Oldboy)

Dae-su wields a hammer in Oldboy

Park Chan-wook’s neo-noir revenge thriller Oldboy tells the refreshingly minimalist story of Oh Dae-su, played brilliantly by Choi Min-sik. 15 years after being wrongfully imprisoned, Dae-su is released and has to find the nefarious baddie that got him locked up or he’ll meet an even grimmer fate.

Dae-su is easy to root for, because he’s been put through so much for seemingly no reason, but he’s far from a traditional hero – as the brutal hallway fight and harrowing final twist can attest to.

Detective Alonzo Harris (Training Day)

Denzel Washington driving a car in Training Day

Directed by Antoine Fuqua from a script by David Ayer, Training Day is a compelling two-hander built around a tense character dynamic. Ethan Hawke plays the young rookie embarking on his first day on the force opposite Denzel Washington as the veteran detective assigned to show him the ropes (and the loopholes).

Washington won a much-deserved Academy Award for Best Actor for his morally ambiguous turn as Detective Harris, who reveals himself to be more and more corrupt as the day unfolds.

The Bride (Kill Bill)

Uma Thurman as The Bride holding a sword in Kill Bill

After reshaping the crime genre with his first three movies, Quentin Tarantino expanded to just about every other genre with his two-part epic Kill Bill. Broadly, Kill Bill is an action film, but it has influences from blaxploitation, film noir, spaghetti westerns, and martial arts movies baked into its cinematic DNA.

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Amidst the dazzling spectacle of Tarantino’s B-movie revenge thriller, Uma Thurman grounds the proceedings with a profoundly human performance as ex-assassin Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo.

Daniel Plainview (There Will Be Blood)

Daniel Plainview in the desert in There Will Be Blood

Daniel Day-Lewis gave arguably the most acclaimed and iconic of all his acclaimed and iconic performances in Paul Thomas Anderson’s oil-biz opus There Will Be Blood. Day-Lewis’ Oscar-winning turn as oilman Daniel Plainview is the quintessential portrait of the dark side of the American Dream.

Thick, goopy oil makes a powerful visual metaphor for the corruption of Daniel’s soul. As he accumulates more and more wealth and power, he gradually drives away all the people who care about him. In the bleak finale, he lives a lonely, miserable existence in a giant, empty mansion with a bowling alley.

NEXT: Why There Will Be Blood Is Paul Thomas Anderson's Masterpiece