Okay, lemme be honest with you. You can like a character and not agree with the things they’ve done.
And Handsome Jack is a perfect example of this.
Sorry if this gets a little long but I feel this needs to be said. Also spoilers for the Pre-Sequel.
I’ve played though all the games multiple times, at least twice fully, and I feel fully comfortable to say that there is absolutely nothing to misunderstand when it comes to Handsome Jack.
In Borderlands 2, Handsome Jack was made to be a villain, and in my eyes he is the perfect one. He is a villain that you absolutely love to hate. The developers wanted him to be this character who comes off as this funny yet egotistical jerk that players will find funny and enjoy. This is why right from the start you have him cracking jokes at your character like the passage below.
"I’m rackin’ my brain trying to think of a name for that diamond pony I bought. I was gonna call it “piss-for-brains” in honor of you, but that just feels immature. Maybe…”Butt Stallion”? Nah, that’s even worse. I’ll give it some more thought."
This is the Jack we get for the good first half of the game. We know he’s a bad guy. We find out in one of the first missions in the game, think it’s called ’Handsome Jack Here,’ that he kills Helena Pierce in cold blood when he and Wilhelm destroy New Haven. From the very beginning we are told what Handsome Jack can do. We are given this character who is funny and cocky but also is not afraid to kill to achieve his goals, no matter if it means killing innocents because they are “bandits.”
Then we see his character become more even more cruel and sinister by having Angel trick you into the getting the faulty core from Wilhelm so he could obliterate Sanctuary, which is full of innocents. He killed Bloodwing because he knew that her death would devastate Mordecai. And all the while he still says things that we as players can’t help but smile and laugh at all the while hating him for what he’s done.
And when Angel dies and he kills Roland we get a whole new side of Handsome Jack. Someone who is bitter and and cold. Someone who has nothing left to live for because he just lost his daughter. A father who wants revenge to those who killed his baby girl. The very same girl who he locked away from the world, the girl who he has been pumping full of eridum so he could power up the vault key. The very girl who wanted to die rather than let her father succeed in his plans for Pandora.
And yet he still cracks jokes, granted though they aren’t as light as the ones in the beginning of the game and are much more darker, such as the “I’ll pay you to kill yourself” mission.
This is the first time we get to know Handsome Jack. And throughout the whole game he is very straight forward in what he wants. He wants to open the vault and gain control over The Warrior so he can rule over pandora to bring justice to an unjust world, and he doesn’t care who he has to kill in order to peruse this goal.
And in the Pre-Sequel we learn more about why Jack is the villain he in in the second game, and in all honesty, his change is ever so slightly subtle. I fully believe that Jack has always been the man he is in the second game, though due to current rank in the company at the time (Jack is only an engineer in the Pre-Sequel) he isn’t Able to reach his goal and thus required help from the vault hunters.
I believe the first noticeable hints of the Jack we know in the second game is when you first meet Gladstone and proceed to upload Felicity into a constructor bot. Felicity pleads and begs to both Jack and the players to allow her to copy her so she could still be herself while the loader would be able to have the AI it needed, a win on both parties accounts. Jack though turns down her request without any emotion behind it once he realizes that it would take a few days to completely copy her files. Now, yes, she was needed in order to regain control of the Helios so we could stop Zarpedon sooner rather than later, but it’s the way he dismisses her pleas that reminds me of Handsomr Jack. “Yeah, no, sorry, we don’t have that time.” He treats her not as a person or a conscious being, but as a means for an end, a stepping stone to get to where he needs to be. He feels no regret in ’killing’ her to get his perfect constructor bots.
When we get back on Helios we discover another glaring obvious fact that we’ve been working for the Jack in the second game the whole time after we save the scientists. Gladstone lets slip that perhaps the reason we can’t reach the eye of Helios is that maybe one of the scientists is a mole working alongside Zarpadon. Jack becomes unresponsive and once we finish the mission and head back to Jacks office we get a scene in which Jack forces us to kill the scientists and Gladstone in order to kill the hypothetical mole. Jack used these scientists in order to help us reach the Eye of Helios and as soon as their use was meet he had them all killed. There were many ways to have weeded out possible moles that didn’t need to result in the scientists dying but Jack had no desire to even consider those possible options.
Finally, once we reach the eye of Helios we fully discover Jacks plan the whole time. We find out that Jack lead the original vault hunters, with the help of Angel, to kill the vault monster. Jack then took the Destroyers eye and plans to use it to wipe out entire bandit camps on Pandora, this goal incredibly similar to his goal in the second game. But once this is reviled and He is betrayed by Lilith, Roland and Moxxi, who destroy the eye to save the civilians of Pandora, we finally expose Jack for who he is, the cold, heartless killer that he is thanks to him swearing his revenge on all those who had betrayed him.
There is so much more in the games to point out but I’ve gone on long enough and I believe I’ve proven my point.
Handsome Jack is not a misunderstood character, he never was. Handsome Jack was shown in the Pre-Sequel that he has always been the bad guy, though due to his rank in his company he was unable to reach any of his goals without some help from those on the outside. Though as soon as he starts gaining more and more power Jack becomes this uncaring leader who in not afraid to kill those who stand in his way.
Does this mean that you can’t like Handsome Jack? Hell no, I can’t stand the jerk but I adore his character. I am fully able to understand that Jack is a bad guy, a villain, and still appreciate and enjoy his character. He is the perfect villain that you love to hate.
So please, please don’t excuse all that he’s done, all whom he has killed because you believe that he is just misunderstood. You are doing a huge disservice to his character by saying that, because he has ALWAYS been the villain he is in the second game.
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