10 Great Movies With Huge Moral Dilemmas

There are moral dilemmas lining most movies. Almost every film sees the protagonist having to overcome tough choices, and then possibly having to deal with the aftermath and the consequences of those choices too.

But some movies do it better than others, and some choices pose fascinating ethical dilemmas that would leave even the biggest puritans and samaritans scratching their heads. Between deciding to torture a man who could be innocent, and lobbying for tobacco companies when trying to be a decent role model, these characters have been put in the toughest positions.

10 Watchmen (2009)

Movie villains can sometimes do bad things with good intentions, and Ozymandias’ actions are the best example of this. Yet, there are many who could very easily agree with his actions. Ozymandias killed three million people to prevent nuclear war, and in doing so, he saved the entire human race. Yes, what the character did was wrong, but it was also the right thing to do.

In one of the movie’s most memorable bits of dialogue, Nite Owl says, “You killed millions,” and Ozymandias responds, “To save billions.”  Watchmen is one of those movies where the bad guy wins, and yet it’s actually hard to call Ozymandias a villain, in the end.

9 Sophie’s Choice (1982)

When it comes to famous moral dilemmas in movies, Sophie’s Choice is the obvious answer. It’s such an obvious answer, in fact, that the title of the movie has even become a metaphor for moral dilemmas.

Sophie’s Choice is an emotionally exhausting movie, and it gets worse than any viewer could ever imagine when the titular character had to make an impossible choice in Auschwitz. Sophie was forced to decide which of her two children should live and which should be sent to the gas chamber, and if she didn’t decide, then they would both be killed.

8 Prisoners (2013)

Prisoners follows Kelly Dover going to extreme lengths to find his abducted daughter. When a suspect is dropped by the police, Kelly takes matters into his own hands by taking the former suspect captive and torturing him.

The logic behind Kelly’s actions is that if Alex is the abductor, he’ll find out once Alex can’t take any more torture. But if Alex isn’t the abductor, Kelly will have tortured an innocent man. What’s worse is that Alex turned out to be completely innocent in the crime, even if it was his mother the whole time.

7 Thank You For Smoking (2005)

Compared to other movie moral dilemmas, the one in Thank You For Smoking is fairly straightforward. Not only that, but it makes for one of the most overlooked and entertaining films of the 2000s, not to mention that it’s Jason Reitman’s best movie.

The movie is about a Big Tobacco spokesperson who goes on TV to lie through his teeth about how cigarettes aren’t unhealthy. However, he doesn’t smoke himself, and he has to act as a decent role model for his son while still lobbying for these tobacco companies. It’s a brilliant satire, as the lobbyist even convinces a cancer patient to take up smoking.

6 The Dark Knight (2008)

There’s a lot about the Joker’s plan in The Dark Knight that doesn’t make much sense, such as intentionally getting captured just to escape again. However, it all accumulates to a shocking finale that’s classic Joker. On the sea, there are two cruise ships, one filled with hardworking civilians and the other filled with convicts, and they’re both rigged to blow.

In a classic Sophie’s Choice predicament, each cruise ship can detonate the other, but if neither of them does it, Joker will blow up both. It holds up a mirror to the audience and forces them to think about what they’d do themselves.

5 The Mist (2007)

At the end of The Mist, when David, his friends, and his young son are stuck in the car and out of gas, they think the best thing to do would be to kill themselves quickly than get picked apart by the monsters. David shoots all of them, including his young son, to spare them from the creatures.

Though choosing whether to kill his own son or watch him get killed is a heartwrenching moral dilemma, it doesn’t take long for David to decide what to do. It’s a snap decision, and that’s part of what makes it so grueling to watch and why The Mist should only be watched once.

4 Batman Forever (1995)

In Batman Forever, the Riddler makes Batman choose who to save, Robin or Dr. Chase Meridian, as he can only reach one or the other. Though Riddler seemed like much more of a threat in some amazing Batman Forever deleted scenes, there wasn’t much at stake with regards to the moral dilemma. In the end, Batman, of course, ends up managing to save both of them.

It was even done much better in The Dark Knight, as the caped crusader has to choose between the love of his life or the one man who can clean up Gotham, Harvey Dent. However, the 1995 movie is representative of all the superhero movies that follow this heavily repeated trope. It’s used in other Batman movies, almost every Spider-Man movie, and so many other superhero blockbusters.

3 Toy Story 2 (1999)

Toy Story 2 is one of the best examples of why Pixar is one the best studios when it comes to storytelling, not just its groundbreaking animation. It’s a lesson that adults can learn from just as much as children.

Woody is torn (quite literally, as he rips his arm in the process) between being encased in glass and living on for generations, or having a family and being loved. It’s a classic moral dilemma that has been the crux of stories for centuries, where characters choose between being immortal or enjoying the life they have, and Toy Story 2 approaches it in such a unique way.

2 Looper (2012)

It’s the age-old dilemma: if someone could go back in time and kill Hitler when he was a baby, would they do it? On one hand, it would save the lives of six million people, but on the other hand, he hasn’t yet done anything wrong. Looper essentially posits the same dilemma.

In the time travel movie, criminals are sent back in time to be shot, which makes for a debate over whether or not they should be killed for their potential evil. However, a much more interesting moral dilemma arises within this first one. The man who is hired to shoot these criminals sees his older self sent back in time, creating the dilemma of whether or not he should kill himself.

1 Oldboy (2003)

The moral dilemma in Oldboy is one of the most vulgar and hard to watch. At the end of the movie, Oh finds out that he unknowingly had sex with his own daughter, who he hadn’t seen since she was an infant. He either must live his whole life knowing that he unwittingly did this, or he can kill himself.

In the same situation, the character Lee kills himself, but Oh doesn’t, and it’s one of the most shocking twists in cinema. There was a Hollywood remake of the movie in 2013, but it didn’t have half of the impact of the original.