I find these sorts of discussions extremely tedious and absolutely pointless. Fictional characters can be endowed with any quality that their creator wants them to have. In a fictional world a billionaire can be by definition benevolent and saintly if the writer decides to write him as such, and even if they decide to make the hero morally dubious they can always make the villain infinitely more evil to justify the actions of the hero. They can construct villains who are little more than caricatures and have them do the most absurdly and nonsensically evil things for no reason, even (or perhaps especially) when the villain might otherwise seem to have reasonable and rational motivations that the audience would otherwise empathize or identify with.
There is little point in trying to argue that this or that fictional character is actually bad when the source material itself presents them as good. Perhaps they would be bad if they existed irl, but the author of a fictional work always has the power to define character A as absolutely good and character B as absolutely evil. The fact that this is unrealistic is beside the point and only means that the writing will be uninteresting to some, while others who prefer stories with simple moral absolutes will be drawn to it - just look at the popularity of Tolkien’s mythology despite the fact that it is one of the least nuanced and most black and white fictional conflicts ever imagined with highly one dimensional characters that are either borderline perfect or irredeemably evil.
The problem arises when some people start to view these works of fiction as allegory for reality and begin to draw parallels that are not there. For instance trying to infer from the fact that Batman is by definition a billionaire hero that somehow billionaires have the capacity to not be a detriment to society irl - they do not! Similarly it is very easy to use fictional works to discredit certain groups or ideologies by creating villains who embody that group or ideology and having them be associated with arbitrary and over the top evil acts.
I find these sorts of discussions extremely tedious and absolutely pointless. Fictional characters can be endowed with any quality that their creator wants them to have. In a fictional world a billionaire can be by definition benevolent and saintly if the writer decides to write him as such, and even if they decide to make the hero morally dubious they can always make the villain infinitely more evil to justify the actions of the hero. They can construct villains who are little more than caricatures and have them do the most absurdly and nonsensically evil things for no reason, even (or perhaps especially) when the villain might otherwise seem to have reasonable and rational motivations that the audience would otherwise empathize or identify with.
There is little point in trying to argue that this or that fictional character is actually bad when the source material itself presents them as good. Perhaps they would be bad if they existed irl, but the author of a fictional work always has the power to define character A as absolutely good and character B as absolutely evil. The fact that this is unrealistic is beside the point and only means that the writing will be uninteresting to some, while others who prefer stories with simple moral absolutes will be drawn to it - just look at the popularity of Tolkien’s mythology despite the fact that it is one of the least nuanced and most black and white fictional conflicts ever imagined with highly one dimensional characters that are either borderline perfect or irredeemably evil.
The problem arises when some people start to view these works of fiction as allegory for reality and begin to draw parallels that are not there. For instance trying to infer from the fact that Batman is by definition a billionaire hero that somehow billionaires have the capacity to not be a detriment to society irl - they do not! Similarly it is very easy to use fictional works to discredit certain groups or ideologies by creating villains who embody that group or ideology and having them be associated with arbitrary and over the top evil acts.