Identifying with the wrong characters

As one could imagine from listening to me talk, I love watching movies. I also love reading reviews of movies, especially ones that I've seen myself; it's fascinating to me to read a well-written, clearly formulated explanation of why a person liked or disliked a movie. I have a problem when I watch certain movies, though: I tend to identify with the wrong characters. Not always the 'villains' (although that certainly does happen), but often someone whose point of view is diametrically opposite to that of the protagonist.

Allow me to give a couple of examples. Oh yeah, major SPOILER ALERTS for both of these movies and TV shows, although they've been out for some time now.

1. The Matrix (1999)
   Cypher is right, no matter how wrong his actions were. Going from a more or less normal, drab existence to one that is even more bleak, monotone, and (both literally and figuratively) unpalatable seems like a pretty raw deal to me, especially since something amazing was presumably promised by Morpheus and his crew. The superhuman abilities that redpills enjoy when they temporarily reenter the Matrix would only throw the depressive nature of the 'real world' (i.e., Zion) into more stark relief. To be fair to the Wachowskis, it seems that they realized that a lot of people would think the same way as Cypher, and incorporated an entire faction dedicated to keeping bluepills 'plugged in' when The Matrix Online was created.
   
2. Initial D: First Stage (1998)
   Midnight street racing is boring. This seems to be a genre convention of anime and Japanese-designed video games in general: the idea that the subject of the given story is so popular that literally everyone in the world is obsessed with it. Pokémon, Custom Robo (Arena, at least), and others have the titular collectable things being used by everyone for everything, from kids' toys to manual labor to law enforcement. In the first episode of Initial D, when Takumi responds to his friends' manic excitement over what might as well be stock-car racing with "It's okay, I guess," I'm inclined to agree with him. Of course, having a character who is not obsessed with the given hobby would make too much sense, so it turns out that he's secretly the fastest driver in the whole world or something; I should write a blog post about how anime conventions like this turn me off of the majority of anime.

If I think of more, I'll add on to this post.