That’s letting him off too easy. A more satisfying ending for him would be dying in an apoplectic fit when he finds out his daughter has married a black guy.
No, wait, even better: when he finds out his son has married a black guy!
Bob Ewell in To Kill A Mockingbird. I know his character was supposed to be hated – being a drunken, abusive, lying piece-o-shit.
When he got on the stand during the trial and was not only clearly lying about Tom Robinson raping “his Mayeller”, but getting away with humiliating Atticus due to “southern codes,” that were being adhered to even there, I went ballistic. I was only 8 or 9 at the time, but I remember being so angry at the injustice of that everything in my peripheral vision was a blur and everything directly in front of me was seen through the color red. Even his daughter Mayella’s initial accusation was forced by him, due to his racism and his weakness as a man.
When he later spit in Atticus’ face for directly asking him questions that put the spotlight on Tom, his abuse and neglect of all of his children, and his white trash existence, I wanted Atticus to break him in half. Finch, being the stoic of course, didn’t – but it was the one time you could see he wanted to get down and dirty.
Finally, when Tom was killed while trying to escape while being transported to prison, I immediately blamed Bob and no one else, seeing red all over again.
OK?
I still am amazed at the people who admit to liking that movie. It’s one of the most vilely misogynist movies I’ve ever seen, and I wouldn’t watch it again at gunpoint.
Reese Witherspoon’s character in Sweet Home Alabama. The way she treated her family, who loved and supported her, the way she outed her gay “best friend” (Honey, if that’s how you treat friends, I don’t want to be an enemy), the way she looked down on all the people from her home town and the way she messed with the mind of her not-ex-husband and screwed around on her fiancee. She was all about me-me-me and I wanted Matthew McConnahottie and Patrick Dempsey to run off with each other and leave her selfish butt in a trailer in Alabama.
StG
Robert Duval in The Great Santini
I am still shocked by how much I hated Tom Hanks in that movie. It’s Tom freakin’ Hanks! I love Tom Hanks! His funny movies (and man, do I miss when Tom Hanks was funny) were a staple of my childhood! Then I watched that piece of shit and, like you, was speechless with rage.
I do not understand what anybody was thinking with that movie.
And a Meg Ryan two-fer…I hated that bitch (and Russel Crowe) in Proof of Life.
Laurence Fishburne in What’s Love Got To Do With It?
That movie made me furious! I hated him for years after watching it.
The first time I saw Dirty Harry, I wanted to bludgeon the Scorpio Killer (played by Andrew J. Robinson) into a pulp. Every subsequent time I’ve seen that film, that character has just made my skin crawl…he is SO repulsive, evil, sadistic, and disgusting. It’s a true testament to that actor’s ability that he was able to make the audience hate him so much. Robinson supposedly received death threats and had to get an unlisted phone number - people hated Scorpio so much that they literally wanted to kill the guy who played him.
The lead actress in Ghost World. She makes everyone else’s life crappy the entire movie and gets no comeupance. I would have settled for her getting hit with a bus in the last frames.
I wanted to throw my arms around Katharine Hepburn when she smacked Jane Fonda in On Golden Pond. It was most satisfying. Too bad she wasn’t in The Music Box. I would’ve enjoyed watching her go all medieval on Jessica Lange.
Everybody in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They.
Marlon Brando (Paul) in “Last Tango in Paris.”
Ernest Borgnine (Fatso Judson) in “From Here to Eternity.”
Dan Duryea could play the most despicable bad guys around.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. SO annoying.
David Carradine in Kill Bill
Kiefer Sutherland in Eye for an Eye
Dwight Yoakum in Slingblade
The hunter in Bambi. I cried so hard at that scene, my parents had to carry me out of the theator.
A few of my top choices have already been mentioned, so I’ll nominate the one that is left. This may just get me Pitted, so pardon me for a minute whilst I don my Nomex underwear and iridium … uh … cup.
It is a character that was enormously sympathetic in the first and last part of the movie, but she was such a shallow, stupid, bitch who was only concerned with herself and the latest even-shallower dope-smoking, manipulative, abusive SOBs du jour in the middle of the movie that I was GLAD she died…
…Jenny in Forrest Gump.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Abusive father, tough life, Forrest’s only real friend. But for some things I can’t put my finger on, and for some that I can, I freakin’ wound up hating her for what she was throwing away. And coming to terms with Forrest in the end did not, for some reason, lessen my anger towards the stupid dumbass.
Sorry, but you asked.
Albert in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. I know, it’s kind of an obvious choice. Like anyone would be expected to like him? Seeing all that he did, a character that brought nothing but pain to everyone around him, was just nauseating.
ETA: Tracy Flick in [b[Election** always creeped me out. A testament to Reese Witherspoon and her greatness, that she could play a dumb sorority girl and make me also believe that she was an intense and very scary overachiever.
Pierce Brosnan in The Thomas Crown Affair. I never saw the original, but Brosnan destroys some are, including burning one painting and gets a bunch of poor eastern European immigrants arrested because he’s a bored playboy. What makes me even madder is he’s supposed to be a sympathetic character. We aren’t supposed to care about the group of immigrants he sets up to cover for his theft because they’re not beautiful people. And we’re supposed to think that he and whatsherface can do whatever they want because their rich and so what if he destroys some art and it is all supposed to be charming. I wish he had got caught.
I actually think a sequel from the point of view of one of Crown’s victims could be interesting.
God, I agree with this SO MUCH. She reminded me a lot of my younger sister. And people wonder why I don’t talk to her.
The entire cast of Kids. That movie made me want to take a shower, I felt dirty just watching such unpleasant people.
I don’t usually have sufficient suspension of disbelief to actually bother getting angry at characters in a movie. I guess the closest I get actually involves feeling angry with the writers, rather than the characters. An example would be, any villain who, having finally managed to get the Hero restrained and helpless, and who has a loaded gun nearby, then emarbarks on the usual Captain Stupid routine of ‘This would be a good time for me to outline all of my plans and indulge in some pseudo-polite urbane banter with my nemesis and talk in long, tedious sentences about how much I am going to enjoy killing him’. These and other Captain Stupid cliches make it loud and clear that the writers either aren’t very good, or have nothing but the basest contempt for me as a viewer. And that, understandably, makes me angry.
Plus the movie-makers who take what could have been something worthwhile and ruin it totally. The last Hulk, the act of desecration that was the Thunderbirds movie, the remake of Stepford Wives, and so on.
Sorry. Guess this counts as a slight hijack. Apologies, I’ll shut up now.
Amen, Brother!