Most of times I find the evil character in a movie to be more interesting than the good one.
I don´t know if it´s that I´m evil myself or if it´s that being “good” is absolutely boring.
Sometimes there are films in which is hard to tell the good one from the evil one. Most of times the “good” one is the last standing.
Anyway, here I go with some films in which I think the evil one is cooler than the good one.
Of course, the first Star Wars trilogy, Darth Vader is almost a pop culture icon by now.
Being a Spaghetti Western fan myself, in For a Few Dollars More I preferred the “El Indio” character, starred by Gian Maria Volonté.
In Predator and the first Terminator the evil ones are the hot stuff of the film.
What to say about the Nexus 6 in Blade Runner?
More to come, now tell me yours.
P.S. TV Shows are also wellcomed, i.e. Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Spike rules!
I believe its a sign of a well-written story where the bad guy is an interesting character and even, as you say, more interesting than the protagonist.
However, just to contradict myself, I would point out that in one of my favorite stories of all time (The Lord of the Rings) the bad guy is totally uninteresting as a character – just a blanket wall of evil with no personality traits whatsoever. Go figure.
Silence of the lambs – Hanibal Lector… doooood. The Usual Suspects – Keyser Soze Training Day – Det. Alonzo Harris
I’d like to nominate Unforgiven too, but in the end I think the interest level in Bill Dagget and William Munney, which is phenomenal for each, is a draw.
Ponder Stibbons, I agree. Maybe the fact that Sauron is more a presence than a true character makes him (it?) more fearfull, but has no intereste as a charecter.
Any Dracula´s movies. Specially that old one starred by Jack Palance, he really scared the hell out of me when I was a little kid. Who wants to be Van Helsing when you could be the Prince of Darkness itself?
And what about Batman enemies? The Joker is my favourite, Jack Nicholson really did a good job, if you ask me.
We could mention here almost any gore/terror teenager films, A Nightmare on Elm Street being the (IMO) most popular one.
Alan Rickman in Die Hard outdid Bruce Willis as far as I’m concerned. I was disappointed in what they gave him to do in Robin Hood - victim of a poor script, I think.
Some great ones already mentioned…Daniel Day Lewis as “the Butcher” in “Gangs of New York” is a perfect example, also Hannibal Lecter, Alan Rickman. Jim Carrey as “the Riddler” totally stole the show IMHO.
when I made the mistake of seeing “Judgment Night”, by a third of the way through the movie I was actively cheering for Denis Leary to kill Emilio Estevez and Cuba Gooding Jr.
I’d quibble with this but only as a matter of degree and say that this is frequently the case for the more interesting bad guy.
In films like The Fugitive the antagonist (“bad guy” even though he’s not realy bad) Gerard is pretty equal to Kimball. After all, Kimball wins big interest points when he repeatedly jeopardizes his mission and his very life to save people’s lives at random and dives to his probable death to avoid capture. Besides, the actual “bad guy” is comparatively dull.
Or The Princess Bride – Wesley, with his double life as the Dread Pirate Roberts, is much more interesting than Humperdink.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Nurse ratched comes close but if anyone wins, it’s MacMurphy.
Aliens – The Badass Momma Alien is cool and powerful, but certainly not as interesting as Ripley, whose own maternal instincts and willingness to repeatedly pur herself on the line when she’d rather be safe commanding acargo ship somewhere keep us riveted…
Anyway, it’s not necessarily a foregone conclusion that the bad guy is the more fun to watch…
The Watcher was done so badly that I cheered more for the murderer than the cop. And I probably would have felt that way, even if it hadn’t been Keanu Reeves playing the bad guy.
Sigh. You don’t know what I’m talking about, right? linky to jog your memory.
To go a bit old school and mention two of my favorite films.
The Night of the Hunter starred Robert Mitchum in one of the greatest roles in history. His deranged preacher made the movie. Lillian Gish is actually very good as the matriarch, but she isn’t half as interesting as Mitchum.
Strangers on a Train starred a fascinating villian and a milquetoast of a hero. Every time I see it I root for Robert Walker.
Touch of Evil has Orson Welles as the corrupt lawman at his most grotesque. For the hero we have Charlton Heston playing a Mexican. In this one there is no contest.
My favorite of the Batman villains was Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, who stole the show not only from Batman, but from the ostensible “main” villain - the Penguin - of that particular film.
And speaking of superhero flicks, what would the Superman movies have been without Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor?
And I must admit to watching the “Wizard of Oz” as a kid, sometimes I wanted the Wicked Witch of the West to bitchslap that simpering adolescent drug-addict Judy/Dorothy, pitchfork that Scarecrow, recycle the Tin Woodsman into soup cans, and make a rug out of the lion.
And I’m the first person to think of the (ahme) venerable C. Montgomery Burns??
the bad guy in ransom was way more fun to watch than mel gibson. and gary oldman in that movie with a young natalie portman and the french guy. i can’t remember the name. sorry.
or if it´s that being “good” is absolutely boring.
