The scariest, the most delicious, the best acted, the ones that haunt your nightmares… I know the AFI did a list of the 100 best villians, but to hell with them. Our list will be better.
I’ve only got one coffee in me so far so my brain isn’t working right. I’ll throw out some nominations in no implied order:
Darth Vader, “Star Wars” and sequels
Auric Goldfinger, “Goldfinger”
Hans Gruber, “Die Hard”
Dr. Hannibal Lecter, “Silence of the Lambs” and related pictures
Annie Wilkes, “Misery”
The Joker, “The Dark Knight” (as played by Heath Ledger)
Dracula, as played by Bela Lugosi, but throw in Gary Oldman’s if you like
I’ll agree with Vader, Lecter, and Ledger’s Joker. Gary Oldman’s Dracula wasn’t really a villain though, was he? In that movie, you could sort of see Dracula’s point.
I’d probably nominate Anton Chiguhr from No Country For Old Men. He wasn’t campy or witty or handsome. Just a very, very disturbing indivicual who was good at what he did, which just happened to be finding lost drugs and killing indiscriminately.
O-Ren and her crazy henchmen from Kill Bill deserves a spot on the list. They made for some good entertainment.
Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men perhaps? It might be a stretch, but I love a bad guy who you can almost side with.
The Agent from Serenity, for the same reason as above. Perhaps he doesn’t belong on this list because Serenity, while good, isn’t a classic film itself. Still, I understand where The Agent was coming from, I thought he was honorable in his own crazy way, and I tend to love characters with no names and origins.
Keiser Soze. A real legend.
Nurse Ratchett from One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest. I’m not the greatest fan of the movie and I actively dislike the book, but holy hell is Ratchett a hateable creature.
I loved this movie and I thought Anton was a awesome character, but I really hated his coin flipping thing. It reminded me too much of Batman’s Two Face coin flipping.
I’ll point him out again: Marty Augustine in The Long Goodbye. Great because he was utterly unpredictable. With all the others mentioned, you knew what they would do; with Augustine, you never could. He might kill you or he might treat you to dinner – but you could never be sure which it would be.
George Lucas, hands down. Not only did he create one of the greatest villians of all time, he then, systematically destroyed not only the image of that villian by turning him into a whiny little prick, but the entire franchise as well, before moving on to savage the Indiana Jones franchise as well, with promises of more havoc to come. His actions have caused grown men to cry, and millions more dread his next cinematic work, terrified that he’ll rape again.
Tom Berenger’s SSG. Barnes in Platoon.
The movie being all about moral ambiguity, you could argue that he’s not a villian, but rather a fucked up, tough as nails old soldier, but any man sitting on my chest trying to kill me with an entrenching tool gets the villian tag.
On the contrary, George Lucas is a great movie hero. He made six wonderful Star Wars films (I wish he’d do the other three) and was partially responsible for the success of Indiana Jones. He’s absolutely great.
I go with Kayser Soze. He’s my kind of villain – insidious, intelligent, relentless.
Skeletor from the god awful Masters of the Universe live action movie. He’s nothing like the sniveling coward from the animated series, but is rather a sophisticated and philosophical character with some actual depth. It’s completely beyond me how such an awesome villain could’ve been written by the person who wrote the rest of that horrible excuse of a movie.
