No - Loki and Thanos, for instance, were excellent villains. I thought about listing them, but the movies are too new. IMHO, pop culture has to marinate for a couple of decades at least any part of it to be considered greatest of all time. It’s like how I would never list a post-2000 song as my favorite song, even if it was, because it hasn’t been around long enough for me to judge it objectively.
Loki and Killmonger were both very good villains. It’s just that neither quite reaches the top of anyone’s lists.
But yes, Marvel movies do tend to spend the bulk of their characterization budget, so to speak, on the heroes. You only have so much screen time, lines, etc. available, and by using stock, generic villains (wants to destroy the world because insane, or literal Nazi, or whatever), you have more time available for the good guys.
Any villain played by Alan Rickman is my favorite.
As for scariest bad guy, mine is Mr. Blonde, from Reservoir Dogs. I can’t watch Michael Madsen in anything now without wanting to cower.
Your post made me think of Eli Wallach’s Tuco in “The Good The Bad And The Ugly”.
Ok, I’ll go there. Thanos is the best type of villain as while he is a mass murder on a Galactic scale, there is a central purpose to his actions and a…call it a philosophy…that he is dedicated too, as monstrous as we think it is. He truly believes what he is doing is for the greater good of the universe and that is goal is not to rule, but to retire. There is…humanity, for lack of a better word, in his villainly. IMHO as always.
And one that came to mind was Keyser Soze (from The Usual Suspects). Of course it could be argued that he was not a proper villain, but his back history shows a willingness to kill families, including his own, when it was necessary (according to his lights). And rather diabolically clever, too.
Interesting thread, hope to see more added.
Frank Booth in his “Well-dressed Man” disguise.
I like my villains to make sense. To be fair, there is plenty of overlap between “definitely evil, but with really good reasons” and “murderous,” but unfortunately Vader became more of a “pathetic, self-pitying fascist and domestic abuser” in the prequels.
So HAL becomes the superior villain to my mind.
Wallach is brilliant in that, but I wouldn’t call him the villain. Lee Van Cleef is literally “the Bad”.
There is no Keyser Söze!
And the T-1000 can mimic the appearance of anyone you know.
I think Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been omitted because the TV series turned him into more an anti-hero than outright villain
AS far Thanos goes I prefer the version of him from the actual comics than the movie version.
Livia, as portrayed by Sian Phillips in I, Claudius I lost count of how many people she had offed. But my favorite to see was her smearing poison on pears growing on a tree. Hubby Augustus was getting paranoid see, and wanted to eat only things he’d selected himself, or seen being prepared. Phillips got to age from about forty to her late eighties or early nineties.
Another favorite of mine is General Zod-- particularly Terence Stamp’s potrayal of him in Superman II.
“Kneel before ZOD!!!”
I’ll disagree on that. While I have a lot of respect for a villain who’s just consistently following a superficially-sound philosophy, Thanos’ philosophy basically just boils down to “he’s insane”. His philosophy is too simplistic, and he follows it too slavishly, with no thought whatsoever. The net result is indistinguishable from “He’s evil just because he’s evil”, and Thanos didn’t pull that off nearly as well as Darth Vader did.
Jareth from Labyrinth.
Gus Fring and Lalo Salamanca from Better Call Saul/Breaking Bad.
I think those were figs, not pears. He was advised not to eat them because his bowels were “loose enough already.”
Sadly, he did not heed the advice.
Ultron, specifically from the comics. I liked the movie version well enough, but the differences are significant, and the comics one is better.
Hyacinth Hawthorne in Laura Amy Schlitz’s novel A Drowned Maiden’s Hair.
Like the Witch in *Into The Woods":