10 Most Likable Movie Villains Of All Time
Bad guys you just can't bring yourself to hate.
Good vs. Evil is a storytelling theme as old as time, and it's one that shows up in the vast majority of Hollywood films. It's an easy concept to shape any story around. Audiences can simply cheer the good guys and root against the bad guys until those credits roll. Any moral gray area is usually small enough to fit inside a bread box.
But sometimes it's not that simple. Sometimes, because of or in spite of the filmmaker's intentions, you find yourself cheering on the bad guy because...well, they're just too damn likable.
Maybe you don't necessarily agree with their end goal of world domination/mass murder/etc, but you still appreciate the cut of their jib. Beneath that ostensibly evil shell, there's something incredibly endearing about them.
Or sometimes they're just sympathetic souls who've been dealt a terrible hand in life, and have been driven to do some less than savory things. Either way, there's something wonderful about understanding that the antagonist is, at least on paper, supposed to be a terrible person, but still being able to respond to their behavior with a smile.
10. Boba Fett (Empire Strikes Back)
If you asked a gaggle of Star Wars fans to name their favorite character in the original trilogy, you're guaranteed to hear two names: Han Solo and Boba Fett. But...why? Why would such a relatively minor character, who spoke roughly 30 words in those first movies, go on to have such a massive impact on fans?
On paper, Boba doesn't exactly scream "fan favorite". Fett is a merciless bounty hunter and Jabba the Hut's right-hand man, tasked with hunting down the other bigfan favorite, Han Solo. Also, he has the most utterly ridiculous death scene ever captured in a Star Wars movie.
Despite all that, Boba Fett's strict professionalism and morality keeps him teetering on the line between villainy and valiance. He's crafty and cunning, which makes him damn good at his job. Also, he seems to be the only one completely unafraid of Darth Vader, which is somehow even more impressive when you consider he's not a Jedi.
In a movie universe stuffed to the brim with badasses, Fett manages to stand out. It's his stoic and mysterious cool - and occasional sassiness to the Dark Lord - that makes him so easy to like.