Struggle. It’s at the heart of every great story and the conflict can be what decides which movies make it big and which ones bomb. Perhaps that’s why we love a good villain. They challenge our heroes, force them to reach new heights, stretch them beyond what they thought was possible. Whether it’s a superhero fighting to save the world or just the boy trying to get the girl, nothing gets us more excited than rooting for someone we love and watching them triumph over adversity.
Which is why, when a villain falls flat, we hate it. It’s disappointing to see a character that is supposed to be intimidating wind up flat, one-dimensional, or worst of all, non-threatening. The supervillain with the unclear plan and vague threats, the generic ‘boss’ archetype that never seems to do anything but be gruff, the “scary” horror monster that’s actually cute and gets more laughs than screams.
At a certain point, though, you just have to reward badness. A good movie villain will be revered. An average movie villain will be forgotten. A truly horrible movie villain, though, will wind up in lists like this one.
10. Pennywise – It
You can’t really fault Tim Curry for this one. He played the part to perfection. There isn’t anyone on earth who could genuinely blend affable and unnerving so brilliantly. Even without all that makeup, even in something as innocuous as Home Alone 2, he can’t help but look fairer and feel fouler. He’s perfect to play a killer children’s entertainer.
Which is why it’s so disappointing that the bulk of this miniseries consisted of a scary clown that didn’t do much. We see early on that the evil in Derry is willing to kill children, but after one vicious attack on Georgie early on, most encounters with this supernatural creature don’t really go anywhere. The clown spends more time frightening the children with threats, balloons, and bad jokes than doing any murdering. Any real violence is directed towards unlikable characters that we fail to sympathize with.
The disappointment goes even further when it’s discovered that the monster is actually a giant spider in the sewer. Up until this point, the metaphorical manifestation of childhood fears could at least have been argued as a theme, but the final confrontation hearkens much more to the cheesy creature flicks of the 40s and 50s than the deep and carnal fear that exists within everyone of things that go bump in the night. The miniseries might have achieved critical acclaim, and Stephen King certainly enjoys a nice throne in the kingdom of suspense and horror writing. However, as for this adaptation, the villain falls flatter that it should if it wants to keep people shaking for 195 minutes.
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21 Comments
Am a tad confused- there is a pic of a late Second Age Sauron starting the article, but then Sauron does not (thank god!) make the list…?
Sam Raimi (who I would trust with my Spiderman for about 6 more movies, incidentally) reportedly isn’t a fan of Venom and didn’t want the character in there at all, but caved to the whims of others. Which sucks. He could have (and should have) left Venom to others and concentrated on his Classic Spidey riffs, maybe teasing Venom at the very end and letting someone else deal with it. I don’t get the hate for Spidey 3, anyway.
I actually thought Sauron in Return of the King was going to be number one! As someone who hasn’t read the books I was always expecting Sauron’s physical form from the start of the Fellowship to return at the end of the trilogy. The first two films had an excellent villain in the form of Sauroman, but he just disappeared leaving the third bereft of a decent bad guy.
To be honest, that’s part of why I chose that pic for the header, despite not including him. Personally, I loved how Sauron was portrayed in all of the films (mostly). I think that the whole “Eye of Sauron” was meant to be more of a legend and a metaphor in the book, than a literal giant flaming eyeball, but Sauron was rarely seen interacting with anyone. Most of his work was done via his agents. Saruman, the Witch King, etc. In fact, his entire power structure was centered around manipulation and shadow-dwelling self preservation. He chose to lie and trick the rulers of Middle Earth into bending to his will, rather than conquer them outright. And even then, he had the foresight to bind his spirit to the ring. In short, in virtually every way possible, his power was demonstrated through his actions, and never through grandstanding or superficial intimidation. He was, by all accounts, an embodiment of fear living within the minds of his enemies. That’s what I felt made him so strong.
That being said, part of the advantage of film is visual depictions. I can completely sympathize with people who think he failed to deliver. Hence his picture here. Such a controversial villain deserves some discussion.
Thanks for your reply Eric. I think you hit the nail on the head.
I think half my problem with Sauron comes from the expectations laid down by the typical hollywood formula. Big nasty knight Sauron was in the first reel so I expected to see him in the last!
Anyway, I think a far greater problem with Return of the King was Sauromans absense so that really isn’t Sauron’s failing. For the casual viewer like myself it was really wierd that he wasn’t dealt with in any satisfying way whatsoever.
With all due respect I do not feel you understand IT whatsoever. If you’ve ever read the novel then you would know the reasons why Pennywise is how he is and why he acts the way he does. Basically he doesn’t kill any of the children outright because they are protected by one another. Other children who are killed are all alone, don’t have any friends and do not share that special bond. The story is about a lot of things but one of the main subjects is about the power of love and friendship overcoming fear and dread.
As for the spider, yes I agree that it fell flat as the climactic finale to the film. But again IT is not ‘really just a spider.’ IT is a combination of fears and on that instant those fears generated into what they saw in the sewers, which unfortunately happened to be a spider.
Good article but I had to defend IT. Far more to this film than people assume.
I’m definitely willing to account for the fact that the novel version of Pennywise would be a much more nuanced character, but to be fair, we’re looking at films here. A bad adaptation of a good character is still bad.
These are all rubbish villains (mostly), but calling them the 10 worst villains in film history is a bit of a stretch… in a medium spanning more than 10 decades and the entire planet, there has been no worse portrayal of an antagonist than Venom in Spiderman 3?
Probably the Master. ;)
The Leprechaun from the Leprechaun horror franchise springs to my mind. And you don’t even have to see all these movies to know what I’m talking about.
I wouldn’t have necessarily included all of these characters in my personal list… but… Mr Freeze would definitely be there! :)
Loki from Marvel, he’s the villain in 3 films! Maybe more!
If General Zod was the villain in Man of Steel, Justice League and then Man of Steel 2, people would complain and want to see more villains, but not Loki? Don’t get it
Maybe it’s cause put some explosions in front of some people’s faces and they’ll watch anything – The Avengers
This article completely misrepresents the philosophy behind ‘Atlas Shrugged’, it is NOT against compassion or generosity, it’s against the forced moral obligation to give your hard-earned money to those who didn’t earn it – income and wealth redistribution under the guise of altruism – if you choose to give to charity by your own volition then that is your choice but it’s not for government or society at large to forcibly take or guilt-trip you into giving money, THAT’S altruism and it’s nothing short of legal extortion.
And the Architect scene in ‘…Reloaded’ was great, a totally bold and unexpected turn in a big-budget summer blockbuster that forces audiences to actually THINK about what’s being said and relayed to the protagonist…
Hey, sorry for the late reply, but I feel like you’ve got a good comment worth addressing. As I said in the article, there are definitely arguments to be made about the philosophy of Atlas Shrugged, both as a movie and as a film. However, I feel that the film fell short of conveying anything resembling a sympathetic view of Ayn Rand’s philosophies. The characters were cranky, bordering on soulless. As I quoted, at one point, a character actually says “Why all these altruistic urges.” To be clear, altruism is the practice of giving or having a concern for the welfare of others (i.e., altruism is altruism whether it is forced or not), but this woman’s character was genuinely bothered by *other* people’s altruism. This is where the message changed from being “It’s not okay to be forced into charity” and into “Why would you bother being charitable?”
It’s not that I think Atlas Shrugged has bad ideas (though I’m more than capable and willing to have a debate on that topic), but I think that even philosophies I disagree with deserve the best possible representation. This film was not the best possible representation of Ayn Rand’s philosophies, and in fact did more damage, I think, than good.
Basically the badguys in Inception are in fact the projections from Cillian Murphy’s dream. Who are really keen on protecting his mind in some sorts
I feel, there were quite a few villains in Inception.
Mal for having committed suicide and blamed it on Dom
Mal’s memories for putting Dom and his team in trobule in all their dreams
Cobol Engineering for putting Dom in a tight spot in the first place
I agree with Siraj. The villains in Inception are there, but they’re not out in the open like some of the other entries on this list. In our society it’s the amorphous legal and economic might of corporations this is more threatening than any individual face you care to put on it. And anyway, the film’s more about dealing with grief and addiction than about fighting a villain in the most direct sense.
Got to agree 100% with you on Pennywise. All that build up and it turns out to be a large crab spider! Surely some penicilin and an STD check up would have served our heros better than Ventolin ‘battery acid’!
The problem with IT was that the novel was so long, which it needed to be, to fully explain everything about the characters and their motivations. Unfortunately you can’t just keep filming due to obvious restraints and this is always going to lend to plotholes and large portions of the story being removed. A lot of people don’t really get IT and assume ‘oh, its a clown. Now it’s a spider. Really scary.’ In fact there’s so much more to IT than that. I urge anyone to read the novel to truly grip how genuinely thought-provoking and terrifying IT is. Then the film, though I agree lacking in places, will become a lot more than what many class it as currently.
I don’t get your complaint about the Architect. You talk about what you expect from a “machine overlord” (which he’s not – he’s just the designer of the Matrix, powerful within that system but not necessarily within the greater Machine society) and then complain that your expections were too perfectly met?
Also, the screens were there for a reason, like pretty much everything in the Matrix trilogy. The Architect was talking about choice from his perspective (as opposed to the perspectives on choice from the Oracle and Merovingian), and the screens symbolised that: like the Oracle says, he can’t see past any choice, so the screens represent all (well, many) possible choices at any given moment. As Neo makes his choice, we zoom on the screen that represented that choice, because we’ve now entered the particular reality where Neo made that choice and the others are snuffed out.
I never understood why Venom (the bi-product of gallactic symbiotic gunk) had pointless fangs when Eddie Brock didn’t.