10 Film Villains We Secretly Wanted To Win

Sometimes we just love the people we should love to hate.

By Sam Heard /

Films are open to a wide range of differing interpretations. One of the best parts about being a film lover is comparing and contrasting your own angle on a movie with others. This room for different interpretations extends all the way through to the villains. There€™s certainly no shame in admitting that on several occasions we caught ourselves willing a film€™s antagonist to succeed. A hallmark of a sophisticated narrative is moral ambiguity; when the audience is allowed to make their own decisions without all the moral judgments being pre-chewed for us by the filmmakers. Nothing is more grating when a good guy is whiter than white and a villain is putridly evil and completely unsympathetic €“ indeed it is this heavy-handed method of characterisation which often leads to us willing the bad guy on. No one wants morality to be black-and-white €“ we want to be trusted enough to make our own judgments. It can be because of an irritating good guy we€™re willing to lose or because a villain is just so awesome that they demand our allegiance but all too often we find ourselves cheering for evil to triumph over good. Here are the 10 villains he we found ourselves powerless to resist: