1. Kong (King Kong)
Do I really need to explain this one? Kong was, literally, a force of nature. A one off, with no one else like him. Like all apes he is intelligent and emotes, but more than that, hes lonely. The way he bonds with Fay Wray is spell binding and enchanting. Then Man, like he always does, decides to ride roughshod over whatever he wants and decides to pluck this magnificent beast from its habitat and transport him to New York where the world can ogle at him as a caged prisoner. The climax, with Kong atop the Empire State Building, swatting at the biplanes (or Helicopters if youre going with the 1976 version) shows us Kong at his most majestic and heartbreaking. Hes the one being attacked, after being kidnapped and chained, yet hes the bad guy? When is that ever fair? I mustve missed the meeting on that one. Kong isnt just defending against the machine guns of the planes. Each lunge, each swipe, is a defence against the encroachment of Man. Mankind did this to him and hes simply preserving his and Fays safety. And that is symbolic of all of Nature because we just do whatever the hell we want, regardless of what it means to other life forms, regardless of how it affects them. Hell, we get indignant when sharks eat people when its their environment thats been invaded - and until a shark crawls out of the sea, hires a car, drives to a shopping mall and chomps on a host of innocents, we have no right to feel such outrage . Yet for all our supposed intelligence, we consistently fail to understand this. As Bill Hicks once opined:
man is just a virus with shoes. So these are the 10 movie villains we really had a soft spot for. Disagree? Wanna add a guy to the list? You know where the comments are...