7. Darth Maul, Count Dooku, General Grievous - Star Wars Prequels
Okay, I have to cheat a bit here to include these guys all in one entry, but otherwise I could fill half the list with Star Wars baddies. If you want a primer on how to create a disappointing movie villain, look no further than the Star Wars prequels. Here's a trio of guys who should, by all accounts, be intimidating, vicious, and unsettle your very soul. Ultimately, their main purpose is lightsaber fodder. Darth Maul gets the most credit for being the only living thing on earth that can kill Liam Neeson, however in an ironic twist, he's also the least threatening. Despite the red and black face and the horns on his head, his role in the flick was less "Sith master" and more "Dog the bounty hunter." He spends much of his time tracking his quarry through the desert and just
shows up in the climax to have a lightsaber fight. Very little is made of his skill, his determination, or his intellect to make him a formidable foe. Count Dooku, on the other hand, is the polar opposite. Refined, with Christopher Lee's smooth yet commanding accent, this guy is in charge of an army, holds rank within powerful organizations, and is seen masterminding all manner of schemes. As might be expected in a second film in a trilogy, he escapes after a less-than-stellar fight scene, with the expectation he would return in the third movie to finish the job with a spectacular battle, similar to how Luke and Vader's fight in Return of the Jedi completely overshadowed the relatively minor scuffle in Empire Strikes Back. Instead, though, we get a bland action scene that results in the execution of this allegedly brilliant and conniving Dark Lord at the command of his master. His entirely unnecessary replacement comes in the form of General Grievous. Fulfilling many of the same duties as Dooku (masterminding things, ordering armies around, being the Emperor's puppet), he replaces the subtle and almost trustworthy demeanor of the frail old man with an even more frail body, augmented by hideous machinery that simultaneously makes him too weak to walk without coughing like he got an asthma implant
and strong enough to wield four lightsabers at once while riding a giant monocycle across a mountain. Also, by the way, he was "trained in the Jedi arts", I guess. Of course there was no way for this trilogy to have a consistent villain to fill these roles without threatening to eclipse both Palpatine himself and the rise of Darth Vader. However all three managed to be lackluster versions of what they could have been. If Governor Tarkin could pull off menacing and evil as a secondary villain, so could these guys.