20 Recent Movie Villains Who Were Instantly Iconic
16. Macrinus - Gladiator II
Gladiator II may have been a wildly mixed bag of a movie - the Ridley Scott Special, honestly - but Denzel Washington's scene-stealing performance as the villainous Macrinus was widely praised.
He may not quite match the detestable brilliance of Joaquin Phoenix's Commodus from the first film, but Macrinus is a very different beast altogether.
For one, he's charismatic and charming in all the ways that Commodus never was - admittedly an inherent virtue of casting Washington.
This, combined with Macrinius' basically pantomime-tier scheme to seize Rome for himself, makes him stupendously entertaining to behold in every single moment.
He's the smartest man in the room at basically all times, has an enticingly layered backstory, and is just a good deal more interesting than our not-terribly-memorable protagonist, Lucius (Paul Mescal).
Washington is so damn magnetic in the role that many awards pundits even expected him to score a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, but alas it wasn't to be.