20 Recent Movie Villains Who Were Instantly Iconic
15. The Major - The Long Walk
Anyone who read Stephen King's dystopian novel The Long Walk before watching the recent film adaptation knew just how statuesque its central villain, The Major, truly was.
The iron-fisted soldier in charge of running the Long Walk was surely a tough role to cast, given that fans of the novel have decades of preconceptions about how the character should be depicted.
But director Francis Lawrence pulled off a major casting coup by landing Mark Hamill for the part, who lends a gravelly menace to the mysterious character even with his relatively insubstantial screen time compared to the central walkers.
Even though Hamill has played villains before, there's still a novelty element to seeing the Star Wars icon portray viciously violent antagonists, especially in live-action form.
Lawrence not only adapted a supposedly "unfilmable" novel into a great movie, but took a legendary literary villain and made him a terrifying cinematic emblem of the establishment.