Best / Worst of Villains

[The Mad Plumber]

There's a section of my website that I am designing which is to include essay articles about villains that I've done an artwork about, and ultimately grading the villain. So, for a little inspiration and fun, I thought I might plug this forum for its opinions on the best and worst of villains.

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BEST OF VILLAINS

Sephiroth
The game and the game manual seem to give the impression that Sephiroth might be a party member you can eventually get. Furthermore, no matter how much you beef up the agility of your characters, the battle is still turn-based and you have to wait through confusing character animations before your own characters start acting. What really pushes him over as a villain is his real world villainy in the form of awful fanart.

Lady Eboshi
This character stands as an example of someone who commits the most awful of atrocities with the best of intentions in mind. Even if her hunt for the Forest Spirit is due to her debt to Jigo, one wonders if she is also satisfying a personal vendetta in her pursuit.

Clarence Boddicker
He's smart, ruthless, and inspired by Heinrich Himmler. He is willing to turn on his own allies to use them as shields, and yet he apparently still commands their loyalty.

Slim Reeser
He's a zombie cowboy with the voice of Dr. Claw. How cooler can a villain be?

WORST OF VILLAINS

Seifer
His are the easiest boss battles in the entire game, he gets his butt handed to him four times in the game, and he calls his enemies "chicken wusses". Also, check out his minions: an idiot who has to say "You know" at the end of every sentence, and a eyepatch-wearing woman who CHOOSES to talk in raspy, one-word sentences and most likely has two functional eyes.

The Witch of the Waste
This is Hayao Miyazaki taking his optimistic viewpoints too far, forcing Sophie to take care of the de-powered Witch that had cursed her. Furthermore, what is the Witch's greatest nemesis? Stairs. That's pathetic.

TV's Frank
"Hey, Frank, can I borrow your keys?" "Okay!"

[Don Quixote]

Taking a crack at this...

--BEST--

Mr. Freeze
Before Batman: TAS came along, Victor Fries (or Mr. Zero as he was originally called in the comics) was a pretty run-of-the-mill cold-themed villain. He committed bizarre crimes and used terrible puns (just like Ah-nohld), and he was really just cannon fodder for Batman. People didn't really care about him or remember him, and those who did remembered him as Otto Premminger with a fishbowl on his head. All that changed when 'Heart of Ice' premiered. This episode re-imagined Mr. Freeze as a man with a vendetta and a man with a broken heart. Losing his beloved wife, Nora, Victor was caught in a cryogenics accident (caused by Ferris Boyle) which caused his body to be unable to operate above sub-zero temperatures. Most say he died that night, but he lived on, fueled by a righteous fury over losing his wife. He is defeated by Batman, and Nora eventually recovers (in the animated universe, not in the comics) after several mishaps. Mr. Freeze brought an emotionality to Batman villains that hadn't been seen since The Killing Joke. I've lost track of Victor these days, since I stopped following a lot of currents due to past money issues, but it's always interesting to see where the story will go when he shows up.

Khan Noonien Singh
Two things. He was in TWO damned things in the Star Trek Universe, and yet he still managed to cement a place in my list of top villains. Deliciously calculating and precise, had he the starship knowledge Captain Kirk had, there is no doubt in my mind he would've been ruler of the Federation. The man was a genius on every level, super-strong, and could seduce ladies like nothing. A refugee from the Eugenics Wars here on Star Trek 20th-century Earth, Khan escaped Earth via a primitive spaceship while in suspended animation. His ship was found by the Enterprise during her initial five-year mission. Kirk barely thwarted Khan's plans to hijack the Enterprise and use it for his own dastardly purposes. Marooning him on Seti Alpha V (the planet did have plenty of plants, water and animal life), the Starship Enterprise sailed off to have more adventures. Khan does not have such a happy fate. Seti Alpha VI exploded, changing the orbit of Seti Alpha V and turning it into an arid planet with only one surviving species. This species was a type of worm that burrowed into the brain and made the victim susceptible to suggestion, before killing them by eating away at their brains. A survey team, mistaking the planet for Seti Alpha VI, sent down Captain Terelle and Pavel Checkov to make sure there were no life forms on the planet's surface. Most of us have seen Wrath of Khan. It is one of the best Science Fiction movies ever produced, and Khan's ability to drench a scene with smugness, disdain and... well, wrath still resonates with audiences. Long story short, if you haven't seen Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, you're missing out on one of the greatest bad guys of all time.


--WORST--

General Katana
It's hard to not talk about Highlander II: The Quickening when talking about bad movies. This movie takes nearly every cool thing from the first film and makes it so gut-wrenchingly stupid that it makes you wonder whether or not the director actually had respect for the original film. Released in 1991, this sequel to the Queen-drenched Highlander movie is just bad. Bad acting, dumb story, massive plot holes, and pointless sex scene/romance. But one of the highlights (lowlights?) of the film has to be the film's main antagonist, General Katana. He's an evil general from the Planet Ziest, where all the immortals actually come from (they just get their minds wiped prior to being dumped on Earth... yes, you read that right), who is... uhh... doing something bad on Zeist (who the Hell cares how it's spelled?). Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert lead the resistance faction back before they were sent to Earth. They prevented Katana from uhh... doing something bad, I guess, and now Katana's back (well, he never left Zeist, but that's beside the point) and he's pissed. He's going to get MacLeod if it's the last (and apparently ONLY) thing he does (do). What's happening back on Earth since Conner got The Prize? Well, it's the year 2024 and MacLeod is an old man. He looks like he's about in his late thousands when the movie starts. He's the co-creator of THE SHIELD. No, not the T.V. show, the massive electromagnetic shield that protects the Earth from DEADLY U.V. RADIATION. Apparently, the Ozone layer depleted about a billion times faster in Highlanderverse than in our own universe. So, in 1999, after losing the love interest whose name escapes me from the first film to TERRIBLE U.V. BURNS, MacLeod helps initiate THE SHIELD so it can protect the Earth from the radiation. The odd thing is that it also blocks out most of the sun's light. By 2024, MacLeod is no longer in charge. The company's being run by Dr. Cox. Dr. Cox, being the evil man he is (also being John C. McGinley), is now the CEO of The Shield Corporation. He is more concerned with Profit than helping humanity rebuild. Terrorists are trying to take down THE SHIELD. To cut this shorter (too late), MacLeod de-ages, falls in with the rebels, somehow summons Sean Connery back to Scotland (where he then takes a 1/2 movie plane ride to America), all to find out that General Katana has teamed up with Dr. Cox to do... uhh... something. Katana spends most of the movie randomly and pointlessly killing people. The one scene where he hijacks a subway train and has it going over the speed of sound is particularly amusing (in the FUTURE we'll have SUPER SONIC TRAINS... even though they only run at normal speed all the time). Katana threatens MacLeod with goons and such at the start of the movie (which is how he de-ages... but I'm getting behind myself), and then later with a fight scene that fizzles out, and then even later with another fight scene atop a HUGE laser emitter. None of these times to we find out what Katana's motivation is. He even kills Dr. Cox toward the end! So why do any of this? We don't know. MacLeod was back on Earth, so there was nothing stopping Katana from taking over Zeist, but I guess it's an immortal thing. I simply would not understand. In the end, Katana goes out like a punk, MacLeod gets the girl (in an alleyway no less! ), and Sean Connery converts his mass into light and bagpipe music. The End. The movie is so hilariously bad that you simply must watch it. Particularly if you're an MST fan. Why they've not done this on Rifftrax is beyond me. Perhaps it's just TOO painful. If nothing else, watch it, and you can say you saw the time when Neil Connery's career was at a higher point than Sean's.

[inlovewithcrow]

Best: the gang from Clockwork Orange. They still scare me.

The first time I saw Darth Vader I thought he was pretty well done. It's hard to mentally go back to 1977, I know, to judge, but the breathing, the mask--pretty cool when you first saw it.

Brad Dourif did a guest bit on XFiles, as a serial killer who was psychic and wormed his way past Scully's defenses. He had a bit of a heart of gold, so there was some nuance there, but that performance...like most of his...eeeeee shudder.

Nazis are good villains. SS particularly. You know, anyone who tortures for real, and you know it's historically accurate, that scares the ^*$( out of me.

Worst. Gee, most of them. Anything from Batman, superman, really all cartoons I've seen, or James Bond novels/movies. All of that is about as scary to me as the ghosts in Scooby Doo.

[The Mad Plumber]

Here's a couple villains off the top of my head. Maybe others might decide as to if they qualify as good or bad villains:

Judge Smails from Caddyshack
+ A judge who has most likely put innocent people in prison.
- Can't golf to save his life.

Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
+ Uses psychological bullying to keep otherwise functional men imprisoned in her ward.
- Was never able to break McMurphy and had to resort to lobotomy.

Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget
+ Something tells me that he's really Chief Quimby. That will make your head spin.
- Can't he see that Gadget is a complete imbecile?

Dr. Wily from Mega Man
+ A designer of hundreds of lethal robots.
- Pathetically begs for his life every time he's beaten.

Scut Farkus from A Christmas Story
+ Yellow eyes! So help me, God, yellow eyes!
- Cries like a baby when Ralphie in a berserk rage pounds him.

Dark Helmet from Spaceballs
+ Uses the power of the Schwartz to send powerful energy to the scrotums of incompetent minions.
- "I knew it. I'm surrounded by a**holes."

Darth Vader from Star Wars
+ Severed his own son's hand off.
- "Hey, where's my wife?"

Lady Tremaine from Cinderella
+ Callously stands in the way of Cinderella finding true love and happiness.
- Must have passed on some ugly genes to give birth to two nasty-looking chicks.

ED-209 from RoboCop
+ So poorly designed, it would be gunning down innocents left and right had it been unleashed.
- Can't navigate stairs.

Hedy Hedley Lamarr from Blazing Saddles
+ Not really racist, but rather uses others' racism to serve his purposes.
- What happened to that band of miscellaneous villains he organized?

Montgomery Burns from The Simpsons
+ An insidious, amoral plutocrat that rules Springfield with an iron fist.
- Was nearly killed by a baby.