Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Top 22 Villains - Part 1

A villain is usually described as being any of these three things:
  • A fictional character who is at odds with the hero,  
  • An evil, vile person, or 
  • The cause of some sort of trouble or evil. 
All sorts of stories have villains who stand against the hero in some sort of way. Some villains are just evil to the core while others are sympathetic but evil in some way. In some stories, the villain could be so awesome that he or she outshines the hero. I’d try to say something more philosophical or insightful here, but that’s all I got. Today’s post is a countdown of my top 22 villains. Why stop at 22? To make a long story short… and a fat man thin, I wanted to look at villains in all sorts of media. I didn’t want to just limit it to comics or movies/TV.

Originally, I was going to look at twenty, but I remembered two villains who needed to be added to the list and I wasn’t taking anyone else off. If I ramble on too long, I’ll just post the rest later. First, here are some honorable mentions that didn’t make it to the list. Some of these are good villains but I just couldn’t budge in making the list longer. Also, I wanted to try to use one villain from each franchise or movie. So, there’s only one Superman villain showing up here.
  • Sauron from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy – While he did create that one ring, he really doesn’t do anything else except stare. 
  • The Green Goblin – He’s my favorite Spider-Man villain. If this list was going to be longer, he’d be on it. 
  • General Zod – He would have also been on the list if this list was longer. Also, I really wanted to limit it to one villain from a franchise. 
  •  Emperor/Chancellor Palpatine - The same thing that applies to Zod applies to “Mr. ULTIMATE POWER!” as well. Sorry, Palpie! 
  • Revolver Ocelot aka “Revolves A^^-a-lot” from the Metal Gear Solid series – He’s on the same boat as Zod and Palpatine. Even though he’s been a baddie in about every MGS game, there’s someone’s who I had to put on the list ahead of him. 
  • Michael Myers from Halloween – I’m not a big fan of the slasher movies, but Michael is the only one who is okay in my book… well, his first two original movies are anyway. 
  • Harlequin - She’s on the same boat as Zod and friends. 
  • Azula from Avatar: the Last Airbender - Crazy ‘Ole Azula is unfortunately in the same boat as most of these people. I really didn’t include any women on the main list, did I? Crap.
I'll start with my first few this time.

22. The Scorpio killer from Dirty Harry

Here’s a realistic villain for a realistic movie. Dirty Harry is a movie I really like and one reason for that is because the villain is such a dirtbag. Scorpio basically wants money delivered to him. If he doesn’t get the money, he’ll snipe someone from a rooftop. He goes to greater extremes when he kidnaps a teenage girl and takes a school bus hostage. He’s well acted by Andrew Robinson who played Garak on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In the end, you’ll be glad that Harry gets him.

21. The Kurgan from Highlander

He’s the villain that all other Highlander villains wanted to be. In the movie, the Kurgan is one of the final Immortals that Connor McLeod of the Clan McLeod must face in order to claim The Prize. Throughout the movie, we see that Kurgan has been a thorn in Connor’s side for a long time. He’s done many vile things to Connor and the people he cares about. The things that make Kurgan awesome are his ruthlessness and the fact that Clancy Brown acted the crap out the character. Don’t be shocked if Clancy Brown shows up on this list again. While we root for Connor to kick his butt, the Kurgan’s still an awesome villain.

20. Col. Volgin from Metal Gear Solid 3

“Kuwabara, kuwabara!” While there are probably better villains from the Metal Gear series, the only one that really stuck out to me was Col. Thunderbolt Volgin from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The guy’s just so ruthless and nuts. It makes you wonder how he ended up becoming so powerful in the USSR. He’s also one boss you engage a few times in the game. I remember his first battle being pretty hard especially since you couldn’t just outright shoot him. Overall, he was a good villain and provided one of the better boss battles for that game.

19. Randall Flagg from The Stand

If I had to include one villain from literature, it would be this guy. In The Stand, Flagg comes out of nowhere and basically rules over Las Vegas when an airborne plague wipes out most of the world’s population. Flagg is essentially the embodiment of evil. He and his posse want to start a war on this small town of survivors being led by an old woman. Flagg also does some messed up things in the book. When he and his posse get… “blowed up good!” towards the end, you’re kind of glad they’re gone. Then, you hear about the extended version where it’s revealed he’s alive… and you hear that he’s in other books by King. It’s gets interesting, doesn’t it? By the way, the picture above is from the ABC miniseries that came out in the 90's.

18. Megatron from Transformers: Beast Wars

"Yessssss..." It’s not that Megatron that impossibly turns into a handheld gun. This is the Megatron who looked like the awesome version of Barney the Dinosaur. Luckily, he dumped that look for a dragon. Anyway, Megatron’s  the leader of the Predacons, the enemies of the Maximals. He's on the list mostly because he almost gets the job done on the Maximals a few times. I didn’t watch the original Transformers cartoon, so I don’t know how effective that version of Megatron was. Still, this version was pretty cool. He even takes over Cybertron in Beast Machines, the not-that-successful sequel to Beast Wars.

17. The Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

That’s right, folks! Oroko Saki's on the list! He’s the Turtles’ main villain in all of their iterations. Since I am a kid of the 90's, I have to know who The Shredder is. I guess the coolest thing about him is that he’s a freaking ninja with some cool armor. He also has a clan of ninjas (or robot ninjas) to do his bidding. In some iterations, he also some awesome alien technology. The guy's just awesome. While there are a lot of various versions out there, I’d have to say that my favorite versions are from the 80’s television show, the 2003 television show, the first TMNT movie, and IDW’s recent TMNT series.

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Well, that's all I have for today. Next time, I'll move up the list some more.



1 comment:

  1. With your honorable mentions, you could have done a Top 30. I actually don't know any one of your actual list, though I am familiar with most of the honorable mentions. Seriously, what does Sauron do other than stare with his eye? How did he make the One Ring? How does he mess with people's minds?

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