In the wondrously wacky world of Tim Burton, there are plenty of viciously
vulgar villains to talk about. When it comes to villains of the Burtonverse,
some are evil due to the necessity for a villain in a movie, while others are truly
scum. But which of these kooky bad guys are the most evil and which aren’t nearly as bad.
I’m Dale with WickedBinge, and this is Tim Burton Villains: Evil to Most Evil.
So first, a couple of rules for this list on what we consider a Tim Burton movie and
therefore a Tim Burton Villain. Firstly, they have to be a full-length preferably theatrical movie,
so none of Burton’s Short Films qualify for this list. Secondly, Tim Burton must have
either directed the film or helped write the story or characters of the film, so movies that
Burton only produced don’t qualify either. And finally, only one villain per franchise of movies.
With our rules out of the way,
let’s get started speaking on our villains in the Bad to Evil category.
The least evil villain on our list is Don Price from Big Fish. Don is a former friend of the main
protagonist, Edward Bloom, from childhood. The two of them tried to steal the eye of a witch
which causes said witch to predict their deaths in the far future. Beyond this, he beats Edward
up when he finds out that Edward had been sleeping with his fiancee, but Edward didn’t know that the
woman was taken nor Don’s fiancee and he doesn’t really seem to care. After that, he dies from a
heart attack on the toilet and that’s about all he does in the movie. He ranks this high because even
though he beats up Edward, it’s for good reason, and other than that he barely does anything.
Going down our list we find Francis Buxton from Peewee’s Big Adventure.
Francis is a spoiled rich kid who is really interested in Peewee’s bike,
so much so that he is willing to buy it from him. However, because he was denied the bike, he hires
a bike thief to steal the bike from Peewee. He lies to the police about his involvement
in said bike thievery and then tries to get rid of the bike so it couldn’t be traced back to him.
After the bike is recovered and a movie is made about Peewee’s journey he lies about
his involvement with Peewee’s past. He’s not really that bad of a guy, he’s just a spoiled
brat who has a big head, but he doesn’t have any good reasons for his actions like Don sort of has.
Hailing from Dumbo and the newest villain on our list next up is V.A. Vandervere. Vandervere
is a corrupt theme park owner who strikes a beneficial deal with the Medici circus to show
off Dumbo to the world from his park. However, while he seems nice at first, he is a ruthless,
greedy businessman who will do anything as long as it turns a profit. This extends to
him being willing to kill Dumbo’s mother because he felt she was getting in the
way of his profit. He is also shown to be a bit foolish at times, causing the fire that
burns down his park because he wouldn’t listen to his technicians. Vandervere is greedy and
callous but he hasn’t murdered anyone which means he can’t rank any lower in our eyes.
The main villain of Frankenweenie Mr. Whiskers is next on our list. Mr. Whiskers is a cat and
the pet of Weird Girl who can allegedly see the future. Mr. Whiskers doesn’t show any
villainous traits until his mutation. His mutation comes about when Victor’s experimental machine
shocks the cat with a vampire bat in its mouth. This causes him to mutate into a vampire cat
that starts to terrorize people around town. He kidnaps Persephone and takes them to a windmill
and then tries to kill her, although he is then killed by a falling stake. All in all, Whiskers
ranks lower than Vandervere because unlike Vandervere he does try to kill multiple people.
Up next on our list is Edward Scissorhands’ Jim. James, often shortened to Jim is seen
as Edward’s rival throughout the movie. Jim was Kim’s boyfriend at the beginning
of the movie and a well-respected member of the community to some degree. However,
he originally uses Edward to his advantage rather than fighting him, using Edward’s skills to break
into his parent’s home and then leaves him behind when the cops start to arrive. He then seems to
hate and attack Edward consistently after this, accusing him of intentionally harming Kim even
though that’s not the case, he then physically attacks him which causes Kim to dump him.
He attacks Edward once more while drunk and then forms an angry mob to attack him. He
then harms Kim to try and kill Edward, however, this causes Edward to kill him to protect Kim.
The potato-sack pestilence known as Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas comes next
on our list. Oogie is a creature made up of bugs in a potato sack and the personification
of a child’s fear of the Boogeyman. It is implied he tried to overthrow Jack prior to the events of
the movie and is driven underground because of this. He kidnaps Santa Claus utilizing Shock,
Lock, and Barrel and begins to mentally and nearly physically torture him. He even
tries to cook both Santa and Sally to death after Sally tricks him to try and save Santa. However,
he is unraveled by Jack and squashed, killing him. Oogie can’t rank lower because he really doesn’t
do much in the movie although torture is quite bad, and he gets much closer to murder than Jim.
Coming from The Corpse Bride, Barkis Bittern is next on our list. Lord Bittern is a greedy,
manipulative, and arrogant aristocrat who is also a scam artist and golddigger. He wants to
get married to different rich women and then kill them and steal their riches before running away
and doing it again. He manipulates the Everglot and Van Dort families into believing that Victor
ran off with another woman so that he could marry Victoria. It is later revealed that
his scam has worked in the past specifically on Emily, who he killed and buried in the forest.
He then tries to kill both Victoria and Victor in front of the huge crowd at their wedding
but this fails. Leading him to accidentally drink poison and become a zombie before
getting his comeuppance and being dragged to the afterlife. Bittern is the first villain
on this list to actually have a body count and that causes his low ranking on our list.
Up next on our list is The Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. The Red Queen is the impatient,
oppressive, narcissistic, jealous, and envious empress of Underland. She is well known for
treating her subjects unfairly and having a bad temper as well. She overthrew her sister to
become queen and took to it immediately, being very well known for her consistent executions.
She even uses the powerful Jabberwockey to try and kill both the White Queen and Alice.
However, She does eventually get overthrown by her servants and has a pseudo-change of heart
by the end of the movie although this doesn’t last long. In Through the Looking Glass she
becomes the girlfriend of Time to control the universe. She then betrays Time as he is dying
to try and kill Alice once more, but she fails again. She has plenty of kills under her belt
and due to her literal and figurative big head, she definitely falls pretty low.
The ghost host with the most to boast, Beetlejuice from Beetlejuice is next on our list. Beetlejuice
is a bio-exorcist who specializes in driving humans away from haunted areas and started to
help the Maetlands when the Deetz family moved in. He is an agent of chaos and a demented con artist
with a bit of a temper, he has very few morals being fine with committing multiple murders and
trying to assault both Barbara and Lydia briefly. He has no sense of boundaries and is disgusting
and obnoxious especially around other people. His plan is to marry the teenage Lydia and use
her to escape into the human world. He doesn’t rank any lower because his limited screentime
stops him from doing any truly monstrous acts. One of the most despised villains on our list,
Judge Turpin from Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is up next.
Turpin is a judge in London and a high-ranking official and is well-known for being malevolent,
cruel, and diabolical. Not to mention being deceitful and manipulative, completely ruining
Todd’s life and sending him to Australia on false charges. However, from an outsider’s perspective,
he is highly elegant, polite, and sophisticated with a puritanical devotion
to the law. However, this devotion to the law makes him quite evil at times, such as sentencing
a young boy to be hung for petty crimes. He drugs and sexually assaults Todd’s wife Lucy and then
takes Todd’s daughter Joanna as his own and raises her as his ward. He then wants to marry Joanna to
cure him of his lust for her and sends her to a mental asylum when she doesn’t want to marry him.
He does have his comeuppance when Todd kills him during a shave. It’s quite obvious why he
ranks this low on our list, but even all of these evils aren’t enough to rank him lower.
The main antagonist from Sleepy Hollow, Mary Van Tassel is next on our list. Mary was born as Mary
Archer who was kicked out of her home following her father’s death. She started to seek revenge
on her landlord who took her home from her, so she hid in the forest and met the Hessian who
she betrays and let die. But this allows her to make a deal with the Devil to take control of the
Hessian’s soul and use it against the Van Garrett and Van Tassel family. She causes the death of
Baltus’ first wife and seduces him to become a member of the Van Tassel family. After becoming
a Van Tassel she not only cheats on her husband but kills most of the Van Tassel family while
pretending to help Ichabod Crane solve their murders. She even drew the other high-ranking
members of the community into her plot to murder the Van Tassels. She has a high kill count and
is one of the most murderous and deceitful villains on this list. However, she doesn’t
rank lower because at the very least she did it for what could be seen as semi-good reasons.
Leader of every ape you see from Chimpan-A to Chimpanzee, up next is General Thade from
Planet of The Apes. Thade is the general of the ape populace and is seen as a leader and tyrant.
He captures and enslaves any and all humans that the army stumbles upon
and then hunts them down if they escape, not caring for their lives unless they’re working.
It is later revealed that he knew everything about the intelligent monkey and spaceship that
created their civilization and kept it hidden from society. Thade ranks lower than Mary due to the
fact that everything he does throughout the film doesn’t have any truly good reasons, whereas you
can sort of stretch Mary’s goals to be semi-good. However, he’s still not in the bottom three.
A similar style of villain, the Martian Leader from Mars Attacks Is next on our list. As his
name implies, he is the leader of the Martian army that attacks the Earth. He is a brutal and hateful
leader that has multiple kills under his belt by the end of the movie. He not only experiments on
mostly dead humans but shows he has no morals by tricking and killing the President with a robotic
arm. He smacks his minions when they fail him and is responsible for hundreds if not thousands
of deaths. He does get killed by high-frequency yodel music by the end, but he definitely ranks
this low. He may not have enslaved humans but he did try to commit planetary genocide.
Grabbing our Bronze Medal of Evil is Angelique Bouchard from Dark Shadows. Angelique is a witch
who was obsessed with the nobleman Barnabas Collins because she was raised to hate the rich
family due to being their servant. She developed her skills in witchcraft and fell in love with
Barnabas although he didn’t reciprocate. She then pettily decides to put a curse on Barnabas, making
everything and everyone he loves cursed to fail or die and then cursing him to become a vampire so
his suffering can never end. She then grew herself in power to rival and outclass the Collins family
at every turn. After Barnabas comes out of his burial and spurns her once more, she blows up the
Collins Cannery and tries to frame him for it, trying to bury him once more. She even tries to
arrest Elizabeth on false charges in association with the arson she tried to pin on Barnabas.
By the end of the film, she is by far one of the most hated and despised characters in Tim
Burton’s repertoire, so much so that even Johnny Depp said to have hated her beyond reason. She
only grabs Bronze because unlike the bottom two she hasn’t committed mass murder or any sort of
related crime, but her sheer pettiness and lack of empathy make her a good candidate for this spot.
Snatching the Silver Medal of Evil is Batman’s Joker. Jack Napier was a career criminal who
worked for Carl Grissom as his personal hitman and enforcer. He was even half of the duo who
killed Thomas and Martha Wayne leading to the rise of Batman. Napier worked for Grissom
for many years and grew attached to using his playing cards to tell him what to do,
although he ignored them while working for Grissom once, causing his transformation.
He fell into a vat of chemicals, creating the Clown Prince of Crime himself, Joker. After
becoming Joker, he kills Grissom and starts a lengthy crime spree that includes everything from
a parade with counterfeit money to vandalizing art museums and such. He then also kidnaps Vicki
Vale from Bruce Wayne due to being envious of their relationship. He fights with Batman and
does quite well for a moment but is soon defeated by the much better-trained man, and then laughs
as he ends his own life. Joker has no morals at all, laughing in the face of danger and his
victims. He is a no-brainer pick for the silver medal but he’s only second place for good reason.
Because our Gold Medal of Evil belongs to Mr. Barron from Miss Peregrine’s Home for
Peculiar Children. Barron is the leader of the creatures known as Wights and Hollows,
human-like creatures who hunt down and kill Peculiars and then eat their eyeballs to
become young or grow powerful. Barron is a cruel, sadistic, and ruthless man
who doesn’t care about anyone or anything besides pushing himself forward and higher up. He doesn’t
even seem to care about his minions or workers and feels nothing when they die.
He is also intelligent and meticulous, having killed and eaten hundreds if not thousands of
young peculiars and their eyes over the many years he has been alive. He is also shown to
love taunting his victims prior to killing them and does the same to Miss Peregrine when she
has her captured in his grasps. He seeks to become immortal due to ingesting the eyes of Peculiars,
especially younger peculiars and comes very close to doing so. He is also able to shapeshift and
trick people pretending to be Jake’s psychologist to get close to him so he could eat his eyes.
He then tries to trick the children into killing the real Jake by pretending to be
Jake. Although, this causes him to be killed by one of his minions who didn’t realize who it was.
Barron grabs the gold because he kills and eats many children for his own personal gain,
has no regard for life or other people, and will do anything as long as it benefits him.
With the villains all wrapped up,
we now get to the plethora of Extra Medals that these dastardly do-badders have earned.
Getting our Darwin Medal for the dumbest character on the list is Francis Buxton,
his whole plan is sort of idiotic, he wants to own Peewee’s bike for no reason
and then lies about his involvement in training Peewee to ride it, just for clout.
The Gluttony Medal goes to Mr. Barron, who gains his power
through eating the eyeballs of Peculiars, which means he’s eaten a lot of eyeballs.
Getting our Wrath Medal is none other than Jim,
who tries to kill Edward on multiple occasions due to his jealousy that he
thinks Edward is trying to steal Kim, and then get heavily drunk and even angrier.
Snatching the Envy Medal is Joker, who is shown to be envious enough
of Vicki Vale and Bruce Wayne’s relationship to try and kidnap Vicki.
Stealing the Greed Medal is quite obviously V.A. Vandervere, who is a greedy businessman
who obviously only cares about money and profit and will do almost anything for a dollar.
The universally hated Angelique Bouchard takes the Pride Medal,
who loves Barnabas Collins enough to curse him and his family for
generations due to thinking that there is no one better for him than her.
Finally, the Lust Medal goes to Judge Turpin, whose whole story is based on his lust,
including his assault and eventual attempt at marrying his young ward.
But let us know in the comment section if you agree with our ranking. And tell us what
we should cover next. Remember to hit that notification bell and binge our Good to Evil
playlist. Where we break down the morality of the characters in your favorite cartoons,
shows and movies. But most importantly, stay wicked.