The world of Pixar villainy is one filled with humor, deviousness, and some of the strongest
nemeses to ever shine upon the silver screen. But while some Pixar baddies are cinematic legends,
others won't stand the test of time. Join us as we rank the Pixar villains from worst to best.
Cars 2 is not a favorite among Pixar fans, and that distaste extends to the film's
main villain, Miles Axlerod, a hotshot moneybags car voiced by Eddie Izzard.
"What? Me? You've got to be crazy."
Axlerod — a character constructed as some kind of Richard Branson
automobile-equivalent — carries with him the fate of the Cars universe,
as his plan to use his fake environmentally friendly fuel to achieve world domination
can only be stopped by, who else, that lovable tow truck known as Mater. The laziness in the
plot and lack of any enjoyable humor at any moment is perfectly represented in Axlerod,
a facsimile of the type of villain that's been portrayed in far superior films than this one.
Simplicity can definitely be a good thing on occasion, but when it comes to Pixar villains, the
simple approach can sometimes mean a character's ultimate downfall. Take Thunderclap, for example,
a not-so-nice pterodactyl who, given the few other options present in this prehistoric adventure,
acts as the de facto villain character of Pixar's The Good Dinosaur.
Thunderclap is a deranged, wise-cracking beast that leads a pack of fellow storm-chasing
pterodactyls in their quest to try and eat Arlo the dinosaur's human companion,
Spot. That's really it, honestly, which leads to Thunderclap's low position on this list,
a character so forgettable partly because of his
lack of any real powerful motivation within the world of The Good Dinosaur.
The Cars films, as financially successful as they were, really don't represent a huge
artistic zenith for Pixar in general, and that's a shame, because Cars 3 wastes the potential of
bringing Armie Hammer into the Pixar world to voice Lightning McQueen's latest rival,
Jackson Storm. Utilizing the inherent bravado that's so common in Hammer's best work only goes
so far for a character whose primary function is to just take the slot of the film's big bad,
with not much else to work off of.
The best of the Cars villains is Chick Hicks, Lightning McQueen's first rival, voiced
by Michael Keaton. As Lightning rests up and recovers in the small town of Radiator Springs,
it's Hicks' jerkish nature that gives McQueen the constant motivation to take him on in the film's
final race centerpiece. And to give Keaton the credit he most definitely deserves, he certainly
gives it his all here as the arrogant race car whose only glory can be found in a racing trophy.
Pixar's WALL-E is a charming film about two robots that doesn't necessarily need a
villain. But it still positions AUTO, the starship Axiom's autopilot software, as the antagonist,
whose programming instructs it to stay the course and not let anything get in its way,
not even the chance to try and save Earth. AUTO is certainly a fine means of creating
conflict in the final act of the film, but when it comes to ranking Pixar villains,
this machine is best seen as more of a plot device than a fully fleshed-out character.
The only character on this list voiced by Pixar's "good luck charm," John Ratzenberger,
the Underminer provides the perfect cap to the first Incredibles film,
teeing off another villain for the super family to face off against.
Thankfully for all of us, the Underminer digs right back into things in the opening
of Incredibles 2. His clever design, kooky backstory, and altogether mischievous nature
makes for a fun villain that only needs a moment to capture your attention.
Arriving over a decade after the previous film in the series,
Toy Story 3 had a lot to live up to, as the franchise had already been deemed a
cultural classic. And that same pressure was on its villain, Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear,
or Lotso for short. Fortunately, just like the film, Lotso exceeded expectations.
Lotso is positioned as the kindly caretaker of the Sunnyside Daycare collection of toys, only to be
revealed as a cruel and dictatorial ruler, making his fellow toys suffer so that he can remain in
power. Even if his routine is something of a new spin on the familiar arc of Toy Story 2's previous
villain, Stinky Pete, Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear is still a wonderfully designed,
instantly memorable character that brings an air of cuddly menace to the Toy Story universe.
Incredibles 2 delivered another memorable villain with the devious and overlooked Evelyn Deavor.
Voiced by Catherine Keener, Deavor is one of the two heads of the DevTech telecommunications
company, with her brother Winston taking on the face and branding of the company, leaving
Evelyn to deal with the actual technology at play. But Evelyn, still bearing a grudge against supers
for the death of her father, uses her technology to take down the superheroes and turn society
against them through an act of violent hatred. Even if its messaging gets a tad muddled near
the end of the film and her true villainy isn't as much of a shock as the film wants it to be,
Evelyn is still a worthy foe for the Parr family to face in this most wonderful super sequel.
In the highly competitive world of Monsters, Inc., where monsters face off against each
other to see who can get the most screams from unsuspecting children, the heroes need an even
scarier villain. And we get that, and then some, with the film's scariest creature of all, Randall
Boggs. The terrifyingly slimy, scaly monster is designed to terrify adults and children alike,
with his chameleonic abilities providing him the means to both sneak and scare to his delight.
While we learn later in the film how he's not the only villain to be found in the
hallways of Monsters Incorporated, Randall is most certainly the most memorable of the bunch when it
comes down to it, and his competitive nature and general creepiness are both huge parts of that.
With all our eyes focused on the menace of Randall Boggs,
few would suspect the CEO of Monsters Incorporated, Henry J. Waternoose,
was the true mastermind behind the devious plans at the center of Monsters, Inc.
Waternoose, in fear of the scare shortage plaguing Monstropolis, turns to nefarious means of trying
to potentially kill children in order to provide enough screams to fix their energy crisis.
With enough paternal energy to convince you of his saintliness but with a creepy,
bug-like design that only becomes more menacing as the film progresses,
Waternoose is a classic example of a villain who thinks he's doing what's right.
With Soul focusing more on existential peril than traditional movie threats,
the film is forced to create some sort of antagonistic force for our central
characters to bump up against. So, enter Terry, the otherworldly being voiced by Rachel House,
who seems to be the only one in the Great Before who makes us feel a sense of dread or anxiety.
Terry is the accounting-obsessed entity who's on a mission to find out why "the count" is off in the
afterlife. While filling a gap that maybe wasn't necessary for this kind of spiritual storytelling,
Terry's humor, aesthetic, and all-around adventurous aura
makes her a more than memorable component of this soulful piece of entertainment.
Another visit to the world of toys was inevitable,
and Toy Story 4 was able to rise to the occasion with a memorable new villain.
We're talking about Gabby Gabby, who turned out to be a complex and terrifying character.
An old-fashioned doll with a broken voice box, Gabby just wants to be played with,
and she knows that Woody's voice box is the only thing that stands in her way of finally being
picked off the shelf at the antiques store. It's this ultimate desire for affection that
puts her so high on this list. Perhaps that's a surprise to many, but it's just as surprising
that the fourth entry in this long-running saga could still wring tears out of our eyes.
Adventure is certainly out there in one of Pixar's most memorable films, Up, when Carl Fredricksen
comes face to face with his childhood hero turned arch-nemesis, the missing explorer Charles Muntz.
At first, Muntz is a welcoming, heroic presence, until he discovers that Carl and his young friend
Russell have befriended the elusive bird creature he's been hunting. Then, Muntz's kindness turns
to menace, and Carl's greatest inspiration quickly turns into his greatest threat.
Muntz's dark and twisted obsession leads him down a dangerous path with a legion of talking dogs,
and it's also what ultimately leads to his downfall. A classic villain in a classic
performance, Muntz is the perfect villainous foil for this daring and emotional adventure.
Toy Story, Pixar's feature-length debut, wants you to believe that Sid — an extremely creative child
who expresses himself through highly imaginative Frankenstein-esque toy operations — is some kind
of terrible, evil person. He wears shirts with skulls on them and rides a skateboard,
so clearly Sid is a monstrous young adult who's not to be trusted.
"Let's go home and play [evil laughter]."
Sid has no idea the impact he's having on these objects until they rise from the
ground to traumatize him. He just sees them as blueprints for his own array of experimentation.
And even though Sid is positioned as Woody and Buzz's worst nightmare,
there's still something charming about his own unique version of playtime.
Chef Skinner In Ratatouille, Chef Skinner is the snobbish,
commercial head chef currently running the late Gusteau's restaurant, and he stands as the only
person in the way of Linguini taking over as the rightful blood heir of Gusteau's legacy.
With Skinner's sights set on using the Gusteau name to brand a collection of frozen meals,
his love of food has turned to, well, absolute trash, and no long-lost relative of Gusteau is
going to get in the way of that. Luckily for us, a certain rat chef is just a tad
too cunning for Skinner to carry out his nefarious anti-culinary schemes, though
Skinner still provides enough memorable menace and conflict to leave a mark in this stunning picture.
In Pixar's A Bug's Life, a colony of ants must face off against the
oppressive grasshoppers who've been abusing them for years.
And no grasshopper is held in more fearful esteem than the leader of the pests himself, Hopper, the
demonic insect with a huge distaste for ants and a hunger for whatever food he can get his hands on.
In the storybook world of A Bug's Life, Hopper is the perfect villainous foil
needed to inspire the ants to face him in the film's climactic showstopper of a performance,
where our heroes take Hopper's only true weakness, his fear of birds, and use it against him. Even a
few decades on, this early creepy-crawly villain is still an absolute standout.
The best trick a Pixar film can play is hiding the villain in plain sight,
and the captivating Coco plays this trick beautifully with the film's
leading musical talent, Ernesto de la Cruz. Brought to life by Benjamin Bratt,
de la Cruz is a musician who captures the hearts and minds of both the living and the dead,
and he's the primary inspiration behind Miguel's guitar-playing ambitions.
But it's only when our protagonist unexpectedly journeys to the land
of the dead that he finds that de la Cruz's whole act has been built on a web of lies,
in which Ernesto killed his songwriting partner and took credit for his work. Miguel's hero turns
right into Miguel's villain, and de la Cruz rises to become one of Pixar's best villains.
Anton Ego begins Ratatouille as the skeletal food critic positioned as
the one to bring ultimate doom to Chef Gusteau and his restaurant.
Ego sends fear and menace through the likes of everyone who crosses his path,
including Chef Gusteau himself, who dies in the wake of one of his negative reviews.
But when Ego tastes the food cooked by the film's rodent protagonist,
Remy, his attitude changes, leading to a glowing review for Gusteau's restaurant
and one of the most elegant and beautiful odes to the art of criticism ever seen in cinema history.
"I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more."
Anyone can cook, and as Anton Ego shows,
anyone can turn their villainy into pure heroism by a story's end.
A nefarious early Pixar villain, Stinky Pete pulls the brilliant trick
of hiding his true intentions from you until the last possible moment,
then pulling the rug out from under you in the most chilling and genius way possible.
In the central conflict of Toy Story 2, Stinky Pete represents the opposite of Woody's playful
past. He's a toy who's never been played with, and he'd rather keep it that way. After all, he's been
constantly rejected by society, so if he can't be played with, well, no one can. A complex character
plagued by his own insecurities, this prospector is easily one of Pixar's most memorable evildoers.
Perhaps it's fitting that, for us, the best Pixar villain is
the one who turns the act of villainy right on its head. In The Incredibles,
Syndrome was just a mild-mannered superhero obsessive, rejected by his all-time idol,
Mr. Incredible. That rejection hit him right in his core, leading him down
a tech-obsessed path towards outright maniacal villainy and turning him into the red-headed,
hyper-villainous, super-killing Syndrome that commands both The Incredibles and this very list.
"I saved the best inventions for myself."
A perfect villain is usually the one who thinks they're the real hero of the story,
and that can certainly be said for Syndrome, as classic a villain as they come
in the Pixar universe... or any other cinematic universe for that matter.
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