Nothing transforms a good movie villain into a great one like a killer wardrobe, a badass
backstory, and a compelling argument.
These villains all had a pretty good point, even if we were too busy hating them to realize
it.
We should say up front that we firmly believe The Dark Knight's Joker to be a raving sociopath
and an absolute menace to society.
But, hear us out, it's sometimes hard to argue with his philosophy that human beings are
not meant to be confined within a structured society.
And yes, human beings find ways to remind us of the delicate nature of social contracts
every day.
"You see: this is how crazy Batman's made Gotham.
You want order in Gotham?
Batman must take off his mask and turn himself in.
Oh, and everyday he doesn't, people will die."
Joker's ferry vs. ferry experiment may have failed to bring Gotham to its knees, but that
doesn't mean he wasn't right about a certain Gothamite's nature.
Yup, we're talking about D.A. Harvey Dent, better known as "Two Face."
Joker tortured the noble law man emotionally and physically early in the film before breaking
Dent's psyche and turning him loose on a coin-flipping killing spree.
Bringing Gotham's Golden Boy down into the trenches with the rest of the city's criminals
was Joker's masterpiece.
It was only tarnished by Batman and Chief Gordon spinning the biggest web of lies that
Gotham has ever seen… which sort of feels like a loss for the supposed good guys.
Count yourself lucky if you are not the leader of the free world when the apocalypse begins.
That's just where Carl Anheuser found himself when the end began in the brainless disaster
flick 2012.
"Just exactly how long are these things expecting to hold us in place, Captain?"
"They're just meant to withstand the first impact of the waves, Mr. Anheuser."
While Anheuser was an antagonistic presence throughout the film, he didn't achieve full
on villain status until he thwarted the heroic efforts of Jackson Curtis to save his family
by unceremoniously slamming the door to salvation in the Curtis family's collective faces.
It's a brutal moment to be sure, but it's important to remember that if Anheuser hadn't
shut the doors, the world-ending flood outside might have found its way in.
It would have killed all of the would-be survivors aboard the Ark.
And that would've meant the end of humanity.
So yeah, Anheuser could've been nicer about everything, but seriously, he had to close
those doors.
Sure, Daniel Craig plays an excellent Bond, but the success of 2012's box office-smashing
Skyfall owes a lot to Javier Bardem's performance as scorned secret agent turned vengeful cyber-terrorist
Raoul Silva.
While there's no question that Silva falls on the baddie side of the spectrum, he's also,
well, a human.
A terrible, awful, no-good human, but a human nonetheless.
"I win.
What do you say to that?"
"...A waste of good scotch."
He's talented, sure, and he's hyper-intelligent, but he's also tortured.
Sound familiar?
There are definite parallels between Silva, a former MI6 agent who was abandoned to be
tortured by the Chinese, and Bond.
In fact, it was Silva's sympathetic backstory that attracted Bardem to the part.
The actor told Fox News:
"Here there is a broken person.
What I like the most is there is a clear motive.
We understand he is very human and this is powerful.
I was attracted to the villain because I thought he was a nice guy.
I could see it in his eyes."
We're not sure we agree with Bardem, but we'll admit Silva's about as sympathetic as Bond
villains get, and that's got to count for something.
He was one of the biggest action heroes of the day, but if Top Gun were real life, there's
no way that Tom Cruise's Pete "Maverick" Mitchell would be a popular guy.
The antagonist of the '80s classic, Val Kilmer's Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, on the other hand,
very well might be.
As top dog at the Naval Air Station Miramar Top Gun school, he's spent years training
to be the best young pilot around, so of course he's going to have a problem when this upstart
Maverick turns up and displays a blatant disregard for everyone's safety.
"You guys really are cowboys."
"What's your problem, Kazansky?"
"You're everyone's problem, that's because everytime you go up in the air, you're unsafe."
At one stage, reports emerged suggesting that Cruise and Kilmer's on-set relationship mirrored
that of their characters, but if there was ever any truth to this then it's clearly all
water under the bridge, as the pair are reuniting for Top Gun 2.
Kilmer was sidelined with throat cancer for a while, but he has revealed that he's fit
and well enough to reprise the role of Iceman in the upcoming sequel.
"I don't like you because you're dangerous."
"That's right, Iceman.
I am dangerous."