>> Speaker 1: What makes a good villain?
Is it their evil or their humanity?
Their likability or their repulsion?
Let's take a tour of some of cinema's favorite bad guys and try to find out.
These are our picks for the top ten movie villains of all time.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 1: We're starting off at number ten with the Pure Evil.
It's the bad guy who does bad because it's bad, and since bad is good, good is bad,
so he's gotta be good, right?
Sure, this might sound like a top candidate for the best villain and
a fantastic tongue twister to boot, but
it's also the flattest of characterizations.
It may have terrified us as kids when boogeymen and black and
white morality hid under our beds.
And in that sense these villains will always hold a nostalgic sort of
tyranny over us.
But we've long since stopped fearing in such simple terms.
However, that doesn't mean that there aren't some worthwhile
villains who are notable mostly for the pureness of their evil.
There's Emperor Palpatine, Damien from The Omen, along with just about any other
incarnation of the devil you see in a movie.
However, for our favorite pure evil, we tend to like Sauron.
>> Speaker 2: I see you.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 1: Sure,
it's hard to compete with an all-seeing fiery eye in the sky, but
there's also something special about the insidiousness of his power.
It doesn't corrupt in a handshake or a single exchange for a soul, but slowly,
over decades and centuries, enticing its victims with a promise of more.
It got Smeagol, and Saruman, Boromir, and the Ringwraiths, and it gets us,
because he's our number ten best villain.
So what works better than pure evil?
Well there's something to be said for
the villains that scare the ever-loving [BLEEP] out of us.
These are your classic horror movie monsters,
things that go bump in the night,
your Freddy Krueger, your Jason Voorhees, your Michael Myers, you Leather Face.
And while some of them might seem pretty evil,
we actually think they're overwriting trait is more that their aim world.
They're agents of chaos.
They're dangerous and unpredictable and they could kill anyone at anytime, not
because they necessarily hate the world, but because they don't not hate it either.
And it's not just not horror monsters,
characters like Goodfellas Tommy DeVito and the shark from from Jaws make his
brown or drawers just as much as Slash or Goons, but for our number nine pick,
we think it doesn't get much more terrifying than City of Gods Li'l Ze.
>> Speaker 3: [FOREIGN] [SOUND]
>> Speaker 1: The guys are badass and
a loose canon in his twenty.
But twelve year old Z breaks into a hotel and murders everyone just for
the hell of it.
Honestly, little Z is way more terrifying in flashbacks specifically because of
his chaos we're talking about.
He's violent, ruthless and unpredictable.
He just assumed post for your pictures as shoot to half as an old in it.
Which is why he earns a spot on our list.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 1: As cinema-goers,
one of the key psychological mechanisms that makes movies so
immersive is that we identify with the protagonist.
And that's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot.
But what it really means is that you see the hero, see them as a human being
similar to yourself, and then your empathy and mirror neurons kick in.
So that all of a sudden, you find yourself feeling the same way they feel, so
you want them to win because winning will make them, and
by extension you fell victorious.
The only thing that gets in your way is the gosh darn villain,
which is where our number eight comes in.
The villain who is seemingly unstoppable.
We're talking relentless,
single-minded adversaries whom we could not possibly conceive of overcoming.
Think agent Smith or any of the terminators.
No matter what you do,
they just keep coming back, they're juggernauts with the memory of elephants.
It's Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood, Ivan Drago from Rocky IV, and
Khan from Star Trek II.
But our favorite version of this bad guy is Max Cady from Cape Fear.
>> Speaker 4: You know when I was in the bucky,
all I could think about was bust an open and killing somebody.
>> Speaker 5: 14 years ago, I was forced to make a commitment to an eight
by nine cell, and now you're going to be forced to make a commitment.
>> Speaker 1: We're gonna pretend we forgot there were two of these, so
we can just talk ambiguously and don't have to pick one,
because they're both so [BLEEP] scary.
You're a rapist who spent his entire time in prison planning on how you
get back at me.
Please excuse me while I curl up in a ball and cry for my mother.
This guy is unstoppable.
Literally going to the ends of the earth to get revenge.
And we wanna reward that effort.
A spot on our list for you, sir Prison Rapist.
Not many there's also something to be said for
the relationship between the hero and our villain.
So let's go back to tenth grade English Lit, we're we learned about the foil.
No not from algebra, we're talking about the perfect counter to a hero.
The paper to his rock.
The yen to his yang.
The peanut butter to his jelly or something like that.
Maybe the thing that makes a villain great is his perfect opposition to our hero.
The most obvious example here, is he who must not be named, AKA Voldemort,
AKA we ain't afraid of that mother [BLEEP] but keep your voice down just in case.
His evil magic is so closely tied to Harry's hero magic,
yet they're perfectly matched and evenly opposed.
There's also General Zod, Angel Eyes, and Hans Gruber.
But for our number seven, is there a better foil out there than The Joker?
>> Speaker 6: Then why do you wanna kill me?
>> Speaker 7: [LAUGH] I don't wanna kill you.
No, no you, you complete me.
>> Speaker 1: He is the chaos to Batman's order.
The evil to his good.
The grin to his grimace.
He even sees himself as Batman's foil.
He knows it, he revels in being his villain.
And with complex character and
fantastic acting like that how can you not give him a spot?
Clever opposition aside,
there's something to be said about a villain who you just loathe.
These are the bad guys who just make your stomach turn, your lip curl, and
your blood start boiling.
Maybe you don't even like the hero here so much as you just hate the villain.
We're talking about the brother-betraying scar.
That scummy Noah Cross from Chinatown and the endlessly chokable Professor Umbridge
>> [MUSIC] >> Speaker 1: And we love to
hate the nurse tragic with her stupid hat, and stupid hair, and stupid rules, but for
our pick is not a bad guy we hate much more than
Reverent Harry Powell from the night of the hunter.
>> Speaker 8: Lord, I am tired.
[SOUND] Sometimes I wonder if you really understand me.
>> [MUSIC]
>> Speaker 8: Not that you mind the killings.
Your book is full of killings.
>> Speaker 1: This guy combines child abuse with a smug sense of
righteousness and the thinnest veneer of likability.
We just want nothing more than to smash his dumb face,
which is why he earns a spot on this list.
Of course, hate isn't everything.
We want to also consider those villains that we like despite the terrible
things they do.
It takes a certain kind of depth and
charisma to earn our admiration, all the while terrorizing the townspeople.
These are your Lokis, your Boaties, your Alonzo Harrises.
It's Harry Lime from The Third Man, and Hans Landa from Inglorious Bastards.
But is there a badder, more lovable bad guy than Dr. Hannibal Lecter?
>> Speaker 9: I do wish we could chat longer,
but I'm having an old friend for dinner.
>> Speaker 1: He's charming, he's intelligent, he's cultured,
he eats people's body parts, he's insightful, he's the full package.
It's this point in our list where we get our first hint that there's
something complex and challenging about good villains.
What does it say about us that these are Nazis, murderers, corrupt cops and
cannibals that we find ourselves oddly attracted to.
It's a long way from the pure evil of our number ten and
we think we're on to something here.
So let's take it one step further.
Somewhere between hateable and likable, we find one dimensional badness sometimes
reveals itself to be something a little more human than we expected.
Sure, we never really root for these villains and
we sure don't want them to win.
But we're hoping but we're hoping for less of a public execution and
more like some serious therapy and
that's where things get really terrifying on an existential level.
The similarities between them and our heroes start to shrink.
The similarities between them and ourselves are less and less.
This might be Woo-jin Lee from Oldboy.
Tajomaru from Rashomon, or Darth Vader by the end of Return of the Jedi.
There's loads of worthwhile, three dimensional villains but
our favorite of all time is Hans Beckert from M.
>> Speaker 10: [FOREIGN]
>> Speaker 1: Introduced in the most black
and white of terms as the shadow and foreboding whistle, he starts out as
a villain so vile that in entire city full of criminals are casts as heroes.
But by the end of his underground trial, he cries out for
help with the voice of humanity.
Screaming out from the depths of a psychological prison and
cast the entire story into different shades of gray.
It's a level of nuance unheard of in most films,
which is why it earns a spot on our list.
If you think a dose of humanity is scary, what about those villains that look human,
sound human and even put on a good human act but then turn around and
do the complete opposite with no remorse.
It's scary and
effective because it makes us think, God, are there people like that among us?
They fit in to humanity yet contain a capacity for remorseless violence and
destruction.
It's Peter and Paul from Funny Games.
It's Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.
It's Amon Goth from Schindler's List.
In a word, it's a psychopath.
And there are really scary kind of villain.
Hell 9000 pulls this off in Robot Form.
John Doe from Seven and Creature Form.
But for our number three,
it's really hard to be Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men.
>> [SOUND] >> Speaker 11: Call it?
>> Speaker 12: For what?
>> Speaker 11: Just call it.
>> Speaker 12: I didn't put nothing up.
>> Speaker 11: Yes you did.
You've been putting it up your whole life, you just didn’t know it.
>> Speaker 1: There's something beyond eerie about the emptiness behind his eyes
and ruthless efficiency and disregard with which he dispatches human life.
There's no second thought, no question of right or wrong.
Just a casual coin flip and [SOUND] It's starting to seem
like the best villains don't just function well in the story but
they also have a complex psychological relationship with the viewers AKA us.
So we wanna talk about the kind of villain who's taken a normal
everyday sort of madness and distorted it out of proportion.
And we think this might be as scariest as it is because it seems to say to us,
this could be anyone.
This could be your husband someday.
This could be you.
They're Annie Wilkes from Missouri, who takes the everyone feels a little bit and
then kidnaps a man.
Or Jack from the Shining whose isolation has turned him into a monster.
There's Coronel Kurt and Joan Crawford and Alex Forest.
And our favorite of these villains, Norman Bates.
>> Speaker 13: Mother, my mother what is a phrase.
She hasn't quite herself today.
>> Speaker 1: Scarred from emotional abuse, and torn to pieces by dissociative
identity disorder, Norman is actually just a sweet young boy, which is great.
But he's also Norma, a serial murdering old woman.
It's painful and difficult to look at these distortions of humanity,
partly because they're so different from us.
But also partly because they're not.
[SOUND] Now,
if our number 2 shows us a potential in ourselves, we wanna talk about
those villains that give us a peek at our deepest subconscious desires right now.
And that's terrifying, isn't it?
We all have parts of ourselves we're uncomfortable with that we try to
push down, and hide, and pretend aren't there.
We all do, right?
Right?
Anyway, the point is, that there's a type of villain that's
awesome because they held up a mirror and said look.
Think of Ozymandias allowing himself to do a small
evil in order to prevent a bigger one.
Or Jigsaw, punishing criminals in a way that we might secretly think they deserve.
Or Tyler Durden casting aside the shackles of society and embracing violence and
disorder and pain.
But our favorite villain of this sort is Frank Booth from Blue Velvet.
>> Speaker 14: Baby wants to [BLEEP] [INAUDIBLE] Get ready to
[BLEEP] you [BLEEP] [BLEEP].
>> Speaker 1: Holy [BLEEP] this is one bad dude.
He's a gas huffing, Pabst Blue Ribbon drinking, sadomasochistic mother [BLEEP].
And sure, his sexual deviance is incredibly disturbing to watch but
you're lying to us and yourself if you can't admit that there's some
weird Freudian stuff going on at some deep id level with it.
It's like watching a perverted car wreck that you can't look away from,
that hits you somewhere deep and hidden.
And that's why he's our pick for the best movie villain of all time.
So what What do you think?
Did you like our take on villans?
Do you want us to dissect some of the best heroes too?
Let us know by liking this video and give us your take in the comments below and
be sure to subscribe for more Cinefix movie list.
>> [MUSIC]