Roundtable: Villains Have The Most Fun

Last month, we talked about our favorite superheroes. Everybody loves a hero, no? We covered a healthy spectrum, from the traditional (Spider-Man!) to the unexpected (Super-Administrator!), and had a lot of fun with it. So, naturally, I thought that we could flip the coin and take a look at the more complicated members of the fictional world. The villains are always more interesting to me. A hero is easily motivated. Save the day! Fight for the Little Guy! Preserve the sense of Justice and Good! Villains, though, are much more curious. What drives them? What makes them memorable? Why do they always get some of the best lines? I’m fond of Dark Helmet’s sage words from Spaceballs: “So, Lone Starr, now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.” With that in mind, let’s see who we love to hate! Or is that hate to love?

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Casey Price: I’m not sure how many times I’ve watched The Emperor’s New Groove. It’s easily somewhere in the double digits. This is one of my go-to, I’ve-had-a-bad-day movies. I’ve always had an unabashed fondness for Yzma. Why? She’s strong, brilliant, motivated, and unabashedly fond of purple. She only wants to depose the Emperor and rule in his place, and is that really all that bad?

OK, yeah, probably. To be fair, Emperor Kuzco was kind of a jerk, and he kind of deserved to be transformed into a llama, but that’s beside the point. Yzma has a snazzy secret lab (but why does she even have that lever?), a loyal manservant, and the ambition to carry out her plan. She would have succeeded, too, if it weren’t for that meddling peasant, Pacha, and his adorably brilliant family.

Is Yzma the most nuanced, layered villain in the multiverse? Is she the most frightening, evil being in the room? Not even a little bit. The Emperor’s New Groove is a kid’s movie after all (superficially, at least). There isn’t a whole lot of diving into Yzma’s probably complicated past. Her motivation is clichéd and her actions are frequently so over the top that it’s insane. It doesn’t matter to me one tiny, ridiculous bit. She never fails to entertain me.

Because this is a kid-focused film, Yzma’s punishment is suitably cartoonish. No dramatic deaths here, folks. No, Yzma becomes a victim of her own science when she is unceremoniously transformed into a small, purple kitten. Even then, by the severely underrated sequel, Kronk’s New Groove, she has mostly recovered from this — she still sports cat ears and a luxurious tail, but has managed to recover some of her humanity. That’s perseverance. And it’s entirely delightful.

Bonus! Yzma was voiced in both films (and the TV series!) by the inimitable Eartha Kitt. Who else do you get for an ultra-fabulous villainess with a not-so-slight feline personality?

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Nicole Taft: I mulled over this question for a bit before realizing there was no other way around it.

My villain of choice is the Joker.

Sure, there are plenty of other fantastic bad guys out there (as odd as that sounds). Darth Vader. Vegeta (before he left the Dark Side). Xenomorphs. But in the end, the Joker will always be my poison. So why him? Because he’s bad. And he likes being bad. Everything he’s doing is terrible, but hot damn if he doesn’t have a good time doing it.

I’ve seen every iteration of the Joker, starting with the 1950s version a la Cesar Romero. However, I consider my formal introduction being Jack Nicholson when I was 6. Even then I knew the man was psychotic, but he certainly knew how to have a good time. I like villains that aren’t redeemable because not everyone is. I hated it when Maleficent was made into one. Why couldn’t she just be bad? But the Joker is too far gone. He’s clawed his way into a deep, dark place of no going back. The kind of person that just wants, as Alfred put it best in The Dark Knight, “to watch the world burn.”

I would say the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series Joker was the version that cemented him as my favorite villain of all time. His unending, unique dynamic with Batman was fascinating. His plots were often absurd, but that’s what made him so interesting. Many of my favorite episodes from that show are Joker-related. When I found out that none other than Mark Hamill himself voiced the Joker I absolutely could not believe it for a while, his voice acting was so amazing.

I was doubtful when Heath Ledger was signed on to be the next Joker, but when he hit everything out of the park, I stopped judging and decided to let things come as they may from then on. So yes, I do like Jared Leto‘s version, with all its weirdness and tattoos. I feel like they hit the nail on the head with his obsession with Harley Quinn (I won’t call his relationship to her one of love since it really is more like she’s his favorite toy) and to be honest while I enjoyed Suicide Squad, I mostly bought the movie for those two.

It will be interesting to see what the future will bring for him. Like many other famous villains, the Joker is never going away. He and Batman are like two titans that will be battling it out together until the end of time. After all, as Darkness, another favorite villain of mine once said, “What is light without dark?”

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Nancy O’Toole Meservier: Villains can take many forms–from campy and fun (Ursula from The Little Mermaid), to the downright terrifying (Pennywise from IT). But my favorite villains are the ones who, while firmly planted in the bad guy category, have an undeniable logic to their thought process. You can’t approve of their methods, but there’s no denying that they also kind of have a point.

Take Magneto/Erik Lehnsherr from the original X-men duology- X-Men, and X2:X-Men United (we do not speak of The Last Stand). Our first introduction to Magneto is as a small Jewish boy in a concentration camp. In a heartbreaking scene, we watch as Erik is separated from his mother, his mutant powers triggered by his anguish. The movie then flashes forward to the not-so-distant future, where the US government is thinking about requiring all mutants to register with the government. It’s easy to see how someone like Magneto (now played by the wonderful Ian McKellan) would see signs of what could turn into another holocaust and want to do what is necessary to protect his people. And anyone who stands in his way be damned.

They say that all villains see themselves as the hero of their own story, and Magneto is a perfect example of this. Sure, at the end of the day, his plan is classic supervillain (turning all people into mutants using a mysterious machine-too bad they’ll all be dead soon after that!), but his motivations, grounded in real historical events, are crystal clear. So even though you don’t want him to succeed, you can’t help but feel for the guy, nevertheless.

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J.L. Gribble: Though I only started watching it a few years ago, I’m still on the Supernatural train wherever it decides to take me. There are some fantastic villains in that show, but the one who has remained first in my heart is Crowley.

His character arc has seen him go from the highest power as King of Hell to the lowest depths of Lucifer’s slave, and while he’s worked with (and against) the Winchester brothers time and time again, even everything “good” he does is tempered with the “bad.” Because Crowley is out for himself first, last, and every time in between. He plays the long game, which means he’s willing to align himself with whoever has the ability to support his goals, creating some truly unexpected team-ups over the seasons.

Through it all, he’s always got a clever comeback for pretty much any occasion, honing snark to a fine art form over the centuries. Crowley’s dapper style also adds another level of panache to the character, proving that evil characters can also have a proper sense of fashion.

Things aren’t great on the Crowley front in the latest season of Supernatural, but I’m biding my time and hoping for the best. Because no one can keep a demon with his attitude down for long.

And finally, Mark Sheppard brings an amazing range to the character. In my own personal headcanon, pretty much every character that Mark Sheppard plays is actually Crowley! Which means he’s cropped up in everything from Battlestar Galactica to Firefly to White Collar — and also makes him a major villain for the crew of Leverage, my favorite heroes.

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Lane Robins:I’m limiting my idea of villain to movies & TV. Otherwise, I’d be pondering this forever.

For me, the “best” villain has to have a certain set of character traits: memorable, with a plan that makes sense of some kind, and most important, has to be watchable! There are a lot of villains who are pawns of a corrupt system—that’s not truly villainous to me (Agent Smith in The Matrix). I also want them to be actual villains, not misunderstood ones.

It’s amazing how many villains those criteria exclude. There are tons of villains that devour screen time while I count the minutes until they’re gone. The Master on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Danny DeVito as the Penguin. Reynard on season 2 The Magicians. The Red Skull, boring and gross.

Loki has watchability by the bucket-load, but he’s a child in a temper, acting out.

Callisto from Xena: Warrior Princess. Memorable. Watchable. Plan, what plan?

Killmonger. Not really a villain. Definitely misguided. I still feel like the outcome might have changed if T’Challa had acknowledged him as his cousin, cruelly wronged, in the throne room scene.

My top picks: James Sterling, Leverage. Not technically spec fic, but c’mon: it’s Mark Sheppard. But is he really a villain? Antagonist, to be sure, but a villain?

Darth Vader! All of the above… but it turns out he’s on a leash.

Catwoman, Michelle Pfeiffer. Memorable, oh yeah. Plan? Revenge, check. Watchable. Definitely. But doesn’t she only dabble in villainy?

So in the end, I’m going with a wild-card pair of villains from an old favorite: Johnny Bartlett and Patricia Bradley from The Frighteners.

What’s worse than a murderous ghost? A murderous ghost who used to be a spree shooter who died before he could rack up the kill count he wanted, and has figured out a way to keep killing post death. What’s worse than that? Having a living accomplice who wants to help him succeed. They’re a terrifying couple, and the reveal that he’s not working alone was a genuine surprise. They’re evil for evil’s sake, and while that’s often unsatisfying, here, it works. It’s especially potent when you realize that the movie was originally billed as a comedy.