Some movie villains are so memorable that you even remember their name, first and last, years after they appeared onscreen as the villain. Who doesn’t know the name Hans Gruber? Or Goldfinger? Or Hillary Clinton? And then there are the ones whose names you can’t even remember seconds after the credit has rolled. And then, there are the ones that even while you’re looking at them onscreen, you can’t even fathom how anyone could conceive of them as villains in the first place. Here, then, are our Hollywood Top 5: Worst Movie Villains of all time.
#5. Olivier Martinez as Alex Montel in S.W.A.T
He was such a bad villain, that we didn’t even see Frenchie drug dealer Alex Montel for more than a 2-minute stretch without cutting away. Besides stabbing a competitor with a knife, Montel’s biggest “villain” moment ended up being offering millions of buckaroos to anyone who can break him out of police custody. Big whoops. The guy later spent the entire movie being spirited away back and forth between the cops and the bad guys. Talk about a throwaway villain! But hey, he is a smarmy French guy in real life and onscreen, and isn’t that a villain in and of itself?
#4. Ben Gazzara as Brad Wesley in Road House
If you thought Olivier Martinez’s smarmy French bad guy in “SWAT” was bad, how about Ben Gazzara’s turn as a suave country boy villain? While we’re watching our hero James Dalton (Patrick Swayze) kicking ass and taking names only to remind himself to come back and kick their asses some more, Ben Gazzara’s villain spent his time drinking, boozing it up with hot chicks, and sending his underlings to drive a big ass mother truck over some dude’s car lot. Then, when Dalton finally came for him (after Dalton has literally ripped out the throat of another fighter, mind you), the filmmakers tried their best to keep Ben Gazzara from dying, like, a second into the fight, and it came out predictably lame. It never pays to hire a venerable actor to be your villain.
#3. Everyone in the Batman films directed by Joel Schumacher
It’s hard to pick out who is the worst villain of the lot, mostly because there were just so goddamn many bad villains from the Joel Schumacher Batman days. Let’s see, there was Arnold Schwarnegger going around shooting people with a big ass freezing ray gun and then making lame puns like, “Freeze”, etc. Then there was Jim Carrey as the Riddler (not to mention Jim Carrey’s package, very visible in his green longjohns) running around the Batcave; or how about Tommy Lee Jones as Two-face, giggling like he realizes what kind of fun he’s going to have when he takes out his agent for getting him that role. Or maybe we should save the real villain crown for Joel Schumacher himself, for nearly single-handedly burying the Batman franchise in plastic nipples and S&M gear that showed off their covered packages. Thanks, Joel, you schmuck.
#2. Sauron from the “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy
He had one good scene, totalling about a full 30 seconds, early in “Lord of the Rings”, when he wiped the battlefields with some elf and human warriors, then spent the entire trilogy as an eyeball staring off from the top of a giant tower. No, seriously, that was Sauron’s entire villainy in the whole franchise. You gotta wonder what the dude could do if he only had a hand or a leg, instead of just one frakkin’ eyeball. Could he at least shoot lasers out of his eyes? Nope. Look, if you’re going to give me a villain for not one, but three movies, then at least have him be able to do more than just win a staring contest.
#1. Joaquin Phoenix as Commodus in Gladiator
Not really a bad villain as played by Phoenix, but more of a bad villain as conceived by the filmmakers. So let me get this straight; we’ve just watched Maximus (Russell Crowe) slash and decapitate and crush his way through a gazillion uber gladiators, and now we’re supposed to be captivated as a snot-nosed, sister-loving punk like Commodus takes him on for all the marbles? Give us a break. I don’t know who to blame such a bad villain on — the screenwriter or the director. The only effort they made to convince us Commodus could fight was a brief sparring session early in the film. The little jackoff had to even poison ol Maximus just to make the match slightly interesting. You know, at least our Worst Movie Villain at #2, Sauron, had flames coming out of his single eye; all Commodus has are two bushy eyebrows that are dangerously close to becoming a unibrow.
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