Four movie villains more interesting than the heroes

Originally there just to be bad, villains will now steal the showThere’s a saying in Hollywood, that a hero is only as good as his villain. In the early days of cinema nobody paid any mind to the bad guy in the movies. He was a bad guy, out to do bad things. As the years rolled by though main characters became more complex, more nuanced and as the protagonists evolved, so did their antagonists. Today we are looking at movies where the villain was so memorable, the hero is a mere footnote. Hans Landa – Inglourious Basterds Say what you will about Quentin Tarantino but the man wrote one of the most memorable villains ever and one of the best opening sequences ever conceived for a movie. A hardened French farmer opens the door to welcome a Nazi official during the occupation of France. The farmer is hiding a Jewish family but is determined not to give them away. His guest looks jovial, enjoys a laugh and is also quite cultured and learned. But as the conversation drags on, the farmer slowly, inevitably realises that the man in front of him is not a man but a monster. Without raising his voice, without resorting to violence, the guest slowly breaks the farmer down and forces him to confess. Following that, he orders the death of everyone hiding in the house without batting an eye. Colonel Hans Landa, the Jew Hunter, played by Christoph Waltz, is a terrifying villain. Unlike Anton, he does not torture nor is he violent. He is intelligent, charming and utterly, completely devoid of any humanity. When you can make a man ordering a glass of milk terrifying, you know you have a great villain. Anton Chigurh – No Country for Old Men Imagine walking down the street and seeing a man with the haircut of Anton Chigurh. Fancy seeing him while queuing for your morning coffee. You could hardly stifle a laugh! Suddenly the funny haircut guy is right in front of you. You look into his eyes and you see nothing there. Empty and soulless. Speaking softly, he then asks you to toss a coin and you instantly realise that your life hangs on that coin toss. Anton, the professional hitman from No Country for Old Men, is an immediate standout from the movie. He is terrifying, ruthless and worst of all, he considers himself an instrument of fate. If you happen to lose the toss, well, that means that you weren’t long for this world. Anton Chigurh – No Country for Old Men Javier Bardem plays Anton masterfully, giving a menacing vibe that makes your neck hair stand up whenever he is on screen. Hannibal Lecter – The Silence of the Lambs Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter has only 16 minutes of screen time. Out of a movie that runs a total of two hours, he is hardly in it. But Hopkins gave a performance so memorable you could be excused for thinking that he was a bigger part of the movie. Hannibal Lecter is fiercely intelligent and able to understand more about people than people understand about themselves. Hannibal can dismantle his opponents with some carefully placed words, breaking them down more effectively than any torture device. And if that fails, well, he can always kill you and eat you. The knowledge that Hannibal passed that forbidden threshold of humanity knowingly, even gleefully, makes him far more terrifying. And his iconic look wearing the mask was something that would go down in history. The Joker – The Dark Knight You knew this was coming. Any list about memorable movie villains that doesn’t include Heath Ledger’s Joker on the top is incomplete. What makes this character truly scary is how unpredictable he can become. Threaten him with death? He isn’t afraid to die. Trying to reason with him? Good luck, the man is dressed like a depressed circus performer. This fragmented psyche, this agent of chaos, is also visual. His makeup is unkempt, dirty. Even his face screams disorder. The last thing that makes this character the scariest of them all is his complete lack of motive. As Batman’s butler Alfred so eloquently puts it, “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” Heath Ledger won an Oscar posthumously for his role as the Joker and it just might be the most deserved Oscar of all time.