The Most Pathetic Movie Villains

Let's continue our theme of good actors as bad villains - the 1998 film remake of classic British spy show The Avengers was a failure on just about every level, but perhaps the worst was the villain. Played by Sean Connery, Sir August de Wynter bedeviled our heroes with a horrible plot to control... wait for it... the weather! Because August is hot and winter is cold! This would be bad enough, but then throw in the twist that Sir August is a member of a secret evil society that only meets wearing teddy bear costumes and you've got a serious turd sandwich of a big boss.

Going one-on-one with Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime is a task that only the toughest villains should try. That's why Bennett, the main antagonist of 1985's Commando, is so perplexing. Played by Freddie Mercury dead ringer Vernon Wells, Bennett is supposed to be a total badass, but he never actually kills anybody or does anything evil until the end of the movie, at which point he's so thoroughly owned by John Matrix that it's not even funny. Also nice chainmail vest, bro-lord.

The 2004 Catwoman movie is an abject disaster for a wide array of reasons, but Sharon Stone's villainess is one of the worst. Laurel Hedare is the CEO of a cosmetics company who is inroducing a new product that makes women look younger and more beautiful - until they stop using it, and then their skin falls off, or something. Uh, so that's basically every cosmetic on the market? And you'd think that after one person had their face melt off, it'd get pulled from Duane Reade faster than you can say "class action lawsuit?" Ah well, Catwoman drops her out of a window anyway.

Oh, Dennis Nedry. You loaf of greedy turds, there wouldn't be a Jurassic Park without you. A corporate spy under the employ of BioSyn, Nedry shuts off the park's security system so he can escape with some purloined dinosaur embryos. Unfortunately, the idiot doesn't realize that maybe letting a bunch of alpha carnivores run wild isn't the smartest choice, and he quickly gets his fat ass eaten by a Dilophosaurus.

So the villain in the 2009 Star Trek reboot just existed to get his ass beat down by Kirk, but that didn't mean he had to be so ass lame. Not only is Nero a generic "destroy everything" antagonist, he's also... from the future. Dude, if I got sent back in time a hundred-plus years, I would be betting on so many football games it isn't even funny. Eric Bana's performance is also totally weird, and he's barely on screen during the flick, which doesn't give him any time to get better.

Evil wizards always blow. It's just hard to be threatening when you're waiting for the post-production effects guys to fill in as your offense. It's even harder when you're being directed by Uwe Boll. Gallian, the evil villain of Boll's 2008 stinker In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, is played with characteristic vigor by Ray Liotta, not somebody we would have pegged for a fantasy warlock. The fact that the flick is basically a low-rent Lord of the Rings minus the ring doesn't help.

Or, as you may know him, the Gingerdead Man. Played by Gary Busey, Findlemeyer is actually a crazed serial killer who massacres a bunch of people at a Waco diner before being nabbed by the cops and sent to the electric chair. Through a chain of events too stupid to recount, he is reincarnated as a sentient human-sized gingerbread man and he sets out for revenge on the survivors of his massacre. And then he's defeated when somebody eats his head.

We return to the Bond franchise with perhaps the nadir in Bondery, Pierce Brosnan's dismal '90s run. His second outing as 007 put him up against media baron Elliot Carver, who wants to start World War 3 so more people watch his news channel. Okay, real quick: this worked for William Randolph Hearst and the Spanish-American War, but there were a few differences back then: first and foremost, they didn't have nukes back then. The prospect of mutually assured destruction doesn't seem to faze him in the slightest, but he commits a rookie Bond mistake by lecturing 007 about his plan for just long enough to be pushed into the path of a giant drill.

It may seem like shooting fish in a barrel to pick on the disastrous Super Mario Bros. movie, but really, how does Hollywood magic transform a giant, green, fire-breathing lizard into Dennis Hopper with the worst haircut of his life? Sure, at the end of the movie the evil King Koopa does transform into a huge reptile, but at no point do Mario and Luigi either throw fireballs at him or chop down his bridge with an axe. But we do get some of Hopper's most demented overacting ever as the Goombas are mustered.