The Most Pathetic Movie Villains
A hero needs a villain, or so the poets say, but the 25 jamokes on this list probably should have thought twice. Lame plans, goofy outfits, bad hairstyles - these inept antagonists have it all.
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By K. Thor Jensen January 5, 2012 |
| 5 | The Architect |
The first Matrix movie introduced an incredibly iconic villain in Hugo Weaving's Agent Smith, so it's not surprising that the pair of awful sequels found a way to piss all over that. For instance, when Neo finally meets the Architect, the guiding intelligence behind the whole ball of wax that is the Matrix. Leave it to the Wachowski brothers to make the big confrontation with the villain as boring as humanly possible. It's not like we wanted a fistfight, but can anybody sit through his speeches and remain awake?
| 4 | General Grievous |
The Star Wars prequels certainly had diminishing returns when it came to villains - everybody loved Darth Maul, but after a dude with two lightsabers, where do you go? Leave it to the genius of George Lucas to come up with an answer - four lightsabers. And thus, we have General Grievous from Revenge Of The Sith. Introduced as an absolute supreme badass, you'd expect the climactic showdown with him to be an insurmountable challenge for Obi-Wan Kenobi, who is outarmed - literally - by the hacking cyborg. Instead, Kenobi makes short work of him and he's never seen again.
| 3 | The Uber Morlock |
Oh, man, Jeremy Irons appearing on this list twice? The early 2000s must have been pretty freaking rough for him. His performance as the Uber-Morlock in Simon Wells' The Time Machine is an abject failure for a number of reasons - it's never really established why he's battling our time-traveling protagonist, he doesn't want the time machine for his own use, and Lord could he use some sunlight.
| 2 | King Galbatorix |
What is it that makes normally competent actors slum it in horrendous fantasy movies? I mean, besides the paycheck. I know John Malkovich has armoires to buy, but there's really no excuse for his performance as King Galbatorix in Eragon. Dude is literally one of the most phoned-in villains of all time - despite the script telling us what an evil badass he is, he doesn't do anything but sit on his throne and tell us how sad he is.
| 1 | Venom |
So the whole point of Venom is that Eddie Brock is a more physically imposing specimen than Peter Parker, so the symbiote costume boosts that natural power and makes him the hulking juggernaut of pain we all know and love. That's why casting Topher Grace as Brock in the third Spidey movie was so idiotic. Okay, yes, Topher Grace is slightly bigger than Tobey Maguire, but really. That 70's Show does not make a villain. Well, except for Ashton Kutcher.
