Sonja Foust, Romance Author

I love villains. Ok, well, you know, I love to hate them. I’m not a sadist or anything. But I think villains are often the best part of a book or a movie. Defeating a real bad baddie makes the hero/heroine look even better. The really good villains are the ones who show how bad bad can be and illuminate how great the hero/heroine really is. So here are my top 10 villains of all time (in no particular order except the order I thought of them in):

1. Voldemort (Harry Potter series)- You knew he had to be on this list, right? The baddest baddie of them all, and so scary I had to turn away from my book, grab my husband’s arm, and go, “eek!” a couple of times. I haven’t seen the Harry Potter movies yet, but my mom tells me Voldemort is not nearly as scary in the movies as in the book. So, may I recommend reading the books?

2. Belloq (Radiers of the Lost Ark)- The other day I went on and on and on about Raiders of the Lost Ark, so I won’t put you through that again. I like the villain, Belloq, though, because he is like Indiana Jones, only bad. (It’s not subtle, either. He has a line in the movie: “I am a shadowy reflection of you.”)

3. Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty)- There’s nothing like a villain whose very name strikes fear in the hearts of mortal man. This one is pretty much punctuated by ugly green lightning and scary music every time anyone says it in the movie, and she’s a real bad baddie. I love that she has an ugly pet who is also evil and that she’s not comic at all. Some kids’ movies tend to water down the villains a bit with silly toadies and whatever, and I get why, but I like that Maleficent is just pure evil, and so is her bird.

4. Sean Ambrose (Mission: Impossible II)- I think the thing I liked most about this villian is that I recognized him from another movie where he played a nice guy (a prince, actually), and he was so convincing as a really bad bad guy in this movie that now I watch the other one where he’s a nice guy and I don’t quite believe it.

5. Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs)- Just totally creepy. Also, you’re never sure if he’s the villain or the protagonist. His story is almost as important as Clarice’s story.

6. Alex Forrest (Fatal Attraction)- Hell hath no fury and all that. This is still, I think, one of the scariest movies of all time, largely because of Glenn Close’s performance. And you almost, almost want to root for her because the Michael Douglas character is so scummy. Thanks, Glenn Close, for scaring a generation of men into fidelity.

7. Darth Vader (Star Wars series)- Every now and then, you get to redeem a villain, which I love. If your villain is going to be a darker version of your hero (which he most certainly is in this series), redeeming him can be possible. The redemption scene in Return of the Jedi is one of my favorites.

8. Agent Smith (The Matrix)- Totally scary, and also gives a lot of background on motivation. He gets a whole long monologue on why he hates humans, and I pretty much believe him.

9. The Wicked Witch of the West (The Wizard of Oz)- In fairy tales, it seems like the delineation between good and evil is necessarily sharper. I like that it works this way because it’s easier to get your point across when you don’t have to worry about who’s bad and who’s not. And we definitely know the Wicked Witch is, well, wicked.

10. The Evil Stepmother (Ever After)- Ever After is my favorite retelling of the Cinderella story and the evil stepmother in this version is really, really evil. Incidentally, this is the movie where the villain from Mission: Impossible II plays the charming prince. Watch both and let me know what you think.

So who are your favorite villains, and why do you like/hate them?

Related posts:

1. Premise Lines
2. Act Climaxes Breakdown: Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Authors in Their Characters
4. Top 10 Structurally Awesome Romance Movies