I agree with the inclusion of Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies, stupidly camp, not threatening, and the Green Goblin looked like something out of the bloody Power Rangers10. GENERAL GRIEVOUS in STAR WARS: EPISODE III
In a saga full of fantastic baddies - including arguably the top movie bastard of all time, no less - there was always going to be a villain that wasn’t fit to clean the bantha shit off of Darth Vader’s space boots. With Anakin Skywalker still getting to grips with puberty, the dastardly villain in Episode III was the much-heralded General Grievous, a droid warrior with a fearsome reputation – spot on, if by ‘fearsome reputation’ you mean ‘intense cowardice’. Sure, he carried four lightsabers, but does having lots of pockets make you a force to be reckoned with? Factor in his stupid chicken walk, a head modelled on a detergent nozzle and an inexplicable chesty cough and he’s hardly the stuff of legend - give him a pack of Fisherman’s Friends and he’d probably change his whole outlook on intergalactic war.
Ultimate act of lameness: Being shot and killed by a blaster. How fiendish!
9. PETER SARSGAARD as GENE CARSON in FLIGHTPLAN
First of all, no one is going to buy that this miserable looking girl would ever be capable of true evil: he’s supposed to be the mastermind of a mid-flight scam that sees him frame Jodie Foster’s concerned parent, but sports a look on his face like he’s just shit in his pants. Secondly, his name is Gene, and no one called Gene has ever been villainous in the entire history of humanity. Finally, his flawless plan is so fucking retarded, it relies on every single passenger on the flight turning a blind eye to the stinking obvious, a series of extremely improbable incidents taking place and the captain having an IQ smaller than his shoe size. Carson’s pre-pubescent voice and poor bomb awareness make him a shoe-in for this list; he even passes up an opportunity to punch Jodie Foster in the face.
Ultimate act of lameness: Being foiled by a recently-bereaved widow and a little girl.
8. MARK PILLOW as NUCLEAR MAN in SUPERMAN IV
Tremble at the might of Mark Pillow! Okay, so Nuclear Man is a slightly more intimidating name for a villain, but it still doesn’t change the fact that he’s the shittiest villain the Man of Steel has ever faced. Admittedly he was born in the most awesome way possible – by a nuclear explosion on the surface of the sun – but an attraction to simple Earth girl Lacy Warfield rendered him an impotent foe; you never caught General Zod making a booty call or Lex Luthor texting one of his bitches. Nuclear Man met a predictable death at the hands of an enviro-mental Superman and was thrown into a nuclear reactor, which somehow killed him despite it being the source of his power; the dolt couldn’t even die properly.
Ultimate act of lameness: Falling for a humanoid female, and not even a hot one.
7. WILLEM DEFOE as THE GREEN GOBLIN in SPIDER-MAN
In the flesh, Defoe makes for a terrifying villain: his cracked, disturbing face looks like something born from one of your stinkiest cheese nightmares. But when scientist Norman Osborn undergoes accidental Goblinization, Defoe lets himself down with his choice of costume, encasing himself in a green plastic number that looks more like something you’d see the Power Rangers fighting against. With that ghoulish visage hidden behind a cheap-looking Halloween mask, the Goblin is reduced to cackling maniacally, failing to kill his arch-enemy and flying around on his posh little glider, which is kind of like an even more useless Segway. The Goblin even makes that hallmark rookie villain mistake of dying by his own hand; at least Dr. Octopus went out with dignity.
Ultimate act of lameness: Pumpkin bombing an elderly guy in a wheelchair.
6. RAUL JULIA as M. BISON in STREET FIGHTER
In digital form, M. Bison is as hard as balls – when he’s not setting himself on fire, he’s stomping your ass into the ground and making you curse your fat sausage fingers to hell. In the flesh, Bison is a less formidable enemy, despite being played by accomplished character actor Raul Julia, a man who played Othello in his time. Dressed from head to toe in tight, restricting leather, Bison lacked his videogame counterpart’s fisticuff skills and was eventually beaten into a sorry-looking paste by Jean-Claude Van Damme and his fist-punching friends. Street Fighter: The Movie was to be game over for Julia, as he died shortly after filming - the makers dedicated the film to his memory, a gesture which saw Julia respond in kind by flipping them off from beyond the grave.
Ultimate act of lameness: Wearing a leather hat, straight from the YMCA school of fashion.
5. RAY PARK as TOAD in X-MEN
Flick through the pages of any Marvel comic book and you’ll likely stumble on any number of great villains, all with incredible powers, sinister motives, evil costumes and outlandish names. It’s quite baffling, then, why Bryan Singer thought plain old Toad was a suitable candidate for an appearance in the X-Men movie. His special powers? Being a toad. These mind-boggling attributes include being able to jump really high and flicking out his tongue – all well and good, but not very useful when you’re fighting superheroes with lightning at their fingertips, claws sprouting from their hands and lasers shooting from their eyes. Toad met a grisly end at the hands of Storm, although he might have also been found shrivelled, dead and stuck to the back of the Brotherhood dustbin.
Ultimate act of lameness: Being a fucking toad. I mean… honestly.
4. HELMUT BAKAITIS as THE ARCHITECT in THE MATRIX RELOADED
The original Matrix movie was one of the best sci-fi action flicks ever, thanks to sneering bastard Agent Smith. The sequel couldn’t hope to emulate the success of the original; while Smith’s virus programme ran riot, Neo faced up to the ultimate enemy – an old, beardy man who reads the dictionary for fun. Keanu wasn’t the only one who got bored listening to the Architect’s cod-philosophy: how many of you thought Reloaded would have been improved if Neo stopped listening to his pseudo-intellectual bullshit and simply kicked seven shades of shit out of his geriatric ass in bullet-time? Important note to any wannabe villains: if you’re going to ‘monologue’ to the hero of the piece, make sure you speak in a language they can understand. And with Keanu Reeves, that doesn’t leave a whole lot.
Ultimate act of lameness: All those televisions, and not one of them showing XXX cable.
3. JONATHAN PRYCE as ELLIOT CARVER in TOMORROW NEVER DIES
Being part of the Bond Villain Club isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; you’re always trying to out-do the last guy - when 007’s former enemies tried to cut him in two with a laser or blow up the sun, repeatedly kicking him in the nuts won’t do at all. Poor old Elliot Carver suffers in comparison to the all-time greats; a weedy, silver-haired, bespectacled geek who dreams of controlling the world through his news corporation, he actually suffers the indignity of being less villainous than several real-life media barons. Carver spends his nights concocting devious plans to play the worlds’ armies off each other, presumably in between bouts of World of Warcraft and updating his MySpace page (‘You have 0 Friends’). Bond might as well have defeated this nerd with a killer wedgie.
Ultimate act of lameness: No villain should ever know how to use Quark Xpress.
2. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER as MR. FREEZE in BATMAN & ROBIN
Singling out the worst bit of Batman & Robin is kind of like searching for a shitty needle in a turdstack, but the Austrian Oak certainly makes the case for the worst character of the series so far. At the time, the Batman universe still boasted tonnes of unused cool bad guys – The Scarecrow, Ra’s Al Ghul and Harley Quinn to name but a few – so it’s a mystery why Mr. Freeze was defrosted for duty. More likely to kill you with his god-awful puns than any real villainy (“Ice to see you!”), Freeze also loses valuable evil points by trying to save his sick wife; no villain worth his salt would ever walk down the aisle. Unbeknown to Batman at the time, Freeze could have been defeated with a medium-strength hair dryer – hardly credentials that would make Gotham’s finest cower in fear.
Ultimate act of lameness: “You’re not sending ME to the cooler!” Very funny, a good joke well told.
1. SAURON in THE LORD OF THE RINGS
Such an epic story deserves an epic villain, but instead of an all-powerful, shit-kicking overlord, the citizens of Middle-Earth lived in fear of what basically amounted to a pissed off lighthouse. With his earthly form chopped down to size after a nasty cut on the fingers, Sauron is reduced to appearing as a giant, sore-looking eyeball at the top of a tower, which kinda makes it hard to be truly evil, aside from a few disapproving glares here and there. Ooh, we’re so scared Mr. Sauron - what are you going to do, look at us funny? Poor Sauron might have the coolest armies at his disposal, but it’s a shame he wasn’t blessed with any common sense: putting at least a couple of guards outside the entrance to Mount Doom might have saved him a whole lot of silly bother. Any self-respecting villain would have spotted that: maybe he should have gone to Specsavers.
Ultimate act of lameness: Brought crashing down by North and Mikey from The Goonies.
Sauron?!!
He seemed more evil when he DIDN'T appear physically
