Movie Villain Mount Rushmore: Who are the Best Movie Villains of All Time?

Good movies usually have good villains. They’re a key ingredient in compelling stories, challenging the hero physically, emotionally, even spiritually. In many ways, a story’s protagonist is defined by their villain, whether they serve as a dark reflection of the hero (think Gollum to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings) or a philosophical foe (Javert to Jean Valjean in Les Misérables). Without a compelling villain, a story will struggle to reach its full potential.

A Diabolical Ranking

There are so many compelling villains to choose from! Instead of doing a Top 10 list or something to that effect, I wanted to put together a Mount Rushmore ranking—something that’s been popularized by Bill Simmons, founder of The Ringer.

There are only four spots on Mount Rushmore, so which villains will be immortalized forever in my little corner of the internet?

So, Who are the Best Villains?

That’s a pretty straightforward question, so I complicated it.

I didn’t just want to do a list of my four favorite villains, because I felt that might skew a bit too much toward certain genres while leaving others underrepresented. I decided that each of the four villains would represent a different type of movie.

The first category is Sci-Fi & Fantasy villains. Pretty self-explanatory—this is the category for the bad guys who exist in extraordinary and fantastical settings, be that a distant planet or magical forest.

The second category is something we’ll call Grounded Reality villains. Baddies in this category exist in a world where realism is the aim. Think cop dramas or psychological thrillers.

Enhanced Reality villains is the third category—these are the bad guys who exist in a heightened version of the world which stretches beyond the bounds of realism. Comic book movies would fit here. So would other films that contain exaggerated exploits.

Our fourth and final category is for Monster villains. This spot is earmarked for the best antagonist in a monster movie—the kind of “force of nature” villain who refuses to die until they’ve wiped out everyone but the last survivor.

Movie Villain Mount Rushmore

Okay, with the categories in place, let’s get into it.

1. Sci-Fi & Fantasy

There are a lot of great options to choose from here, and I narrowed my initial list down to five: Agent Smith from The Matrix, Darth Vader from Star Wars, Lady Eboshi from Princess Mononoke, Sauron from The Lord of the Rings, and Voldemort from Harry Potter.

Voldemort was the easiest one to cross of the list, despite a fun Ralph Fiennes performance. Voldemort is often outshined by other villains in the films (quick test: who do you have a more visceral reaction to, Voldemort or Bellatrix Lestrange? How about Dolores Umbridge?). Also, it’s generally not a mark in your favor when the film in which you play no part is the best regarded movie in the series.

Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) is a great foil in The Matrix. He’s played with a precise, robotic menace that slowly unhinges throughout the films, and the idea that he evolves into a sort of virus that threatens both humanity and the machines is a clever progression for his character. Ultimately, the movies around him don’t live up to the potential of the original film and as such he can’t reach the top spot.

The role that Sauron plays in The Lord of the Rings is an interesting one—he has little individual, physical presence beyond a brief (but effective) cameo in the prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring. Otherwise, he’s relegated to existence as a flaming eye atop Barad-dûr. Yet, Sauron’s menace is deeply felt across the films. We understand the stakes, even though our heroes deal exclusively with Sauron’s minions, rather than the big bad himself. Still, a lack of physical presence and personal connection to Frodo and the others holds him back in my mind.

A dark horse pick that I considered was Lady Eboshi (Yūko Tanaka/Minnie Driver), the antagonist from Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 film Princess Mononoke. She leads Iron Town, an industrial settlement poisoning the earth and warring with the spirits of nature. Sounds like a stock evil villain, right? But Lady Eboshi ends up being more than that—she cares for the people under her charge, making Iron Town a refuge for lepers and other outcasts of society. I have a memory of watching Princess Mononoke for the first time when I was young and being confused as to why the “bad guy” of the movie was doing good things. It’s a great lesson in creating a complex villain and I was tempted to make her my top choice. But…

Darth Vader (James Earl Jones/David Prowse) cannot be denied. The intimidating Sith Lord is the quintessential example of developing an antagonist over the course of a film series. Each film in the original Star Wars trilogy adds important layering to his character: the black-clad heavy of A New Hope, the paternal revelation of The Empire Strikes Back, and the struggle and ultimate redemption in Return of the Jedi. Everything adds up to an emotional, incredibly satisfying conclusion to the character that makes Darth Vader one of the greatest—if not the greatest—movie villains of all time.

Winner: Darth Vader

2. Grounded Reality

This category is chock full of memorable villains, and I had the hardest time picking a winner from this group. Ultimately, it comes down to taste, but my final five were: Alonzo Harris from Training Day, Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men, Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs, Hans Gruber from Die Hard, and Terence Fletcher from Whiplash.

The stakes are technically the lowest in Whiplash, so he was the first cut, but man, is Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) a despicable villain. The conductor at a prestigious music conservatory, Fletcher is an abusive, manipulative monster who terrorizes his students in an effort to “bring out the best in them.” Selfish, ruthless, and utterly convinced of his methods, Fletcher is the type of villain who is scary because he could exist in the real world.

Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) was an interesting baddie to consider, because he seems to skirt the line between a grounded villain and one that belonged in a more exaggerated reality. In No Country for Old Men, Chigurh is essentially unstoppable, an embodiment of evil. He’s arguably one of the most successful movie villains—he achieves his goal, kills everyone who opposes him, and even gets away in the end. All in all, a terrific and terrifying performance, but one that I found markedly less fun than the remaining options.

Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for his performance as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs—and he did it with only sixteen minutes of screen time. That should tell you how effective he was playing the part of an insidious serial killer. Hannibal Lecter is one of the great movie villains, you won’t get an argument from me. But it must be noted that he wasn’t the primary antagonist in his most successful film, and other movies that used the character were…less admired.

For a fiendishly magnetic performance, look no further than Detective Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington) in 2001’s Training Day. Alonzo is a man who revels in his corruption but is also smart enough to checkmate those who might try to oppose him. He’s a villain who is always one step ahead, and his ultimate downfall is brought about by a coincidence rather than an error in his scheme. Alonzo is frightening, entertaining, and very human.

In the end, my love of Die Hard and Alan Rickman’s wonderful performance as faux terrorist/exceptional thief Hans Gruber won out. He’s the “smart villain” who actually seems like the smartest guy in the room. Gruber became the template for countless action movie villains to follow, especially those in the “Die Hard in a <BLANK>” genre. He is charismatic, menacing, calculating, and tremendously fun. Hans Gruber is the type of villain you love to hate, and his final comeuppance is extremely satisfying.

Winner: Hans Gruber

3. Enhanced Reality

I found the majority of my selections in this category were villains who simply relished being bad. The five finalists were: Clarence Boddicker from RoboCop, Hans Landa from Inglourious Basterds, Ivan Drago from Rocky IV, Joker from The Dark Knight, and Loki from Thor/The Avengers.

It could be argued that Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) is more of a grounded villain, but the world of RoboCop is so heightened that I felt comfortable slotting him in here. Boddicker is prime villain material—a homicidal gang leader and irredeemable psycho who has a great conflict with the movie’s titular character.

As far as villains go in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Loki and Thanos have been the most successful in terms of popularity and impact. I’m giving the edge here to Tom Hiddleston’s Asgardian trickster god, who has become a recurring character in the MCU (and is still going strong in his own streaming series). Loki is often nasty and conniving but has always possessed a charm and some sympathetic motivations that gave him a little more depth as a character. If I can quibble a bit, however, I’d say that it’s been a while since he was actually a full-blown villain, having moved more into an anti-hero role.

Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) certainly belongs in this category—an almost superhuman harbinger of destruction that tests the limits of punishment Rocky Balboa can take. Drago is a perfect villain for Rocky, with a personal animosity (he killed Apollo Creed!) that makes their battle a truly titanic clash. Add it a few great lines and you’ve got yourself a memorable villain.

Nazis often make for ideal movie villains—with their unambiguously evil ideology, little else is needed to make the audience despise them. However, Quentin Tarantino layers on additional character traits to the villain of Inglourious Basterds, Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). There is an opportunistic, calculating killer hidden underneath Landa’s polite, sometimes silly, demeanor, which makes the character all the more chilling. Additionally, he’s another villain, like Anton Chigurh, who technically “wins” by getting what he wants at the end of the movie—but not without a reminder of the evils of his past.

Ultimately, I had to go with the Joker—arguably the greatest comic book villain of all time. There are few iterations of the Clown Prince of Crime more indelible than Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. The Joker is the perfect ideological opposite to Batman—embodying chaos as opposed to Batman’s order—and serves as a mockery of the Caped Crusader. You might say he “gets the joke.” The Dark Knight is an incredible film, but it wouldn’t be what it is without the Joker. He’s unpredictable, maniacal, and easily one of cinema’s best villains.

Winner: The Joker

Monster

Narrowing down my list of monster movie villains came down to preference, so you might be surprised to see horror stalwarts like Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger left off my final list. Still, I think I came up with some strong candidates: the Alien Queen from Aliens, the Predator from Predator, the T-800 from The Terminator series, the Thing from The Thing (man, a lot of repetition here), and the shark from Jaws.

The Jaws shark is a classic movie monster, and one so unforgettable that people still feel uneasy when they go swimming in the ocean. Steven Spielberg’s summer blockbuster preys on a real-life fear—there are sharks prowling the world’s waters, and being hunted by an underwater monster would be terrifying. Funnily enough, the movie actually benefitted by the monster not being on screen, as the film’s mechanical shark was prone to malfunctioning, so some of the scariest moments are achieved by clever staging and John Williams’ infamous score.

In terms of creating paranoia, nothing tops the Thing. An alien that can imitate other life forms to near perfection, it sets off a pulse-pounding crisis for the characters stationed at an isolated research facility in Antarctica. With a monster that could be anyone, tension is high throughout the whole film, and there are some shocking moments that make use of the Thing’s shapeshifting properties. Great movie, great monster.

These last three were difficult to choose from—they’re all incredibly memorable monsters in massive movie franchises. Eventually, I settled on the Predator as my third-place finisher. The genius of the original Predator film is the establishment of the elite, uber-masculine military squad led by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch. The movie takes the time to set up this formidable group, which makes it all the more shocking when the Predator starts cutting through them like they are nothing. It’s a great looking movie monster, full of all sorts of lore-building details that leave you wanting more. The Predator is a great villain and makes for an awesome showdown with Arnold at the end of the film.

There are a lot of extraterrestrials on this list! But none can top the queen—the Alien Queen, that is. The big bad of James Cameron’s sci-fi action epic Aliens is a logical addition to the Alien lore, and an intimidating one at that. It also serves as an ideal foil to Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), who becomes a surrogate mother throughout the film—essentially pitting two mothers against each other for their survival and the survival of their children. One is a vicious alien monster who lays facehugger eggs, but you get it. And it all culminates in one of the greatest fights in movie history. The Alien Queen is certainly worthy of the top spot, but it just loses out to…

The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a time-traveling machine with a directive to kill the mother of the future human resistance. What makes the Terminator so terrifying is how cold and unstoppable it is as it seeks to complete its mission. It does not stop hunting Sarah Conners, even as its human disguise melts away and its alloy skeleton is torn apart. It keeps on coming until the bitter end. Adding to its legacy is its unexpected hero turn in Terminator 2: Judgement Day—that may be a bit of a cheat since this is a villain Mount Rushmore, but it’s a fun twist on the movie monster formula that enhances the original’s standing.

Winner: The Terminator

Conclusion: Best Movie Villains

So that’s it! My movie villain Mount Rushmore: Darth Vader, Hans Gruber, The Joker, and The Terminator. And it only took 2,500 words to get there! Just imagine those evil mugs carved into the side of a mountain…

What do you think? Who are your favorite movie villains—the characters you hate to love and love to hate? Sound off in the comments below!