Top 10 Favourite Villains

It's a high to be loathed (you should really give that song a listen, it's really catchy)! Everybody loves a good villain, and I certainly have my favourites. Sometimes the villain is loved more than the hero, and sometimes they're loved just the same, and that's okay because at least the villains are getting some love! Villains are often an important part of a lot of genres, and for me, the more malicious, the better. Sometimes you can't tell which side of reason they side on, and other times it's completely obvious that they're evil and nothing else. Just, ugh I love me a good villain, so without any further delay, I present to you my top ten favourite villains! And trust me, this was a hard list to narrow down.

Godzilla - Godzilla

I'm very much new to the Godzilla franchise as I've only seen three movies so far (two good, one bad), but I've already grown to love how awesome this monster is. Godzilla's a bit weird though because in the vast majority of the movies, he's actually a hero and saves Japan from the monsters that he battles. He does manage to smash it up during the process, but most superheroes do that anyway. For me, I like viewing Godzilla as a menace and a force of nature, because that's what he was in his very first appearance in 1954 (here's something interesting: when you watch the US dub of the original film, every single mention of the nuclear attacks on Japan and the firebombing of Tokyo are completely removed. hmm....) as a reaction to the Japanese people's fears of another nuclear attack. He's still awesome in the 2014 film, but there he's actually the hero. And I'll try my best to not remember the monster from the movie starring Matthew Broderick, which isn't even considered to be Godzilla anymore.

Dexter Morgan - Dexter

I'm kind of cheating here, because Dexter is an anti-hero: he only kills the bad guys (although he has fucked up once or twice). I'm still not yet finished with watching Dexter, and I've only read the first book so far, but this dude is my favourite TV character. The thing with shows, movies, books, and even games that focus on the bad guy is that you grow to love them, and I love Dexter so so much. I never want him to get caught, and every person that he ends up hating I hate them too (looking at you, Doakes). And for a guy who doesn't really feel much, you do end up feeling a lot for Dexter, especially when things go spectacularly wrong for him (if you've seen the Season 4 finale, you know what I'm talking about).

Cell - Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z is such a long anime series that it has quite a few villains, but Cell is definitely my favourite out of all of them. The Androids Saga can get a little confusing if you've never seen it before, but basically the gist is that Cell is a biological android (rather than a cyborg) from the future and is made up of all the cells of the Z warriors (our heroes). You still with me? Good. Cell travels back in time in his cocoon form and has to absorb enough energy to reach his perfect form. First, he sucks all of the organic matter from humans (if you saw my post of scary moments, you'll know what I mean), then he has to absorb two other androids in order to attain his perfect form, which he has to use to kill Goku (the main hero). Got it? I hope so, because this story arc is long as fuck, which suits me just fine. What I love about Cell is that this guy is so vain. Once he reaches his perfect form, he decides to hold his own martial arts tournament where every contestant must fight him, and he's 100% sure that he's not going to lose. But guess what? He does. Because he's the bad guy and this is Dragon Ball Z, where the bad guys always lose even when it looks like they've won. In the DBZ fighting video games, Cell is a pretty powerful character once you've unlocked all of his moves and forms, and I love playing as him. Majin Buu is the most powerful villain in the series, but he just never caught my attention like Cell did.

Ingsoc (The Party) - Nineteen Eighty-Four

I just could not make a list about villains without including one big faceless evil, and Nineteen Eighty-Four's Inner Party is the one of the most evil faceless things I've seen in fiction. Does Big Brother even exist, or is he like Uncle Sam and just a fictional character made up for the sake of propaganda? We just don't know. And we're not going to know because once we know too much, the Party will completely wipe us from existence, and it'll be like we were never even born in the first place. Now that's doubleplusungood for us. (see what I did there?) The thing that makes Ingsoc so frightening, is that parts of it do exist in the world. Maybe not in places like western Europe or North America, but it can sometimes seem like the world doesn't heed the lessons that books teach us.

Frankenstein's Monster - Frankenstein

Here's a question for you: is the Monster really a villain? Think about it. In the Universal movies, yes the Monster is a villain. He's also pretty mindless and easily manipulated too. But in the book (which I studied at A-level and really liked and will be studying again this year), it's a little more complicated than that. Frankenstein's Monster (I personally say monster because it has the same negative connotations as creature sometimes) is one of my favourite fictional monsters mainly because of how heartbreaking his story is. His creator wanted to play God and once he'd realised what he'd done, he completely rejected him and cast him out into the world without knowing anything at all. Those kinds of villainous backstories are always the most gut-wrenching, and the Monster does get a bit melodramatic in the book (it's Gothic fiction though, so melodrama is definitely allowed), which makes him such a good villain to me.

Maleficent - Sleeping Beauty

(i'm so proud of how perfect this gif came out. just look at it, it's perfect.)

I couldn't let the boys take all the glory, now could I? Maleficent is my aboslutely favourite Disney villain. My favourite word just so happens to be 'malevolent'. When you give a character a name that sounds like a synonym for 'evil', you've got to live up to that. I didn't enjoy the movie Maleficent as much as everybody else because it made her into the hero, and I like her more as the villain. The part in Sleeping Beauty where she's enchanting Aurora to go up the stairs to the spindle always put me on edge when I was little, and sometimes I wanted to be Maleficent more than Aurora. I want to be able to enchant people and turn into a dragon, that'd be so cool!

Loki - Marvel Cinematic Universe

(i know, the gif obscures his face i'm sorry but this is my favourite shot of him >.<)

Let's be real here: who doesn't love Loki? Everybody loves Loki! Even me, and I'm the DC Girl. As much as I love this dude, I've given him the #4 spot because it took me an embarrassingly long time to actually like him. I didn't know who he was when I first saw The Avengers in cinemas, and I just didn't get the hype around him (I actually used to get annoyed by Tom Hiddleston's presence on my Tumblr dashboard: and now he's all over it because I want him to be) until I watched the second Thor film last year. So yeah, I'm incredibly tardy to the party with this one. Another reason why I've put him here is because sometimes I have to remind myself about what he's done. Yes, he's acted out because he felt like he was ostracised by his family, but he's still attempted mass genocide and tried to take over the world by force, which is totally unforgiveable. I still love him though. If you hear a sobbing noise, it's just me crying over Loki fanfiction.

Michael Corleone - The Godfather

Do you want to know why I love gangster and mafia things so much? It's because there aren't any heroes, even the so-called 'good guys' are corrupt. You know that these villains are terrible people who do horrible things, but you still want them to succeed. The reason why I like Michael Corleone so much is because when you watch the first two Godfather films, you see Michael go from being a wide-eyed innocent soldier and college boy who wants nothing to do with his family's business to being probably the coldest mob boss ever, having a disregard for other people to the point that he has his own brother killed for betraying the family (you broke my heart, Fredo...). In fact, that's not just cold that's fucking frozen. He may not have Luca Brasi (because he went to sleep with the fishes), but Michael can still be intimidating all on his own. Damn.

The Joker - DC Universe

Shall I tell you guys something? My favourite Batman villain is actually The Scarecrow, but the Joker is a villain of a completely different class. Scarecrow scares the living shit out of people because he likes seeing people go into a state of sheer terror, but the Joker kills people just for the fun of it. That is the kind of person you should be fucking scared of. If I ever ran into this guy I'd be saying my prayers there and then because I'd be off to meet my maker, no exceptions. Out of all the different portrayals of the Joker (the one in the gif there being Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight), my favourite would probably be Mark Hamill's version. Jack Nicholson was like, as Michael Caine described, a scary uncle, and Heath Ledger was a complete twisted psychopath. Mark Hamill's Joker is definitely the Joker that you see in the comics, he's still bat-shit crazy, but he's witty and he sees humour in almost everything. When we go into comics territory, Joker is terrifying. HE BARELY EVEN HAS A FACE ANYMORE. Go on. Click that link. I dare you to.

Count Dracula - Dracula

I've been obsessed with Dracula since I first read it when I was 14, and one thing that makes me sad about the character of Count Dracula, is that thanks to parodies and the like, he's not as scary as he should be. In the book, the fact that you almost never see him once Jonathan Harker comes home from Transylvania makes him seem so scary and dangerous, which is what he is. This guy may seem suave, but he'll go for your neck in a beat. My favourite portrayal of the character has got to be Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I reviewed two years ago and is one of my favourite films now. He manages to show all sides of the character, rather than what Bela Lugosi (who I still like btw) did back in the 1930s which was the suave host and then the controlling beast. I do like Lugosi's portrayal, but it's so OTT that I can't help but like it. If I were a snob, I'd probably hate it. But seriously, the best way to get to interested in something is to slap the Dracula name on it. I love this character so so so much.

(so many mentions...)

• Lex Luthor - DC Universe
• The Terminators - The Terminator series
• President Snow - The Hunger Games series
• Dr. Hannibal Lecter - Hannibal Lecter series
• The Scarecrow - DC Universe
• Clayton - Tarzan (just the Disney version though)
• Patrick Bateman - American Psycho
• Tony Soprano - The Sopranos
• Frieza - Dragon Ball Z
• Khan - Star Trek
• Mom - Futurama
• Mr. Burns - The Simpsons
• Norman Bates - Psycho

Who are some of your favourite villains?