Not worst as in completely uncharismatically sadistic. Not worst as in an absolute hate sink. WORST as in horribly written, uninteresting, annoying, one note, has a annoying voice, completely moronic motives, or straight agonizing to sit through!
MCU Thanos. Dude is a complete idiot. With the stones he could basically be a god and do whatever he wants, but chooses to half the universe in order to stretch resources… except that doesn’t actually do that. He halved all life. Most resources are themselves alive. And even then he’s only kicking the can down the road a bit. Why not double the resources? Why not fundamentally change life so that it doesn’t have to use as much?
The comics version works because it turns out that his justifications are bullshit; dude just wants to impress Death because he loves her.
I will grant that MCU Thanos works in the sense that he’s a tough-guy moron who surrounds himself with yes-men, which only enhances his danger. But I don’t think that this was the intent in how they wrote him.
They wrong him like one of those alt-right philosophy bros, as if they could somehow make him make sense.
Satan. Loses his job over a difference of opinion and then suddenly becomes the complete antithesis, and raison d’être, of his boss. How convenient. He just screams “plot device” to me.
Anakin
I was a 1980s kid. Darth Vader was one of those peak villains one sees in childhood, the ultimate bad guy. He killed indiscriminately. He had space wizard magic to find you and read your mind and choke you remotely. He had the evil (red) version of the coolest weapon in the universe. He was so scary his own soldiers on the bad guy side were afraid of him. He tortured the princess. For some reason he was part robot, had a deep commanding voice, and even his breathing was scary. And to top it all off, it turned out he was the good guy’s father. Fathers are supposed to be safe, not scary!
I had many, many childhood nightmares about Darth Vader. I watched the movies an incalculable amount of times, I cheered when the good guys beat him, or at least escaped him with their skin intact.
Then I got a little older, and the prequels happened. I don’t know if any retroactive backstory could have matched the feelings my childhood mind had generated so many years earlier, but I was at least curious about what they’d come up with to explain who Darth Vader has been and what made him that way… only to learn that apparently the ultimate scary badass was apparently just some dull and whiny guy who somehow was randomly lucky, smart, and magical, lived a really nice and comfortable life with lots of support and encouragement, but was just all “no I wanna be bad now because some easily-resolvable life stuff made me angry waaaah.”
So disappointing.
His turn to the dark side is just so damn abrupt. Even Clone Wars, which does a lot to flesh out Anakin as a character, doesn’t even really show us the gradual seduction of the dark side on him.
Voldemort. He was so stereotypically evil there was just no depth. Also fuck JK., support trans people, I already regret talking and thinking about HP
A villain defined by equally flat minions, trying and failing to kill a child for Jump The Shark reasons.
Elon Musk
(You didn’t say it had to be someone fictional. I mean, just look at him!)
Basically a real life cartoon villain from a shitty family Guy clone. LMFAO
He comes complete with the “hey this guys a phony!” character to heckle Musk.
Musk vs Zuckerberg. Go.
Hey, weren’t they supposed to have a cage match a few years back? Chickens. I would have enjoyed watching that.
Musk chickened out.
We were promised a cage match, but instead we got worst platform (X) versus worst platform ripoff (Threads) match. Riveting.
Caillou
Snoke.
It felt like there was supposed to be big plans for the Snoke character in the later movies, but he ended up being a complete throwaway.
Perhaps not the absolute worst but certainly one of the most forgettable villains.
They famously had no coherent plan for the sequel trilogy, so each film lurched off in its own weird direction.
It’s truly mind-boggling how badly Disney screwed up what should’ve been a slam dunk.
This one was so disappointing :(
I said this in another thread recently, but Ted Faro from the Horizon Zero Dawn series was so badly written. He was a one note guy, use technology to get profit at the expense of the planet, lying and dishonesty and being a douchey and thoroughly despised tech bro—
and then I realized, he’s incredibly well written. He’s fuckin’ Elon Musk but American. He’s Sam Altman. He’s all these fuckers, and they’re him.
Elon Musk would totally irradiate himself in a bunker to become an immortal monster. Hell, that’s literally what Peter Thiel goons his tiny dick to every goddamn night!
Ted Faro was a bad villain back in ‘18. In ‘26, he fits in.
Take ALL of my next month’s salary for mentioning HZD. 🩵
He was a well written character in 2018, too, you just weren’t ready to see it.
They saw exactly what was happening. Artists aren’t stupid.
Most aren’t. Eventually I’ll hold the brain cell for a bit.
Gru from Despicable Me. What kind of villain adopts and raises children and saves the world on purpose?
He has the audacity to call himself despicable.
Movie should’ve been about Vector
“Despicable V(ector)”
Clear setup for an antihero. Disqualified.
The Hamburgler
Oh, I got a real fictional answer. Dominic Toretto. His crew started as simple thieves who stole DVD players. Dom had no problem with Brian getting iced by the Koreans to throw off the feds. He played all sides against themselves and showed real potential as the villain who got away. Stone cold sociopath who drives 2 nice cars.
Fast forward 20 years and he’s a super spy who has reluctantly saved the world three times while driving variations of those same 2 nice cars.
He’s become the anti-villain. Not a hero but someone who stops other villains. There’s also no real person anymore. Dom is just a guy who drives and has a one word catchphrase that’s so boring it’s a joke now. There is no more depth or nuance to him. And since he contractually can’t lose fights in his films there is no chance the other villains succeed.
Yup, after the first three films it’s basically like watching a kid play with action figures.
I still enjoy them, because I’m freaky for fast cars, but that’s about it. Fast X has been sitting on my HDD for years unwatched, lol.
The calypso twins in Borderlands 3. The streamer schtick got old quickly, and the game just took control away from you whenever they showed up so they could act with impunity. They were just annoying and kind of whiny so the “sympathetic” backstory didn’t do anything for me. I remember the final boss being deeply unimpressive after all the build up, too.
Was going to post this. Seriously ruined the franchise.
Rose from Pokémon Sword and Shield. He wants to solve an energy crisis that won’t actually be an issue for like 1,000 years. Then when Leon asks him to delay his plans for literally one day he massively flips out and decides to kick off the apocalypse. And no, it doesn’t make any more sense in context.
That is some Gainax ending level type shit there.
The Riddler from The Batman is poorly written because he spends the first two acts establishing himself as a person trying to right the wrongs of Gotham and honestly did a really good job at it, then had to switch to trying to destroy the city in act 3 because they didn’t want the audience to get any ideas.
This describes like all the batman villains
Lots of baddies in Asian media seem to be completely two-dimensional. They’re bad because they are bad people, full stop.
They must be stopped before they destroy whatever, for no particular reason. Oh good, the goody came along and defeated them. Woo.
Please don’t ask me to name any of these, I don’t read Korean or Chinese so I can’t remember them.
