20 Recent Movie Villains Who Became Instantly Iconic

Just as important as crafting a compelling movie hero is coming up with a worthy villain. Because if the antagonist is a damn squib, it becomes a whole lot easier to not really care about the central conflict. But a basically solid villain is one thing. The sheer confluence of circumstances that goes into delivering a great and even iconic all-timer antagonist is kinda mad. Like not everyone can be Jack Palance in Tango and Cash, and I'm only being half-unserious when I say that. But sometimes a movie villain just has the sauce, as has been the case with a heck of a lot of recent films. So polish your fangs and get your best maniacal laugh going, I'm Ewan, this is WhatCulture, and here are a whole bunch of recent movie villains who became instantly iconic. First up, Stephen Jay Lockjaw – One Battle After Another Paul Thomas Anderson's superb One Battle After Another saw Sean Penn receive some of the best reviews of his career for his sublime and ultimately Oscar-winning performance as Colonel Stephen Jay Lockjaw, a psychotic military man who spends the movie pursuing the members the revolutionary outfit known as the French 75. While it would have been easy for a character like Lockjaw to feel like a pure caricature, Penn infuses him with so much unsettling physicality, his facial twitches, his stilted way of walking, that he becomes a more distinct and distinctly horrifying antagonist, like a version of Wile E. Coyote if he was on some kind of government watch list. It It helps that Anderson writes Lockjaw with considerable shade, for as monstrous as the character is, there's also a fundamentally pathetic quality to him that he's so desperate to belong to a white supremacist outfit that he fails to anticipate their ultimate decision to, you know, kill him. In a movie packed with brilliant characters and performances, it's Lockjaw who makes the deepest impression. A villain who is terrifyingly believable, and yet just ridiculous enough to laugh at all the same. Being a movie lover on the internet can be pretty exciting. You've got a buffet of streaming services to choose from, endless places to yap about them on and wouldn't I know it, and also shops to fuel your fandom further. But it's also a bit of a Wild West vibe out there. And that means needing some protection, partner. That's why we're settling up with Sheriff Norton VPN, the fastest rootin' tootin' VPN in the West and one who'll escort you safely to the films and TV shows you want to watch. Scan the QR code on screen or use the link in the description to get Norton VPN standard with the price for your first year working out as as little as $3.33 per month, or £2.50 a month if you're in the UK. With that, you can also watch your favourite content on the go, hassle-free, protecting your internet connection on public Wi-Fi wherever you are in the world. You also get a 60-day money-back guarantee if you change your mind, which is pretty darn decent, if I do say so myself. A big thank you once again to Norton for sponsoring this video, and now, on with the show. Yeah! Next up, Varang. Avatar, Fire and Ash. James Cameron's third Avatar movie, Fire and Ash, was rightly criticized for being far too much of a rehash of the two previous films, but its clear MVP was its single distinct new character, the villainous Varang, played by Una Chaplin. And also, just for a second, let me get on my Navi soapbox. All you Avatar-had-no-cultural-impact people are missing out on some seriously great cinema, case in point, this character. Even folks who were lukewarm or downright negative on the third Avatar film showered praise on the incredibly extra leader of the Mang Kwan clan, whose fiery intensity stood in stark contrast to most other Na'vi in the franchise. More to the point, her hypnotically seductive qualities proved hugely popular online, reflecting how quickly she was able to literally charm the pants off of Colonel Quatrich, of course played by Stephen Lang. That is to say, the internet fell head over heels for Varang in all of her animalistic magnetism, a testament to both James Cameron's penchant for creating strong female characters and Una Chaplin's mesmerizing performance in the role. Though Varang ultimately dips out of Fire and Ash rather abruptly in the movie, it seems highly likely she'll make a return in Avatar 4 to make everyone swoon all over again, which I am doing as I record this entry, because yeah, that's a cool giant blue alien lady. Moving on, Jimmy Crystal, 28 years later. You know, it sure has been a great year for Jack O'Connell, given that he played not one, but two totally unforgettable movie villains in the past 12 months. The end of 28 years later concluded with the introduction of his antagonist, Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, the leader of a Jimmy Savile-inspired cult who rescues young Spike, played by Alfie Williams, from a pack of the infected. Beyond the revelation that Jimmy is the same young tyke we saw in the film's 28 years prior prologue, most all context was saved for the follow-up 28 years later, The Bone Temple, which is also absolutely like my favorite movie of the year so far and is a modern day masterpiece as far as I'm concerned. The media reveals that Jimmy is an unhinged Satan worshiper who finds himself on a collision course with Ralph Fiennes' Dr. Ian Kelson over the course of the story. O'Connell pulls off the tricky feat of making his Jimmy both a terrifying psychopath and a ludicrously entertaining villain all at once, his blonde wig and tracksuit underlining a character who feels entirely out of place in a post-apocalyptic horror film, and yet only proves all the more memorable as a result. Man, what a movie. 28 years later, The Bone Temple, just brilliant. Next up, Milton Rockwell, Marty Supreme. Though genuinely likeable characters are tough to come by in Marty Supreme, the most detestable of the lot has to be Milton Rockwell, played by Kevin O'Leary, a predatory, influential businessman who attempts to exert control over old Tinny C's titular Marty. While many found it distracting that Rockwell was played by polarizing Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary in an undeniable feat of stunt casting, it's tough to argue with the very believable, calculating menace of his performance, which doesn't seem many measures removed from his true self. There's also a fully hypnotic quality to the scenes where Rockwell bristles up against Marty, culminating in the instantly legendary exchange where Rockwell professes, I was born in 1601, I'm a vampire, I've been around forever. Don't know why I went with that voice. Just kind of thinking, you know, if you're going to be a fake vampire, you kind of got to New England accent it up, maybe. I don't know. Is that even a New England accent? It was kind of transatlantic. Anyway, moving on. So my terrible accents aside, Josh Safdie did toy around the idea of confirming Rockwell to be a legit vampire in the final scene by having him take a literal bite out of Marty, though sensibly decided against it. All the same, regardless of your opinion on O'Leary himself, he absolutely crushed the part and made Rockwell an incredibly distinctive riff on the familiar rich asshole archetype. On the way, Macrinus, Gladiator 2. Oh man, has there been a more annoying movie sequel than Gladiator 2? No, like seriously, genuinely, has there been a more annoying one? Can you let me know in the comments below? because, uh, that was a profoundly frustrating viewing experience for me. So yeah, Gladiator 2 may have been a wildly mixed bag of a movie, the modern-day Ridley Scott special, honestly, but Denzel Washington's scene-stealing performance as the villainous Macrinus was widely praised, and rightly so. You know, Ridley giveth with one hand and taketh away with the other. You get big ol' Denzel giving a great performance, and then you also get weird CGI animals in the Colosseum for some reason. No, I'm not letting it go. Why did they have to do that? It made no sense. They clearly don't look like the things the meta looked like. What was going on there? Back on track, back on track. Yeah, he may not quite match the detestable brilliance of Joaquin Phoenix's Commodus from the first Gladiator, but Macrinus is a very different kind of character altogether. For one, he's charismatic and charming in all the ways that Commodus never was, admittedly an inherent virtue of casting Washington in the role. This, combined with Macrinus' basically pantomime-tier scheme to seize Rome for himself, makes him stupendously entertaining to behold in every single moment. He's the smartest man in the room at basically all times, has an enticingly layered backstory, and is just a good deal more interesting than everyone else in the movie, not least of which is Lucius, played by Paul Mescal. Washington is so damn magnetic in the role that many awards pundits even expected him to score a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nom, but alas, it wasn't to be. Probably because of those goddamn CGI baboons. Okay, we're moving on. On the way, The Major, The Long Walk. Anyone who read Stephen King's dystopian novel The Long Walk before watching the recent film adaptation knew just how statuesque its central villain, The Major, truly was. The iron-fisted soldier in charge of running The Long Walk was surely a tough role to cast, given that fans of the novel have decades of preconceptions about how the character should be depicted. But director Francis Lawrence pulled off a major casting coup by landing Mark Hamill for the part, who lends a gravelly menace to the mysterious character, even with his relatively insubstantial screen time compared to the central walkers. Yes, Hamill has played villains before, especially the Joker, oh my god what a performance in that role, but there's still a novelty element to seeing the Star Wars icon portray viciously violent antagonists, especially in a live-action format. Lawrence not only adapted a supposedly unfilmable novel into a great movie, but took a legendary literary villain and made him a terrifying cinematic emblem of the establishment, all with Mark Hamill at the helm. On the way, Galactus, the Fantastic Four first steps. Slight tangent before going into the century. Does anyone else remember the 90s Fantastic Four show, you know, the one with the really bad animation and the theme song that will never leave my brain no matter how many times, and years of therapy I attempt to remove it from there. Well, Galactus gets beaten by Ghost Rider in that show, and I don't think we talk about it enough. Like, Ghost Rider had never been mentioned before in the cartoon. He shows up out of nowhere and is like, hey Galactus, just look into my eyes and beware the torment of a billion, billion souls. and then and then Galactus is like ah that's too many souls and then leaves we don't talk about that enough we should talk about that more I hope that actually happens in the MCU at some point because um yeah if you know what I'm talking about let me know in the comments and uh let me know if you'd also be down for seeing that in live action form because I would but yes talking about the Fantastic Four: The First Steps even the most casual of Marvel folks out there will know that Galactus is one of the most iconic villains ever created, and that there was tremendous pressure to get his MCU debut right. Especially after his widely panned depiction as a cosmic fart cloud in 2007's Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer. Oh man, the lasting damage that movie did. We not only got weird like fart cloud Galactus, it also led to weird poop cloud parallax in that goddamn god-awful Green Lantern movie too. But um yeah on to goodish movies now and while The Fantastic Four: First Steps was a relatively underwhelming outing on the whole fully explains why I keep on going off on all these tangents, its depiction of Galactus was widely praised by fans for finally doing the big old purple guy justice. For one his design is superbly, even fantastically source accurate. But it's Ralph Ineson's performance, especially that voice, which really lends the character so much presence and gravitas. And rather than merely depict Galactus as a one-dimensional eater of worlds, we get a fascinating glimpse into his debilitating, never-ending hunger. The very hunger he hopes young Franklin Richards can take away from him. While Galactus' role was smaller than some fans were maybe expecting, at the very least some exceptional groundwork was laid for the mega-villain to return sooner rather than later, and hey, maybe even not as a villain either. Maybe he'll get a fun new Herald at some point too, I mean I love all the Herald stuff. Ryan Gosling, Cosmic Ghost Rider, maybe? I don't know. On the way, Michelle Fuller, Begonia. The beauty of Yorgos Lanthimos' Kind of Kindness is that we don't actually know who the real villain is for almost the entire runtime, at least unless you've seen the South Korean film on which it's based, Save the Green Planet. Our conspiracy theorist protagonist Teddy Gat, played by the always brilliant Jesse Plemons, nevertheless believes that farmer CEO Michelle Fuller, played by Emma Stone, is actually a secret member of an alien species known as the Andromedans, and is putting the forest humanity into subservience. Teddy resorts to kidnapping her, and while he's depicted as a dangerously erratic man throughout the film, the big climactic twist is that, actually, he's right. After Teddy's suicide vest accidentally detonates and kills him, Michelle teleports to the Andromedan mothership, revealing herself to indeed be a high-ranking member of the species, just as Teddy theorized. However, the Andromedans have actually spent thousands of years trying to guide humanity towards a more peaceful future, and now realising that prospect is kind of on the rocks, they decide to end the human quote unquote experiment. Michelle then pops a diorama-like bubble on board her ship, which instantly ends the life of every single person on Earth in that moment. And yeah, while the lines of villainy are definitely blurred throughout Begonia, what with Teddy's conspiracy theory driving him to kill numerous people, Michelle definitely wins bad guy top trumps here, what with her instant genocide of like 8 billion people. And on top of Michelle being an utterly transfixing character, we got another banger of an Emma Stone performance out of the movie. Love that for her, and also us. Next up, The Monkey. The Monkey! Good lord, I love The Monkey, and Osgood Perkins in general, because what a great, unique perspective he has going for him as a filmmaker. I am locked into everything he is doing right now. So, as you may be aware, horror movies centred around cursed objects are all the rage. But Osgood Perkins struck sure gold with his adaptation of Stephen King's short story The Monkey the other year. The film's overarching villain isn't a flesh-and-blood person, but a cursed toy monkey which triggers the brutally violent death of a random person nearby whenever its key is turned. This is the deliciously simple setup for a film defined by its array of cartoonishly gory and sometimes hilariously over-the-top deaths, all brought about by a seemingly innocent-looking object made for children. The whole point is that it's absurd and that eventually in our lives we just tend to cross a threshold of trauma and sadness where sometimes all you can really do is just laugh at the cruelness of it all. But there's no mistaking the creepiness of that face with the foreknowledge that it's basically an unstoppable killing machine the moment its key is turned. And hell, if you're bold enough to try and activate its deathly drums without winding the key first, you'll see just how damn destructive it can get out of pure spite. Additionally, even without the monkey saying anything at all, Perkins manages to imbue it with a distinctly mischievous personality. It's a scamp, a rascal, and one I personally could not get enough of. Next up, Harrison Lee Van Buren, The Brutalist. The villain at the core of Brady Corbet's towering epic The Brutalist is Harrison Lee Van Buren, played by Guy Pearce, the wealthy industrialist who hires architect Laszlo Toth, played by Adrian Brody, to design a community centre, the Van Buren Institute. But amid the film's enormous scope, we see Harrison as an agent of capitalism who uses his riches as a means to control Laszlo, a Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivor who immigrated to the US in the pursuit of a better life and, you know, happiness, as the old saying goes. The longer the story drags on, the further Van Buren's mask begins to slip, his snobbery transpiring into outright racism, all while his acts become more literally and physically monstrous. Now, yeah, it would be very easy for a character like Van Buren to come across as a basic, evil rich guy but across the film's expansive 215 minute runtime we get a far more nuanced account of the man's character all of it wrought so brilliantly by an Oscar-nominated Guy Pearce on the way Dementus Furiosa how do you follow up an iconic villain like a Morton Joe in your also iconic action classic Mad Max Fury Road well you make it epic or epicer because Fury Road is obviously an already epic movie, you get what I'm trying to say. George Miller's ambitious and thoroughly mythic Mad Max prequel Furiosa may not have charmed audiences or critics as much as its preceding franchise entry did, but it's a beautiful film and honestly my personal favourite of the series. A big part of that is down to the visual makeup of the film and Miller's direction, but Also, the character of Dementus, played by bona fide best Chris, Chris Hemsworth. Also, he absolutely is just the best Chris at this point. Have any of the other Chrises worked with Michael Mann in a stylish techno-thriller like Black Hat? No. The answer is no, they have not. Also, go watch Black Hat because that movie is horrifically slept on and really overlooked. But yes, back on track, Furiosa, Hemsworth's performance as Dementus is equal parts tragic and, well, demented, providing in essence a dark reflection of Max's character in the previous films with a visual resemblance to a modern day Mel Gibson. Take that comparison as you will. Maybe this character is just iconic to me, but give it time, and I'm sure everyone will be preaching the virtues of Dementus and the Octoboss, can't forget him, like they're the Doof Warrior reincarnated. Next up, Remick, Sinners. Jack O'Connell strikes again, this time as the absolutely transfixing Irish immigrant vampire Remick in Ryan Coogler's Sinners. And it seemed like there just wasn't anything fresh to do with vampires these days, writer and director Ryan Coogler categorically proved that very thing wrong. A lesser film would have made Remick's vampirism a straightforward allegory for, I don't know, white supremacy or imperialism or something, but for all of his violent acts he's a far more complex character than he may at first seem. For one, Remick is an ancient being who has experienced the atrocities committed by the British against the Irish people. As a result, he yearns to create his own vampiric family of sorts, imploring his victims to assimilate their own culture into his blood-letting community. And if all this isn't enough, we even get to see the guy do an awesome Irish jig. Like, when was the last time you saw a bloodsucker do that? I'm gonna wager and say it was never. Like the best movie villains, Remick has shade and complexity to spare, in turn providing a meaty role for O'Connell to sink his sharp, sharp fangs into. On the way, Linda Liddell, Send Help. Sam Raimi's Send Help is a glorious sick puppy of a movie that simply wouldn't work without the towering essential performance from Rachel McAdams as underappreciated corporate strategist Linda Liddell. While the marketing largely suggested that Linda was an outright hero who faces off against her asshole boss Bradley, played by Dylan O'Brien, and the pair are stranded on an island following a plane crash, things aren't quite so simple. Linda is a more nuanced and also kinda twisted character than one might expect. She is far from a mere mousy office worker. She's also an obsessive survivalist who decides not to summon help when given the opportunity, given that the flip dynamic of the island allows her a level of agency that she simply does not have in her regular life. This lurches from deranged to downright psychotic when she murders Bradley's fiancé Zuri and a boat captain once they arrive on the island to rescue them. After this, Linda kills Bradley and then uses the whole ordeal to reinvent herself as a self-help celebrity. Yeah, one at first pretended to say, good for her, but by the time she's murdered three people in her pursuit of a better life, it's kind of a little bit tougher to be on Team Linda. All the same, what a brilliant character though, and so brilliantly performed by Rachel McAdams, who, in a more just world, will be early Oscar buzz around this time. Oh well, at least we have Sam Raimi back. If you're as happy about that as I am, then maybe also go check out our deep dive on Darkman we uploaded the other week. Pretty please? I'll be your friend. That was really pathetic, wasn't it? Go watch the video, it's a great time. On the way, The Void. Thunderbolts. Thunderbolts is one of the few MCU movies to pull the surprise villain card and actually get away with it. It sure helps that said villain turns out to also be the single creepiest in the series' whole history. After superpowered individual Bob, played by Lewis Pullman, is reinvented as the superhero Sentry, he turns on Valentina de Fontaine and basically goes into business for himself, only to be incapacitated by a kill switch. But yeah, this inadvertently triggers the emergence of Bob's villainous alter-ego, The Void. A physical embodiment of his depression and insecurity, he possesses the ability to trap people in visions of their most traumatic memories. For one, the ever-silhouetted design of The Void is inherently unsettling, and the means through which he dispassionately turns innocent civilians into literal shadows of their former selves is something out of a pure nuclear horror movie. Though The Void is ultimately a fairly fleeting villain in Thunderbolts' final act, he makes one hell of an impression all the same. In turn proving the MCU can tackle tricky subjects with greater skill than one might reasonably have expected given the movie franchise's form since Endgame. Next up, Titus. Hoppers. Hoppers was something of a return to form for Pixar, In large part because of how fearlessly it let its unhinged freak flag fly. Especially in the film's third act. It's at this point we learn the film's real villain isn't so much evil mayor Jerry Genarro, played by Jon Hamm, but the insect prince himself, the caterpillar Titus, played by Dave Franco. Titus ascends to become the Insect King after Mabel, played by Piper Kurda, accidentally crushes his mother, the Insect Queen, voiced by Meryl Streep, to death, at which point he pupates into a butterfly who swears revenge by wiping out all of humanity. In what's surely the most twisted villain scheme of any Pixar movie ever, Titus plans to impersonate Jerry with a robotic clone, and then kill everyone attending his rally by subjecting them to frequencies which will prove fatal. Couple this with his hilariously petulant moustache-twirling personality and Dave Franco's killer performance as Butterfly Titus, and he's easily the best Pixar villain we've gotten in a long, long time. Next up, solid gold Magikarp, Eddington. Ari Aster's deeply deranged satirical thriller Eddington is about many, many things, but perhaps its most salient point is that the film's characters waste so much oxygen screaming at one another that big data is able to rather quietly expand its dangerous reach in the background. While the film's central conflict revolves around the planned construction of a new data centre in the titular New Mexico town at the behest of data firm Solid Gold Magikarp. This is all while the residents of Eddington become increasingly and violently divided, given what they purport to see on social media. This is an outcome exacerbated by the data firm themselves sending a private jet's worth of mercenaries to the town to cause further chaos. And said chaos creates enough mayhem and a distraction that the data center is ultimately built by the ending of the movie, the implication being that big data is now basically unstoppable as it expands its influence, presumably with the proliferation of AI. And yeah, with the world at a serious inflection point as AI seems to seep its way into so many aspects of our daily lives, it was perhaps no more likely or timely a movie villain last year than Solid Gold Magikarp. Next up, The Lawyer, Ready or Not 2, Here I Come. The second Ready or Not movie came pretty close to matching the inspired insanity of its predecessor, and while this was largely thanks to the inspired pairing of Samara Weaving and Catherine Newton as embattled siblings, Elijah Wood wasn't far behind them at all, a goddamn psycho. Wood plays a character known only as The Lawyer, an envoy of the powerful demonic entity known as Mr. LeBail. While ultimately a dignified observer to all the mayhem unfolding here, that's precisely what makes the character so much fun to watch, especially as no other actor on this list seems like they're having quite so much fun as Elijah Wood. We know basically nothing about his backstory, he more or less acts as a master of ceremonies who outlines the rules of the current game and then watches and advises as it plays out. But there is a slight amusement to Wood's performance, which implies there's far more to this suited-up dude than meets the eye, with Wood himself even suggesting in interviews that the lawyer might have been working for LeBail for centuries and could even be immortal. Sadly, with Ready or Not 2 underperforming at the box office, it's not looking too hot that we'll get a threequel to shed more light on the character, which is really annoying because I want to see more of Elijah Wood being a psycho. I think we all do. God damn it. On the way, Toros, Anora. There is certainly some room for debate about who the real villain is in Sean Baker's Oscar-winning Anora, though the most apparent antagonist is surely Toros, the fixer employed by Vanya's father to find him and get his recent marriage to Anora, played by Mikey Madison, annulled. Toros spends basically the entire movie on the back foot, exasperated at how much of a wild goose chase the job sends him on, enough that the poor guy can't even conduct a baptism in peace without being called away. And to be clear, Toros is far and away the funniest character in the movie, but he's also still got a job to do, and doesn't care much for the titular characters among us to actually help him. He confiscates Sonora's wages, gags her and holds her against her will, so he's certainly not a good dude, but he is nevertheless an all-timer example of a henchman whose personality makes him so much more than your average rent-a-goon lackey, made in the mould of an old-school Shane Black heavy than anything we've come to associate with the genre over the last two decades. I don't know what genre exactly, but filmmaking in general. Next up, Tessa, Predator Badlands. If you took only a passing look at the marketing for Predator of Badlands, you might not have even been aware that Elle Fanning was pulling double duty in the movie, starring as not only synthetic protagonist Thea, but also her sister Tessa. A damaged Tessa is retrieved by Weyland-Yutani, repaired, and tasked with completing the mission she and Thea were initially charged with, capture the apex predator known as the Kalisk. Tessa's unrelenting drive to finish the job is easy to understand given that Weyland-Yutani will decommission her if she fails, and Hellfanning brings an overpowering intensity to the part, rendering her entirely distinct from Thea in the process. It's a brilliant performance. While Thea is the most emotive synthetic we've ever seen in the Alien franchise, Tessa consequently sees that feeling as a weakness to be stamped out, while remaining surgically focused on the task of ensuring her own survival. That a Predator movie managed to centre around a non-Yautja villain without it feeling like a massive cop-out is honestly a staggering achievement. I really hope they get to complete this trilogy because it's been a great time all around. And lastly, we have good old Aunt Gladys herself, Weapons. The fact that Weapons' witchy villain Aunt Gladys, played by the brilliant Anne Managhan, has her own Wikipedia page says it all, not to ignore the fact that Anne Managhan also won a well-earned Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her phenomenal performance as the character. Now, me personally, I can't get enough of witches, but you could argue that they've been done to death in the horror genre, so what a breath of fresh air it was to see Zach Cregger do something fundamentally different with such a well-trodden archetype. Beyond Gladys' inherent theatrical menace, realised through the off-putting makeup, wardrobe and Managhan's skin-crawlingly eerie performance, a lot of the brilliance comes from Cregger's relatively restrained and even subtle approach to her depiction. We don't glean many direct details about Gladys' past or how she came to terrorise the town of Maybrook, but small slivers of dialogue and subtle inflections in Managhan's delivery do nevertheless nod towards some intriguing possibilities. But you know what? At her core, Gladys has everything you need in an instant classic villain. An astonishing central performance working from a rich script and an unforgettable look that's ripe for emulation. And also, yeah, instantly terrifying and then also endlessly quirky and compelling to watch at the same time. What a movie. So excited that they've announced a prequel now, so buckle up, weapons-erinos. This end ain't going nowhere.