[The following list contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Way back in 2020, I wrote: I firmly believe that a villain is only...

[The following list contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] De Guiche (Cyrano): A pompous, foppish aristocrat that wields his...

[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose....

[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] In Bernard Rose’s original Candyman, the eponymous hook-handed...

In my Black Widow review, I argued: The villains, sadly, are far less compelling and memorable, existing only as shallow, generic...

[WARNING: The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS for 13 Assassins, Skyfall, Django Unchained, and Avengers: Endgame.] What defines a...

One of the primary thematic questions driving Disney’s recent animated output has been “Where does evil truly reside?” As in real life,...

In light of the recent controversy surrounding the independently-produced visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club!, I decided to do...

Unlike some Marvel movie fans, I don’t feel that Thor: The Dark World (2013) is a bad film, necessarily. It does, however, suffer from...

When The Force Awakens was first released one year ago, I sang its praises, but even I had to admit that the film had, for lack of a...

In the weeks since the release of The Force Awakens, I’ve observed two distinct and powerful reactions to the film’s central villainous...

As played by the incomparable Klaus Kinski, Loco is the definitive Black Hat: cunning as a fox, venomous as a rattlesnake, and dirtier...

Can true evil exist in the absence of malice? Can a character really be considered a villain if he is incapable of comprehending morality...

When you get right down to it, the sadistic sociopath (indirectly) responsible for the creation of the metal-headed hero in Paul...

The dashingly handsome protagonist of Michael Crichton’s 1979 heist movie (played by the always-charismatic Sean Connery) isn’t...

Robbery. Rape. Murder. To Alex DeLarge, it all adds up to a day well spent. This common thug with delusions of “culture” loves torturing...

Played by Orson Welles at his charismatic best, cinema’s most memorable black marketeer manages to charm nearly everyone he...

When I first learned that a significant number of Shakespeare scholars consider Iago–slimy, scheming, irredeemably evil Iago–the...

Of all the henchmen and hired killers buried by suave super-spy James Bond, few are more gleefully sadistic and psychotic than Mister...

In terms of storytelling, what really defines a character as a villain? His actions? Well, consider Putnam, who spends the entirety of...