Top Ten Tuesday: All About the Villains

Today is the start of a week off from work. Today is the day that my parents go away on their (sort of) spontaneous cruise. Today is the day that Emma’s carpet arrives and work on her room begins to take shape. I’ve made today sound a lot more dramatic than it really it, if I’m honest! It must be the over-dramatic villainy in the air.

For all you lovely people who don’t know what Top Ten Tuesday is, or don’t know how to get involved. click here. The lovely folks at Broke and Bookish team together to produce a book related topic each week, and you simply list the top ten of that topic. Easy, even when you have work and relocation activities all day!

Top Ten Tuesday has out done itself once again. Don’t get me wrong, I sometimes gets really annoyed when old topics are revisited during these posts, but I am glad the folks at Broke and Bookish have decided to throwback to 2010. I love a good bad guy, an evil villain. Whether in print or on screen, a villain can often be the most dynamic character in a story, and is often the most entertaining person in a plot. And to boot, they often don’t think they are the bad guy.

Nobody is a villain in their own story. We’re all the heroes of our own stories – George R R Martin

To help myself this week, I have split villains into three camps: in print, on the big screen, and on the small screen. The first list is villains I have taken from literature, that I think of when I think of villains from books (even if they have later appeared on screen). The second list is villains from the big screen, many of which are classic bad guys and one of which who terrifies me beyond words, and the last is villains from TV:

Villains in Literature

1. Hook Peter Pan: I love Peter Pan, and Hook is a fairly integral part of that (plus there have been some great on screen versions of him.) While he is pure evil when it comes to Peter, he doesn’t pose a threat to many others really. He has a HOOK for a HAND people!
2. Bellatrix Lestrange Harry Potter Series: She is pure, psychotic, evil.
3. John Clay The Red-Headed League: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: He is the kind of thoughtful, intelligent, scheming kind of villain that has the chance of getting away with it.
4. Mrs Agatha Trunchbull Roald Dahl: She is sadistic and mean, and uses it to make her feel important. The fact she is sadistic and mean to children is even worse.
5. Nils Bjurman The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: I don’t want to say anyone deserves the inner workings of Lisbeth Salander’s slightly twisted mind enacted upon them, but, he kind of had it coming after he blackmailed her for sexula favours.
6. Edwin Epps 12 Years a Slave: So evil that I haven’t yet managed to make myself watch Michael Fassbender in this role.
7. Count Olaf A Series of Unfortunate Events: I find Count Olaf creepy in a world where these children’s lives are already diabolical.
8. Le Chiffre Casino Royale: A scary, emotionless financier of lowlife criminal undertakings.
9. Gary Soneji Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross series): A villain with a vendetta is never a nice villain to have, especially a villain who taunts.
10. Long John Silver Treasure Island: He made people trust him, before turning on them and stabbing them in the back.

Villains in Film

1. Hades Hercules: Blue hair, enough sass to take out the Kardashians.
2. Child Catcher Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: Nightmare inducing, sickness provoking, spine tingling, fear producing bad guy.
3. Hans Landa Inglorious Bastards: It’s the smile, and the ease in which he is an evil Nazi.
4. The Joker The Dark Knight: He is the only shining light in an otherwise average film (sorry it’s just how I feel.) Absolutely brilliantly unhinged and tempremental.
5. Keyser Soze The Usual Suspects: So clever, so cunning, and a brilliant storyteller.
6. Scar The Lion King: HE KILLED MUFASA. ‘Nuff said.
7. John Doe Se7en: Until the last murder, this was one perfectly executed serial killing spree.
8. Darth Vader Star Wars: That swishing cape, the evil head gear, the music, and of course the rasping breath. Pretty mucht he most famous villain ever, with one of the biggest redemption scenes in film.
9. Shere Kahn The Jungle Book: Yes, he had a rubbish start in life, but that is no excuse to relentlessly take it out on a wolf pack and their cute adopted man cub.
10. Lars Thorwald Rear Window: He sits in a chair in poor lighting creepily smoking while having a staring match with the good guy. I mean, hello, villain alert.

Villains from TV

1. Moriarty Sherlock: Andrew Scott is just brilliant, the perfect mix of intelligent game playing madness.
2. Slade Wilson Arrow: Nothing like a slightly super powered Aussie with a love fuel hatred of the lead character.
3. T-Bag Prison Break: Paedophile, rapist, murderer. Not necessarily in that order. Made to be disliked really.
4. Grant Ward Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D: It’s like he was too good looking to be a good guy, so they made him evil. And they all trusted him.
5. Kilgrave Jessica Jones: Probably MCU’s best villain. I think he is so scary because he has so much potential to cause so much trouble with his mind control, and yet he just causes immeasurable pain and trouble for one person because he can, and because he enjoys it.
6. Zelena Once Upon a Time: So jealous, self serving, and mean.
7. Klaus Mikaelson The Vampire Diaries: Let’s be honest, being half vampire half werewolf is never likely to put you on the side of the good guy.
8. Wilson Fisk Daredevil: He literally lost his mind and bashed a guys head in until his brain plopped on the floor.
9. George Foyet aka The Reaper Criminal Minds
10. Hannibal Lector Hannibal: This isn’t just the version in the TV show, it’s on TV with the chianti, and in the book too, and not just when he throws the most perfect cannibalistic dinner parties.

I am sorry for any spoilers!! Which villains do you like best in literature, film, and TV?