I liked the villain better

[quote] I liked Darth Vader, too.

Darth Vader was a pussy. I'll take Emperor Palpatine any day.

I was rooting for The Darkness from Legend

I always like Dracula better than everyone else

Helen Berent (Gene Tierney) in Leave Her to Heaven.

Alan Rickman is the patron deity of this thread. Alan in "Die Hard," Alan in "Robin Hood," even Alan in that HP tripe.

Honorable mention to Jeremy Irons in the "Die Hard" sequel.

[quote]I always like Dracula better than everyone else.

Who else could make that cinnamon bun hairdo work?

Pete Campbell on Mad Men is at various times presented as a villain. But he’s my favorite character.

I liked Hannibal Lecter

I remember the first time when I saw "Fatal Attraction<' there is some line when the Anne Archer mother-wife character gets on the phone with Alex Forrest and calmly tells her that if she bothers her family again, she'll kill her. A Black woman in the audience then burst out with a loud "HOLY SHIT!" The entire audience cracked up.

Hans Landa from Inglourious Basterds was so fucking charming I wasn’t mad he survived. Christopher Waltz was perfect in the role.

^^^oops, wrong thread. sorry.

Sexy, stuck up Lucius Malfoy could’ve killed Harry Potter for all I cared. He was such an arrogant bitch. I loved it.

Killmonger in Black Panther.

[quote] I remember watching this at a theatre in Washington, D.C. in a very mixed audience, and the Black folk in the theatre started talking back to the screen. It was exhilerating. I felt that oneness with the audience, too.

[quote] We were all on the edge of our seats, and when some guy said, "Awe man, you better tell your wife, man..." etc. it was so fun. I can't remember watching a movie at a theatre that was so unifying. I felt like we were all friends with the same guy.

R9, did you post R44 at the below-linked thread? I still remember reading that and enjoying the post.

I may be the only one, but I always feel sorry for Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) when she's publicly humiliated at the end of "Singin' in the Rain." Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and the other guy are so damned smug, whistling and dancing as they prepare to open the curtain to reveal that perky Debbie Reynolds is actually providing Lina's singing voice. It just seems unnecessarily nasty, and Lina is by far the funniest and, to me, the most endearing character in the movie. Also, Gene Kelly, even in his dance numbers, always had a very punchable face. That phony, plastered-on grin of his made him seem so pleased with himself.

The enormous bug alien that collapses at the end of "Starship Troopers."

Eh R7 he sort of starts as the villain but he has a slow redemptive arc throughout the show....dont know if he counts. Interesintingly it does the reverse with Harry who starts out this well intentioned sort of nice guy and he ends up probably the sleaziest most unlikeable character.

Anyway I usually feel the same about most villains but ESPECIALLY with Victor Komarovsky in Dr Zhivago, played to perfection by Rod Steiger. Definitely not perfect and treated women like shit but not the unredeemable piece of shit that the characters in the film treated him like, he had his weak spots and even did the right thing in a couple of occasions.....plus the character was charming, funny, sexy, always told it like it was and was everything the rest of the characters other than maybe Alec Guiness's were not.

Can we include TV shows? The villains on Melrose Place were infinitely better than lame Alison, Billy, and Jane.

Almost always the villains in the Batman movies, since they're always more interesting.

Another one for me is Steff from Pretty in Pink...1-it's mid 80's James fucking Spader, and 2nd, Ringwald is so freaking UNLIKEABLE in the film (despite supposedly being the likeable heroine) it just makes me defend him.

Derek (Jason Bateman) was much better than Ricky on Silver Spoons. He was more of a tween ‘bad boy’ than villain, but I wanted to be friends with him 100% more than dull Ricky.

(He was so popular that producers wrote him off the show because people liked him better than Ricky. Haha)

Easy one: Peyton from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle!

I cheer every time she makes mincemeat out of the playground bully. And in my head I play an alternate ending where she slaughters those annoying Seattle yuppies (including the annoying child) and moves on to a happy life in another city.

Rebecca de Mornay was FABULOUS in this.

How could I forget J.R. Ewing??

From the daytime soap world, Carl Hutchins in "Another World."

I'm not sure if Mrs. Howard Fowler counts as a villainess, but that dull, drab Mrs. Stephen Haines probably thinks so.

Well I always rooted for the Childcatcher and the Baroness.

Fuck yappy little Toto. I wanted the flying monkeys to whisk him far away.

I was rooting for Charles to be crowned.

Alex Krycek on the X-Files. I loved when he would pop up in random episodes and fuck with shit. Always a pleasant surprise. They didn’t need to kill him off, I would’ve liked to have seen him in the reboot. Still a pest twenty years on.

He was so hot, too.

I always rooted for Heather on General Hospital and Annie Dutton on Guiding Light.

From Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: the high school principal, and Jeannie Bueller. Matthew Broderick is smug and unsympathetic in every role he’s played on screen. I wanted Ferris to get caught and have his ass handed to him.

Billy Zane on Titanic. Jack was an annoying little pussy.

r15=Zelda Zanders

The Nazis in "Captain Corelli's Mandolin." The movie was so awful that I was rooting for the Nazis to put an end to it.

[quote] preferred Alex Forrest to Beth Gallagher in Fatal Attraction.

Because who wouldn't prefer a schizoaffective maniac to a fucking $cio ant princess?

Ahem

During "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas" I was rooting for Satan.

Jaws - I root for the shark every time.

That's what you get for going in the water.

Nellie and Harriet Oleson

As a child, I always preferred the villains in Disney movies, especially the female villains.

Me too! I loved Maleficent. She was so haughty and scary and she turned into a freaking dragon. And she had a fantastic look.

But I also loved this one because she was batshit crazy and made me laugh:

Agent Smith in the "Matrix" films was a much more interesting character than Neo.

The Baroness over Maria in Sound of Music for sure.

[quote] The Baroness over Maria in Sound of Music for sure.

[quote] But I also loved this one because she was batshit crazy and made me laugh:

Maria makes me...laugh.

On True Blood, I liked human villain Sarah Newlin more than vampire "heroes" Eric and Pam.

I was a Russell fan

Abby Fairgate Cunningham Ewing Sumner

Barking mad Sister Ruth in Black Narcissus.

Another vote for the Baroness.

Bruno (Robert Walker) in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train

R48 It’s funny you mention Bruno because deep down, I always wanted to see Guy (Farley Granger) hook up with Bruno (Robert Walker). But again, I know it was 1950.

Hitchcock had the best villains. I nominate Ray Milland in Dial M for Murder.

Sorry OP, but Alex was such an insidious cunt that it makes me hard when she gets her comeuppance at the end each time I watch the film. I pretend that my hands are Dan’s wrapped around her bony neck as he’s drowning her in that scalding hot water. The original ending would have been great too, but she was so nasty that the action-packed, violent end she meets in that steamy bathroom is the only satisfying way that she could have gone out.

Two villains that I do feel sorry for and also kind of root for happen to be from two Jamie Lee Curtis horror flicks - Prom Night and Terror Train. SPOILER ALERT: One goes on a killing spree several years after witnessing the death of his twin sister when they were kids, and the latter goes berserk after having a mean trick played on him by a bunch of fraternity assholes.

I feel sorry for The Predator. Ok he was a killing machine for some unknown reason but the cast slaughtered a whole village of Mexicans so they weren't innocents either.

Conflict starring Humphrey Bogart has him as the villain and the protagonist. We know he is a killer but we feel sorry for him when things start happening against him.

R9 That line is her saving grace because Alex is the rockstar of this film. Anne Archer plays the dotting turned warrior wife with such conviction and Alex is reduced to such a slimy bad 80s slasher flick villain that it becomes easy to root for Anne. One of the greatest films of all time that also has a horrible ending.

Visser, the villain in Blood Simple, is one of my favorite movie characters of all time.

I wanted Diana to take over Earth.

Michael Biehn in "The Fan."

Norman Bates.

I was another one of those wierdos who loved female villains as a kid. Maleficent, Cruella DeVille, The Sanderson Sisters, The Grand High Witch-- even when their aim was the destruction of children, I was on their side. It's an interesting phenomena, and I think it says a lot about feeling like an outsider, with a point of view that's not valued by the mainstream. These women were all outsiders, but they were also larger than life, self-possessed and confident, becoming heroes to those of us who needed validating that there was more than one way to be in the world.

^ R38 here and I fully agree with what you said. Thanks for putting it so well.