Top 10 Movie Villains That Are Just Plain Bad

Every movie needs a good bad guy. And these guys were the best (at being the worst). Welcome to WatchMojo.com and today we’re counting down the top 10 worst movie villains. For this list, we’re taking a look at villains who basically ruined their respective movies, whether that’s because they had terrible backstories, were poorly performed, or their motives that made no sense. <4>#10: General Grievous “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” (2005) While the “Star Wars” prequels are often reviled, they did manage to give us a few interesting villains in Darth Maul and then-chancellor Palpatine. Unfortunately, General Grievous is not up to par. Sure, with his four light sabers, Grievous looks cool, but he turns out to be pretty weak. He spends the whole movie coughing, up until the midway point, when he is killed by Obi-Wan by a blaster (of all things). He also serves little purpose to the main story involving Anakin turning to the dark side and receives almost zero-character development, making him one of many pointless characters in the prequel trilogy. <4>#9: King Koopa “Super Mario Bros.” (1993) If there's one character on this list whose film adaptation strays furthest from its source material, it’s King Koopa. King Koopa was a giant turtle-like creature that always kidnapped Princess Peach in the “Super Mario Bros.” video games. Fans of the Nintendo game series eagerly anticipated seeing what the reptilian baddie would look like in the feature film adaptation. What they got was a guy in a suit, played by Dennis Hopper. Not only was Koopa wildly different from the source material, Hopper himself was also miscast, which was disappointing, to say the least. Not frightening and certainly not intimidating, King Koopa’s just boring. <4>#8: The Shark “Jaws: The Revenge” (1987) Remember how scary the shark was in the first “Jaws” film? Well after three sequels, the sharks have apparently developed not only some kind of superpower, but also complex emotions like spite. In the fourth and final installment of the “Jaws” series, a shark is looking for vengeance against the Brody family after they killed the sharks in the previous films. Somehow, this shark is able to travel from New England to the Bahamas in a few days and is able to track down Sheriff Brody’s wife Ellen. How does it know where Ellen is vacationing? Does any of this make any sense what so ever? Of course not! This villain is just plain stupid, along with the rest of the movie. <4>#7: Dominic Greene “Quantum of Solace” (2008) In Dominic Greene’s defense, he was in a difficult position: “Casino Royale”’s Le Chiffre and “Skyfall”’s Raoul Silva are two of the best Bond villains ever, and he was expected to live up to both as the bad guy in the intervening 007 flick. However, even when taking that into consideration, there’s absolutely nothing about Mr. Greene that’s memorable. His plan to sell water at an overly inflated price is painfully boring, and actor Mathieu Amalric isn’t able to add much, as he’s pretty low on charisma in this role. As far as Bond movies are concerned, Greene is just like everything else about “Quantum of Solace”: he’s about as bland and uninspired as they come. <4>#6: Benjamin Chudnofsky aka Bloodnofsky “The Green Hornet” (2011) Now it may seem sacrilegious to put Christoph Waltz on a Worst Villains list – especially after his role as Colonel Hans Landa in “Inglourious Basterds” – but unfortunately, not even he can make Bloodnofsky a compelling character. Bloodnofsky is a mob boss who spends the whole movie complaining about whether or not people find him scary. The role sounds tailor-made for someone charming yet menacing, like Waltz. However, the problem is in the writing of the character, and the audience isn’t really sure if they’re supposed to find him funny or scary, either. In the end, we feel neither, and he just comes off as whiny and annoying. <4>#5: Ivan Ooze “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie” (1995) Okay, so you can’t really expect a villain as dark or complex as The Joker or Hannibal Lecter in a “Power Rangers” movie. However, fans of the TV series still could have gotten someone a bit better than Ivan Ooze. Not only does Ivan look more silly than scary, his evil scheme to take over the world is ridiculous as well. His “master” plan is to sell magical ooze to kids and convince them to throw it at their parents, which will then cause the parents to turn into mindless zombies. He then orders the parents to walk off a cliff and send them to their death. Sound stupid? Trust us. It is. <4>#4: Aliens “Signs” (2002) Director M. Night Shyamalan is no stranger to terrible villains. Hell, the villains in “The Happening” were friggin’ plants for crying out loud. But interestingly enough, his weakest villains actually came in one of his better movies. “Signs” is centered on aliens who are invading earth. That sounds cool, until you discover their weakness. It turns out they can be completely and easily destroyed by… water. You know water? The thing that makes up about 71% of the earth? So then why would the aliens want to even invade earth? Only Shyamalan could tell you. <4>#3: Mr. Freeze “Batman & Robin” (1997) We could easily make a top 10 list of reasons why “Batman and Robin” is an abysmal movie. Our number one reason would probably be the campy Mr. Freeze, played by a campy Arnold Schwarzenegger. While it does include the tragic Freeze backstory about his sick wife, the movie treats the character as a joke, making him far less compelling than he might’ve been. Instead of being pitiful, he hides in an ice cream factory, and spends the entire movie shouting painfully unfunny ice puns. Mr. Freeze was so bad, in fact, he helped nearly kill the superhero movie genre as a whole. <4>#2: Terl “Battlefield Earth” (2000) John Travolta performances are hit or miss, and you can tell just by looking at his ridiculous hairstyle and by listening to his painfully hammy dialogue that this one is a miss. And believe it or not, Terl acts even more ridiculous than he looks. Terl is supposed to be a brilliant mastermind, yet he comes up with the idiotic plan to teach a human, who he has enslaved, a crash course on his advanced alien technology so the human will mine gold that he will then hand over to Terl. Terl then sends him – unsupervised - to a military base full of jets and bombs and somehow does not expect him to lead a human revolt against his race. Not even Dr. Evil had plans this dumb. Before we reveal our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions. - Venom “Spider-Man 3” (2007) - General Katana “Highlander II: The Quickening” (1991) - The Octopus “The Spirit” (2008) - Dracula “Blade: Trinity” (2004) - Shao Kahn “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” (1997) - Doom “Fantastic Four” (2015) <4>#1: Nuclear Man "Superman IV: The Quest For Peace" (1987) Where do we begin with how dumb Nuclear Man is? Well first off, he’s created from a nuclear reaction involving the sun and a strand of Superman’s hair. He’s born with a mullet and wearing a black and gold unitard, but has Lex Luthor’s voice for some reason. He also has radioactive nails that he uses to scratch Superman. And instead of having kryptonite as a weakness, he loses his strength when it’s a cloudy day. In the end, he loses all his power after Superman blocks his source of power, the sun, later stashing him in a power plant reactor. Absolutely nothing about Nuclear Man makes any sense, so it’s difficult to watch him without bursting out laughing. Do you agree with our list? Which movie villains do you think are the worst? For more hilarious top tens published everyday, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.