Lame Villains

A great villain can really make a movie. Heath Ledger's The Joker, Norman Bates, Hannibal Lecter... they're very memorable and they're the star of the film. Then there's the other side: a villain so lame, so hilariously bad that you can't forget them either. Here's our (least?) favorites...


1. Bennett in Commando

Arnold Schwartzenegger spends most of this movie completely ripped and oiled up. He kills just about every person listed in the credits and a whole lot of uncredited people as well. He hits a guy with a phone booth, rips the seat out of a car, flips another car off of it's side, in one scene he has 8 cops on top of him but he flings them into the air like they're confetti. He kills a guy while sitting next to him in an airplane. At one point he goes into a shed so he can kill some guys with garden tools. Any ridiculous way to kill someone, Arnold pretty much does it. It's the ultamite 80s macho movie and it knows it, during a fight with some great cheesey trash talking, Rae Dawn Chong says "I don't believe this macho bullshit." You can't believe it either, but you love it. In the climatic battle at the end, he goes toe to toe with this guy:

Nothing says highly trained killing machine like a push broom mustache.

He's not ripped. Hell, he has a gut. For some reason he wears a chainmail vest, tight leather pants and a dog collar. Everyone else is wearing more appropriate mercenary gear such as BDUs and tactical assault vests. Not Bennet, no, he's got style. He looks like a Village People backup singer and dancer. Yet through the magic of the silver screen, he holds his own against Arnold Schwartzenegger, who spent the previous 80 or so minutes killing people with every weapon known to man. John Matrix (Arnold) makes Rambo look like a rent-a-cop; Bennett jiggles when hit with a punch. So it makes sense that they have a 3 minute knife fight where Schwartzenegger has met his match. Oh wait, no it doesn't. The hero-villain badass-to-lame ratio is off the charts here.

2. Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin

The only thing funny about Mr. Freeze is that Schwarzenegger got paid $25 million.

This whole movie was crap for a number of reasons, one of them being it was chock full of lame villains. But Mr. Freeze is the icing on the cake. Yeah, that's a pun in honor of Arnold Schwartzenegger's terrible one liners and puns, such as: "Ice to see you!" and "Chill out." Mr. Freeze was so bad that it killed the 90s Batman movies. Well, that and they had Joel Schumaker direct it. When you sink a hugely successful franchise, that takes a special kind of suck. Mr. Freeze wasn't the only reason this movie stunk, he's just the flag bearer for all of it's awfulness.

3. Nuclear Man in Superman 4

Mark Pillow as Nuclear Man, seen here with his career almost in reach.

Where to start. First of all, his costume is a joke. It looks like he's got a wedgie. Second, he's voiced by Gene Hackman, because they couldn't get an actor with both the look and voice they wanted. 'Cause you know, Hollywood is starved for actors. Third, shouldn't he have been played by Christopher Reeve? Nuclear Man was created by a nuclear missile exploding in the sun with Superman's DNA. He's a clone! He should be played by the same actor as Superman! It makes no sense that he looks different and that he has Luther's voice. Fourth, he injures Superman by scratching him with his finger nails. Clark Kent can't get a paper cut, but Superman can get scratched. If they made a Superman V, would Lex Luther have sent an army of cats after Superman? And fifth, his powers are dependent on the sun, so shouldn't he be Solar Man? They simply did not think this guy through.

4. Elliot Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies

You know he waited in line for an iPad.

Credit to Jonathan Pryce, he was perfect for this role and he nailed it. Unfortuneately the role was the worst Bond villain ever, and that's saying something because there's some pretty awful Bond villains. Sure, Carver is ruthless, but they all are. Bond villains are supposed to try to rule the world. Elliot Carver's main goal? To secure broadcasting rights in China. So he tries to start a war between England and China. Not start a Third World War to watch the world burn because he's a mad man, not to deplete the world's armed forces for when he strikes against everyone, not to tie up both nation's military resources so he can conquer them... no, he's doing this to start CNN: China. He doesn't even get a fight, which is good because he would probably piss his pants.

5. Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The Turtles fought a rat, a warthog, a rhino and this thing that looks like cotton candy.

TMNT was awesome when you were a kid. But even as a kid you realized the lameness that is Krang. He's just a brain-like thing, and they never explained how he became just a brain. You would think that when they put him in a mechanical suit, they would make him the head, kind of like RoboCop, right? No. They put him in the torso, with no actual protection. You could just snatch him right out of there and stomp him to death. Or just wait for him to fall out when the body does things like bend over or run. And the body he travels around in is a fat guy with short arms who wears suspenders, he's not even efficient. Sometimes he was on a rolling tripod, so you could kick him like a field goal if you wanted to. When a child knows it's lame, well that's a special kind of bad villain.