The greatest movies would be nothing without great villains. Imagine 007 without Goldfinger or Batman without The Joker. Heroes need complex antagonists opposite them to provide a formidable threat and an engaging story.
And while all of us know how Darth Vader can silence enemies with a simple force choke or Voldemort can kill with a stroke of his wand and a powerful curse, there are a number of other iconic baddies who are just as powerful without magic or special abilities. Without further ado, here are some of the most epic movie villains without superpowers.
Captain Vidal: Pan’s Labyrinth
In Guillermo del Toro’s award winning dark fantasy film Pan’s Labyrinth, the young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) stumbles upon an enchanted labyrinth and embarks on a quest to reclaim an ancient magical kingdom. Opposite this innocent and imaginative girl is her fascist stepfather Captain Vidal (Sergi López), a top military officer who seeks to crush the Spanish resistance.
This is a guy viewers really love to hate. His heart is as cold as his demeanor, and mercy is nowhere to be found in his vocabulary. When he’s not killing unarmed opponents, he obsessively checks the golden watch on his wrist. Played to perfection by López, the film owes much of its success to this character’s commanding screen presence.
Epic Villain Scene: When a pair of Vidal’s subordinates bring him a father and son whom they believe are rebels, these prisoners plead with him and insist that they are mere farmers and were just hunting rabbits. Ignoring their cries, Vidal first kills the son with the butt of his pistol and then shoots the boy’s father. Upon discovering a pair of dead rabbits in their bags afterwards, he feels no remorse and viciously commands his men to not bother him unnecessarily again.
Anton Chigurh: No Country for Old Men
There’s a reason Javier Bardem was cast as the Bond villain in Sam Mendes’ Skyfall. The Spanish actor gained attention and an Academy Award in 2007 when he played the serial killer Anton Chigurh in the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece No Country for Old Men.
Based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, the film follows Texas hunter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who discovers an abandoned truckload of cash and drugs. Moss soon finds himself on Chigurh’s trail, who ruthlessly murders anyone in his way. Meanwhile, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) oversees the entire investigation, desperately trying to capture Chigurh.
Chigurh is a brutal, sadistic display of inhumanity who could make Darth Sidious wet his pants. Armed with a silenced shotgun of his own design and maintaining the same remorseless expression on his face throughout the film, Chigurh makes No Country for Old Men what it is and is made all the better by Bardem’s stellar performance.
Epic Villain Scene: Amidst his gruesome murders, Chigurh’s creepiest scene doesn’t need blood or violence to convey the villain’s pure wickedness. Walking into a gas station store, he goes up to the counter, holds out a coin and tells the man working there to call heads or tails. Confused, the man asks how he can call it if he doesn’t know what’s at stake. Chigurh tells him that this coin has been waiting years to arrive here. Upon flipping it, he hands it to the man, orders him not to put it in his pocket and walks away, leaving the man both baffled and utterly creeped out.
Col. Hans Landa: Inglourious Basterds
Before 2009, Academy Award winning Austrian actor Christoph Waltz was relatively unknown in the U.S. That all changed when he starred in Quentin Tarantino’s epic WW2 set film Inglourious Basterds as SS officer Col. Hans Landa. Nicknamed the “Jew Hunter”, and taking great pride in that title, this guy rivals Ralph Fiennes’ Amon Goeth in terms of his sadism.
The film devotes as much attention to Landa as it does to the band of Nazi-hunting American Jewish soldiers known as the Basterds, and rightfully so. As much as viewers hate this guy, it’s necessary to see him commit such heinous acts so that we root for the film’s heroine Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), a theatre owner seeking vengeance on him for killing her family years earlier.
Epic Villain Scene: In the film’s opening scene, Col. Landa goes to a Frenchman whom he suspects is harboring Jews. Before ordering his men to blast the area beneath the house where they are hidden, Landa has about a 10-15 minute conversation with this French farmer, knowing all along that he is indeed keeping a family from him. Rather than get it over with, he tortures this man with fear and gives no warning to the Jews before his men fire a hemorrhage of bullets into the floorboards, killing all but Shosanna, who escapes.
Bill “The Butcher” Cutting: Gangs of New York
Anyone who’s able to take down Liam Neeson with a butcher knife deserves to go down in movie history. In Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, Daniel Day Lewis, who also won an Oscar for his performance here, plays gang leader Bill “The Butcher” Cutting. Leading a group of so called “Natives”, Cutting is obsessed with ridding the Five Points of the Irish and other immigrants who he believes are corrupting America. After killing the Irish Priest Vallon (Neeson), Cutting must deal with his vengeance seeking son Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio) years later.
Lewis is one of the great method actors as he’s known for really getting into his characters, and it shows here. He gives Cutting an incredibly captivating demeanor in the way he walks and talks. He also unabashedly loves to point out his fake eye as a battle scar from his fight with Vallon, whom he repeatedly compliments as the greatest man he ever killed.
Epic Villain Scene: Viewers see the reason for Cutting’s nickname when he takes Amsterdam to his butcher shop and shows him how to effectively cut meat. Scorsese uses the atmosphere of raw meat and slicing as a foreshadowing of the bloodbath which unfolds at the end of the film. The mentor/apprentice relationship between Cutting and Amsterdam is really highlighted here and establishes that is doomed to end in violence.
Hannibal Lecter: The Silence of the Lambs
All the villains on this list are great, but Hannibal Lecter is the only one who will eat your liver with a side of fava beans and a nice chianti. Originally found in the pages of Thomas Harris’ novels, Dr. Lecter has appeared in other films and is now the subject of the popular NBC show Hannibal. Yet the first time we saw Anthony Hopkins’ iconic performance as Lecter was in the 1991 Oscar winning Jonathan Demme film The Silence of the Lambs.
Lecter is also the only villain on this list who gets recruited by the movie’s heroes. When F.B.I. recruit Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) goes after a serial killer, she requires the aid of the equally psychotic murderer Dr. Lecter to catch this guy.
Epic Villain Scene: After working with Clarice for some time, Lecter makes his escape from prison in a rather theatrical manner. After biting off part of a man’s cheek and banging his head against a wall, he then kills the other guard with a nightstick. But the real spine chiller is when he hangs one of them from the prison cell in a crucifixion like manner. The man’s stomach is cut open, and Lecter consumes the blood soaked atmosphere.
Conclusion: Those are just a few of the great movie villains without lightsabers and Demi-God powers. We didn’t even get to talk about Amon Goeth (Schindler’s List), Hans Gruber (Die Hard), Michael Corleone (The Godfather), Jack Torrance (The Shining) and so many more. Who are your favorite movie villains? Sound off in the comments below!