top 10 villains!

[Mithran]

1. Jack Torrance (The Shining)
2. Marcellus Wallace (Pulp Fiction)
3. The Joker (The Dark Knight)
4. Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs)
5. Jabba the Hut (Return of the Jedi)
6. Annie Wilkes (Misery)
7. Count Dracula (Dracula)
8. Khan (The Wrath of Khan)
9. Carroll Oerstadt (Deja Vu)
10. Baron Harkonnen (Dune)

Those are my favorites, at least. I was surprised that I could produce ten, to be honest.

[Mjoll]

In no particular order and more than 10 but who cares, one can never have enough villains:

- Alien as Alien in Alien
- Vincent Cassel as Jacques Mesrine in Public Enemy no.1 link (not to be mistaken with Public Enemies)
- Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu as Raymond Lemorne in Spoorloos aka The Vanishing link (The original 1988 movie and not the **** remake. Fantastically tense thriller despite not having a single drop of blood in the whole movie. Donnadieu is the guy with a goatee.)
- Gary Oldman as Stansfield in Leon link (EVERYONE!!!)
- Henry Fonda as Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West link (With a soundtrack by Morricone!... Now that you called me by name...)
- Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds
- Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard
- Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes in Misery
- Sergi Lopez as Captain Vidal in Pan's Labyrinth
- Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting in Gangs of New York
- Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men
- Laurence Olivier as Christian Szell in Marathon Man link (Is it safe?)
- Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth in Schindler's List
- Denzel Washington as Alonzo in Training Day
- Tom Cruise as Vincent in Collateral
- Alec Baldwin as Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross link (not really a villain but deserves a mention for his performance)

[Kistilan]

Ridd ick, Entreri et al - started as the villians early on. They were both "the classic bad guy" that "the good guys" were fighting against or trying to hunt down, before they carried their own stories as protagonists due to being well developed enough to do so. The "good guys" then manipulate each into fighting other "greater" evil to bennefit them. The Paladin King sends Entreri and Jarlaxle out to fight the undead dragon's minions - pitting two evils against eachother. Ridd ick goes AWOL from the millitary, kills people to escape, then kills everyone who is looking for him, and is basically being hunted down. I understand that the lines are blurred here where he isnt the classic black and white plotting villian, which is what I like about the character.

You can use the word "anti-hero" or whatever you like to describe them afterward, but in the beginning they are both "the bad guy" (villians)- Entreri went through several series of books as the assassin who hunts regis down and confronts Drizzt, savagely beats Regis in order to manipulate Drizzt into fighting him one on one. (Drizzt won't normally fight him because there is no reason to fight and he has no ego problems to satisfy).

Jarlaxle just manipulates everyone around him for profit. He is ironically the least sinister of the three examples I illustrated, at least overtly. Covertly, he is trying to use everyone else as his pawns to move him and his allies into the best possible position to make profit. There are novels with him as both the villian the protagonist has to confront, AND novels where he is the protagonist of sorts who himself is being manipulated to confront other forms of evil - by a paladin and his allies no less.

Again, I'm not seeing the villain in them. I'm seeing misunderstood heroes with vendettas. Now, if you can give reasoning for Ridd ick's logic in going AWOL (and necessitating the escape ie killings), maybe you'd have something -- but I bet the logic makes him out to be the anti-hero again.

As for Entreri, as I've not read any of the books on him or his exploits, it sounds like he's simply manipulated from a Neutral Position into fighting for the Greater Good. Ever thought why Drizzt REALLY won't fight (ergo kill) him? Maybe it's because Drizzt realizes he's not only not worth fighting, but because he's not a truly bad person (ie villain).

An example of all of this: Dragonlance's Villains Series. You'd wonder why Raistlin isn't there, wouldn't you? It's because although he's EVIL, he is actually a misguided anti-hero and has done good things (self-serving in the end, realizing ruling over a dead world was less-than-appealing and made his magic useless). Still, after sacrificing himself he was granted sanction by the gods, provided he was stripped of his magic so he could no longer threaten their godhood soverignty. Lord Soth, Lord Toede, Verminard, Khisanth, Fistandantilus -- these are characters that never changed: they were always villains and never sacrificed anything for anyone. They also had no reason for their acts (killing innocents or simply killing in order to achieve some sort of vigilante justice). Your Entreri character there (that I'm again unfamiliear with) seems to be motivated by a shade of grey justice. I could be far off the mark, but... I'm an English Lit grad -- I usually have a good eye for reasoning as to the motivation of a character (or person).