--- title: Super Bad: 10 Best Movie Supervillains description: Does the Mandarin of Iron Man 3 have what it takes to become one of the most hiss-able comic-book-movie bad guys ever? canonical: https://time.com/archive/7119045/super-bad-10-best-movie-supervillains/ author: Gary Susman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-05-07T09:45:36.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T05:42:42.257Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Super Bad: 10 Best Movie Supervillains og:description: Does the Mandarin of Iron Man 3 have what it takes to become one of the most hiss-able comic-book-movie bad guys ever? og:url: https://time.com/archive/7119045/super-bad-10-best-movie-supervillains/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt220a4814e395964c/698a8eebe6e84a0ddd2b8936/spider-man-immagini-dal-film-25.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: Spiderman 2 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Super Bad: 10 Best Movie Supervillains twitter:description: Does the Mandarin of Iron Man 3 have what it takes to become one of the most hiss-able comic-book-movie bad guys ever? twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt220a4814e395964c/698a8eebe6e84a0ddd2b8936/spider-man-immagini-dal-film-25.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Super Bad: 10 Best Movie Supervillains > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Gary Susman](https://time.com/author/gary-susman/) May 7, 2013 9:45 AM UTC  Columbia Pictures Corporation by [Gary Susman](https://time.com/author/gary-susman/) May 7, 2013 9:45 AM UTC Does the Mandarin of _Iron Man 3_ have what it takes to become one of the most hiss-able comic-book-movie bad guys ever? ## The Joker 
The Joker is the scariest of all supervillains, perhaps because he is the most creative and most versatile -- really, what other supervillain can be credibly played on the big screen by Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, and Heath Ledger? He's evolved over the years, from campy crook (Romero, in 1966's Batman) to homicidal vandal (Nicholson, in 1989's Batman) to mischievous terrorist (Ledger, in 2008's The Dark Knight). He has no principles other than nihilism; since everything is a joke to him, he takes nothing seriously and therefore can't be bargained or reasoned with.



There's no convenient backstory to explain how he became the way he is (even in the Nicholson version, he was evil and sadistic from Day One). It's as if he sprung to life from Batman's own id, a cracked mirror image of the Caped Crusader's own mechanical ingenuity, disregard for rules, and willingness to take the law into his own hands. Batman can pound the hell out of him, institutionalize him, even kill him, but he can't stop the Joker from grinning that maniacal grin. niennunb ## Cape Fear  Ben Kingsley in Marvel's "Iron Man 3"


What does it take to make a solid supervillain? To make a worthy opponent for a movie superhero, the supervillain needs both outsized powers or skills. And outsized ambition to use them for self-aggrandizement. A baroque sense of style is a plus, and so is a twisted backstory – though that's not a must, since sometimes a supervillain is scarier when his (or her) evil nature can't be explained away by past trauma.



Time and the audience will tell if the Mandarin, played by Ben Kingsley in the new Iron Man 3, gets to join the pantheon of classic comic-book movie supervillains. (Sure, he's one of Iron Man's most venerable opponents in the books, but on screen, he offers some surprises that may rankle purists.) Here are ten of the examples he has to live up to (down to?) if he wants to join the superhero movie supervillain hall of infamy. niennunb ## The Green Goblin 
In another universe (say, the DC Comics universe), Norman Osborne could have been Bruce Wayne, a millionaire industrialist with a genius for creating cool toys, a willingness to live outside the law, and a split personality. But instead of becoming Batman, in Marvel's world, he's a megalomaniacal supervillain. In Willem Dafoe's portrayal (in 2002's Spider-Man), Norman Osborne is the military-industrial complex personified, in all its entrenched privilege and sense of entitlement. It's his fight-or-flight response to the threat against his standing as a defense mogul and titan of industry that transforms him into the Goblin, as much as his failed attempt to test his supersoldier protocol on his own body.

The Goblin persona seems inspired by one of the many masks in Osborne's art collection, but as Osborne becomes increasingly paranoid and unhinged, it's clear that the Goblin is his true self, and that the benevolent tycoon who offers to mentor Peter Parker is the mask. When he finds out that Parker is his nemesis, Spider-Man, he feels doubly betrayed, not just because Peter seemed the dutiful and intelligent son that his own boy, Harry, was not, but also because the Goblin had seen Spider-Man as a fellow Nietzschean superman (little s), one who could have ruled alongside him. Still, the Goblin has one last secret power, one that transcends death: the ability to haunt Peter/Spidey by living on in the vengeful wrath of his orphaned son. niennunb ## General Zod 
Michael Shannon, in this summer's upcoming Man of Steel, has his work cut out for him in portraying General Zod, the memorable Superman II villain first played on screen by Terence Stamp (pictured). As a foe of Superman (and one of the few fellow Krypton natives to survive the destruction of that planet), Zod has a lot going for him. He has all the same powers as Superman, he has a flashy sense of style, and he has two equally implacable sidekicks: Non, a hulking mute who seems to have been inspired by Jaws from the James Bond movies, and Ursa, who swipes trophies from those she's vanquished and rocks a mean pair of leather boots. All three have a grudge against Superman, whose dad imprisoned them in the Phantom Zone, but its Zod who is the undisputed leader.



If Superman is a Christ figure, come to Earth to save humanity, then Zod is an Antichrist, his mirror image, come to Earth to enslave humanity. (Stamp's sneer contains a galaxy of contempt for the weak species he plans to rule, since it barely offers him any challenge.) Zod also confronts Superman, unwittingly, in two other ways: First, he offers a cautionary warning against the explosion of nuclear warheads in space; you never know what kind of intergalactic criminals will be accidentally freed by the shockwaves. Second, he makes Superman realize that, no matter how much he'd like to give up his powers and live a normal human life with Lois Lane, there will always be threats that force him to keep donning the cape and tights. niennunb ## Kingpin 
Wilson Fisk is your typical comic-book crimelord, a corporate titan who is also the Kingpin, a leader of a vast criminal underworld. It's bad enough that he has the inerrant hitman Bullseye on his payroll. Kingpin's also a really big guy, so big that, to play him, 6'5", 290-pound Michael Clarke Duncan had to gain another 40 pounds. Fair enough, for all his height and bulk, Duncan often in movies and TV came off as a giant teddy bear. In Daredevil (2003), he uses that extra bulk to indicate menace, but his baritone croak might have been enough to do the job. (Indeed, Duncan also voiced Kingpin on TV's Spider-Man: The New Animated Series.)



Having defeated Bullseye, Daredevil attacks Kingpin and finds him a surprisingly formidable fighter. (He's also the killer who murdered the blind superhero's dad years ago, of course.) Daredevil wins, but leaves his foe alive, probably a mistake. (Had Daredevil become a franchise, we surely would have seen a lot more of Kingpin, who's a staple villain throughout various Marvel titles.) After all, Kingpin knows Daredevil is really lawyer Matt Murdock. (For a masked superhero, the movie Daredevil is surprisingly sloppy about keeping his secret identity a secret.) But Murdock taunts Wilson into remaining silent, lest he reveal that he lost a fight to a blind man. niennunb ## Dr. Doom 
Another Marvel franchise (2005's Fantastic Four and 2007's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer), another scientist/industrial tycoon transformed into a supervillainous monster by his own experiment. In the case of Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), that means he mutates into a man of metal who can hurl bolts of energy, the result of the same cosmic radiation mishap that befell his four colleagues. They used their mutations for good as the Fantastic Four, but in Victor's case… well, his name should have been a tipoff toward his predilection for evil and world domination. (Maybe it means something more flattering in Latveria, his fictional native land in Eastern Europe, whose dictator he becomes in the comic books.)



The relationship between him and the heroic quartet is pretty high-school-cafeteria; he's the dashing rich kid bully who threatens to steal Sue Storm away from nerdy Reed Richards. But as a supervillain, he's hard to kill. Even the team effort that leaves him a fused lump of metal at the end of the first film isn't enough to do the job. He shows up again in the sequel, resurrected without explanation, to wreak more havoc, even when he should be teaming up with his four frenemies to thwart a cosmic catastrophe that threatens the planet. McMahon brings to the role much of the same vain arrogance that informed his portrayal of hotshot plastic surgeon Christian Troy on TV's Nip/Tuck, only without the redeeming glints of humanity and conscience. niennunb ## Dr. Octopus 
Like so many Spider-Man villains (see also the Green Goblin and the Lizard), Doc Ock started out as a well-meaning scientist who made the mistake of subjecting himself to his own experiment. (Given how many of these self-made monsters, all of them mentors of a sort to Peter Parker, it's a wonder that Pete still maintains his enthusiasm for applied science.) Even after Dr. Otto Octavius' (Alfred Molina) fusion-energy experiment goes horribly awry, killing his wife and fusing four tentacle-like arms to his spine, even after he embarks on a crime spree and starts robbing banks, he's still primarily motivated by a desire to continue his research into the elusive nature of energy. Of course, energy, in Spider-Man 2, becomes a metaphor for power, which can turn against those who wield it carelessly.



Physically, Dr. Octopus is one of Spider-Man's most daunting adversaries. (Under Sam Raimi's direction, the darting, malevolent tentacles recall the rapist tree limbs of Raimi's debut feature, Evil Dead.) But Spidey's even more difficult challenge is to get Octavius to rediscover his soul, the selfless part of his spirit that the electronic arms have shorted out. Like General Zod in Superman II, Octavius unwittingly reminds Parker that he can't just hang up his webs and live a normal life; there will always be threats that only Spider-Man has the power to thwart, and as Pete's Uncle Ben famously said, "With great power comes great responsibility." niennunb ## Catwoman 
Catwoman is unique among movie supervillains, and not just because she's a woman, though that also matters. Her motives are much more mysterious than most, which makes her especially volatile and unpredictable. It also makes her alliances fleeting and her loyalty dubious. In all incarnations (Lee Meriwether in 1966's Batman, Michelle Pfeiffer (pictured) in 1992's Batman Returns, Anne Hathaway in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises), she and Batman share an attraction, but it's the attraction of a pair of praying mantises, with the female likely to bite the male's head off if they ever consummate. Like the Joker, she has a backstory that doesn't explain the full depths of her malice and mischief. (After all, this cat has nine lives and is, especially in Hathaway's version, eager to wipe the slate clean and start afresh.)



Is she a feminist avenger, out to emasculate the men who've underestimated her and shame the weak women who've betrayed their sex? Is she just a really skilled burglar who uses her slinky sex appeal as a weapon? Yes to both, but in the most intriguing incarnation (Pfeiffer's), she's also a damaged soul who finds a similarly wounded spirit in Bruce Wayne. Their fumbling attempt at kinky romance, up to the moment where they recognize (to their horror) who their latexed alter egos are, is surprisingly poignant. (Leave it to Tim Burton to turn a Batman adventure into a tale of two misfits in love). Other villains may break Batman's bones or his spirit, but only Catwoman could break his heart. niennunb ## Bane 
Which is worse, fighting a villain who believes in nothing (the Joker), or one who's not only an ideologue, but a demagogue? Bane (Tom Hardy in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises) makes a case for the latter. He's a terrorist, he's a Maoist revolutionary, and he's a weirdly charismatic leader. (He also has a streak of brutal sadism and that creepy, gas-dispensing breathing mask, both of which make him seem like a cousin to Blue Velvet baddie Frank Booth, or maybe even Darth Vader..) Add to that a sense of personal animus against Batman, along with alliances with other Bat-foes going all the way back to Ra's al Ghul.



And did we mention that he's also ridiculously strong? In the comics, Bane was known as the only villain to have "broken the Bat," and an iconic moment from the books when Bane snaps Batman's spine over his knee is recreated in the film. Even without putting Batman on the disabled list, this is the sort of bad guy who can make an aging superhero seriously contemplate taking early retirement. niennunb ## Loki 
Loki isn't just a supervillain, he's also a god. As seen in 2011's Thor and 2012's The Avengers, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has a lot in common with his adoptive brother and nemesis Thor, including some Oedipal resentment against Odin and some serious anger-management issues. But he's also a trickster, using deception to get what he wants, instead of just a big hammer, like Thor. Thor ultimately recognizes his own immaturity, while Loki never does.



In The Avengers, a still-jealous Loki aims to rule the Earth with the help of a mysterious energy portal, an alien army, and his own gifts for mind-control, which leads more than one of the good guys to fight for the wrong side. Eventually, the Avengers get their act together, and there have been few sights more satisfying in recent movies than the Hulk wiping the floor with Loki. Still, Loki remains a threat, one who promises to make more mischief in the next Thor movie, due in November. niennunb ## Lex Luthor 
Luthor is a supervillain who possesses no superpowers, though he does rate above average in intelligence, resourcefulness, and egotism. In the comics, that egotism is mixed with narcissism; Superman tried to save the young Luthor from one of his own experiments-gone-awry, but the resulting disaster made the young man lose all his hair. Instead of joining Hair Club for Men, Luthor swore eternal vengeance on Superman. In the movies, this backstory is absent; as played by Gene Hackman (pictured, in the early Superman films) and Kevin Spacey (in Superman Returns), he's just a vain genius who's affronted by Superman's very existence as a do-gooding foil to his megalomaniacal ambitions.



In both incarnations, he's surrounded himself with gun molls and ignorant stooges, which makes for good comic relief but which also suggests his own insecurity (why threaten his own mastery by picking intelligent, competent underlings?). As a result, both movie Luthors come off as comic blowhards – until they start making mischief, threatening to kill hundreds of millions, and making Superman's life miserable. Spacey's Luthor has the edge over Hackman's in scariness; he's a brutal sadist who gleefully shanks Superman with a kryptonite shiv. But whooever plays him, it's clear that Luthor, a man who'll destroy a continent out of pique, is no one to trifle with. niennunb ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7119045/super-bad-10-best-movie-supervillains/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7119045/super-bad-10-best-movie-supervillains/"},"headline":"Super Bad: 10 Best Movie Supervillains","datePublished":"2013-05-07T09:45:36.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T05:42:42.257Z","description":"Does the Mandarin of Iron Man 3 have what it takes to become one of the most hiss-able comic-book-movie bad guys ever?","url":"https://time.com/archive/7119045/super-bad-10-best-movie-supervillains/","keywords":["Superman","Batman","Spider-Man","daredevil","Thor"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt220a4814e395964c/698a8eebe6e84a0ddd2b8936/spider-man-immagini-dal-film-25.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Gary Susman","url":"https://time.com/author/gary-susman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt220a4814e395964c/698a8eebe6e84a0ddd2b8936/spider-man-immagini-dal-film-25.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Spiderman 2","caption":"","creditText":"Columbia Pictures Corporation","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7119045/super-bad-10-best-movie-supervillains/","name":"Super Bad: 10 Best Movie Supervillains"}}]}] ```