We were just having fun a few weeks ago when I realized that our villain pick, Jason Bateman in Carry-On (2024) was probably pretty weak sauce and mostly because I had just seen it. 2024 had a surprising amount of great on screen villains that we failed to recognize, so here we go!
Connor McGregor in Road House (2024)
Connor McGregor is a pretty awful person in real life, but boy is he a charismatic villain here! He's an absolute force of nature, psychotic, gleeful, and unstoppable. He has a memorable intro, butt naked and totally comfortable strutting his stuff around a chaotic environment. I hate to say he's pretty damn charismatic, too. The stakes in Road House are really solid, and he ends up being too much for even the people who hired him to control. That's all to say, it's really easy to hate him, but he also brings such competence and a challenge for Jake Gyllenhaal after the other goons are so dumb that you kind of cheer for him, too.
Dementus in Furiosa (2024)
Chris Hemsworth is an underrated villain and does a great impression of his grandfather here as the wildman throwing a wrench into Immortan Joe's works. He's a roving bandit of a villain, one utterly terrible at settling down even though that's what he's trying to do. You see him try to climb the ladder opposite to Furiosa but he's staggeringly incompetent. Furiosa seeks her revenge but finds more than anything she's outgrown him, and what seemed scary as a kid its just kind of a pathetic wiener man. He's got a magnificent arc, even it's a downward trajectory.
Evil monkeys
There was that weird guy in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) and the weird red monkey from Godzilla X Kong and of course, Robbie Williams. Strong year for Apes. Scar King was interesting, totally a sort of wicked bad guy who mostly hid behind a strong spin whip and frost beast. Intelligent and a worthy adversary, though. You don't often see Godzilla villain kaiju hatching schemes. Proxima Caesar, was that his name? He was just having fun and probably arrives too late into the film to be a huge presence, but he's notable and has a great death.
Anything we missed?
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