Yes, villains absolutely win in many movies, especially in horror, thrillers, and darker dramas, leaving protagonists defeated or achieving their sinister goals, like in Se7en, Avengers: Infinity War (temporarily), The Vanishing, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. These endings subvert expectations, create shocking moments, and can serve as powerful cautionary tales, making them memorable and impactful.
Whiplash and Streetcar Named Desire are two other films in which the villain wins.
Only two other actors have won Oscars for playing the same character – Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando for playing Vito Corleone in “The Godfather” and “The Godfather: Part II – so Phoenix's turn as the Batman villain in his own origin story, directed by Todd Phillips, seemed like a sure-fire path to an Oscar.
The Best Movie Villains Of All Time
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Top 10 Horror Villains
The Pure Evil villain is a type of villain that is considered to be one of, if not the most evil character(s) in the story with no redeeming qualities. A villain who is Pure Evil is completely evil.
Villains aren't born, they're made. There's a quote that I found while watching some reviews: "villains aren't born, they're made." And I think that's true, no one is born evil. They choose to be evil. Look at Mega Mind, he wasn't born evil, he was a kind person who ended up in a place where he was raised to be evil.
The Most Misunderstood Villains of All Time
Walt Disney received a record 26 Oscars, the most by any individual, with 22 competitive awards and 4 honorary ones, including a unique set for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (one large and seven small) and a posthumous win for Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. He was nominated 59 times, winning primarily in animated short and documentary categories.
Celebrities Who Refused an Oscar
1. The Exorcist. When a mysterious entity possesses a young girl, her mother seeks the help of two Catholic priests to save her life. The scariest movie of all time.
Find those iconic closing scenes below, alongside some of the other best movie endings of all time.
There's no single "No. 1" suspense movie, as it's subjective, but top contenders consistently cited for impact and acclaim include The Dark Knight, The Sixth Sense, Inception, Se7en, and The Silence of the Lambs, often topping lists for their thrilling narratives, iconic twists, and high audience ratings, with classics like Hitchcock's Vertigo also highly ranked.
Fictional examples such as Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series and Darth Vader from Star Wars exemplify characters who transition from villainy to heroism through acts of sacrifice, redemption, and atonement. Real-world parallels also exist, albeit less dramatic.
Warning Signs of a Truly Evil Person
Scientists wouldn't use the label evil but describe someone as a psychopath, and all three traits of a psychopathic personality can be inherited from your parents.
Here are the ones we'll never forget.
There are many roles that different villains can take in a movie, so why are female villains restricted? Female villains don't typically get the backstory that many male villains do. They don't get to play with moral ambiguity; women characters are either “good” or “bad. They also don't get sympathy from the spectator.
Some of the best-known villains of our generation have redemption arcs thrown in at the end of their lives. The characters may be redeemed by the end, but since it's rushed and forced we don't have the opportunity to see them change and grapple with their new reality.
The movie noted for having around 32 jump scares is The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia, often cited on horror forums as having a high number for a feature film, though records also exist for series like The Midnight Club breaking world records for jump scares in a TV episode.
The "Big 3 Slashers" universally refer to the iconic horror franchises centered around Michael Myers (Halloween), Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th), and Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street), representing the peak of the 1980s slasher boom with their distinct masked/iconic killers, enduring legacies, and numerous sequels. While other slashers like Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) or Ghostface (Scream) are significant, these three form the core group known for shaping the genre.
However, not all Disney villains are created equal–some of them are particularly known for being truly terrifying and unsettling. Characters such as Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, The Evil Queen from Snow White, and Ursula from The Little Mermaid are ones that you don't want to mess with.