The 15 Best Movie And TV Villains Of 2023 Ranked

As we close the book on 2023 and take stock of the best that this year delivered in movies and TV, let's not forget the bad guys. Villains are paradoxical characters; we love them precisely for how bad they can be, and if a story invests you in its villain, you can be cheering in equal measure as they rise and then as they fall. And then, of course, there's the sons of b*tches you just really want to see go down.

"Best villains" sounds similarly oxymoronic. So, why are these villains the ones who deserve the highlight? These are the bad guys who are not just wholly formed and compelling in their own right, but who further the themes of the story surrounding them and best challenge both the hero's goals and the writer's point(s). Stories are a reflection of the world in which they are told, so these villains can offer insight into the very real things that we fear and hate in the year 2023.

I might be stretching the definition of "villain" here, but I'd be remiss if I ended 2023 without writing about one of the best performances I saw this year — Kiefer Sutherland as Captain Philip Queeg in William Friedkin's last film, "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial." A tyrannical, paranoid, and micromanaging captain of the Navy ship the USS Caine, Queeg was illegally relieved of command during a storm. Now, his mutineers stand trial while he must defend his reputation.

Some history; Herman Wouk first wrote "The Caine Mutiny" as a novel in 1951, then turned the court martial chapters into a play in 1953. Queeg first ascended to the halls of movie villain history thanks to the 1954 "The Caine Mutiny," starring Humphrey Bogart. However, Friedkin adapts the play, not the novel. That leaves the audience in the judges' perspective; they can't be sure what happened beyond how the witnesses tell it. Keeping Queeg's potential crimes offscreen likewise means we can only judge him for his performance in court.

As for Sutherland? He half-mumbles his lines, words spilling out with the taste of anxiety; his Queeg betrays a unique mix of self-righteousness and uncertainty. It's the showiest performance in an only-the-essentials production, but Queeg is what this story orbits around. As much as he commands the screen, it's easy to imagine this man struggling to maintain control of his crew.

For Queeg's damning breakdown on the stand, the 1954 film uses a minute-long unbroken close-up, which ends abruptly when Queeg catches himself. Friedkin effectively stretches this out, with Queeg digging himself to the Earth's core after his grave is already finished.

We said goodbye to the Roy family of "Succession" in 2023, but the year brought us another contemptible billionaire clan populated by an aging king and his motley crew of fail-children.

Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) and his twin sister Madeline (Mary McDonnell) sit on the throne of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. Their company produces the painkiller "Ligadone," an addictive drug that's fueled the opioid epidemic and filled the Ushers' coffers. The heirs of this blood money are Roderick's children: Frederick (Henry Thomas), Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan), Victorine (T'Nia Miller), Napoleon (Rahul Kohli), Camille (Kate Siegel), and Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota).

Roderick mandates his children pursue their own vocations, but despite this and their individual quirks and style, they're all part of the same rot. That's why it's satisfying as "The Fall of the House of Usher" strings together the most famous stories of Edgar Allan Poe into a single narrative as a new Usher falls, one by one, episode by episode. The apparition Verna (Carla Gugino) is the murderer, but her body count pales compared to the Usher opioid empire's crimes.

Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference between a good man and a weak man. When times are easy, the latter can appear to be the former. Ketil in "Vinland Saga" season 2 is an example of these blurred lines and an essential ingredient to the anime's exploration of toxic masculinity and violence.

Ketil is a plantation owner in 11th-century Denmark, supposedly retired from his days as the warrior "Iron Fist Ketil." He's also a slaver — cultural norms outdated by millennia are no excuse for this — but he treats some of his workers as well as can be, giving our heroes Thorfinn and Einar the chance to buy their freedom if they plow his land to prosperity. The enslaved Arnheid, though? He employs her as a comfort woman.

Ketil is nice enough because he can afford to be — until King Canute reveals plans to seize his land. Once enough pressure is applied, Ketil cracks. He beats a pregnant Arnheid to death for trying to escape him, then recruits his vassals into an army, sending them to be slaughtered by Canute's forces in the vain hope of defending his property. Oh, and his "Iron Fist" nickname? Stolen from another man who happened to have the same name. Ketil is a coward, but cowards can still harm people weaker than them.

The origins of Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) as a lab experiment have been teased throughout the "Guardians of the Galaxy" films. In 2023's trilogy closer "Volume 3," we finally met his creator, the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji).

Few acts are more viscerally detestable than animal cruelty ("Kick the Dog" is its own trope) and the High Evolutionary lives up to that. He has an ethos — he wants to remake the universe in his image — but it only serves to explain him, not humanize him. Iwudi acts like he's on a stage, not in front of a green screen, shouting his megalomaniacal lines such as "There is no God! That's why I stepped in!"

Some critics have suggested that the High Evolutionary's characterization represents Disney itself; a corporation that cares about its creations only as intellectual property and lacks any true imagination. In other words, director James Gunn takes shots at his employer (who fired then rehired him) as he jumps ship to the Distinguished Competition full-time. To be sure, the High Evolutionary treats his living creations like experiments, not his children, callously incinerating them if they don't meet his standards.

One of 2023's underseen gems, Matt Johnson's "BlackBerry" is a (highly dramatized) inside look at the creation of the eponymous phone. Glenn Howerton plays Jim Balsillie, a Canadian businessman fired for being a dick. As luck would have it, he'd previously gotten a pitch for a new cell phone from small firm Research In Motion (RIM), and lacking options, he buys and bullies his way into the company's leadership.

Jim understands the business, if not the technology, so he gives the computer nerds at RIM a much-needed whipping into shape. At first, anyway. To fuel the demands of perpetual growth, he manipulates company stock and ultimately takes the deserved fall for it.

Balsillie, as portrayed in "BlackBerry," is a dime-a-dozen soulless MBA, but what makes him stand out is Howerton's roaring performance. He shouts — a lot — but even when he's quiet, he radiates contempt. Howerton again plays the monster inside Dennis Reynolds from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," but without the self-satisfied grin. With Balsillie's brawling attitude, it makes sense that his favorite sport is a violent one like hockey.

Robert De Niro has built his illustrious career playing monsters in the films of Martin Scorsese: the socially alienated outcast Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver," the figurative "Raging Bull" Jake LaMotta, and heartless gangster Jimmy Conway in "Goodfellas." In their 2019 collaboration, "The Irishman," De Niro took the cool out of being a gangster with Frank Sheeran — a simple-minded tool who drifts through life committing one evil act after another for no reason beyond orders from more powerful men and is rewarded by dying alone in a nursing home.

In "Killers of the Flower Moon," following white supremacist murders of Osage tribespeople in 1920s Oklahoma, that role goes to Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio). De Niro instead plays the puppetmaster, Ernest's uncle William King Hale, who delegates these murders to his clownish nephew and other henchmen so he can get his hands on the Osage's oil wealth. Of all the wolves in the picture, Hale masks himself as a friendly dog, even learning the Osage language and attending tribal council meetings. And yet across Hale's face is the same murderous greed that De Niro flexed so memorably to "Sunshine of Your Love" in "Goodfellas."

"Succession" is probably going down as the show of 2023, and the reason it took off in the first place is our perverse fascination with the billionaire overlords at the reins of our rotting husk of a civilization. The show damns-via-spotlight new money like the Roys, old money like the Pierces, and even newer money like the Elon Musk-esque CEO Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), a figure so utterly loathsome I decided against dignifying him with inclusion on this list.

The evil ruling class is a motif in 2023 cinema, with good reason. As we've established, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is cut from the same cloth as "Succession," Panem from "The Hunger Games" is built on class divisions (with the Capitol and its lavish citizens on top), "Saltburn" tackles the enticement of being on top of the world (without being anti-poor people, to be clear), and "Killers of the Flower Moon" shows how white supremacy can't be disentangled from American power structures.

Culturally, we've finally woken up to how the rich and powerful serve no utility beyond making themselves even more rich and powerful.

Barbenheimer is the defining movie event of 2023, but while the movies caught on together in part because of how different they seem, the same demonic force drives both narratives. Its name? Patriarchy.

This is more obvious in "Barbie," which actually names the patriarchy and features Ken (Ryan Gosling) bringing it back to Barbieland from our reality like patient zero. Defeating this infection becomes the main goal of the Barbies. But, as Robert Downey Jr. at least understood, male egos are at the core of "Oppenheimer" too. From Strauss to Truman, the film's antagonists are driven to prove themselves the biggest swinging dick in the room. As has been observed in films since at least "Dr. Strangelove," it makes all too much sense that bombs are phallic.

In "Bottoms," the comedy of the year, the villains are meathead football players afforded privilege because they're all strong men. "Vinland Saga," set in the ancient past and made in Japan, proves how universal the harm of the patriarchy is to the human experience across nationality and history.

"Barbie," at least, suggests a better path in Stereotypical Barbie's (Margot Robbie) closing words to Ken: "You're not your girlfriend. You're not your house. You're not your mink. You're not even beach. Maybe all the things you thought made you you, aren't really you."