Pretty much every movie has a hero and a villain. And each one has a story, a reason why they do what they do, or how they see the world. Audiences naturally gravitate towards the hero and his story. But sometimes, the villain has a more compelling story that leads the audience to focus more on him.
The five entries below span nearly three decades of filmmaking, from a corrupt LAPD detective to a Sith Lord’s origin story. Each hero here is well cast and reasonably well written. They were just outmatched by a villain who got a better screenplay.
1. Training Day (2001)
It’s hard to believe that Denzel Washington’s only Best Actor Oscar win came from playing a villain. But here we are. In Training Day, he plays Alonzo Harris, a crooked cop who doesn’t just break the rules; he’s written a whole new version of events in his head where he’s the hero. Towards the ending of the movie, he compares himself to King Kong, and it’s so unhinged and brilliant that it’s easy to forget he’s done horrible things in the name of justice.
Meanwhile, Jake Hoyt, played by Ethan Hawke in an Oscar-nominated performance, is the rookie and hero who spends most of the time absorbing Alonzo’s philosophy and just trying to survive his idea of on-the-job training. Audiences felt bad for Jake, sure, but they just couldn’t take their eyes off Alonzo.
2. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is why most Star Wars fans still talk about Revenge of the Sith, and he ended up being the villain. Viewers watch this promising kid get manipulated by an old creep, lose the love of his life, and make a deal with the devil. Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor), on the other hand, spends most of the movie a step behind, chasing a cyborg with four lightsabers in a side quest that feels like a video game level. The final duel on Mustafar decides more than who walks away; it’s where Anakin loses his soul for good. Obi-Wan walks away alive, but Anakin walks away as Darth Vader. Critics agree this was the strongest of the three prequels, and it’s largely down to Anakin’s tragic arc.
3. No Country For Old Men (2007)
Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) wasn’t the yelling type, and that restraint made him only more terrifying. This was a guy who decided if someone lived or died by flipping a coin, and that alone made his story more compelling than anyone else’s in the film. Bardem won an Oscar for the role, and anyone who’s seen the film gets why instantly. Viewers wanted to know what would make a guy go through life with such a fatalistic worldview.
That focus on Chigurh more or less relegated the hero, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), to the background. He became someone who made a really, really bad decision and spent most of the film running from it. His death happens entirely off-screen. It’s like the Coen brothers were saying, “Eh, who cares about him? Let’s get back to the scary guy with the weird haircut.”
4. Black Panther (2018)
When Black Panther came out, it didn’t take long for the internet to basically explode with memes and essays about whether Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) had a point. It turns out he did. The guy grew up as an outsider, watched his father get murdered by the king of Wakanda, while the nation itself hoarded all the cool tech, mostly made from vibranium, that could have saved the world from some pain and suffering. His anger felt real.
T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) was a great king. But for most of the movie, he was reacting to Killmonger’s arguments. Jordan put so much pain and fury into that role that even after he loses the fight to T’Challa, Killmonger wins the debate. Seeing people still arguing about how right/wrong his politics were is proof he did win.
5. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Hannibal Lecter (Sir Anthony Hopkins) only appears on screen for about 16 minutes in The Silence of the Lambs. That’s shorter than the time it takes most people to eat lunch, and it’s also the shortest screen time an actor has needed to clinch the Best Actor Oscar. He’s the scariest part of a movie that spent a lot of time building him up as an urban legend even before viewers see him.
When he finally appears, all calm, polite, and staring straight through Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), the scene turns ice-cold in a way gunfights in most other thrillers never quite manage. Clarice does all the work, solving the case and risking her life in the process, but the movie keeps orbiting around Hannibal like the sun.
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