Female villains in movies and books

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The only female villains that truly stand out in my mind are tragic ones. Many are twisted, but there are some that you can feel pity for, to a degree, because they were victims before they became victimisers. Of note, I mean:

Sadako Yamamura from Ring (Yes, I know that in the novels she is genetically a male with testicular feminisation, but most people would be familiar with the film version, in which that isn't mentioned)

Xais from the Doctor Who spinoff novel The Romance of Crime (A mutant human who has psychokinetic abilities, and due to the psychological trauma of the purging of mutants from the world she lived on, a vicious serial killer who killed people by making them explode. Survives her execution by imprinting her mind and soul onto a metallic mask made by an artist working in the prison)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Romance_of_Crime

It's not a movie, TV series, or book, but I thought both the Boss, and the Beauty and the Beast Unit from the Metal Gear Solid games were tragic villains. In fact the Boss (spoilers) turns out not to be a villain, but a tragic hero, but throughout MGS3, she acts like a villain.

The only ones that stand out to me at the moment are the Chinese warior women who often appear in Jackie Chan movies.

agreed

What about Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? Annie Wilkes in "Misery"? Rosa Klebb in "From Russia With Love"? Mom in "Futurama"?

Or simply a woman with ambition.

Shadow Weaver from "She-Ra: Princess of Power"

The Wicked Witch of the West from "The Wizard of Oz"

Ventress from "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" (The new one based on the movie on "Cartoon Network")

T-X from Terminator 3 if she can be classified as a "real" villain - she's only a cyborg programmed to kill.

Poison Ivy in Batman and Robin.

Sil in Species.

Generally I am not a fan of female characters, in my opinion girls, women aren't as interesting as men (in majority of cases at least - in movies, novels, comics and in real life as well) and I'm a female mysogynist, I admit.

Yes, the Rani was a great villain, as was Lady Peinforte; it was a pity that we did not get to see more of them. Hopefully at least the Rani will return; she was in some ways potentially more interesting than the Master (the interaction between them in "The Mark of the Rani," was classic)

Queen Mab from Merlin was also a magnificent villain, completely overshadowing

I would add Jadis from the Chronicles of Narnia (she has probably already been nominated) the Lady of the Green Kirtle/Queen of Underland from The Silver Chair in the same series; Morgan le Fay, Ashka from Spellbinders, "Milady" (My Lady Clarice de Winter/Anne de Broeuil [sic]) from Three Musqueteers, Xeyide from The Neverending Story.

I must confess that, in addition to the attraction of physical beauty and admiration for intellectual prowess, I am almost equally drawn to moral extremes of immaculate virtue and unregenerate evil as well as the ambiguity of the middle.

Last edited by AlexandertheSolitary on 01 Dec 2008, 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I saw Rip Van Winkle on the OVA and she is pretty mind blowing, a stand out villain.

In the X-Men comics, there are a lot of female villains I think are fantastic; Emma Frost is not a favourite of mine, but I love Mystique, Deathbird, and Lady Deathstrike. Also, Callisto, if you may call her a villainess whenever she's opposing the X-Men for whatever reason.

Lady Eboshi from Princess Mononoke. Miyazaki has awesome female characters. <3

And another vote for the Wicked Witch, because everyone loves her, even though she terrified me when I was a child.

harley quin, girl from batman I believe she stands out the most, mostly cause shes just SO COOL.

Plus she looks like harlequin from chrono cross, connected? maybe, maybe not

Tank Girl and FLCL's Haruko. They maybe considered villians because they are bad Tomboys but that's just because they are handsome ENTPs. LOL

This is kinda a spoiler because you're not supposed to know who Phantasm is until the end of the film, but she's from Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. She's kinda like...well, like an evil Batman. She's meant to be a parallel to him, but basically made a few different decisions and so wound up on the opposite side.

I'm not sure if I would count Harley Quinn, although she's awesome, because sometimes she's acted as a good guy.


Arukenimon from Digimon is freakin' sweet. And she's sexy without being presented as such--it's never called attention to, she just is. And when you find out her and her partner's backstory, it's just heartbreaking. And my god, their final scene...*sniffle*


Domino from Pokémon is downright epic. She looks about 16, she's cute, she's perky, she's adorable...and she'll kill you dead six different ways before you hit the ground. She's also probably the only Rocket we've seen who's allowed to talk back to Giovanni without repercussions, and even in the midst of a plot of massive evil, she tries to be his voice of reason (of course he has none of it, but it was worth a shot).
Hunter J is pretty badass too, but we don't know much about her other than "she's nearly unstoppable and completely ruthless".
For that matter, nearly every female Evil Team member would count except Jesse and Cassidy because you just can't take them seriously (and before anyone asks, Hun and Saturn are in fact male despite looking like women and, depending on the language, sounding like them too. Even in the languages where they have female voices, they're identified as men).
I'd consider Molly Hale in here too even though people debate with me if she was actually a villian. I say she had knowledge of the consequences of her actions and went ahead and did them anyway (laughing about how people were freaking out as she watched them on her computer), and that makes her a villian as opposed to a bad guy. So she's five--there can be five-year-old villians.


Cammy White from Street Fighter (yes video game so what?) counts as both a villian and a hero, but unlike Harley it's at two distinctly different times in her life. See, Cammy was initially an assassin for the main bad guys, personality wiped so she was nothing but loyal, and nearly robotic. But then she started to get her own mind, and the head bad guy realized this was a Massive Issue and tried to have her disposed of. But even a top officer couldn't kill her, so she wound up with amnesia outside the MI6 base. Later, as an MI6 officer, she tracks down the bad guy and all this is revealed to her...and while it makes her depressed to know that she had done such things, she also knows it was in the past and there was nothing she can do about it but move forward.

Marie L'Angelle from Garth Ennis's Preacher.