10 villains ruined by their own storylines

It’s Villain Week here at Mashable. In honor of the release of Venom, we’re celebrating all our favorite evildoers from film and TV all week long. Spooky, scary!

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We’re all in on onscreen villains, but their backstories don’t always turn out so compelling. So it goes in pop culture, when ever-expanding franchises, sequels, and reboots build out entire plot lines and character traits we never wanted or needed. 

A little mystery can go a long way in a villain-driven franchise (related: we are terrified for the Joker films), but the names on this list were ruined with too much background.

Here are seven villain backstories that ruined the character forever.

Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars prequels

It’s hard to remember, all these years later, what exactly we expected from a movie trilogy about the origin of Darth Vader. What we know now is that we still hate seeing this Sith Lord as a pod-racing child, that we roll our eyes when we remember his mother died the same way Luke’s aunt and uncle did, and that nothing will ever be as cringey as Anakin and Padme’s love scenes. Darth Vader, it turns out, was gaslit by a politician (yikes)! Do we still get chills when he and Obi-Wan battle it out? Sure! But we’re not happy about it!!

Jigsaw, Saw series

The first Saw movie introduced the anonymous and terrifying Jigsaw killer, and by the end of the movie we learn that it’s John Kramer, a misdiagnosed patient dying of terminal cancer. This was enough – some would argue one Saw movie itself was enough – but every subsequent film insisted on adding to Jigsaw’s backstory, adding in a suicide attempt and laundry list of victims for his philosophy that life must be tested to be earned.

Maleficent, Maleficent

A dark, live-action origin tale for a notorious Disney villain seemed thrilling in 2014, but the film starring Angelina Jolie was largely disappointing. Maleficent’s journey is twisted and tragic, but the final takeaway is that she was upset about a boy (Stefan, who turns out to be Aurora’s father). She lets the rejection fester for literal decades and makes Stefan the focus of her most ambitious evil plans. Ugh. 

The Black Hood, Riverdale

The Black Hood had us shaking in our boots for most of Riverdale Season 2. This person attacked Fred Andrews, Geraldine Grundy, Robert Phillips, and more – some of whom are villains in their own right. These victims were targeted by the mysterious Hood to the point where Polly Cooper fled town to avoid similar fate.

So then. The titular hood is removed to reveal Joseph Svenson, the Riverdale High janitor, who was shot and killed. BUT THEN Midge Klump turns up dead after the musical, which means the Black Hood is alive and well. AND THEN we found out that the real Black Hood is Hal Cooper, and also Gerald Petite is a copycat Hood hired by Hiram Lodge. Will the real Black Hood please stand up?

Most Spider-Man villains, most Spider-Man films

Image: Snap Stills / REX / Shutterstock

“Benevolent mentor loses his shit” worked the first time, and maybe even the second. But then it happened a third, and a fourth. Basically up until Spider-Man: Homecoming (and the new Marvel’s Spider-Man game), Peter Parker was almost always up against what appears to be a cautionary tale about his own future: a successful intellectual whose ideas go just wrong enough for him to get possessed by robotic arms or turn into a lizard-man. Shout out to Homecoming‘s Vulture just for showing that there are other engaging ways to write a villain.

The Horde, Split

James McAvoy proved himself capable of embodying multiple personalities, but dare we say that 23 is just…too many? We could’ve done without Dr. Fletcher explaining that The Horde’s psychology somehow altered their body’s biology (the Beast is super strong, fine, we accept it!) and that inexplicable zoo twist. What fresh excess does Glass have in store?

Michael Myers, Halloween series

Michael Myers was your run-of-the-mill murderous psychopath in the first Halloween, but then the sequels decided to dig into his obsession with killing family members (there’s a cult involved) and general inability to be killed. 

After escaping in the first film, he’s seemingly killed in the sequel. Except he wasn’t. He’s back in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, where he’s seemingly killed again, only to return in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. He’s killed yet again, this time by Laurie Strode, in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later… but then Halloween: Resurrection brings Michael back, explaining away his death as a decoy. This time, he kills Laurie. 

If that feels repetitive, it’s because it is. It made us long for simpler times. Be careful what you wish for, though, because the 2007 Halloween reboot took us back to Michael’s childhood, where adults and a kid Laurie ~just don’t get him~. In Halloween II (2009), the siblings share a telepathic connection manifested mostly as visions of their dead mother. GET US OUT OF HERE. (Luckily, the 2018 Halloween will do just that). 

Twisty the Clown, American Horror Story

Twisty haunts the early episodes of AHS: Freak Show as the personification of everyone’s deepest coulrophobia. We could’ve never learned anything about this horrifying kidnapper and been fine with it. The mystery adds to the fear! Then we had to learn that Twisty was bullied and slandered in the circus, that he was unsuccessful in finding other work, and that his late mother was an alcoholic. He shot himself, meaning to die by suicide, and ended up losing a chunk of his jaw that he covers up with that creepy clown mouth. NOPE.

Chucky, Child’s Play series

The creepiest doll in horror history began as host to the soul of Charles Lee Ray on a constant quest to return to a human body. He died and came back and died and came back and we laughed and cried and joined him on his journey. Then there was Bride of Chucky, which introduced Charles’ living, human girlfriend, who not only accepts his undead doll lifestyle but who is somehow also stereotypically hell-bent on marriage. She dies at the end of the film, but not before giving birth to the…

…Seed of Chucky: Glen/Glenda seeks out his birth parents(???) in Hollywood, where they’ve been living for years and planning their return to humanity. They inseminate a human woman with Chucky’s sperm (???????) and she has twins (?!!???!!>?). These two Sid-and-Nancy each other in the next movie and we wish nothing since Bride had happened.

The Grinch, the new The Grinch movie

As voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, the latest incarnation of that mean, green, Christmas-stealing machine should be more curmudgeonly than ever. But the trailer is alarmingly humanizing. 

Admittedly, we haven’t seen the film yet, since it’s not out for a few more weeks. Based on that trailer, though, this Grinch is a loving pet owner who surrenders to cuddles, eats pasta, and watches TV. He’s barely seen partaking of what should be a signature pastime: making young children cry. In fact, the only kid he bullies gets a bit of a ‘tude and seems to brush the whole thing off to the infectious beat of Tyler the Creator. What is going on??