Contrasting Sequel Antagonist / Live-Action Films

From a human-hating ape to an ape-hating human.

Contrasting Sequel Antagonists in live-action films.

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• Bill & Ted:
  • The closest thing to an antagonist in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is Ted's dad who threatens to send him to military school and arrests the historical figures that the boys need for their history report.
  • Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey introduces De Nomolos, a terrorist from the future who sends robot duplicates to Kill and Replace the duo and change history.
  • In Bill & Ted Face the Music the new leader of the organisation that gave Bill and Ted the time machine in the first place is trying to kill them because she thinks their deaths will bring about utopia. Though she does send another robot assassin after them. Ted's dad is still being a Fantasy-Forbidding Father but he's in no position to send his now adult son to military school.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • In Batman Begins, Ra's al-Ghul and the League of Assassins are motivated by the greater good by ridding the world of chaos and destroying what they see as a hopelessly corrupt Gotham City. In The Dark Knight, The Joker is motivated to prove that Gotham and its people aren't nearly as good as they think they are becoming and to create chaos. In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane and Talia al-Ghul, despite claiming their goals are the same as Ra's al-Ghul, are ultimately doing it out of completely personal reasons, loyalty/love and revenge respectively.
    • The primary bad guys are also vastly different in their physical appearance, personalities, and fighting styles. Ra's Al Ghul is a genteel, soft-spoken, Wicked Cultured but otherwise ordinary man who usually dresses in black, and frequently wears a classy suit. He leads an army of ninjas and fights primarily using Eastern martial arts. The Joker is a grubby, unpleasant-looking clown in greasy-looking makeup and a creepy rasping voice, who wears a dark purple suit, albeit one much less clean-looking than Ra's. He employs criminals, gangsters, and common thugs and is something of a Psycho Knife Nut. And finally, Bane is a hulking, scarily intelligent monster of a man with a Cool Mask, a military-looking trenchcoat and body armor and a booming voice, who controls an organization of fanatical terrorists and relies on his devastating size and power in combat.
• Sweet Pete, the Big Bad of Chipn Dale Rescue Rangers 2022 appears to be this to Judge Doom, the Big Bad of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Both are rogue toons out to get revenge on Hollywood's animation studios by torturing innocent toons, but while Judge Doom was once a friendly toon who only played villains until an accident caused him to become a villain for real, with his evil plan involving killing innocent toons using a harmful substance called "The Dip", Sweet Pete, on the other hand, was a Former Child Star who was fired after becoming too old to star in animated movies, with his evil plans involving kidnapping innocent toons, erasing their mouths so they can't scream, and using a machine that "bootlegs" them into a more deformed version of themselves, which Pete then forces them into starring in his ripoff movies instead.
• Gellert Grindlewald is this of the Prequel variety in Fantastic Beasts to Voldemort from Harry Potter.
  • Grindlewald doesn't care about blood supremacy like Voldemort did, he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants wizards to come out of hiding.
  • Voldemort was so terrified of dying that he intentionally created six different Horcruxes to hide segments of his soul. Grindelwald isn't afraid of dying. He actually willingly dies telling Voldemort to shove it (and laughs in his face) when the latter comes calling to his prison cell looking for the Elder Wand.
  • Voldemort also is a megalomaniac who thinks he can do no wrong while both Harry and "Dumbledore" (it's not clear if he's the ghost of Dumbledore or simply a manifestation of Harry's subconscious) believe that Grindlewald did eventually come to regret what he'd done.
  • Grindlewald has a much broader knowledge of magic and more tricks in his arsenal than Voldemort ever did. He mostly just defaulted to the killing curse and comes off as more Unskilled, but Strong.
  • Voldemort was a Bad Boss whose underlings were loyal to him out of fear. Grindlewald treats his followers better and they’re genuinely loyal to him and not just his cause.
  • Grindlewald’s Fatal Flaw is his Hair-Trigger Temper whereas Voldemort’s was his Pride.
  • Grindelwald puts up an Affably Evil act and uses his Silver Tongue/charisma to get people to do his bidding at first and then defaults to violence if it doesn't work. Voldemort after young adult years never bothered to be charming and weaseled his way into power using sheer brute force.
  • While Grindlewald once loved Dumbledore and is indicated to still do, Voldemort holds no love for anyone.
• In Ghostbusters (1984), Gozer the Gozerian is an evil Sumerian God who travels to other universes and destroy them, taking on a new form in each world it visited before wiping entire populations. In Ghostbusters II, Vigo the Carpathian is the ghost of a 16th century warlord and sorcerer, wanting to possess the infant son of Dana so he could be reborn and aim for world domination. In the essential third movie, Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Ivo Shandor was a former philanthropist turned misanthropic servant of Gozer who grew disappointed at his master's defeat by the Ghostbusters, then decided "Why worship a god, when you can BECOME one?"; he decided to kidnap his current living relative to help take on his own Destructor form. Ghostbusters: Afterlife once again features Gozer as the main antagonist with a similar goal as before. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire introduces Garraka. While both Garraka and Gozer are extra-dimensional Eldritch Abominations, Gozer was always an Omnicidal Maniac while Garraka, even if he is established to have already been evil beforehand, became omnicidal because he was betrayed by a human.
• Halloween: While the main antagonist of most of the movies is Michael Myers, two of the films had different antagonists.
  • Conal Cochran in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which was an attempt to make the series an anthology series focusing on a different Halloween related massacre each time. Michael Myers is a young, strong man, while Cochran is an elderly man with little physical power. Michael is a mute mental patient with no social skills while Cochran is a very charismatic businessman and well-liked among the townspeople. Michael is a brutal unstoppable killer, and Cochran's android enforcers do all of the killing for him. Perhaps most interestingly, the Shape is defined by the iconic mask he wears, while Silver Shamrock uses masks as weapons to kill their unlucky victims.
  • Corey Cunningham in Halloween Ends serves as this to Michael from the last two films. During those movies, Michael was getting old, which resulted in him copping a lot more injuries and sometimes opting for a Combat Pragmatist route. Corey, on the other hand, is in his twenties and is way more able-bodied, and experienced with engineering equipment which comes in handy during the massacre at the junk yard. He also only targets people who he feels wronged him personally, though he will kill others who are in his way. Contrast with Michael, who kills randomly for no apparent reason. Corey also lacks Michael's borderline superhuman abilities; as soon as he's up against someone he can't sneak attack, he goes down in no time. Michael's face is also almost always covered with little clear idea of what he even looks like underneath while Corey's appearance is known before he ever wears a mask. And while Michael was simply born evil, has no catalyst for his actions and never expresses any conflict or remorse, Corey was a flawed but well-meaning and sincerely kind young man whose guilt over accidentally getting a child killed and his isolation cause him to snap and eventually comes back from the brink enough to try and stop Michael. They also have radically different origins as Michael committed his first murder intentionally as a child while Corey's first death was an accident for which he felt genuinely remorseful and occured in adulthood.
• In Hellboy (2004), Grigori Rasputin is a bald but bearded human mystic who wants to bring about the destruction of the world by summoning the Lovecraftian Ogdru Jahad, and who mostly relies on other people and monsters (Karl Kroenen, Ilsa Haupstein, Sammael) to do his bidding for him. In the second, Prince Nuada is a long-haired, clean-shaven elven prince who wants to destroy only mankind (so that the fair folk might live) by summoning the mechanical Golden Army, and is a skilled fighter who does all of his own dirty work.
• Highlander III: The Sorcerer: Kane is very similar to the Kurgan from Highlander, a sword-wielding barbarian madman who has clashed with Connor in the past, beheaded an important mentor of his, and is still pursuing Connor to get the Prize. They differ in that Kane starts out with two allies before going solo and is also a Magic Knight, which makes him more dangerous.
• In Jurassic Park, the series invokes this with its main dinosaur antagonists.
  • The Big One from the first film is a Velociraptor that causes the first films premise. By killing the worker at the beginning of the film, the Big One made the investors nervous about the park's safety, which causes Hammond to invite experts like Grant and Malcolm to the island in order to quell their fears.
  • The T-Rex family from The Lost World: Jurassic Park are a pack of T-Rex’s that are obviously a family and the adults are much more scary than the Big One during the film climax, Buck becomes the most dangerous threat in the film by going on a rampage to find his baby, unlike the Big One and her pack where they were killed at the end of the first movie, the T-Rex family live at the end of the film living peacefully on Site B.
  • The Spinosaurus from Jurassic Park III, in contrast to the Tyrannosaurs that were antagonizing the heroes based on territorial reasons and end up being Accidental Heroes, Spinosaurus hunts the main cast out of revenge after being wounded. The Tyrannosaurs in both Jurassic Park and The Lost World are first encountered in the rain, while the first appearance of the Spinosaurus is in the day and its final confrontation is in the rain.
  • The Indominus rex from Jurassic World is the first dinosaur bred specifically for increased aggression, both for increased thrill factor and, more surreptitiously, as a prototype bioweapon. Plus she's raised in complete isolation with no positive associations other than the crate that brings her food. Naturally, when she finally breaks out, she attacks everything in sight. Also, she's actively the main cause and central focus of the film's major crisis, whereas previous dinosaur main antagonists like the original raptors, the T. rexes, and the Spinosaurus were simply the most dangerous hazard that happened to be present during a crisis.
  • The Indoraptor from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, seems to have been designed in opposition to the Indominus rex. The Indominus was an albino with a solid color, specifically based on a T-rex with exaggerated raptor features, and hunted for sport. The Indoraptor is a textbook case of Dark Is Evil with gold stripes running down his sides and back, looks more like a big raptor with some T-rex features, and hunts primarily because he was made to do so and out of hunger but still manages to indulge his sadism. He's also specifically male rather than female. His behavior is also very distinct from his predecessor, while the Indominus rex's psychopathic nature seemed to be expressed in a state of perpetual anger and her attacks were her lashing out, the Indoraptor has a sense of humor and seems to take amusement in his actions.
• In The Librarian film trilogy (for the follow-up TV series, see Live-Action TV):
  • In Quest for Spear, the villain is a rogue Librarian, who wants to get his hands on the Spear of Destiny in order to rule the world.
  • In Return to King Solomon's Mines, the bad guy wants to rewrite history in order to marry the woman he has always loved but who chose another.
  • In Curse of the Judas Chalice, the true Big Bad is Dracula himself, who wishes to use an ancient artifact to restore his strength and become the dreaded vampire of myth he used to be. The decoy villain, meanwhile, wanted to resurrect Dracula in order to create an army of vampires to Make the Bear Angry Again.
• Paddington: Millicent, from the first film, is a No-Nonsense Nemesis with a personal vendetta against Paddington, ends up despising the slap-on-the-wrist punishment she gets. Phoenix, from the second, is camp and flamboyant, has plans that don't involve Paddington until the bear inserts himself into them, and who eagerly accepts his prison sentence.
• The original Planet of the Apes movies have a bit of this. Distrust between apes and humans is a pretty big theme of the series, so most of the villains are variations on that.
  • Planet of the Apes (1968) has Doctor Zaius, a grandfatherly orangutan Well-Intentioned Extremist who has such a good point that you could argue he's not even evil, or at most, Necessarily Evil. He's also a Non-Action Big Bad, being a somewhat elderly bureaucrat. While his distrust for humans is probably his defining trait, he's also - as a kind of Kick the Dog moment - one of the few antagonists of the series to also show mild intra-ape racism: it's commented early in the film that he "looks down his nose at chimpanzees", and he is indeed pretty condescending towards the chimp characters throughout the movie.
  • Zaius returns in Beneath the Planet of the Apes but is a Friendly Enemy at this point, and he's really just along for the ride. The real villains of that film are General Ursus - a warmongering Killer Gorilla brute - and Mendez XXVI, a mutated human and the leader of a bomb-worshipping Cargo Cult. Zaius and Ursus are motivated by a reasonable mistrust of humans and our destructive tendencies, and Mendez represents an embrace of every human trait they fear, together with mistrust of the apes, which is also pretty reasonable: as Zaius and Ursus both show, apes can be jerks too. The apes' Sacred Scroll warns of man's tendency to "kill for sport" and willingness to "murder his brother to possess his brother's land", and Ursus invades the mutants' city for that exact reason: he thinks their land might be worth something, though presumably he's able to justify it since his targets are humans, whom he does not consider his brothers.
  • The Big Bad of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Dr. Otto Hasslein, is a pretty overt echo of his fellow Morally Ambiguous Doctor, Zaius, with the twist that he's a human being trying to maintain humanity's dominance, while Zaius was trying to prevent humans from regaining that dominance. Dr. Zaius' vaguely fascist undertones are also made a little bit more pronounced in Dr. Hasslein's case: although he looks too young to be part of Operation Paperclip (the actor was born in 1941), when you see a German physicist advising the U.S. president in the early '70s, it's hard not to at least consider that possibility.
  • Governor Breck, the villain of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, is probably the most overtly fascistic villain of the bunch, as the dictatorial leader of a dystopian slave state. While most of the series' villains have somewhat sympathetic motivations, even if their methods are pretty hard to defend, Breck is a Smug Snake with no visible redeeming traits. His treatment of apes isn't born of paranoia or a desire to keep his own people safe, but just general unprovoked contempt. It was with him, and people like him, that the entire feud started.
  • Battle for the Planet of the Apes has villains that are a bit of a callback to Beneath's Ursus and Mendez, being a brutal gorilla military leader and a mad mutated human.
    • General Aldo, like Ursus, is a warmongering gorilla general who starts out as a Token Evil Teammate defined by his bitterness towards humans in a society that is actively trying to heal the rift between humans and apes. His resentment of this direction, coupled with his inarticulated status as The Chosen Wannabe (because of an Alternate Timeline created in Escape) drives him to violate ape society's most sacred law.
    • Kolp had previously appeared in Conquest as one of Breck's Punch-Clock Villain underlings, marked by his uncommon sharpness and detached demeanour. By the time of Battle, he and those under his command are starting to show an early form of the mutation seen in Beneath as they live in the irradiated tunnels of the old human city, and his cold demeanour has progressed into outright madness and, like Mendez XXVI, he embraces all the negative traits that apes had ascribed to humans since the first film, particularly when he invades Ape City specifically because he wants their land, while at the same time paranoid that they want his (they really don't). The movie ends with Aldo forcing the realization that these traits are not unique to humans after all.
    • Mendez I appears briefly as Kolp's Token Good Teammate.
• The main antagonists of the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy contrast each other in many ways:
  • In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Steven Jacobs of is a cold and corrupt businessman whose only goal in life is to make a profit off whatever scientific advancements his company GenSys makes, no matter what the worldwide repercussions are. He also shows absolute disregard towards the well-being of the apes, who he only sees as test subjects with no other value. Rather notably, he never directly interacts with Caesar, the protagonist, until near the end of his life; instead, all of his clashes are with Will Rodman, the film's Deuteragonist and Decoy Protagonist.
  • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes has Koba, who starts off as one of Caesar's most trusted advisers, but his evil tendencies emerge when the apes and humans attempt to coexist. Serving as a direct Foil to Caesar, he holds a bitter, long-seated hatred towards humans for his mistreatment at their hands in the past, and clashes with Caesar over their opinions of them. When he temporarily overthrows Caesar and becomes the new ape ruler, Koba proves to be The Caligula and has no qualms about killing apes as well if it meant satisfying his bloodlust. Also see below under Battle for the Planet of the Apes for General Aldo, of whom Koba is an expy.
  • War for the Planet of the Apes has Colonel McCullough is a Special Forces Colonel who has made it his mission to eradicate the apes and the Simian Flu virus from the face of the Earth and start human civilization anew. He has no qualms about killing human and ape alike, though it is out of a genuine (and possibly misguided) hope to eradicate all traces of the Simian Flu. He is another Foil to Caesar, but only in the sense of their messianic natures. He also holds a Nothing Personal attitude about his antagonistic actions throughout the course of the film.
• Staple of the Rocky movies.
  • Rocky and II feature Apollo Creed, a dominant and charismatic boxing champ who fights the amateur Rocky for an easy, fun payday... at first. In the sequel, he's motivated by proving himself worthy of the title after negative press accused him of fixing the fight.
  • III gives us Clubber Lang, a fiery loudmouth brute. He's the no.1 contender for Rocky's title, and pulverizing the champ is all that matters to him. While Apollo was a truly well-rounded fighter, Lang is all about aggression and power. Creed was also image-conscious to a fault, ^note both fights with Rocky were ultimately about bolstering Creed's reputation while Lang doesn't give a shit about public opinion of him—he just wants to dominate, and Rocky is the man to beat.
  • IV introduces Ivan Drago, a stoic Russian juggernaut out to prove Soviet superiority who gets Rocky's attention by killing Apollo. Compared to Clubber Lang, who was a Hot-Blooded, angry loudmouth Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy, Drago, on the other hand, is cold, quiet and stoic.
  • While Tommy Gunn, Rocky's wild, troubled ex-protégé, is The Heavy of Rocky V, his shady promoter George Washington Duke is the true villain of the piece. Rather than posing a physical threat, Duke is a scheming manager who tries to convince Rocky to come out of retirement, and resorts to various underhanded, manipulative tactics to do so.
  • Finally, we meet Mason Dixon in Rocky Balboa. Like Creed, he's a dominant champ; unlike Creed, he's unassuming and the public hates him. He challenges the aged Rocky to a charity match to boost his cred with fans.
  • This is also extended in the Creed spin-off series, where Apollo Creed's son and Rocky Balboa's mentee Adonis gets his own set of rivals.
    • "Pretty" Ricky Conlan was just a champion for Donnie to prove himself as a boxer worthy of the professional stage, and had no prior connection with Donnie whatsoever. The only thing antagonistic about him is that he's a trash talker (which is very common in sports) and that he is set to go to jail for an off-screen crime (which didn't even involve Donnie himself). Viktor Drago was a physical representation of Rocky's and his own father's dark past that Donnie has to overcome in finding peace for his own legacy; the connection that Viktor had to Donnie was mainly through their parental figures: Ivan Drago for Viktor, Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed for Adonis. He's antagonistic mainly because he wants to remove the shame from his family after his father, Ivan, lost to Rocky Balboa — and the only way for him to do so is to defeat Rocky's mentee, Adonis Creed himself. Damian "Dame" Anderson is a figure of Creed's own past as his childhood friend turned enemy, who resented Donnie for living the life that he never had due to being locked up and Donnie himself getting away with the crime. His antagonism towards Donnie is easily more personal than Drago and Conlan.
    • Donnie's rivals also stand out in terms of their nationalities and where Donnie fought them in the films' climaxes. "Pretty" Ricky Conlan is British (with his actor being half-white, half-black); as such, Donnie fights him at Goodison Park in Liverpool, England. Viktor Drago is Ukrainian with Russian heritage from his parents; as such, Donnie fights him at Moscow, Russia. Damian "Dame" Anderson is African-American; as such, Donnie fight him at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California.
• Dr Frank N. Further from The Rocky Horror Picture Show is an alien scientist whose main goal is to seduce everyone. Due to Tim Curry not wanting to reprise the role, Shock Treatment replaces him with Farley Flavors, a billionaire who wants to steal the protagonist's wife and turns out to be his long-lost twin brother.
• Saw:
  • John Kramer, dubbed "the Jigsaw Killer", is the Big Bad of the first three films in the series, who pursues the "rehabilitation" of people who committed crimes through death traps and wants his "methods" to remain relevant after his death via the recruitment of apprentices and the execution of posthumous schemes (the latter mainly due to his terminal disease). He's a middle-aged man close to elder age and is fairly polite and approachable, but usually shows no mercy and has always succeeded in causing pain and suffering to numerous people over his lifetime, as well as several times after his death. That said, his death was caused by one of his victims, and he ultimately fails to leave a Villainous Legacy that's entirely loyal to his ideals.
  • Also in the first three films is Amanda Young, John's first known apprentice and a young woman who's physically stronger than him, but still rather weak in comparison to most other characters. While she was initially loyal to John, Amanda eventually becomes much more motivated by revenge, killing people out of outright malice or under her opinion that they couldn't be rehabilitated at all.
  • The Big Bad of Saw IV to Saw 3D is Mark Hoffman, another Jigsaw apprentice who contrasts both John and Amanda. Whereas John and Amanda were considerably average civilians within their society, Hoffman is a Dirty Cop. He was never actually loyal to John due to the latter forcing him into becoming an apprentice after setting a frame-up for him in his first murder, and is motivated to leave a Jigsaw legacy in which he's the most important figure, kicking John and Amanda away. Hoffman is also much stronger than John and Amanda, and is just as smart as the former.
  • Brad Halloran from Jigsaw is the first Big Bad in the series who's not a Jigsaw killer or copycat, instead being a straightforward corrupt police detective. The Jigsaw killer role in the film instead goes to the protagonist Logan Nelson, who seeks to get revenge on him after one of his informants murdered his wife.
  • The Spiral Killer from Spiral is a Jigsaw copycat who seeks to "clean" the Metropolitan Police Department by murdering corrupt police officers, recycling the typical Jigsaw traps in order to shock the department. Unlike John, who treated his accomplices well unless they defied him, the Spiral Killer outright murders an accomplice to stage a fake death. He's also the first antagonist to have a direct connection to one of the protagonists.
• All of the villains of the Scream franchise use the Ghostface alias, but each differs from the last in one way or another.
  • Billy Loomis and Stu Macher are the villains of the first film. They are sadistic teenagers who committed their first kill by murdering Maureen Prescott for sleeping with Billy's dad. Billy blamed Maureen for breaking up his parents' marriage, while Stu went along with Billy's crimes because of "peer pressure".
  • Scream 2 has Debbie Salt/Nancy Loomis, Billy's mother and her accomplice Mickey Altieri. While the villains of the previous movie were a pair of teenagers, Debbie and Mickey are an older woman and college-age male, respectively. While Billy and Stu were on the same page about framing others for their murders, Debbie and Mickey have different goals; Mickey wants to get caught and plans to blame the existence of horror movies on his murders, while Debbie seeks to kill Sidney for killing her son and has no intention of getting caught.
  • Scream 3 has Roman Bridger, who is revealed to be the Greater-Scope Villain for the entire film series, having been the one who revealed Maureen's affair with Billy's father to him, which motivated his killing spree. Roman is the first Ghostface who is biologically related to Sidney, being her half-brother conceived via rape of Sidney's mother by a Hollywood producer. While the other Ghostfaces have accomplices, Roman is the only one who works alone.
  • Scream 4 has Jill Roberts and Charlie Walker. While previous Ghostfaces are either older than Sidney or around the same age as her, Jill and Charlie are younger than Sidney.
  • Scream (2022) has Richie Kirsch and Amber Freeman. Much like the villains of the previous film, they have incredibly shallow reasons for their murder spree. That said, their goal is somehow even pettier, since they seek to recreate the plot of the first film just so that they can inspire the creation of a Stab film that's closer to the first few ones, due to them hating the direction Stab 8 took. Additionally, in a major departure from most other Ghostfaces, where there was a clear hierarchy with a main killer commanding over the accomplice, and some of these alliances fracturing via backstabbing, Richie and Amber genuinely like each other and hold equal power.
  • Scream VI has Detective Wayne Bailey and his children Quinn and Ethan, the first time in the franchise's history where there's a trio of Ghostfaces. Their motivation is not out of a petty desire similar to the previous killers, but rather simple revenge for Sam's murder of Richie, the eldest son of the Bailey family, in self-defense. They also break many other attributes common to the Ghostfaces: they use firearms in-costume, employ The Family That Slays Together in full-force (in contrast to past related killers doing their murders in different films), and one of them is a cop in the murder investigation instead of an average suspect or Red Herring. Finally, they have no interest in Sidney whatsoever; instead their main target is Sam.
• The Shaolin Temple trilogy flips their villains around; the first movie's Big Bad, Emperor Wang Shi-chong, is a ruthless tyrant and monarch dominating the whole of China with an iron fist, while the second movie has a pair of unnamed bandit brothers leading their underlings (the second film is Lighter and Softer as a result). The third movie, Martial Arts of Shaolin, walks the middle line with it's main villain being a Manchurian warlord and a corrupt minister ruling a small town.
• Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (2009) has Lord Henry Blackwood, who goes out of his way to be Obviously Evil, creating an image of himself as a black-magic-wielding Antichrist figure who everyone should be afraid of, and whose end goal is to seize control of the British Government and the Empire and rule it through fear. The sequel Game of Shadows has Professor Moriarty, who prefers the Villain with Good Publicity approach, he creates the persona of a jovial and respected Cambridge professor, is a trusted adviser to the Prime Minister, and his plans rely on keeping his criminal activities as discreet as possible and manipulating events from behind the scenes. And his plan is to cause enough chaos to kick World War 1 off early, which he will profit from.
• In Star Trek (2009), the Big Bad Nero is an angry working-class Badass Normal Romulan from the 24th century who winds up stuck in the past after falling through a vortex, and strikes off on a mission of revenge against the Federation for failing to prevent the destruction of his home planet. In Star Trek Into Darkness, the Big Bad John Harrison is the exact opposite: a stoic, Wicked Cultured genetically augmented human from the 21st century who attacks the Federation after being forcibly revived from cryogenic stasis, wants to complete a mission of world domination that he began centuries in the past, and turns out to be secretly in league with a rogue Starfleet admiral. Krall from Star Trek Beyond contrasts both of them, being a rogue Federation MACO with an artificially prolonged lifespan who twists himself into a semi-human alien monstrosity, and wants to destroy the Federation because he believes that they've abandoned their principles.
• Star Wars:
  • In the prequels, Maul is an attack dog with a red lightsaber. By contrast, Dooku is elegant, stylish, and cultured. He's also a political manipulator, and a powerful nobleman in his own right, who left the Jedi Order. Incidentally, The Clone Wars and Rebels expanded on Maul's character. He's driven by rage and revenge, and Dooku is driven by doubt in the Jedi and Republic. Anakin cut off Dooku's hands, while Obi-Wan separated Maul from his legs. Dooku has a classy and archaic curved lightsaber, while Maul has a standard Sith double-bladed one.
  • Kylo Ren from The Force Awakens initially seems like a carbon copy of Darth Vader, but it's quickly revealed that he is an uncertain, emotionally unstable man-child who also turns out, despite his innate skill, to not be fully trained in Force combat, in contrast to Vader's coldly menacing, dark, brooding presence and expertly channeled rage (Vader had a good 20+ years to develop into a hardened veteran). Also, their motivations are quite different: Anakin is a classic example of Love Makes You Evil, and his transformation into Darth Vader was caused by his desire to protect those closest to him. Even as a Sith Lord, most of his actions regarding Luke are born from his warped, twisted attempts to save him by luring him to the Dark Side. Ren, on the other hand, views love as a weakness, and even murders his own father in cold blood in order to cut off his emotional attachment to his old life. The Last Jedi takes this even further; Vader ultimately tried to preserve the past in his fall to darkness and even at his darkest was dedicated to maintaining the current status quo; Ren ultimately decides to destroy as much of the past as he can, Jedi or Sith, and unlike Vader after killing his master, doesn't turn from his path. And while Vader wore his armor and mask because he was dependent on them due to the horrific burns he got from fighting Obi-Wan, Ren doesn't need his armor at all and wears it only for dramatic effect, going almost the entire second film without his mask, and has a perfectly normal, even handsome, appearance underneath.
  • After The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren becomes the political successor of Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious after taking the title of Supreme Leader of the First Order. Sidious is old, calculating, methodical, and without feelings, whereas Kylo Ren is a Young Conqueror who's impulsive, unpredictable, erratic, and still torn by emotions that he tries to put aside for his ambitions. Much like Palpatine, Kylo is responsible for the end of his era's Jedi Order and drives its leader into an exile of impoverished seclusion, though in Sidious' case it was because Yoda fought him to a draw and Yoda fled to survive, whereas Kylo shatters Luke's morale, driving him away in shame over their confrontation. Sidious and Kylo both murder their masters, Darth Plagueis the Wise and Snoke respectively, to further their grab for power. Where Palpatine is content to rule from a distance and govern through subordinates (Grand Moff Tarkin, Darth Vader, his army commanders), Kylo Ren is hands on, insisting on micro-managing and commanding his troops and personally executing "traitors" who resist. In many respects, Kylo Ren is the Skywalker heir Palpatine wanted all along, being neither dependent on life support like Anakin, nor incorruptible like Luke, and carrying out the act of Patricide that Luke refused to do at the Emperor's command.
  • In contrast to Grand Moff Tarkin, who was an ice-cold seasoned veteran who had clear authority over Darth Vader, General Armitage Hux is young, a lot more emotional, and butts heads with Kylo Ren repeatedly. The contrast only deepens when Kylo seizes power and chokes Hux into submission; Tarkin was able to order Vader to stop Force-choking a disrespectful Admiral Motti, while Hux is completely helpless in the face of Kylo's wrath.
  • Rogue One: Orson Krennic is a grouchy Jerkass, extremely passionate about his work, dresses all in white, and speaks with Ben Mendelsohn's natural Australian accent, whereas most of the other Imperial villains in the franchise, especially Tarkin, are Faux Affably Evil, borderline emotionless about their duty, dress in grey or black, and speak with recieved pronunciation accents. Fittingly, Krennic and Tarkin absolutely loathe one another.
• Daredevil and Elektra:
  • Wilson Fisk/The Kingpin is the head of all crime in New York. Roshi is the head of The Hand. They are both a Corrupt Corporate Executive and The Man Behind the Man. Fisk has a personal feud he didn't know of with Daredevil having killed his father but did know he ordered Elektra's father to die, Roshi likely was the man who headed the death of Elektra's mother. Neither of them ever have one scene with Elektra, though Fisk was at least around her and fought Daredevil while Roshi never takes part in combat.
  • Bullseye and Kirigi were both assassins responsible for killing one of Elektra's parents, her father and mother respectively. Bullseye is a bald Irish man in black leather while Kirigi is Japanese man in white with a long mane. Bullseye embraced the evil he commits For the Evulz and didn't deny how attractive he found Elektra to be and wanted to kiss her. Kirigi is stoic and fixated only on his task, but didn't shy away from mocking Elektra for her dead parent.
• Kingsman: The Secret Service and Kingsman: The Golden Circle:
  • Valentine is an Affably Evil black man who shares a genuine Villainous Friendship with his henchwoman-in-chief and dislikes the sight of blood and gore. He's a Well-Intentioned Extremist motivated by concerns about overpopulation and the environment.
  • Poppy is a Faux Affably Evil white woman who treats most of her employees terribly and has no issue with seeing people who displease her thrown into meat grinders. Her villainous motivations are purely selfish.
• Sebastian Shaw in X-Men: First Class and Bolivar Trask in X-Men: Days of Future Past:
  • Sebastian Shaw is a sociopathic, physically powerful mutant who leads a handful of mutants and tries to start World War III, so in the end he could seize power after humans eliminated themselves and emerge as the leader of the surviving mutants. He tries to manipulate people, but he usually resorts to intimidating them to do his biding. He worked for the Nazis, and also owns a seedy night club. The bad future is averted by killing him, even though it costs the relationship of Mystique, Charles Xavier and Magneto, who all become more disillusioned and cynical as a result.
  • Bolivar Trask is a brilliant Well-Intentioned Extremist human inventor who creates mutant-hunting robots to achieve world peace. He is a smooth-talking fearmonger who successfully manipulates people. He was voted the man of the year, made prosthetics for children and creates weapons for the U.S. government. The bad future is averted by letting him live, and the events help to actually mend the relationship of the three mutants in the long term and helps them move on to a better path (even if it is temporary in the case of Magneto).
• Hans Gruber in Die Hard and William Stuart in Die Hard 2.
  • Gruber is a Gentleman Thief from Germany, with him and his crew robbing Nakatomi Plaza while posing as far-left Western Terrorists in order to deflect police attention from what they're actually up to. While he once was a leftist terrorist himself, he has long since abandoned any political ideals; his motive here is purely about getting rich.
  • Stuart is an American ex-Special Forces colonel who launches a genuine terrorist attack at Dulles International Airport, seeking to rescue Ramon Esperanza, the drug lord dictator of a Latin American Banana Republic. His motive is expressly political and anti-communist, seeing Esperanza as a key ally in the Cold War who the US recklessly removed from power.
• Seen in the Black Mask duology. The first film's main antagonist, The Commander is a fighter who leads the dreaded 701-Unit on a killing spree, is a highly-capable combatant who gives Black Mask a run for his money and intends to overthrow the government for initiating the Super-Soldier project before pulling the plug. Dr. Moloch, the villain of the sequel, City of Masks, on the other hand is an Evilutionary Biologist and largely a Non-Action Big Bad who throws his genetically-enhanced Beast Men at Black Mask, who supports the government so he could continue his experiments unoppposed.
• Eldon Tyrell in Blade Runner is a short-haired, clean-shaved old man who dresses in white, wears thick glasses, talks in a friendly, grandfatherly tone and treats people and Replicants alike respectfully, and is killed in the third act. Niander Wallace is a long-haired, bearded young man who dresses in black, is blind and can only see through camera drones, talks in a flatly sinister voice, has no empathy for anyone and survives the movie.
  • In addition, Wallace is a nigh-emotionless Cold Ham human villain who commands a vast corporation and never fights, in contrast to Roy Batty, a highly emotional Large Ham replicant villain who leads a tiny band of escaped replicants and personally hunts Deckard in his film's climax. Roy has spiky bleached-blond hair, believes in the value of life (human and replicant), seems visibly torn about the murders he commits, and saves Deckard's life in the final moments of his own, while Wallace has shaggy dark brown hair, has no respect for the value of life whatsoever, casually murders humans and replicants alike, and tries to tempt Deckard to his side with a copy of Rachael, then orders him brought offworld for torture when he won't cooperate.
  • Luv, as the main Replicant antagonist of the movie, also strongly contrasts with Roy. Physically, they're opposites, Roy is a bleached-blond man who usually dresses in black, while Luv is a brunette woman who usually wears white or grey. Roy Batty was very much his own man, even killing his own creator, albeit reluctantly, and is shown to have a deep respect for the value of life, gently holding a pigeon in his hand without harming it and famously saving Deckard in the climax. Luv is fanatically loyal to Wallace and a sadist to boot, who delights in hurting and killing things less powerful than she is, and is obsessed with proving how much superior she is to everyone else. Finally, while it's clear that Tyrell sees Roy as his greatest triumph, and assures Roy that no one has lived as fulfilling a life as he ^note "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long — and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.", Wallace largely sees Luv as little more than an expendable tool, and subjects her to emotional abuse and condescending praise. ^note "The best angel of all...aren't you, Luv?"
• A remake rather than a sequel, but compare It (1990) to It (2017):
  • To contrast Tim Curry's famous performance, Bill Skarsgård goes the Cold Ham route, rarely raising his voice while remaining utterly creepy. He's also a lot more openly sadistic.
  • Tim Curry's Pennywise wore a brightly-coloured outfit, and could almost pass for someone you'd see at an actual kid's birthday party. Bill Skarsgard's version wears a primarily-white outfit that makes him look more like a Renaissance clown.
• The main villain of Special Female Force, The President, is an elderly terrorist mastermind who commands an elite army of insurgents, and plots to unleash a powerful Synthetic Plague to Take Over the World; the villain of the sequel is a disgruntled ex-cop dissatisfied with his treatment in the police, who leads a group of untrained hooligans and street punks and only targets his fellow ex-colleagues, with his modus operandi far more subdued.
• The alien villain of Species II is a male hybrid instead of a female one like in Species. Also, whereas Sil came across as emotionally immature and scared about being on a planet dominated by humans, Patrick's plan to feed the alien invasion is far more determined and calculating.
• The Karate Kid: The Karate Kid trilogy has Daniel's rivals and their evil mentors stand out in their unique way.
  • The The Karate Kid (1984) has Johnny Lawrence bully Daniel out of jealousy, self-gratification, and the fact that his personality was influenced by his sensei, John Kreese, who is mainly an over-the-top Drill Sergeant Nasty to his students.
  • The The Karate Kid Part II has Chozen Toguchi bully Daniel out of the fact that Daniel is a foreigner, coupled by his twisted sense of honor regarding Mr. Miyagi's history with his family. Speaking of family, Sato Toguchi (Chozen's uncle) is driven by his hatred for Mr. Miyagi being a "coward." Unlike Kreese (and eventually Silver), Sato has a sense of honor in the trilogy that the two Cobra Kai founders lack, and he ultimately reforms himself.
  • The The Karate Kid Part III has Mike Barnes bully Daniel out of greed (given that Terry Silver will guarantee him money for beating him in the tournament). Speaking of Silver, he is (later revealed to be) a cocaine-addict who goes over the top to manipulate Daniel into torture out of revenge on behalf of his war buddy's loss.
• The Mummy Trilogy:
  • Imhotep in the first movie was an Egyptian priest whose main goal was to reunite with his lover, and he gained immortality and powers through the curse cast upon him as punishment.
  • The Scorpion King in the second movie was not a mummy, but a warlord turned into Humanoid Abomination for striking a deal with Anubis to gain victory over his enemies.
  • The Dragon Emperor in the third movie was Chinese warlord whose main goal has always been conquest, and he actively sought immortality and learned to control the five elements before he was tricked to receive a curse upon himself.
• The Scorpion King series gives different Evil Overlord flavors:
  • Memnon was a Master Swordsman leading a massive horde that sought to conquer the known world that used the Sorceress' visions to predict his enemies' moves and defeat them. Otherwise, he was a completely ordinary and normal (albeit skilled) human. Mathayus is initially hired to kill him, but after his contractor is killed and Memnon murders his brother, he makes it personal.
  • Sargon, on the other hand, is both a brutish fighter and a sorcerer due to gaining his magical gifts from worshipping Astarte. His ambition is greater than just conquer the world but to become a god too, and not only he kills one of Mathayus' brother, he also killed his father too (making it extra personal).
  • Talus is an Evil Sorcerer that seeks the Book of the Dead to gain dominance over his neighbors. Besides his magical gift, he is a Non-Action Big Bad who isn't even killed by the protagonist, but lynched by a mob instead. Also unlike the previous two, he did not kill any of Mathayus' relatives to push him in search of revenge.
  • Draven is a prince at first and pretending to be Mathayus' sidekick before being revealed to be Evil All Along. Unlike his predecessors, he has no magical skill and is an average fighter who relies more on his mooks.
  • Nebserek is somewhat similar to Sargon (mighty fighter wielding unholy powers given by a evil deity and revered like God-Emperor), but what differs him from all antagonists that precede him is that he is driven by revenge against the titular character for the death of his tribesmen, making him the closest thing to an Evil Counterpart to Mathayus at least in regards to the first two movies.
• The mummy movies that Universal put out in the '30s and '40s also have this relationship to each other:
  • The Mummy (1932) features a version of Imhotep very much along the lines of his later portrayal in The Mummy (1999): a cunning, articulate Evil Sorcerer who very quickly regenerates his original, living body and persues his own agenda of reuniting with his long-lost love.
  • This is in contrast to Kharis, the villain of The Mummy's Hand, a lumbering, mute, bandage-wrapped Implacable Man who needs the guidance of the priest Andoheb, and is motivated only by a desire to avenge the desecration of a tomb.
  • The sequels to The Mummy's Hand avert this, retaining Kharis as their central mummy, and giving Andoheb a string of suspiciously similar substitute apprentices taking over his role, most of whom have the bad habit of falling in love with the heroine.
• Godzilla can be both this and Contrasting Sequel Main Character as the character has alternated between hero and villain depending on the movie with the original Godzilla being a Tragic Monster, the Godzilla of Shin Godzilla's mere existence as an radiated creature is a tragedy onto itself and the Godzilla of the anime trilogy can and will actively destroy anything in his way — and that's without getting into the Godzillas of the reboot-happy Millennium series.
  • See the Multiple Media folder for MonsterVerse examples.
• If Krampus is to be taken as a Spiritual Sequel to Trick 'r Treat, the contrasts between their respective villains, The Krampus and Sam, are worth noting. Both are supernatural beings associated with the folklore of their respective holidays - Halloween and Christmas - who punish those who don't properly honour that holiday, and both show a kind of ambiguous mercy to those who learn their lesson, but beyond that, there are some pretty noticeable differences: the Krampus is constantly leaping about despite being very big, while Sam is a child who moves with the slow stride of an Implacable Man. At the climax of Trick R Treat, Sam's Scary Scarecrow mask is dramatically removed to reveal he is a Pumpkin Person, but we never see the Krampus' real face; even his mask is hidden behind the hood of a shabby Santa Claus outfit for most of the movie, though underneath the costume he seems to be a goatlike Beast Man.
• Each entry in The Fast and the Furious films has a villain that contrasts from the previous one in one or more ways.
  • The villain of first film is Dominic Toretto, the leader of a carjacking gang. Dom is an Affably Evil Noble Demon who greatly respects loyalty. Dom could also be considered the Deuteragonist of the film. Over the course of the following films, Dom becomes less of a villain and more of a hero.
  • The sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious has Carter Verone, a ruthless drug kingpin from Miami. Verone has neither Dom's skills as a driver nor any of his redeeming qualities. While Dom hated cops, Verone has no trouble bribing or blackmailing them into his services. He also ends up in prison unlike Dom.
  • Takashi aka the Drift King from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Unlike Verone who was American and wasn't a driver himself, Takashi is Japanese and is a driver. Takashi is also younger and more temperamental than Verone.
  • Artuto Braga aka Roman Campos from Fast & Furious. Braga is a drug trafficker who was born in South America and poses as his own second-in-command, Roman Campos. Because of this, the audience doesn't realize he is the main villain until much later in the movie. He has no driving skills and is older than Takashi.
  • Hernan Reyes from Fast Five is a Brazilian drug lord posing as a legitimate businessman. Unlike Braga who only uses other criminals for his dirty work, Reyes also has the entire Rio de Janiro police force in his pocket.
  • Owen Shaw from Fast & Furious 6 is an ex-Special Air Service soldier who leads a team of criminals whose skills mirror that of Dom's friends. Shaw is also the first villain in the series who fights Dom in the climax.
  • Furious 7 has a Big Bad Duumvirate with Moses Jakande a Nigerian terrorist and Deckard Shaw the brother of the aforementioned Owen. Jakande is seeking the hacking device known as the God's Eye while Deckard seeks to avenge his brother's defeat in the previous film.
  • Cipher is the villain of The Fate of the Furious and the Greater-Scope Villain for the fourth, sixth and seventh films. She was the one who corrupted Owen Shaw which led to him coming into conflict with Dom and his crew. As Braga was working under Shaw, she is also in part responsible for him as well. She hired Moses Jakande and Deckard Shaw to steal the Nightshade device and the God's Eye. As a cyber terrorist, Cipher contrasts the previous villains who are either drug lords, carjackers or thieves.
  • F9 has Otto, the son of an Eastern European dictator who wishes to surpass his father by becoming a cyber terrorist. He mostly has Dom's brother Jakob doing the bulk of the work and he later teams up with Cipher, who only uses him as a pawn.
  • In Fast X, the main villain is Dante Reyes, the son of the fifth movie's villain who wishes to avenge his father's death.
• Scooby-Doo (2002) and Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed had contrasting villains. Scrappy-Doo was kicked out by Mystery Inc. and held the Spooky Island owner hostage. He wanted the souls of the visitors to transform into a monster. Jonathan Jacobo is a Mad Scientist who faked his death, posed as both a female news reporter and a masked menace and converted costumes into monsters.
• Sam Bailey from Mystery Road is this to Johnny from it's sequel, Goldstone. Sam was a fairly blue-collar rancher, Johnny is a Corrupt Corporate Executive. Sam came across as somewhat Ax-Crazy, believing that Murder Is the Best Solution and often committing the murders himself, Johnny prefers to bribe people to leave him alone or delegate his killing to others. Sam controlled sex workers through drugs, Johnny controls them through legal chicanery. Sam had a low-ranking Dirty Cop in his organization, while the influential local Mayor is in Johnny's pocket. Sam is an outspoken racist, as are his men, while any racism Johnny displays is more subtle an he's at least willing to employ Aboriginal and Asian henchmen. Sam goes to the final battle with the rest of his gang (albeit lingering in the back), while Johnny is a Non-Action Guy who cuts and runs the first chance he gets. Sam is shot dead, while Johnny escapes town.
• While their status as a Shared Universe are now rather ambiguous, the titular creatures of the Alien and Predator franchises are this to each other. The Xenomorphs are a virulent race of parasites that kill any living thing they see and are semi-sentient at best, while the Yautja are a technologically advanced Proud Warrior Race who, despite always being the ones to start the conflicts, follow a Code of Honor that prevents them from killing certain individuals and allows them to develop respectful relations with humans whom they deem worthy foes.
• The main villains in the Men in Black film series differ in terms of motivation, means of disguising themselves on Earth, fighting style, and connection with the main duo.
  • "Edgar" the Bug was a dreaded terrorist and warmonger who wanted to instigate a war between Earth and the Arquillians so that his species, the cockroach-like Bugs, could feast on any and all bodies that were decimated from the conflict. To disguise himself on Earth, he murdered and stole the skin of a mean-spirited farmer named Edgar, though he was hardly inconspicuous due to being forced to hobble around in a sack of dead flesh and doing little to hide there was something inhuman about him. Despite this, "Edgar" was strong and fast both in and out of his disguise and was a dangerous fighter at close range. Unlike the villains that succeeded him, "Edgar" had no prior connection to Agent K or Agent J and was simply a threat they had to keep from hurting the Earth.
  • Serleena was the megalomaniacal queen of the wormlike Kylothians, and a Galactic Conquerer who sought out the Light of Zartha to destroy Earth and Zartha and lead her species to rule the galaxy unopposed. While "Edgar" had to kill the first human he encountered and wear his skin to (poorly) pass himself off as an ugly male, Serleena was a Voluntary Shapeshifter to copied the form of a model in a Victoria's Secret magazine ad and was able to pass herself as human much more successfully. Compared to the physical fighter "Edgar" was, Serleena preferred to keep her distance in battle and make use of Combat Tentacles to ensnare and whip her enemies with. She also is the first antagonist in the series to have some prior association with one of the heroes, in this case Agent K since several years prior to the events of the film, she came to Earth in pursuit of the light and killed a Zarthan Queen who is implied to be K's lover and the mother of his possible illegitimate child Laura Vasquez.
  • Boris "the Animal" was a cold-blooded assassin and a member of the Boglodites, a race of Planet Looters who sustained themselves by consuming the resources and species of whichever planet was in their path. While "Edgar" was wanted to feed his brethren and Serleena desired to conquer the galaxy, Boris sought revenge against K for shooting off his left arm and deploying the Arcnet forcefield that prevented his species from feeding off Earth and making them starve to extinction. Unlike Edgar and Serleena, Boris needed to do little to disguise himself as a human, albeit a brutish and unkempt-looking one with spots of his true form showing through. In terms of fighting style, Boris was a combination of Edgar's brawler and Serleena's long range attacker due to being both immensely strong and a deadly shot with the spikes he was able to project from his palm via his pet called "Weasel". Though he is an evil alien who has history with Agent K, it turns out he affected both the protagonists since he was the one who spitefully murdered J's father when K successfully deployed the Arcnet, and not killing Boris over that is what K considered the worst mistake he ever made.
• Nicky Holiday from The Great Muppet Caper serves as this to Doc Hopper from The Muppet Movie. Doc is a restauranteur who is more associated with Kermit, while Nicky is the brother of Lady Holiday, a wealthy British fashion designer, and is more associated with Miss Piggy. Doc wanted Kermit to be the mascot for his french-fried frog legs restaurant, while Nicky wanted to frame Miss Piggy for jewelry theft so he could have her arrested while he stole the baseball diamond. Doc chased Kermit halfway across the country, while Nicky stayed in London the entire time. Doc had a whole army of men working for him, including a Mad Scientist and an assassin, whereas Nicky only had three henchwomen. Finally, while Doc ran away after being scared off by a giant Animal, Nicky was defeated by Miss Piggy and ended up arrested.
• Fortress 2: Re-Entry: Warden Poe from the first film, while the director of a Hellhole Prison, is Affably Evil, has several hints of humanity when he clearly starts to fall for Karen, and is ultimately revealed to be an Artificial Human and as much a victim of the MenTel Corporation as the prisoners, with ZED as The Man Behind the Man. Warden Teller from the sequel is an ice-cold, Faux Affably Evil and fully organic man who is in no way being controlled by ZED, and is only interested in expanding his own power.
• Venom (2018) and its sequel has this going on with the human and symbiote villains in both films:
  • On the human side, the first movie features Carlton Drake, a wealthy Evilutionary Biologist who hides his true sociopathic nature behind his status as the respected CEO of the Life Foundation. He employs an army of hired guns to help him in his goals and believes the symbiote race to be the next step in human evolution, seeking to use them to end suffering on the planet with him on the top. By contrast, Cletus Kasady in the sequel is a serial killer from a lower-class background who is very much The Dreaded to the general public and only has himself, the Carnage Symbiote, and his girlfriend Shriek to rely on. Furthermore, Cletus doesn't have any of Carlton's megalomania and simply sees his symbiote as a way to cause as much chaos and death as he wishes.
  • On the symbiote side, the first movie has Riot, the leader of the symbiote race who seeks to lead his species to Earth so they can enslave and devour humanity and colonize the planet and sees Carlton Drake as a means to an end. His fighting style largely focuses on brute force attacks and generating mace-like weapons, ax blades, and elongated claws. The second movie's villain, Carnage, is Venom's "son" created when Cletus Kasady bites Eddie and ingests his symbiote-laced blood, and is purely focused on himself and his own desires. He wants to be the only symbiote on Earth so he can do whatever it wants and had no problem working with Cletus due to their shared passion for murder until growing tired of Frances' sonic powers. When in combat, he makes uses of tendrils, human-shields, and shards from his body, using every tool he can to defeat his "father".
• The killers in Knives Out and Glass Onion
  • Ransom Drysdale in Knives Out is a grandson of a millionaire detective novelist, born into privileged, who reacts to a perspective of being written out of the will and losing said lifestyle by condoning an extremely clever scheme to murder the man and frame someone else for it. Said scheme goes largely undetected and once it risks being unraveled, Ransom engages in Xanatos Speed Chess to get it back on track, proving to have a truly devious mind. Once defeated, Ransom attempts one last desperate act to take the one who uncovered the intrigue down that fails due to his own ignorance about knives, but seems impressed by clever thinking of person who foiled him.
  • Miles Bron in Glass Onion gained huge fame and fortune by riding someone else's coattails and stealing the credit for their accomplishments. When presented with a perspective of losing it all, he commits a murder so incredibly poorly thought out that it begins to fall apart near immediately and his attempts at covering it up are so ill-conceived and blunt they almost fly under Benoit Blanc's radar because he cannot believe the killer could be this dumb. When the whole thing is revealed Miles successfully destroys crucial evidence, only to be undone in a different way and suffers a Villainous Breakdown.
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day: The T-1000 is this compared to the T-800 from the first movie. Whereas the T-800 was a massive, hulking brute force steamroller that primarily used heavy guns and doesn't bother to blend in, the T-1000 is a stealthy infiltrator that looks much more normal and favors lighter sidearms or shapeshifting its arms into blades. James Cameron deliberately invoked this with his casting of the much more ordinary looking Robert Patrick opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying that if "the 800 series is a kind of human Panzer tank, then the 1000 series had to be a Porsche."

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