After rewatching ABL recently, I’d have to go with Hopper (and as the majority vote proves, he is a crowd favourite). When I watched him as a kid, his scenes always scared the living daylights out of me, especially when he brings out Thumper to feed Dot to!
Played with menacing relish by Kevin Spacey, he is quite possibly the only Pixar villain who knows he’s mean, and intentionally continues being so! While the rest of the baddies in the Pixar universe may be misguided (Syndrome), obssessed (Charles Muntz), deluded (AUTO), immature (Sid), or just plain arrogant (Chick Hicks), Hopper knows that what he is doing is wrong, and yet goes about his dirty business in a very calm and rational manner (at least, till his final moments).
Like the best bullies, he torments, manipulates, and intimidates his victims into subservience, and like a good leader (albeit a very evil one), he knows how to rally his troops and instill fear of insurbodination. The “You let one ant stand up” speech and his cold-blooded stare during the ‘demonstration’ makes for one of the most chilling scenes in any Pixar movie.
He is also the only villain to my knowledge that actually kills characters on-screen, as opposed to Muntz or Syndrome’s implied murders. A dangerous dictator, ruthless ruler, and a terrible tyrant, Hopper has got be the most rotten bad guy of them all.
I just basically completely agree with everything you’ve said there, thedriveintheatre. Hopper has to be Pixar’s only truly evil villain who also seems to lack an obvious motive, and that makes him all the more scary, and yet very watchable.
If I’m honest, that’s why I didn’t really care for Hopper so much (despite his being voiced by Kevin Spacey, who is a truly fantastic bloke). In my eyes, he’s just a stock “evil” villain, with little in the way of personality, or character development. He’s just a nasty, tyrannical bully, end of story. As a result, I find him kind of underwhelming. I like villains to be 3D, and to at least hint at some kind of human side - or grasshopper, as it were. Just my opinion.
I remember feeling kind of bad for him when he died, though. Something about the angles of that sequence and those horrible bobbing baby birds left me feeling slightly queasy.
Ach. The choices were just too hard, but I went with Hopper. And I have no idea why. He’s just SCARY. And he’s a bit more mysterious in my eyes. Just WHY does he think ants are inferior? Randall and Syndrome are AWESOME villains themselves, but we KNOW why they are “villains”.
Now, if I had a choice for “favorite villain sidekick”, it would be Thumper. Hooooly cow, THUMPER
We only know why SYNDROME became a villain, because we actually got to see the pivotal scene in which he forever came to hate Supers, because of his idol letting him down. And of course, many of us here totally disagree with Randall being a “villain” at all(notice he isn’t even one of the choices, since he was really just a “henchman” of Waternoose’s and was basically totally under Waternoose’s control), we have no idea as to WHY or HOW he got to be that way. It’s too easy to simply say, “well, he was jealous of Sulley’s success”, when there was most likely much, much more to it than that. We can only speculate as to why he was so obsessed with winning and proving himself to others, but to get to that point he was at in the movie, emotionally and behaviorally, I can completely relate to and understand. Suffice it to say, though, that if Randall had ALWAYS been like that, he would NOT have been given a job at what was considered a high-risk position, so Randall’s fall from grace had to have taken place after he was hired.
As for Hopper, his animosity towards the ants(understandable, as I can’t stand them myself, since around here, “ant” almost always means “FIRE ant”)is based on the old Aesop fable, “The Ants and The Grasshopper”, in which the grasshoppers were always trying to take advantage of the hard-working ants so they could have resources without having to do the actual work to get them. Grasshoppers, aka locusts, have always traditionally been seen as bad news, destroyers of crops who simply eat, eat, eat but who don’t save up or work to get their food; they just steal it, basically. Hopper’s personality seems based on many overbearing and sadistic military leaders which have appeared in films throughout the years, especially the brutal Col. Kurtz(the late Marlon Brando)in Apocalypse Now.
I personally find it a bit odd that Randall isn’t one of the options in this poll but Emperor Zurg is (assuming it refers to the toy Zurg, and not the character he’s based upon, whom we never actually saw in either of the Toy Story films, just the Disney Channel spin-off cartoon which Pixar had little to do with). Sure, Zurg’s great and all, but as antagonists go, he doesn’t amount to very much more than a mild distraction for the gang, and becomes a good guy very quickly. He’s really more comic relief than an actual bad guy, IMO.
As for Randall, I definitely think of him as a villain, but I don’t want anyone to get upset or take offence about that - it’s just a personal opinion, and, since villains are usually what make a conflict so interesting and enjoyable in the first place, I don’t think it does them any disrespect to acknowledge them as such.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I just remembered that we do, in fact, see the character Zurg in the video game at the start of Toy Story 2. My point remains the same though.
I actually like all of them they’re all actually pretty evil, unlike some other movies I see where deep down they love puppies and kittens and rainbows. But if i had to pick a favorite, I’d have to pick Muntz (since he’s in my favorite Pixar movie, and I like that quote “Adventure is out There!”)
A little thing about Hopper. I don’t think it was that he thought ants were “inferior”. In fact, Hopper probably has a secret fear of them…which we kind of see where he demonstrates it with those uhh…acorns…or whatever those things were. That “one” is really no threat…but “all” of them are. That if the ants got it into their hands to stand together that they would be stronger than them.
That’s what I love about his character. Beneath all the tough-guy and brutal dictator appearances, he is really an insecure coward, with a hidden vulnerability. Other Pixar villains are either psychopaths, infallible, misguided, or fearless. This guy is really just a bully, albeit a very dangerous one.
There’s a [spoil]new villian[/spoil] that kinda reminds me of Doc.I think [spoil]Lotso[/spoil] is my new favorite villan.He’s just so ruthless,to the point that [spoil]he turns his back on his own minions,and calls them worthless.[/spoil]
Are you saying that [spoil]Lotso[/spoil] reminds you of Doc Hudson or do you mean some other new character? And you’re just saying by personality or something right, cause Doc’s no villain.
I think xCarsLuverx means they have something in common. Like both have an incident in their past that they can’t forget and that haunts them, causing them to prevent others to be truly happy.
But I think the similarities end there!
Yeah, that’s true. The difference I guess is that Doc was just sort of bitter but still had a good heart, [spoil]while Lotso was hardened to the point of no redemption.[/spoil]
Evil Emperor Zurg! 
But if i had to pick a favorite, I’d have to pick Muntz (since he’s in my favorite Pixar movie, and I like that quote “Adventure is out There!”)
