The greatest movie villains IMO...
...are the villains with no redeeming qualities. Likeable villains can be fun but the cold ruthless ones you love to hate are the most effective.
shareit depends on what you're after. a villian with no relatable qualities is one sort of villain, has one sort of effect. utter alien, repellent in that respect.
a more sympathetic villain has another. one isn't better than the other. the more relatable villain might be, on the basis of its 'reachability' to the average person, more frightening. i.e. i could see myself, in similar circumstances, doing those horrible acts.
for example, bernie madoff was clearly a sociopath, but if people hadn't thrown enough money at him to get himself in the jam he was in which drove the fabrication of his scam, he wouldn't be the hall of famer evil-doer he became. his evil is both a function of his innate & acquired personality -along with- his circumstances. was he, iow, a born ogre. quite possibly not. ted bundy, probably so. some serial murderers born, some made.
we are justifiably fascinated with evil, because evil people are a threat to us, in the small sense & large. i'm looking forwrard to viewing vice, because dick cheney is a mild-mannered fellow, in the domestic conventional or personal sense, who quite unexpectedly, become a figure of great evil on the american scene. if he were a beady-eyed reptile, he never would have been let into the building. we are fascinated by such people, what makes them tick, how they get over on us.
Hans Gruber (Die Hard) and Gustavo Fring (Breaking Bad) are two very memorable villains
Alan Rickman's Sherrif of Nottingham was a really bad guy too
No redeeming qualities to speak of, just pure (and awesome) villainy