8 movie villains who fell madly in love

When we watch a movie, we don’t feel empathy for the villain, because, in general, he has a constant confrontation with the protagonist, who usually steals our hearts. However, over the course of history, Hollywood has shifted the stereotypes of the “very bad” antagonist and the “very good” hero, so that villain love stories have started to gain relevance, helping us to understand the reasons a little better. that led such a character to be what he is.

O awesome.club compiled the stories of eight classic cinema villains who, against everything, risked their hearts for a love, not always reciprocal, but whose attitudes made us love them a little more or, at least, see them with different eyes.

Unlike the original story written by Bram Stoker in 1897, or the films starring Béla Lugosi (1931) or Christopher Lee (1958), in this case, the evil Count is not a cruel monster, but a lover who lost his wife, Elisabeta, in the Crusades, and sees her reflected in Mina Harker, a Victorian maiden who doesn’t know there is a vampire in love in Transylvania.

This Count who just wants to love again, and who finds himself crushed by abandonment and trapped by the tyranny of immortality, is seen in detail in Dracula by Bram Stokera film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and released in 1992. Even so, the reason that drives Dracula to kill is the love for Mina: we can see the anger directed at Jonathan Harker (Mina’s fiancé), then the submission to Renfield to bring him constant information from England (where she resides), or the hate murder of Lucy Westenra when she finds out that Mina has finally married.

The story of the Phantom of the Opera did not vary much in each adaptation, and the essence of the main characters was respected. In 19th-century Paris, Erik, a brilliant man with a deformed face, works at the opera as an assistant in each production. But the funny thing is, he uses his scientific skills and knowledge to fill the theater with deadly traps and instruments of torture that only he knows. Thus, those who approach or mock him become victims of his tricks and die.

Erik lives in the catacombs of the theater and doesn’t have a good relationship with people, as he feels tormented by the deformities of his face, which was always covered with a mask, generating much more mystery around his image. When he meets Christine, an innocent young opera singer, her whole world changes as he falls in love with her. In his eagerness to win her over, he timidly helps her in her career and protects her from those who want to harm her. She considers him a kind of mentor and feels good around her, but when Raoul appears, an extremely superficial and arrogant character, everything spirals out of control and Erik’s fury erupts.

Gastón Leroux’s original story, published in 1910, as well as its adaptations, do not end well, because Erik dies or, worse, ends up having solitude as his only companion.

During the entire saga Harry Potter, we saw Severus Snape, the Potions professor (later Defense Against the Dark Arts and finally Headmaster of Hogwarts), as a harsh, demanding and, at times, unfair man to his students, especially Harry. He torments him and speaks ill of his father, James, constantly.

But as the sequels go on, we discover that Snape’s hatred for Harry is not random. Snape and Lily (Harry’s mother) were best friends in their teens, and the young man ended up falling in love with her. However, when they entered Hogwarts, she met James Potter and was blinded by the boy’s seductive and popular image, so she completely abandoned her friendship with Snape, who was constantly teased by James and his friends.

Thus, Professor Snape welcomed Harry Potter into the school as the fruit of two people, one loved and one hated. At Albus Dumbledore’s request to protect Harry from Lord Voldemort’s plans, Snape dedicated his life to taking care of the boy, because deep down it was Lily’s legacy, whom he never stopped loving.

In the movie The Mummy (1999), as a sort of Count Dracula, the high priest Imhotep is sentenced to eternal life after killing Pharaoh Seti, the lover of his beloved, Anck-su-Namun. Disaster is unleashed when Pharaoh Seti discovers the romance between Imhotep and Anck-su-Namun, but achieves nothing but chaos upon being killed by them. Love fails because Anck-su-Namun commits suicide and Imhotep flees across the desert to Hamunaptra, the city of the dead, ready to resurrect his beloved.

In the midst of the resurrection ritual, Imhotep and his priests are captured by Pharaoh Seti’s guards, and Anck-su-Namun’s soul is sent to the underworld. Imhotep’s priests are mummified alive, and the high priest falls victim to Hom Dai’s curse: they cut out his tongue, bury him alive with a hundred scarabs, and he has to endure eternal life in agony.

Thousands of years later, Imhotep is mistakenly revived by librarian Evelyn Carnahan and Rick O’Connell. He will want to take the opportunity to resurrect his beloved and finally rule together.

The film King Kong 1933 and its subsequent adaptations place us on the mysterious Skull Island, where the reckless gorilla Kong is considered the eighth wonder of the world and worshiped by its inhabitants, revered as a god. When a US expedition alters the peace of the place and threatens the gorilla’s domain, things become too dangerous for the expeditionaries. Kong is furious, but when he meets Ann, offered in sacrifice by the island’s natives, he falls madly in love with her.

Kong is taken to the United States and there he tries to capture Ann again, but an army squad kills him on top of the iconic Empire State Building. Before dying, the gorilla releases the girl and carefully places her in a safe place to save her and prevent her from dying with him.

We all remember the evil and dark Darth Vader, villain of the movie saga Star Wars, with his black attire and dark mask that emits a loud sigh when he speaks. When it comes to achieving his goals, Vader doesn’t hesitate to remove anyone from the way, killing in cold blood with the use of the Force.

But before he became this reckless villain, Vader was Anakin Skywalker, and he grew up into a brilliant young man whose power was carefully predicted by Yoda, the Jedi Master. Anakin meets the Queen of Naboo and Senator Padmé, and they both fall in love, although they know their romance cannot continue because their careers would be threatened. Though they are forced to end their love story, Padmé becomes pregnant, while Anakin is torn between turning to the dark side or continuing his Jedi training.

Distant and suffering, Padmé decides to look for Anakin, but is intercepted by Obi-Wan Kenobi, who was looking for Darth Vader to kill him. Vader believes her lover has betrayed him and tries to strangle her, but Obi-Wan saves her so she can give birth to Leia and Luke. Finally, Padmé dies in childbirth and Vader is confined to the dark side forever, until he comes face to face with Luke and confesses that he is his father.

Davy Jones, one of the most iconic villains in Pirates of the Caribbean, is a man whose passion for the sea is beyond comprehension. His love for the waters reaches such a point that he falls in love with Calypso, the goddess of the seven seas. Against all odds, she matches him, and for a long time the relationship prospered and they were happy, but there were two obstacles that led things straight to failure: Calypso had to live like a mortal and abandon her jobs in the ocean, and beyond Furthermore, she was as fickle and untamed as the sea itself, and could not lead a quiet love life.

So Calypso proposes to Jones to command a ship called The Flying Dutchman, bewitched with her powers, to protect and shelter the dead of the sea (any man or woman who has died in the waters). Rescued souls could rest for another 100 years with an oath to Captain Jones. In return, the captain could only set foot on land once every 10 years, while Calypso was free for that time.

But the goddess did not fulfill the agreement. When Davy Jones made his first landing after ten years, Calypso was not waiting for him as they had agreed, so the man, feeling a deep pain, tore his heart with his own hands, but this only caused greater suffering because one of the powers that Calypso had bestowed on him was that of immortality. His heart kept beating outside his body, confined in a vault, and he became the cruel villain we know today.

The film Batman: The Return (1992) tells the story of Catwoman, Batman’s (at first glance) evil enemy, and once again we discover a story full of bitterness and pain. Catwoman was born Selina Kyle and, as we can see, she didn’t have a fun life, quite the opposite. She worked as a secretary to Max Shreck, a ruthless businessman, owner of several companies in Gotham City, who tried to assassinate her when the young woman discovered a macabre plan by her boss to shut the city down and monopolize the electricity business.

As a result, she gathers all the anger and frustration she has built up over the years and transforms into Catwoman. In a black leather costume, this woman will seek revenge on her boss and an entire city that has always tormented her. This is how she meets Batman and starts to develop a love-hate relationship with him, because supposedly they are opposites and work for different sides, but in reality, they are two sides of the same coin and, at a certain point, perfect soulmates.

Throughout the film, Catwoman discovers that she has a lot of resentment stored and that she is not happy with herself, which is why she cannot relate well to people and, even less, to Batman, who is as tormented or more tormented than herself. Thus, she is seen wandering the streets of Gotham City, dazed and off-kilter, understanding that her relationship with Bruce Wayne would never work out, but regretting that she didn’t even have the courage to try.

Which of these villains do you sympathize with the most? Do you know any other fictional antagonists who have lived through a tragic love story? Tell us in the comments!