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Darth Vader topped Empire’s 2018 reader poll of the greatest film villains, with the Joker and Loki in second and third place. The ranking is a fan-voted list reported on January 25, 2018—not an objective or universally official verdict on cinema’s greatest villain.
Empire’s top 20 film villains
The order below is the ranking attributed to Empire’s reader poll in contemporaneous reports by Forth 1 and Hindustan Times/ANI. Character names and films are included to make the entries easier to identify.
- Darth Vader — Star Wars
- The Joker — The Dark Knight
- Loki — Marvel films
- Hans Gruber — Die Hard
- Hannibal Lecter — The Silence of the Lambs
- Hans Landa — Inglourious Basterds
- Kylo Ren — Star Wars
- Anton Chigurh — No Country for Old Men
- Voldemort — Harry Potter films
- The Alien — Alien
- Gollum — The Lord of the Rings
- Sauron — The Lord of the Rings
- Nurse Ratched — One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- The Sheriff of Nottingham — Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
- Palpatine — Star Wars
- Norman Bates — Psycho
- Agent Smith — The Matrix
- Freddy Krueger — A Nightmare on Elm Street
- The T-1000 — Terminator 2: Judgment Day
- Michael Myers — Halloween
What the ranking says—and what it does not
The first five were Vader, the Joker, Loki, Hans Gruber, and Hannibal Lecter. The selection ranges across science fiction, crime, fantasy, horror, and thriller films; that is a description of the characters represented, not a reported poll result about genre.
Empire editor-in-chief Terri White said readers “voted in their droves” and named Vader their number one, adding that “the pull of the dark side is still strong.” The reports do not provide a vote total, electorate size, sampling method, or criteria for deciding what makes a villain “great.” The order therefore records the outcome as reported, but cannot establish how representative the voters were or whether they were judging popularity, scariness, writing, performance, or influence.
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Why Darth Vader came first
Empire writer Chris Hewitt described Vader’s mask, voice, rasping breathing, and apparent control as elements designed for “maximum malevolence.” That is Hewitt’s explanation of the character’s effect, reproduced in the poll coverage—not a separate finding that voters applied a particular scoring system.
Vader’s first place can be read as a measure of his place in popular film culture as much as a judgment of evil. A viewer might instead define “greatest” as most frightening, most consequential to a protagonist, most original, or best performed. The poll reports do not say which meaning its voters had in mind.
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How to read “officially ranked”
Here, “officially” should be understood narrowly: the list was attributed to an Empire reader poll and reported in January 2018. It is not an industry-wide award, a critics’ consensus, or a definitive ranking issued by an authority over cinema. The 2018 date also matters: this is a historical poll, not a continuously updated list of every film villain.
One report spells Anton Chigurh’s surname “Chigurgh”; the conventional spelling is Chigurh. The list above uses that spelling while preserving the reported placement.
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