James Cameron is back with the sequel to The Way of Water is taking audiences back to Pandora with familiar faces like Jake Sully, Neytiri, and even the villainous Colonel Quaritch, who seemingly died in the first one. Quaritch is one of many iconic villains from the Cameron oeuvre.
Cameron’s baddies range from humans to extraterrestrials to killer cyborgs. From Quaritch to various different Terminators to the xenomorphs’ queen from Aliens, Cameron’s movies are full of unforgettable villains.
8 Flying Piranhas (Piranha II: The Spawning)
On the commentary track for Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Cameron jokingly refers to his debut feature Piranha II: The Spawning as “the finest flying killer fish horror comedy ever made.” The sequel stepped up the danger of the first film’s piranhas by giving them wings.
The one drawback to the threat of the piranhas from the first movie is that as soon as the characters get out of the water, they’re safe. If the piranhas can fly, that’s no longer the case.
7 Caledon Hockley (Titanic)
The villain in the most iconic romance movies of the 1990s, is technically the iceberg that sinks the ship. But the iceberg doesn’t have any malicious intent; it’s just sitting in the ocean, minding its own business. The true antagonist of the movie is Caledon Hockley.
Cameron translates the doomed story of star-crossed lovers from Romeo and Juliet onto the decks of the Titanic, with wealthy socialite Rose falling for commoner Jack. Billy Zane gives a hilariously stuck-up performance as Caledon, Rose’s jealous, possessive, self-obsessed fiancé, who tries to murder Jack while the ship is sinking.
6 Carter Burke (Aliens)
While the main antagonistic force in Aliens is, of course, the aliens, smarmy suit Carter Burke is the human villain. Burke values money and power over human lives. The biting satire of the callous corporate elite embodied by this character is one of many things from Aliens that still hold up today.
Burke is arguably even more hateable than the aliens themselves. Ripley put it best: “You know, Burke, I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t see them f***ing each other over for a god**** percentage.”
5 Salim Abu Aziz (True Lies)
If Cameron had directed a James Bond movie, it might look something like True Lies, his underrated spy thriller about a government agent balancing his espionage work with his suburban duties as a husband and father. Like most Bond villains, the bad guy in True Lies is a cartoonish caricature of unbridled megalomaniacal evil.
Salim Abu Aziz is the leader of an extremist terrorist cell known as the “Crimson Jihad.” But he doesn’t just represent an ideological threat. By kidnapping Harry Tasker’s wife and later his daughter, he makes the conflict personal.
4 T-800 (The Terminator)
While the T-800 has been reprogrammed as a hero in all the sequels, the first the T-800 is a perfect villain. It’s an unstoppable killing machine hellbent on preventing the birth of resistance leader John Connor.
It might sound like a bad joke to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger gave his best performance as an emotionless robot, but the actor really makes this premise work with a convincing turn as a relentless cold-hearted android who shoots his way through every obstacle.
3 Colonel Miles Quaritch (Avatar)
Colonel Miles Quaritch is the stern-faced military bureaucrat intent on wiping out the local Pandoran population in Avatar. He embodies the film’s imperialist themes and the defeat of Quaritch signifies the defeat of all the other colonizing humans. Stephen Lang’s phenomenal performance breathes an R. Lee Ermey-like energy into this gruff, amoral character.
Despite dying on-screen in the first Avatar movie, Quaritch returns in the sequel, thanks the titular body-swapping technology. There could be a multi-movie redemption arc in store for this character.
2 The Queen (Aliens)
When Cameron took on the daunting task of following up Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror masterpiece, he knew he couldn’t make a better haunted house movie in space than Aliens switched genres to action. It has the same intensity as its predecessor, but it’s a much more explosive and exciting cinematic endeavor.
The sequel has many bloodthirsty monsters that Ellen Ripley is determined to vanquish, but the big bad – “The Queen” – is surprisingly sympathetic. The Queen has the same motivation as Ripley herself: she wants to protect her kids.
1 T-1000 (Terminator 2: Judgment Day)
Sarah Connor faced a sleeker, more advanced Terminator in the sequel. T2 brought back Arnold Schwarzenegger as a reprogrammed T-800 determined to protect Sarah and her son John, while Robert Patrick ed the cast as the T-1000, whose high-tech construction made up of “mimetic polyalloy” (liquid metal, created with groundbreaking CG effects) allows it to shapeshift.
Not only is the T-1000 faster, stronger, and even more durable than the T-800; it can also take the form of anybody to fool its targets. So, Sarah has her work cut out for her in her bid to vanquish Skynet the second time around.
