The best ‘Indiana Jones’ villains, ranked

Image via Paramount

Now that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has swung into theaters, let’s count down the very best villains in the franchise in order from least to most memorable. We won’t be counting every single one here, mind you, so don’t expect to see the likes of more minor henchmen on this list, such as Alfred Molina’s Satipo from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I’m also choosing to exclude Ray Winstone’s George McHale from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull due to the fact that he ultimately sides with our hero by the end of the movie, despite his loyalty alternating throughout. For our list, we’re also leaving off characters from The Indiana Jones Chronicles TV show, and any board games, comic books, video games, or novelizations for concision’s sake.

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Boyd Holbrook’s Klaber needed to be included on this list due to the significant screen time he has in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but that is the only reason he even made the cut. Though I loved Holbrook in roles like James Mangold’s Logan and Netflix’s The Sandman series, his role as Klaber makes it to the bottom of our list due to a bigger problem in Dial of Destiny that represents one of its major flaws — there are simply too many superfluous characters in the movie with not enough of a compelling backstory or unique trait to them. Klaber is a neo-Nazi henchman who likes to kill college professors as flippantly as some people scratch their noses, and that’s all you really need to know.

The main antagonist in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is unfortunately one of the most forgettable aspects of the film, save for his incredible death scene in which he “chooses poorly” and transforms from a middle-aged man to a skeleton in the blink of an eye. The U.S. industrialist Walter Donovan, who aligns with the Nazis, is motivated mostly by his ambition of getting the legendary artifact, the Holy Grail. However, both his superior — Hitler himself — and his subordinate end up being way more memorable than him. Still, he deserves a place on this list for setting into motion the plot of the film, as well as the nefarious deeds he commits, such as shooting Sean Connery’s Henry Jones Sr.

To me, the Jürgen Voller character from Dial of Destiny represents the epitome of Mads Mikkelsen’s self-aware typecasting in Hollywood as a cookie-cutter villain for any major franchise. I like Mikkelsen as an actor, and I even defend his role as the zealot sorcerer in Doctor Strange, a character famously dumped on by many critics for being too generic. In the case of Voller, he is way too derivative of another far more compelling evil-doer in the franchise to rank any higher on our list. In fact, Voller reminds me very much of a video game villain-type character, rather than having the rich backstory or memorable twist on a tired trope that most Indiana Jones antagonists boast. That being said, I put Voller above Walter Donovan for this list due to Donovan himself also being derivative of previous films’ villains. However, as mustache-twirling as Voller is, at least he is a physicist — a trait that makes him a cunning foe that can match Indy’s own intellect. The backstory of him being a Nazi who has since taken up a job with NASA to help the U.S. win the space race is also an intriguing concept — at least, on paper. Look on the bright side, Mikkelsen; at least the filmmakers did not inundate your eyes with some kind of weird affliction or sparkly nonsense like in most of your past Tinseltown roles.

I may technically be cheating a bit by including Richard Young’s Garth from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on this list since he is a villain that only appears in the opening prologue scene of the movie. However, given Garth’s obvious influence on the protagonist’s character development, as we see through his interactions with River Phoenix’s young Indy, I will make an exception here. Plus, his inclusion rounds out our list to a nice and even 10 entries. What little we see of Garth seems quite compelling too since he comes across like an alternative universe version of Indy, complete with a leather jacket and the famous fedora that he gifts the young adventurer at the end of the prologue. I like this character for being at once a villain — although not one who is outright pure evil — but also kind of a role model to Indy as a fellow tomb raider. It’s a fascinating dynamic that thematically sets the stage for the father-son story that unfolds in the film with Harrison Ford’s Indy and his dad, Sean Connery’s Henry Ford Sr.

My feelings about Paul Freeman’s René Belloq as a villain has transformed to skew more positive since I first conceived of this list after a recent rewatch of Raiders of the Lost Ark. True, he is far outshined by another villain who steals every scene he’s in (we’ll get to that). However, Belloq’s rich backstory would make him a Bondian-type arch nemesis to Indy if he were the only bad guy in the movie. Belloq carries a certain sophistication to him that makes him instantly classic, even though he is sometimes dupped by more quick-witted characters, such as Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood. Like Indy, Belloq is also an archaeologist. However, Belloq is not afraid to get his hands slightly dirtier than Jones, as illustrated by him stealing our hero’s coveted Peruvian idol in the opening scene. This makes him similar to Sherlock Holmes’s Professor James Moriarty in terms of being the complete opposite counterpoint to Jones. As Belloq himself tells Indy, “I am a shadowy reflection of you.”

Even though Dr. Elsa Schneider is technically Walter Donovan’s subordinate, she is arguably a more interesting character than her boss. Both of the villains in the film are secretly Nazi spies, but she is clearly motivated by her unquenchable ambition to attain the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, without necessarily agreeing with the ideology of Hitler’s regime. What’s more, she is a seductress who has ensnared not only Indy but his father. Despite having many moral failings, we can’t help but pity Elsa at the end of her life when she values the Holy Grail more than her own mortality after falling in a crevasse in a futile attempt to grab the ancient artifact. This is a character that is not 100 percent evil, and she even helps Indy out at one point, which is what makes her a little bit more interesting than the more bland baddies that were previously mentioned on this list.

I am once again putting my thumb on the scale a little bit to include Michael Sheard’s Adolf Hitler as one of the top villains in the Indiana Jones franchise, considering he only has a brief scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. However, that one scene is so memorable that the actor’s portrayal of the totalitarian dictator has essentially become my head-canon version of the villain when it comes to pop culture portrayals. Indeed, perhaps only the original Wolfenstein 3D first-person shooter game has achieved giving Hitler such an ominous presence with such little screen time, and Sheard’s Hitler wasn’t even given a boss fight scene in a mech suit. Nevertheless, Hitler deserves a place on this list for being the overarching villain of multiple Indiana Jones installments, even if we don’t actually see him, as is the case in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Dial of Destiny.

I will admit it, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull is not my favorite movie in the franchise. The Soviet Russian villains are portrayed as a much less threatening force than the Nazis of previous movies, despite Joseph Stalin’s murderous ways exceeding Adolph Hitler’s total kill count in real life. Even so, the Oscar-winning Blanchett’s typically magnetic performance elevates the character to the point that we can hardly keep our eyes off of her whenever she is on screen. Plus, her weird obsession with unlocking the secrets to psychic abilities comes back to bite her in the butt at the end of the film in a satisfying moment of comeuppance. Her CGI-fueled death may pale in comparison to past films, but it nevertheless serves as a mind-bending Icarus-type parable about the limits of human knowledge.

Personally, I find the racial stereotyping in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to be rather off-putting, even though some — including co-star Ke Huy Quan — continue to argue today that the racism label is unfair, given how old the movie is. However, the main reason this film does not hold up to me as well as the first and third films is because of the arguably cliched archetypes it presents, which diminishes its entertainment factor. I’ve simply seen the white savior trope way too many times in movies, not to mention its one-dimensionally-written portrayal of Kate Capshaw’s Willie Scott, the epitome of a shrill damsel-in-distress trope. However, despite these drawbacks in the film, including its possible perpetuation of Western orientalism (see: Edward Said’s 1978 book of the same name), it is undeniable Mola Ram and his penchant for dark magic is absolutely burned into the collective pop culture consciousness and for good reason. A villain who can pull the still-beating heart out of one of his victims is completely bonkers, even to this day. Whether you think Temple of Doom’s writing is problematic in its own right, or simply a product of its time, there is little arguing over Mola’s menacing screen presence in the film. The villain represents the pinnacle of the horror elements of the Indiana Jones franchise, which have been largely absent for far too long.

Even though Major Arnold Ernst Toht is technically subordinate to the main villain in Raiders of the Lost Ark, he is by far the most memorable antagonist in that movie. Ronald Lacey’s malevolent performance is the main reason for this since he has such an absolutely reptilian persona as a Gestapo henchman and torturer. Not since Peter Lorre’s portrayal of a child serial killer in Fritz Lang’s 1931 classic M has an actor endowed a villain with the type of visceral slime that just oozes off the screen. The actor’s wardrobe is also iconic in every way, from the black trench coat to the round spectacles and his branded palm. It’s no wonder Dial of Destiny has clearly taken cues from the Nazi villain’s appearance for Mikkelsen’s Voller. Major Toht’s face-melting death at the end of Raiders also happens to be perhaps the most unforgettable demise in cinematic history.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is now playing at a theater near you.