The DC Universe is home to some of the most well-known villains in comic book history. When making the leap from comic to the big screen in the
DC Extended Universe, certain traits will inevitably get reinterpreted. While some villains are made more sympathetic or at the very least more entertaining, others becomes outright loathsome.
- Man of Steel: General Zod has pretty sympathetic reasons for attacking Earth, even if his methods are wrong. The one character that is given no depth outside of being a prick is a rude truck driver who groped a waitress then got violent when Clark politely told him to stop. This makes it pretty easy to find the schadenfreude in Clark destroying the man's truck.
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: This film's version of Lex Luthor could be considered the patron saint of hate sinks. His mannerisms get on people's nerves, he openly mocks people who don't help him, he projects his personal issues on people who had nothing to do with them (his reason for hating Superman in this incarnation is that his worldview, shaped by being a victim of abuse by his father, is that power and benevolence can't go hand in hand), and he'll kill anyone who refuses to help him or even has a crisis of consciousness at his actions. He takes Senator Finch's "Take a bucket of piss and call it 'Granny's Peach Tea' " jab and throws in back at her in a very literal way before blowing her up to discredit Superman, and creates Doomsday to kill Superman. This makes it very cathartic in the Ultimate Edition when after Luthor smugly mocks Batman over knowledge about his secret identity as Bruce Wayne and that he pulled an Insanity Defense for his crimes, Bruce wipes the smug look off by revealing he's arranged for Luthor to be sent to Arkham Asylum.
- Suicide Squad (2016): The film has a morally ambiguous cast, but for the most part they're all given qualities that should make them likable or at least not loathsome. The Joker is a loving boyfriend this time and Harley Quinn makes the grade by merit of being Harley Quinn. Deadshot's a killer, but comes across as a loving father. El Diablo killed his family, but is genuinely remorseful. Killer Croc and Amanda Waller are too cool to hate. Captain Boomerang is the Token Evil Teammate, but is also the comic relief so he gets by as well. Enchantress and Incubus look cool but were more plot devices than characters. That leaves Hunter Griggs, the prison guard in charge of Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Diablo and Killer Croc. He treats his prisoners with utter disdain and enjoys every moment of it, with implications that he may have sexually abused Harley. Slipknot could also qualify, given that he punched a woman just for giving him lip.
- Wonder Woman (2017): General Ludendorff wants to keep the Great War going just for the thrill of it. His superiors and subordinates both object to this, only to be killed for it. Telling is that Ares, the god of war actually comes across as more reasonable than Ludendorff while still being villainous.
- Justice League (2017):
- Steppenwolf in the theatrical cut is what you get when you take away General Zod's sympathetic motivation. He wants to conquer Earth and terraform it into an unsustainable hellscape, but rather than doing so in a misguided attempt to save his dead world, Steppenwolf only conquers Earth to score points with Darkseid. He's a bully who brags to Diana about all the Amazons he killed, and like a lot of bullies he's easily humbled once Superman and Wonder Woman manage to destroy his axe, leaving him defenseless.
- He's not quite so loathsome in Zack Snyder's Justice League, with some throwaway bits of dialogue hinting that he possesses some sense of honor and genuinely believes the people of Earth might benefit from being subjected to Anti-Life. His fellow New God Desaad on the other hand is pretty repulsive in more than just looks, as he routinely rubs Steppenwolf's failures and indiscretions in his face solely to show him how low he ranks on the chain of command. When Steppenwolf is killed, Desaad gives a particularly nasty grin as he's proven right about Darkseid's chief enforcer, not caring that the people of Earth have now proven they're a credible challenge to his master.
- Aquaman (2018): King Orvax was the King of Atlantis before Arthur was born. After Arthur's mother Atlanna fled an Arranged Marriage to him, he sent Atlantean soldiers to bring her back by force. Even though she returned to Atlantis voluntarily because she knew he'd never stop chasing her, he had her sacrificed to the Trench after learning she'd had a half-Atlantean son with Tom Curry. He raised his son by her, Prince Orm, to hate and despise humans and treat the surface world as the enemy. This makes him directly responsible for both Arthur and Orm's personal issues and indirectly responsible for Orm's plan to conquer and depopulate the surface world. Since he's a Posthumous Character, however, we never get to see him get his comeuppance, unless one counts the irony of the film's ending: Atlanna turns out to be alive all along, Arthur takes the throne of Atlantis and Orm is talked out of his hatred of humans by Atlanna herself.
- SHAZAM! (2019):
- The Bryer Brothers waste no time planting themselves as such, given that they and their friends frequently beat up Freddy Freeman through out the film, who is handicapped. It's not hard to cheer when Billy Batson smashes one of their face in with Freddy's crutch, and that's only the beginning of what they go through as they get their truck smashed and go through suitcase wedgies, which they gave to Freddy, much later as well.
- Despite being the main villain of the film and willing to target children for the sake of power, Dr. Thaddeus Sivana is ultimately motivated by his childhood ostracism, and the Deadly Sins are ultimately forces of nature motivated by their respective sins. Sivana's older brother Sid and their father on the other hand aren't so lucky. They exist in the film to be purely despicable, are the reason behind Sivana’s descent to villainy, are some of the first characters in the film, and both become the cathartic targets of his rampage and the only ones the audience won't feel bad for.
- Birds of Prey (2020): Pretty much every male character in this movie only exists to be unlikable. Ironically, the few men who do show any decency or deserve any sympathy from the audience are all members of crime syndicates.
- The Big Bad Roman Sionis is a sadist, a misogynist and despite coming from a place of privilege, whines about how unfair his life was. After Harley cripples his driver, he replaces the poor guy out of a mixture of sociopathy and fear of Harley's boyfriend. For added measure, he's not above killing and maiming minors.
- His second-in-command Victor Zsasz is just as sadistic, though unlike his comic incarnation he doesn't just stop at bloodlust. He goads Sionis into publicly humiliating a woman who hadn't wronged him for kicks and in the past led the massacre on Helena's family.
- Harley's landlord Doc straight-up sold her out after hearing she was smuggling a kid with a bounty on her head. When Harley confronts him on this, he bluntly tells her he did it for the money and receives no come-uppance for his back-stabbing.
- Even law-enforcement is teeming with unlikable scumbags. Renee Montoya is the only one seen doing any work, her former partner got promoted over her and takes credit for her achievements and generally acts like a pompous prick.
- Wonder Woman 1984: Maxwell Lord is the main antagonist, but despite his wrongdoings and unbridled sense of greed we do see a sympathetic side to him in the form of his son and his own abusive father. By the end of the film he's actually more sympathetic than Barbara Minerva/Cheetah, who also manages to come across as tragic rather than loathsome. The same can not be said of Maxwell's aforementioned father or the creep that tried to rape Barbara, both of whom gave the villains their motivation to seek power at any cost.
- Just like it's predecessor, The Suicide Squad, the majority of the characters are given likable qualities in spite of moral ambiguity. However, there are still quite a few pretty despicable scumbags among the cast. In the first squad, Blackguard is an annoying prick who betrays the team to the Corto Maltese military, while The Thinker is pretty funny with all his ham, but then it's revealed that for THIRTY years, he's been experimenting, torturing, and raping Starro and the political enemies of the current regime (which includes their families, by the way). Mateo Suarez could count as well, considering he burned the aviary of his predecessor, with the birds still inside, and planned on using Starro to conquer the world.
- Peacemaker: Peacemaker's father Auggie Smith is a white supremacist leader and an infamous supervillain. Auggie abused Peacemaker throughout his childhood to train him into being an assassin who would target minorities, and he constantly blames Peacemaker for his brother Keith's death even though it was caused by Auggie forcing the two to fight each other for the amusement of him and his white supremacist buddies. He's casually racist, and relentlessly antagonizes anyone he meets who isn't white or straight in the most obnoxious manner possible while hiding behind a thin veneer of self-righteousness. It all culminates in him trying to kill his own son due to a misunderstanding all the while comparing himself to Abraham and acting like he's on a holy crusade. Even his actor described him as being a totally repugnant piece of shit.
- Black Adam (2022):
- Ishmael Gregor, who seeks the power of SABBAC. Entitled and power-hungry because of his descent from King Ahk-Ton, who also sought the powers of SABBAC, Ishmael betrays his countrymen to Intergang and works with them while they oppress the Khandaqian people. There is no line he won't cross to get what he wants, including threatening a child.
- His ancestor Ahk-Ton was also this, having put his own people into grueling labor for the Eternium he needed to make the Crown and having anyone who displayed even the slightest hint of resistance put to death. When Teth-Adam bursts into his palace to make him pay, Ahk-Ton then starts pleading for mercy he doesn't deserve even an ounce of.
- Blue Beetle (2023): Being a Non-Action Big Bad more focused on money than world domination, Victoria Kord is defined by her loathsome personality. She is a smug, power-hungry war profiteer who uses Kord Industries to shut down many local Hispanic businesses and belittles her Hispanic employees to the point of misnaming them even when corrected. She even goes as far as personally ruining her niece Jenny's life just for being Ted's daughter, and then have the gall to demand entitlement from her. Even Carapax, who nearly does all the dirty work for her, is more sympathetic due to the fact all his misery is result of her machinations.
