2. Mark Pillow as Nuclear Man in “Superman IV: The Quest For Peace” (1987)

Of all the elements of the deeply un-fun Sidney J. Furie-directed “Superman IV,” the unfunnest of all has to be its wretched, wretched villain. In a would-be clever nod to the film’s macro theme of trying to establish peace in a world bedeviled by nuclear proliferation, this guy is born of energy flare that happens when Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman, by this stage as much on autopilot as anyone and lumbered with an awful nephew character, played by Jon Cryer in a transparent Poochie-style attempt to woo younger viewers) steals one of Superman’s hairs, attaches it to a nuclear bomb which then gets thrown into the sun. As a result he’s a supposed clone of Superman, though he looks totally different and sounds like his “father” Luthor (Hackman voiced the character too) who should possess all his powers and therefore be a worthy adversary. With one tiiiiiiny flaw: he needs the sun to live and so can be defeated by anyone clever enough to step into the shade or go inside. The film is the nadir of the Superman canon, and presumably a big slice of the reason that nearly 20 years would pass before anyone came near Supes on the big screen again.

1. Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze in “Batman & Robin” (1997)

It was the stuff ’90s nerd dreams were made of: Batman (played by the debonair George Clooney, no less), facing off against the most iconic action star in the world, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnie was playing Mr. Freeze, a villain with an appropriately tragic back story, and in true Joel Schumacher fashion, he looked spectacular, painted an icy, glittery blue and a toy-friendly suit and Mad Max-ish car. What the audience, and maybe even the future Governor of California, probably weren’t banking on, was that Schumacher and writer Akiva Goldsman had doubled down on the camp even from “Batman Forever.” The result was that Freeze’s backstory was pretty much botched, and that Arnie barely gets to have a line that isn’t some kind of terrible, terrible cold-related pun. The Austrian Oak was never exactly known for his line readings, but he has so little to work with here that even his impressive screen presence doesn’t make much of an impact. “Batman & Robin” is still, correctly, the byword for the very worst that the superhero genre can offer, and Schwarzenegger makes an appropriately awful villain. Perhaps the only redeeming feature is that he makes co-villain Uma Thurman, as Poison Ivy, look slightly less terrible in comparison.

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