6. Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face in “Batman Forever” (1995)
Take it from someone who was nine years old at the time: the idea of recent Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones and comedy megastar Jim Carrey playing two of Batman’s most iconic foes, Two-Face and The Riddler, in a new movie was just about the most exciting thing you could ever think of. And at the time, I’m pretty sure I lost my mind over Joel Schumacher’s day-glo nightmare “Batman Forever.” But in retrospect, the film’s a highly painful experience, and that’s in part thanks to the villains. Carrey is as over-the-top as you might imagine as Edward Nygma, but at least feels like he’s at home; he’s positively minimalist next to Jones, clearly and palpably cashing a paycheck and dreading the whole thing. The character has a unique and tragic conceit in his split-personality, but the film ignores it entirely, turning Harvey Dent (played by Billy Dee Williams in the first “Batman” film) into a purple-faced, fur-suited megalomaniac. And as for the performance? Well, it’s fair to say that the actor is someone who’s at his best when he’s underplaying (see “No Country For Old Men,” “The Fugitive” and “In The Valley Of Elah”), not when he’s doing a screeching, wildly misjudged riff on his character from “JFK.” The only remarkable thing about this performance is that Schumacher had worse to unleash with his next time at Bat.
5. Julian McMahon as Doctor Doom in “Fantastic Four” (2005) and “Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer” (2007)
With the “Fantastic Four” reboot gearing up to shoot, an impressive array of actors were mentioned to play the quartet’s most famous nemesis, with Sam Riley, Eddie Redmayne and Domhnall Gleeson all linked to the gig before Toby Kebbell landed it. We won’t find out how he does until next year, but it’s a fair bet that it’s more memorable than the last man to inhabit the metal mask, Australian actor Julian McMahon, who left a very low bar to clear. The mid-00s “Fantastic Four” movies aren’t terrible so much as mediocre and forgettable, but their treatment of one of Marvel’s most iconic bad guys is one of their biggest problems. They dump much of what makes him unique (that he’s literally the king of his own country) in favor of making him a yet another bland, corporate type, which at least explains why the interchangeably handsome McMahon landed the gig. His plans are never especially clear or distinctive, and even in the slightly superior sequel, the filmmakers never nail the look, with Doom looking more like he’s from “Steel” than his Marvel heritage. Obviously it’s not the easiest task for an actor to play a megalomaniac behind a metal mask, but we can only hope that Kebbell does a better job with the new incarnation than McMahon.
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