Everybody likes villains! Talk about the villains you like. Any genre will do.
I'll talk about my top three. I notice they all kind of beat up/steal the power of gods, which I suppose is peculiar. But I'll handle them once in each post because each one is pretty cool and deserves to be talked about a bit. Also I am very lazy.
1. Kratos, God of War Series
I like Kratos as a villain because a lot of people think that he's a tragic hero, but he really isn't - he might be a tragic hero if he had lost. Tragic heroes don't win. Villains do. And as a villain, he functions magnificently: pressured from all sides by forces seemingly beyond his power, he rises up and takes the reins of his own destiny. No one is safe from his wrath or his judgment, not Persephone, not Ares, not Zeus, not anybody. He's a nihilist who has decided that he is unable to impress any meaning upon the world, seeing it too sick to continue existing as it does, and therefore sees it appropriate to destroy it.
The really interesting part about this is that he's out to plunge creation back into chaos and everyone is cheering for him. Wow. That's just a seriously good villain, if only because most people seem to operate off the idea that his actions are justified, either by his own torment or by the fact that the world that he's in isn't nearly as cool as the ass-whoopings that he's going to deal as he destroys it.
Who are some of your favorite villains?