As is to be expected, DC continues to tease their Suicide Squad release with movie posters, perfectly timed celeb Instagram posts, and of course, a handful of trailers. They're really going for broke when it comes to promoting this thing and while we're hesitant and nervous about some aspects of the film, we're getting excited to see some DC characters on the big screen for the first ever. We're especially excited for the female villains. Harley Quinn has always been a fan favorite, topping lists of female comic book villains for years. Between her and our first look at Enchantress, we're getting excited to see how Margot Robbie and Cara Delevingne take on these badass female villains and make them their own.
In the meantime, we'll just have to wait and relive some of our favorite moments from our other female comic book movie villains. Sadly, there aren't many that really take the cake. Just as it took some time for female superheroes to have their day, we've been waiting for some of our favorite female villains to take their turn on the stage. But the few that we do have we adore. Their performances will be what we put Robbie and Delevingne's performances up against. You won't find any Uma Thurman Poison Ivy's on this list, just the best performances of some of our favorite actresses starring as our all time favorite female comic book movie villains.
Faora from Man of Steel
Faora, Zod's lieutenant in the 2013 Man of Steel, is a fantastic take away from an otherwise ho hum movie. Though the movie didn't fair well, as we have said time and time again, Faora has remained a fan favorite due to her brute strength and her fighting prowess. Her extensively calculated hits are precise and strong and make her a contender when up against Kal-El or Superman. In what is probably the greatest fight to take place inside of an IHOP, Faora confronts Kal-El alongside her partner from Krypton who is never named outright. She takes Kal-El on at first by herself, she appears calm and cool, hardly out of breath after every take, a real soldier, trained down to the last detail.
Her often quoted line, "The fact that you possess a sense of morality, and we do not, gives us an evolutionary advantage. And if history has proven anything"¦ It is that evolution always wins," is delivered in between hits and throwing Kal-El through buildings. In terms of combat, Faora is the better trained and stronger fighter but Kal-El ultimately wins, as he tends to, because of his developed heat vision and flight that Faora has not yet have. With Faora we see how inexperienced Kal-El truly is when it come to hand-to-hand combat. Her costuming is fantastic, making her look a warrior in head-to-black armor, her own black cape, and weaponry. She looks like a force to be reckoned with as she most certainly is. Add in the fact that she is played by a German actress (Antje Traue), with a terrifying accent, and you've got a villain that fans everywhere are begging to see again soon. A fantastic representation of our female comic book movie villains.
Talia al Ghul from Dark Knight Rises
Beautiful, cunning, deceiving, and smart– just a handful of words to describe Talia al Ghul, our female villain from Dark Knight Rises. Played by Marion Cotillard, Talia al Ghul is ally and friend to Bane played by Thomas Hardy. Their alliance strategically plans to take down Batman in a very slow and calculated way. Our favorite villains tend to be those who sneak into our heroes lives and plan to destroy them from the inside out. Talia is the perfect, if not best, example of what patience it takes to make the ultimate takedown plan. After the death of her father, Ra's al Ghul, Talia takes up his plans to destroy Gotham and does so by pretending to be a rich businesswoman by the name of Miranda Tate, going as far as joining the board of Wayne Enterprises.
Though she doesn't have any special powers, her skills of manipulation and trickery make her worthy of our list of best female comic book movie villains. In fact, she proves to be quite the match for Bruce Wayne/Batman because of their similar approaches to their end goals. They both uses their family inheritance to further their plans, disguising themselves as wealthy members of Gotham society while hiding who they truly are and what they are truly after. Her great patience, perhaps from a childhood spent in prison, is sometimes highlighted as a weakness as well, as it is ultimately what leads to her downfall. She waits too long to detonate her nuclear bomb.
Talia highlights what she does best when she tells Bruce, "You see, it’s the slow knife…the knife that takes its time. The knife…that waits years without forgetting…then slips quietly between the bones. That’s the knife…that cuts deepest.”
Mystique from X-Men
Perhaps the most well-known and easily recognized she-villain on our list is Mystique from several X-Men movies. First played by Rebecca Romijn and most recently Jennifer Lawrence, Mystique has been playing the game for a long time. With her complicated past, like many of the ladies on our list, Mystique is constantly causing problems for our mutant heroes. Over the years and over what seems like countless movies we have gotten to know the ins and outs and complications with Mystique. Though she is essentially Magneto's right hand she is frequently moving between good and bad with her motives often unclear and murky. And, like any good villain, she uses and absues those closest to her for power plays and to get what she wants.
Her shape shifting abilities allow her to take on the form of anyone and this allows her to gain access to a lot of places and gain a lot of information from unsuspecting humans and mutants alike. A firm believer in mutant rights, Mystique refuses to hide who she is. In X-Men United, when Nightcrawler asks her why she doesn't use her powers to merely blend in with normal people she responds, "Because we shouldn't have to." In the newer X-Men films we get the backstory on Mystique as a child and young woman who at first seems like she would never cross over to the bad side. Though her belief in Magneto and how she believes he can help the mutants, she ultimately joins him. One of the most fantastic female comic book movie villains due to her complicated backstory and amazing powers.
Catwoman from Batman Returns
When it comes to female comic book movie villains, where would we be without Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman? Probably depressed that all we had was Halle Berry's version and that a female villain the caliber of Catwoman deserved better. Thank god we had this version before the other. In 1992's Batman Returns, Pfeiffer took moveigoers and fans by storm with her take on the famous femme fatale. Before she is Catwoman she begins as the mousey, shy, and generally confused Selina Kyle. Though typically scatterbrained, Kyle does confront her boss Schreck on the files she finds about his proposed power plant and the issues therein. She promises not to tell but he pushes her out the window. Not the cleanest way to kill someone, but still, he thinks it works.
It would have if the former spinster cat lady was not revived by a bunch of alley cats, thus returning to us as Catwoman. Catwoman is given a fantastic storyline that involves her in a revenge plot with Shreck, allied with the disgusting Penguin famously played by Danny Devito, in a romance with Bruce Wayne, and in a romantic relationship with his alter ego, none other than Batman. Our favorite part for this kickass female comic book movie villain is when she turns down Bruce Wayne's plea for her to stop her attack on Schreck and to move in with him. She essentially tells him to screw off and using one of her last remaining lives to take out Shreck with electrocution. we know she lives on the last of her nine lives and leaves Batman to deal with his own vigilante stuff. She's strong, sexy, and totally crazy. A fan favorite for years and years.
As you can see Harley Quinn and Enchantress have a lot to live up to when Suicide Squad is released in August. But DC seems confident in the film as a whole and is really pushing it. As a result cosplay outfits are already available for Robbie's take on Harley and women and men alike are ready for some more badass, sexy women to steal the show. Female comic book movie villains have had little opportunity to shine, but with these new pushes in movies, we're hoping to see a lot more of them.
