Betcha Can’t Guess Massachusetts’ Favorite Movie Villain

Cinema Lovers, what does it take to become an iconic movie villain? Sure, they've got to be EVIL, but it's more than that. They also have to have some other interesting traits, right?

Something that makes them compelling, possibly even more like us than we want to admit. Maybe they're even funny while at the same time committing horrible misdeeds. If they weren't interesting, they would quickly fade away.

But, no. Great movie villains hang around and continue to come back(sometimes through several sequels!) because there's more to them than being evil for evil's sake. Darth Vader is a great example. He started out as purely evil, but then we learn there's still some good in him. That makes him a much more interesting character.

Or Rutger Hauer's character Roy Batty from Blade Runner. Or Dr. Hannibal Lecter whether he's played by Anthony Hopkins, Brian Cox (Manhunter), or Mads Mikkelsen(the TV show Hannibal).

Shane Co, the country's largest privately-owned jeweler, conducted another one of their fascinating studies recently this time looking at America's favorite movie villains state by state.

For their research, they put together a list of 87 popular movie villains from both live-action and animated movies using ranked lists from numerous sources. Then, by using Google Trends, they analyzed the search data from the past 5 years for every villain(both live-action and Disney/Pixar) to determine the most-searched-for in every state.

The overall favorite for the most popular movie villain was Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight. Heath did an amazing job with his performance. You may recall Heath won a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance.

Coming in second place overall was Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, etc. You may recall Anthony Hopkins won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance. (You see a pattern here?) That's why actors love to play villains. Awards season.

The most-searched-for live-action movie villain in Massachusetts was another character that netted the actor who played him a Best Supporting Actor trophy. No Country For Old Men's Anton Chigurh as portrayed by Javier Bardem was the favorite in the Bay State.

Here's something that I found quite interesting(and a little weird) for Massachusetts. The most searched-for Disney/Pixar movie villain is also named Anton. But the last name is not Chigurh, it's Ego. That's right. Anton Ego from Pixar's Ratatouille is the Commonwealth's top choice.

Overall, it was a close race between the most-searched-for Disney/Pixar villain and the second-place finisher. Scar from Disney's The Lion King finished first taking 7 states while coming in second place(taking 6 states) was the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.

If you're a big fan of movie villainy(live-action or otherwise), take a look at the full rankings. It really is pretty fascinating. Visit Shane Co's website here for all the info.