Who can Hollywood still villainize?

It’s a question worth asking.

Every era of filmmaking has leaned on certain “safe” villains. In the ’30s and ’40s, it was Axis soldiers. The ’50s leaned on communists. The ’70s and ’80s often made street criminals and minorities the face of evil. The ’90s favored Arab terrorists. For decades, it was understood—sometimes openly, sometimes quietly—who it was okay to demonize on screen.

That map has changed.

Today’s Hollywood walks a tighter wire. The global box office matters more than ever. Audiences are more diverse, more vocal, more sensitive to stereotypes. Studios, facing both social pressure and international markets, tread carefully when choosing villains.

Who’s off the table?

Racial minorities. Audiences won’t tolerate stereotypes without critique. Arab villains, largely avoided. Muslim characters, written with care or sidestepped entirely.

LGBTQ characters are no longer cast as coded villains. Religious groups are tricky—cults or abusive leaders may be fair game, but not broad portrayals of faith.

Foreign nationals? Studios covet the Chinese market, so Chinese villains have vanished. Russians still show up, but often as rogue agents, not national stereotypes.

So who’s left?

The ultra-rich. Corrupt billionaires and tech moguls are open targets. Films like Glass Onion and series like Succession skewer the elite with relish.

Corporations and CEOs remain reliable antagonists. Avatar, Don’t Look Up, Iron Man 3—all frame corporations as engines of greed and destruction.

Nazis are a perennial fallback. No one protests their depiction. Franchises like Indiana Jones and Captain America are built on it.

Human traffickers, serial killers, and terrorists—provided they’re written as individuals, not as broad groups—remain common. Think Taken.

Corrupt government figures thrive in thrillers. Mission Impossible, Bourne, Jack Ryan, and Homeland continue to mine this ground.

Aliens, robots, and supernatural forces provide clean, uncontroversial conflict. The Terminator, A Quiet Place, Transformers, Marvel’s cosmic villains—all work here.

White supremacists and domestic extremists appear more frequently, particularly in prestige TV. BlacKkKlansman, Justified, and Law & Order: Organized Crime go there.

What’s most common now is the systemic villain. The enemy isn’t a person. It’s corruption. It’s capitalism. It’s the system.

Sometimes this works. Parasite used class tension as its engine. The Big Short exposed systemic rot with sharp teeth.

But often it breeds sameness. Another greedy CEO. Another evil algorithm. Another faceless senator.

Villains need to evolve as audiences do. The trick is keeping them human, fresh, and sharp.

Because the worst thing a villain can be isn’t offensive.

It’s boring.