Unlike movie genres, my opinion is literal for 'villain' in entertainment or literature. Like the definition, "
Villain (noun) a character in a story or play who opposes the hero", the term covers anyone or anything serving as an antagonist in a story for me.
American Film Institute polled "1,500 directors, actors, screenwriters, critics, historians and others" to choose 50 movie heroes and 50 movie villains for its
America's 100 Greatest Heroes & Villains. AFI categorized movie villains as:
"Characters that movie goers love to hate - and hate to love. Villains are characters whose wickedness of mind, selfishness of character and will to power are sometimes masked by beauty and nobility. Others rage unmasked. Daring the worst to gain the most, the movie villains we remember best can be horrifically evil, merely sleazy or grandiosely funny, but are usually complex, moving and tragic. For voting purposes, AFI defined a "villain" as a single character, a duo or a team of characters." (click paragraph for full website text)
Some nonhuman (appearing) acting AFI villain finalists were:
10. The Queen,
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
13. Hal 9000,
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
14. The Alien,
Alien (1979)
18. The Shark,
Jaws (1975)
27. Martians,
The War Of The Worlds (1953)
39. Cruella De Vil,
101 Dalmatians (1961)
Some of the 400 nominees not voted as Top 100 were:
Birds,
The Birds (1963)
The Blob,
The Blob (1958)
Gill-Man,
Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)
Maleficient,
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
The Predator,
Predator (1987)
The Thing,
The Thing (From Another World 1951)
And before someone asks, the answer is yes. I do see all of those Alfred Hitchcock feathered fiends as villains. Yep. There was a need for shotguns in that movie. And plenty of shells. LOTS of shells...