Beatrix Kiddo: The Kill Bill Franchise
Nobody is badder than The Bride, a stone-cold assassin who tries to get away from it all and live happily ever after before her former boss and colleagues kill her almost-husband and leave her in a coma. When she wakes up, she methodically (and maniacally) works her way through a list of five kills, but along the way in Quentin Tarantino’s two-part saga, the body count gets much, much higher.
John Wick: The John Wick Franchise
There isn’t a member of this film series’ Russian or Italian communities in New York who doesn’t know a victim of Keanu Reeves’ John Wick. He might have the highest body count of anyone else on this list. And all because of a puppy. Do not mess with John Wick’s puppy.
King Leonidas: 300
Leonidas set the tone from the very beginning of this gore-filled ultra-violent flick. The leader of the Spartan army never shied away from a fight, and even though his final moments saw him on his knees, it wasn’t to beg for mercy, it was to die as he lived—by the sword, or, in this case, spear. If that wasn’t enough, Leonidas and his men also managed to best all of Xerxes’s forces—which far outnumbered the Spartans—in battle up until the very end.
James Bond: 007 Franchise
He’s more suave and sophisticated than brutish, but you have to be gritty to survive 24 world-saving missions over a half-century in the field, right? The Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan iterations of Bond don’t register much on the toughness scale, but Sean Connery and especially Daniel Craig (who literally laughed, naked, in the face of torturers) more than make up the difference.
Colonel Miles Quaritch: Avatar
Stephen Lang plays the bad guy in James Cameron’s 2009 space war film with relish. He’s a man who looks, talks, and carries himself like he always has a cigar in his mouth. Quaritch takes actual joy in destroying the resources of Pandora, and nobody on any planet can rival him when it comes to operating gigantic robot gunners.
Tyler Durden: Fight Club
We’re not supposed to talk about this movie, but Brad Pitt’s character is a portrait of anarchy. He’s a guy who loves violence and relishes in it. It’s his art. And while Pitt is famous for eating a lot in most of his movies, he’s as fit as any human has ever been in this one.
Ethan Hunt: The Mission: Impossible Franchise
Tom Cruise’s biggest enemy in this six-film, 25-year-old franchise is gravity, and Cruise is undefeated. He’s climbed the world’s tallest tower (with magnetic gloves!), skydived through a lightning storm, clung to the side of a flying plane, and climbed a rock face without any equipment.
Han Solo: The Star Wars Franchise
While he softened up a bit in his brief appearance in The Force Awakens, and we won’t speak of the guy’s ridiculous origin story, Han 1.0 was a total badass. He says “I know,” when his girl says she loves him. He basically saves the galaxy by dropping into Luke’s fight against the Death Star. And he shoots first! He definitely shoots first
Dr. Ryan Stone: Gravity
The opening title card of Alfonso Cuaron’s 2013 space survival flick tells us, “At 600 km above planet Earth, the temperature fluctuates between +258 and -148 degrees Fahrenheit. There is nothing to carry sound. No air pressure. No oxygen. Life in space is impossible.”
Sarah Connor: Terminator 2: Judgment Day
The transformation Linda Hamilton’s character makes between the first and second Terminator films is enough to make her the biggest badass in the series. She started as a confused and frightened woman on the run and became a pint-sized wrecking ball who won’t let anything stop her from preventing the apocalypse.
Black Widow: The Avengers Series
There are a lot of tough guys and gals in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but Scarlett Johansson’s Natalia Romanova is one of the few who kicks serious ass without any actual superpowers. Just give the girl a gun (or don’t!) and watch her take down anyone or anything in her path.
Maximus Decimus Meridius: Gladiator
“Are you not entertained?” Maximus asks a stunned-silent crowd of Roman spectators after he slays a team of much bigger and better equipped men in the arena. Incidentally, viewers of Gladiator absolutely were. Crowe won an Oscar for his work, and the flick temporarily revived the long-dead sword-and-sandals epic.
Diana Prince: The Wonder Woman Franchise
Born of a race of Greek mythological female warriors, Wonder Woman nevertheless has to fight her hardest to beat the worst evildoers. She effectively wallops the bad guys with her powers of superhuman strength, speed, and smarts.