Top 10 Worst Movie Dads
With Father’s Day coming up, I wanted to write an article about dads. That’s straight forward enough and I probably will put out a list of just the ‘Top 10 Movie Dads,’ but I then watched a few movies that made me want to work on this list instead. It’s pretty straight forward, just some movie dads that I don’t think are exemplary figures to their kiddos. I do want to mention that I’m generally not including fathers who are conventionally abusive (like in a real life way) because I want this to be a little more lighthearted. One dad who didn’t make the cut but needs to be mentioned is Peter McAllister (John Heard) from ‘Home Alone’ since he and his wife forgot their son at home while going on vacation, then did it again the next year, and Peter seemed mostly unbothered by it. Also the opening scene of two where Buzz is clearly antagonizing Kevin but Kevin gets in trouble really peeves me off. And as per usual, I’m keeping this to the big screen so while TV dads like Logan Roy from ‘Succession,’ Omni-Man from ‘Invincible,’ Homelander from ‘The Boys,’ Dan Scott from ‘One Tree Hill,’ & Fire Lord Ozai from ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ are all bad enough dads to earn a spot, they’ll be excluded here.
Porourangi (Cliff Curtis), ‘Whale Rider’- I usually try to start my list with one of the more popular entries. That is not the case here as this is easily the least relevant/popular father here. ‘Whale Rider’ is a 2002 New Zealand film about a young girl, Paikea (Keisha Castle-Hughes), who is overlooked by her family due to being a girl. She is raised by her grandparents, because her mother died in childbirth and her dad sucks. Her father (understandably) took the loss of Paikea’s mother & twin brother hard. But instead of stepping up for his daughter, he gave her to her parents, refused to take on the leadership of his tribe, and moved to Germany. This film is a brilliant coming-of-age story, but one thing that frustrates me about it is that Porourangi never really takes accountability/is held accountable for abandoning his daughter.
Fritz Von Erich (Holt McCallany), ‘The Iron Claw’- Please let me preface by saying that I am only referring to the character from this film, not the real life figure the character is meant to portray. I know very little about the real life Fritz and his personality, so again this is not a commentary on him. But Fritz in the movie? That guy sucks. He is stuck holding a grudge since he never achieved his personal goal of becoming a world champion. So he projects that onto his sons, is way too hard on them, and also gaslights them so hard. He claims that he never wants his sons to be wrestlers but forces the four of them into the business, which leads to the deaths of three of them. I am not saying he is directly responsible for the deaths of his sons, as they all had their own problems & demons, but his ‘suck it up’ & ‘figure it out yourself’ attitude certainly didn’t help.
Darth Vader (James Earl Jones), ‘Star Wars’- Now for the obvious one. As he is becoming Vader, Anakin Skywalker, turns on his very pregnant wife and she ends up dying in childbirth, partially due to the strain he put on her body. And at first he has no idea that his two children survived, so I’ll cut him some slack for being an absentee dad. But then he learns that they exist and are his kids (or at least that Luke is). And he finally gets the opportunity to reunite with his son & reveal their relation, so what does he do in that moment? Give his son a warm hug? Some words of encouragement. No! He slices his hand off. I’ll give Vader his credit, he redeems himself, but it really is at the last possible moment so he doesn’t get the full redemption.
Thanos (Josh Brolin), ‘Avengers: Infinity War’- Thanos is one wild dude. He decides the solution to population control is to eliminate half the population. He had the ability to literally do anything, and that’s what he went for. But on that journey to getting what he needed to enact his plan, he quite literally sacrificed one of his daughters for power. Straight up tossed her off that cliff. And his other daughter, Nebula, was never able to live up to the expectations he put on her so he would effectively torture her by replacing parts of her body with cybernetic enhancements. Stand up guy.
Ego (Kurt Russell), ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’- Thanos isn’t the only Marvel daddy to make this list. Star-Lord’s pop, Ego, makes the cut too. Ego creates children in hopes of passing on some of his powers, not because he wants someone to share it with, but because it will ultimately end in more power for himself. When his children don’t display the powers he wants them to, he kills them, resulting in the hundreds of skeletons we find on his planet. As far as we know only two of his children (Star-Lord & Mantis) survived and Ego only ever wanted to take advantage of them. And the cherry on top is that he killed Star-Lord’s mom by literally giving her cancer. Come on dude.
Denethor (John Noble), ‘Lord of the Rings’- There are some insanely frustrating & vile characters to be found in Middle-Earth, but somehow Denethor is one of the worst. The steward of Gondor and father of Boromir & Faramir, Denethor tragically loses his eldest son, Boromir. So he decides to constantly remind Faramir that he should’ve been the one to die & we see some flashbacks showing he has always acted this way to his son. Then, when Faramir seemingly dies Denethor decides to burn himself in Faramir’s funeral pyre, even though Faramir is still alive! Luckily Faramir is saved, but Denethor gets pretty crispy.
Buck ‘Ace’ Cluck (Garry Marshall), ‘Chicken Little’- A former high school baseball star & the widowed father of our titular chicken, Ace loves his son & doesn’t sniff the level of bad found on the rest of this list. But he keeps his son from being himself, is constantly embarrassed by him, & doesn’t trust him when he tells him about the sky falling. His father rarely defends him when Chicken Little is being publicly humiliated and it’s truly really sad to watch.
Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), ‘The Shining’- Jack Torrance has got to be one of the worst. After taking up a post as a caretaker of a hotel, he slowly goes mad and tries to murder his wife & son. Yeah, that’s really bad.
Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs), ‘Harry Potter’- Somehow Isaacs’ Tim Ratliff on ‘The White Lotus’ looks like a great father in comparison to his wizarding world role. Lucius Malfoy is just straight up a bad dude, being one of the top followers of Voldemort, verbally harassing people, bribing government officials, & just being a straight up jerk. And he rubs all of this off onto his son while also being a jerk to him. He forces his son to join the Death Eater ranks to help try and keep himself in Voldemort’s good graces and is spineless when his son is forced to do things way above his paygrade.
Peter Conway (Steve Pemberton), ‘Better Man’- Again, this is just a critique on the character from the film, not Robbie Williams’ real life father. In the film, Peter is already mean to his son but also abandons him to try and pursue his dream of being famous. He fails at this, but still values his non-existent fame more than his family. The worst part of it all is that his son forgives him & he is never truly held accountable for his actions, at least not in the film.
