Neither Joy nor Anxiety are villains.

I'd say many of the best movies have no outright villains, in that they offer windows into the complexity of their characters and why they do the bad things they do.

I'm not sure that even murderous psychopaths should be regarded as pure evil, since like the rest of us, they are shaped by their genes, upbringing, and life circumstances.

A lot of the best movies explore the difficulties of trying to figure out what's good and evil, how "good" people get sucked into doing bad things, and how to grow and do better despite all the adverse pressures and damage done to us.

In lieu of a villain, it's more common to see an "antagonist" who is just a character who forces the protagonist to face something and change as a result of encountering the antagonist. It can be a very subtle process. In some films, one could even say society is the antagonist ("Taxi Driver" is one example that comes to mind).

EDIT: Another interesting film to examine is "The Big Chill." That is a film with a group protagonist and they are changed by the death of a friend who the viewers barely see, and who ha no dialogue. We only are shown the body, briefly in the opening credits (IIRC).

Your "over-generalization" is not unwelcome. This forum is an appropriate venue for discussing those kinds of ideas. However, almost any movie would fit into your definition of what I called a "villain". By that definition, for example, I wanted to mention one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, The Heiress. It was made in my birth year, 1949, and it got a Best Picture nomination. It should have won that honor; I think it is WAY better than the movie that actually won that year. Olivia de Havilland won Best Actress, and I think it is the best movie she was ever in. The "villain" in that movie is Montgomery Clift's character Morris Townsend, and he is the only character in that movie who could be called a "villain", and that is why I did not mention that movie. But by your parameters he is perhaps not truly a "villain", just an irresponsible wastrel who would not have been good as a husband for the title character. But there are movies that have NO characters who could stand as identifiable "villains" and those are the movies I intended to reference when I started this thread. I appreciate your input.

— Ron

The screenwriter invented Wilson the volleyball a companion because otherwise there could be no conflict and no dialogue. Wilson is definitely not a villain but he does provide the possibility for dialogue in implied conversations with the Hanks character.

I also think the animated film My Neighbor Totoro is totally fascinating. Not only are there no villains, but there is not really any conflict. If you study screenwriting, you are told on day one that conflict is the building block of a screenplay. It's just the sweetest movie and I haven't watched it in a long time, but although I could see unknowns and mysteries that needed to be resolved, I never saw drama that I felt rose to the level of "conflict."

Probably ever movie has something that could be described as an "antagonist", even if it is not a villain or an entity with which the protagonist fights or argues. Unless maybe you could show me a movie in which the protagonist doesn't change at all between the first and last frame of the movie.

Great topic!