Ed Ranks the Top 10 Alan Rickman Roles

And look at that damn fantastic hair!

Hey, remember when I did that Gary Oldman post? Yeah, it was good times.  You know who else was awesome? Alan Rickman! Rest in Peace, buddy. Let's now deeply consider your contributions to cinematographic history. Sorry fans of Quigley Down Under, his role as Elliott Marston doesn't quite make the cut (just kidding, there is no such thing as a fan of Quigley Down Under).

10. Alexander Dane/Dr Lazarus (Galaxy Quest)

By the sweaty ballsack of Grabthar, I actually can't stand this movie. I have no idea why people think it's entertaining. But if there is anything good about this film, it's Alan Rickman. So I'll go ahead and put this one here. Notionally, the film Truly, Madly, Deeply should be on this list somewhere and I could have put it here. But nobody has actually heard of or seen that film other than pretentious cinephiles, and I didn't want to rank a film I've never seen.

9. Colonel Brandon (Sense and Sensibility)

Remember how Ang Lee, Director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hulk actually broke into Hollywood by adapting a Jane Austen novel with Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Kate Winslet (before she started taking her top off in every role). Not really? Well, he did. And Rickman actually had second billing, above Grant and Winslet. Look, I'm not a huge fan of romantic costume dramas involving love triangles... but Alan Rickman was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in the British Academy Film Awards. And that is just like the American Academy Awards but where they spell "color" with an unnecessary "u" and call it a "lift" rather than "elevator." At the very least, Rickman playing a cheery character rather than a Machiavellian villain or darkish antihero shows that he has some range.

8. Judge Turpin (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street)

And speaking of having range... you've got to have range to do a musical, right? Well, apparently not because Alan Rickman could have really used some serious auto-tuning for this film. Still, if you ignore his awful singing, the Judge Turpin character is still a quality antagonist role as an a corrupt judicial official who has Johnny Depp banished to the hideous, monster-ridden Australia in order to get some action with his wife. That's so totally an Alan Rickman thing to do.

7. Éamon de Valera (Michael Collins)

While Liam Neeson was the star and absolutely rocked this film about the Irish Civil War,  Rickman's role as Sinn Fein president de Valera was a great one which Roger Ebert described as being played with "shifty conceit." If anyone can pull off "shifty conceit," it's Alan Rickman - and he did. People might not agree with the accuracy of the portrayal of de Valera (which Ebert, again, describes as "a weak, mannered, sniveling prima donna whose grandstanding led to decades of unnecessary bloodshed") but it was a great role regardless of how true it might have been to the man. Essentially, Rickman had to overly douche-up his role to make Collins even more obviously the hero.

6. Marvin the Paranoid Android (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

I like Douglas Adams. He was one of the wittiest writers there ever was. I like Martin Freeman. I like Mos Def. I like Zooey Deschanel (in appropriate doses, she can get annoying fast if you have too much of her as anyone who has ever seen anything she's been in should know). Something about this movie just missed though. Maybe it's because I  have fond childhood memories of the cheesy six-episode BBC 1980s adaption and I negatively compared the things that I thought the BBC version did better. This really should have been better. I think the worst part of this film was probably Sam Rockwell who was hamming up an extremely thinly-veiled George W. Bush impersonation (making the film dated within a few years) with sub-par effects for his two faces. But the best part? By far it was Rickman as Marvin the Paranoid Android, the nihilist, existentialist robot. The design of the robot costume itself was "meh," but Rickman's depressed, miserable lines were spot on.  Oh, and Rickman was only the voice. Warwick Davis was the one actually in the costume.

5. Harry (Love Actually)

As I noted with Sense and Sensibility,  I'm not a huge Rom Com fan. And holiday-based star-studded--ensemble loosely-connected-multi-narrative Rom Coms might just be the worst. We can blame Love Actually for later atrocities like Gary Marshall's Valentine's Day, New Year's Eve and Mother's Day trilogy. If the horrific curse of 2016 killing everyone including Alan Rickman didn't also snatch Garry Marshall - then we'd be seeing more of those awful films for years. But despite all that, Alan Rickman absolutely kills it with his role in this ensemble piece. Is his character largely an unlikable piece of shit who's thinking about cheating on his wife (reunited with his Sense and Sensibility cast mate Emma Thompson) with his flirty secretary and therefore ruins his own marriage, destined to be stuck in it but never happy again? Yes! But Alan Rickman can obviously pull off an unlikable douche who ruins his and his wife's life. Not quite as "muahahaha evil" as Hans Gruber, but it... again... shows some range.

4. Metatron (Dogma)

An image you surely wanted to see right now

Alan Rickman has a great voice. He honestly should have done more voicework than he did. Look, he wasn't up there with Morgan Freeman, but he was pretty close. It's therefore not surprising that Kevin Smith made the wise choice to cast Rickman as Metatron - the Voice of God. And this is a voice of God that is completely appropriate for Rickman.  Morgan Freeman could never pull of a voice for a God that is a dickless, cynical, disgruntled angel who talks about sex face and getting drunk. Oh, and the God that he is the voice for is also Alanis Morrisette. Rickman is perfectly cast in this film... a classically-trained Shakespearean actor contrasting with a bunch of stoners from New Jersey. Dogma is, by far, the best Kevin Smith film and the one with the most meaning. It's packed full of cameos and smaller supporting roles (like Rickman's) that are meaningful and effective rather than just like, "Oh hey look, another cameo," as many of his other (later) films include.

3. Severus Snape (Harry Potter Series)

He kills Dumbledore. Spoiler alert?

2. Sheriff of Nottingham (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves)

Fuck yeah! Alan Rickman is the Greatest Sheriff of Nottingham of all time and always will be. Kevin Costner is a sub-par Robin Hood who couldn't even do a British accent (as Robin Hood: Men in Tights aptly pointed out to us), but this still probably one of the most memorable versions of the Robin Hood tale. It's still much more part of the cultural zeitgeist than the more recent Russell Crowe version. The film was the second biggest film of 1991 (behind Terminator 2) and that Bryan Adams song was top-notch! But let's not kid around - I was rooting for Alan Rickman all the way in this. They will continue making Robin Hood movies for hundreds of years after we're all dead and nobody will get the Sheriff as maniacal and awesomely wretched as Rickman did.

1. Hans Gruber (Die Hard)

Shit is about to go down.

Was there any other possibility for the best Alan Rickman role than this? AFI's 2003 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains ranked Gruber as 46th greatest villain of all time, barely cracking the top 50. Anyone with common sense knows this is wrong and time will prove it. This is a list that stupidly had "Man" from Bambi as one of the greatest villains. I'm not saying he's the best of the best, but he's certainly top 5. Hans Gruber is amazing. If you're going to watch an Alan Rickman holiday movie this year, make sure it's Die Hard and not Love Actually. Gruber's motives are complex and layered, with him only feigning a role as a politically-motivated terrorist when he's actually really only out to steal money. It was a great movie twist that has been copied again and again (including by later, shittier, Die Hard films). When he runs into John McClane and pretends to be escaped hostage "Bill Clay," crying and almost pissing his pants in fear - it's amazing acting tour de force. It actually wasn;t in the script for the film, and was only added after Rickman was cast because his ability to do accents. And the fact that the audience knows he's the bad guy while Willis does not makes the scenes so effective and sinister, rather than going for a cliché "surprise" moment. The fact that we know the twist is coming makes the build up to the reveal incredible. And his death scene is obviously one of the most incredible and iconic in film history. The horrified look on Gruber's face as he falls to his death could be credited to Rickman's amazing acting skills - but in actuality when they filmed the stunt they actually dropped Rickman earlier than he was told he'd be dropped in order to get the look.  Like with the Sheriff of Nottingham, Rickman is just so charming and effective of a bad guy that you actually kind of want to root for him. Especially after you find out he's just a capitalist looking to make money. How awesome is that? And plus he kills that lame "Hans bubby, I'm your White Knight" Harry Ellis asshole. If anything, Gruber should be given a full posthumous pardon for any crimes he committed for that service to society.