All comparisons between Dick Cheney and Darth Vader were rendered moot recently when George Lucas told Maureen Dowd, of The New York Times, “George Bush is Darth Vader. Cheney is the emperor.” In response to that clarification, David Edelstein wrote a piece in this week’s New York magazine in which he attempts to find another movie villain who Cheney resembles even more than any character in Star Wars. Ultimately, though, he settles on the former vice president being something of a villainous mutt: “Cheney is Palpatine with a soupçon of Sauron, a pinch of Voldemort, a dash of Mabuse, a jigger of Fu, with some Elmer Fudd and Richard Nixon folded in.”

That’s an interesting conclusion, but do we really need to soil our memories of these cinematic evildoers by likening Cheney to them, and worse, vice versa? It’s bad enough the guy has shown up in a lot of contemporary movies, both officially (W.) and unofficially. In Jim Jarmusch’s new film, The Limits of Control, which opens this week, a certain character is an obvious, albeit somewhat veiled, stand-in for Cheney. And at least seven other recent films similarly feature a character who is a dead-ringer for the old VP. We count them down, in order of most intentionally Cheney-like, below.

7. “Daniel Plainview” (Daniel Day-Lewis) in There Will Be Blood (2007)

Though set a century earlier and featuring a protagonist who looks nothing like the former VP, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film has often been jokingly said to be based as much on the life of Dick Cheney as it is based on the Upton Sinclair book Oil! While it’s possible the filmmaker indeed meant for the film to have some relevance to the Bush administration in general, calling Daniel Plainview a stand-in for Cheney is overreaching just a little bit.

6. “Chuck Raven” (Richard Dreyfuss) in Silver City (2004)

When John Sayles’ film came out five years ago, Richard Dreyfuss’ campaign manager character was viewed as a loose representation of Karl Rove, especially since Chris Cooper’s gubernatorial candidate was clearly modeled after George W. Bush. But now that Dreyfuss has portrayed Dick Cheney in Oliver Stone’s W., it’s hard not to see this character as somewhat personifying both members of the Bush administration. Also contributing to the perception of amalgamation is the fact that a later film more intently combined the two men into one character…

5. “Chief of Staff” (Willem Dafoe) in American Dreamz (2006)

In many reviews for Paul Weitz’s satire of politics and pop culture, Willem Dafoe’s character is referred to as “Vice President Sutter.” The mistake is forgivable, though, because the actor is unmistakably made up to look like Cheney more than is anyone else on this list. And the resemblance is uncanny. But technically the occupation of the character is Chief of Staff, to Dennis Quaid’s Bush-like President Stanton.

4. “Mr. Vice President” (Dan Aykroyd) in War, Inc. (2008)

He’s the vice president, and he runs a private corporation that takes over a desert country. Obviously this character is meant to be a not-so-veiled substitute for Cheney. But compared to Dafoe’s version, Dan Aykroyd hardly looks like the real deal. Also, we don’t much like relating Raymond Stantz to Dick Cheney.

3. “Vice President” (Geoffrey Pierson) in Get Smart (2008)

A dumb comedy such as this could very well have credited its President and Vice President characters directly as “President Bush” and “Vice President Cheney,” similar to how impersonations of world leaders are handled in parody movies like The Naked Gun and Hot Shots!. But despite the generic labeling of the roles, James Caan and Geoffrey Pierson are definitely intended to be Bush and Cheney, respectively. Of course, in real life the duo were much more bumbling than they are on screen here.

2. “Vice President Becker” (Kenneth Welsh) in The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Conservative critics immediately complained about the likeness between Kenneth Welsh and Cheney, accusing the makers of this global-warming-based disaster movie of intently portraying the vice president as the movie’s villain. But nobody denied this. Roland Emmerich always admitted that the character in his movie is supposed to be a stand-in for Cheney, in order to use the film partly as a criticism of the Bush administration’s environmental policies. However, in the movie, VP-turned-President Becker does end up changing his mind about global warming. Emmerich said of this plot point: “That may be the only science fiction in the movie.”

1. “Bruce Wayne/Batman” (Christian Bale) in The Dark Knight (2008)

Certainly the best-looking version of Cheney, the Caped Crusader is hardly meant to physically resemble the former vice president. Yet the character’s actions are so in tune with Cheney’s own that Christopher and Jonathan Nolan must have known they were writing an invitation for the comparison. As much as it’s upsetting to think of Cheney as a superhero, especially after shooting down all the villain analogies, there is truly no clearer unofficial portrayal than this.