I actually quite liked the villains in the Winter Soldier, myself, even besides the Winter Soldier. Even though they were all minor characters or made up for the movie, and all of them lacked superpowers, I found them to be a welcome change of pace from superpowered villains and enjoyed their antics well enough.
The villains of the MCU are pretty lousy aren't they?
- Thread starter Johnny Novgorod
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Thanos has one or two scenes establishing him as the series "true final boss" or something like that, altough nothing I saw in the movie made me even remotely interested in him. As for Ronan, he's just some guy. I dunno. Reminds me of the non-character bad guy from Thor 2 but you didn't mention him for some reason.spoonybard.hahs said:
I didn't mention him because he is the true dud villain (read: I forgot about him).Johnny Novgorod said:
My issue with the villains is that apart from Loki we don't have a regular villain in a comic book costume wandering around all the time. All 3 of Iron Man's villains. Gone. Malekith. Gone. Red Skull (best villain even more so than Loki because he was a cartoon character). Gone. Abomination. Locked Up and never seen again. We finally have an anti-hero in the form of the Winter Soldier but that is really my biggest issue with all the villains so far. Loki is the only one who has an absurd costume that has gotten to stick around for more than one movie. With the Winter Soldier we now have another not hero that will stick around. Other than that I think the villains have been just fine.
Red Skull in particular will never be boring to me because how else were you going to make a good Captain America movie set in WW II? The cheese factor had to be off the charts and because Hugo Weaving is so good the Red Skull is the best villain they've had bar none.
Red Skull in particular will never be boring to me because how else were you going to make a good Captain America movie set in WW II? The cheese factor had to be off the charts and because Hugo Weaving is so good the Red Skull is the best villain they've had bar none.
And that's one the things a lot of people miss about Loki's character too. I mean hell, even in Norse mythology Loki is a trickster and a manipulator more than an actual villain (until he brings about Ragnarok but that's an entirely different topic there). Most of what I hear about Loki is how weak he is or how "hot" Tom Hiddleston is (which I really don't find him as such but) and everyone fails to comment on the master manipulator part.Imperioratorex Caprae said:
I won't be seeing GotG for a while (gotta see Cap 2 and Iron Man 3 still first because they've been out longer), but I'll probably still enjoy it (even though I know next to nothing about them comic wise and forgot they existed til they decided to announce the movie). As far as MCU villains go I'm still waiting for Fox to stop fucking with X-Men so Marvel can have it back (I know they won't until it stops making money but....) and make an actual Avengers movie with more of the Avengers actually present (and damn it, I want a Deadpool movie and I want it to be correct. None of this sewing his mouth shut bullshit and his thing with death I really want that) and their villains. MCU is doing....decently for their villains but like someone else said.....
That does tend to be the bigger problem. *shrugs* but what do I know since I only off and on pay attention to the comics.Delock said:
Is he really? Every single Avenger kicks his ass at some point in the movie. He gets maybe ONE stunt per movie and most of them don't even work out properly anyway. He only gets some trickster cred in Thor 2 as far as I'm concerned.Blow_Pop said:
I'm going to disagree with you on the Madarian. If it was any other movie, where they build up a character like that only to have that twist, then I would agree with you. However, what they did was to advertise an arch-nemesis only to pull a bait and switch. That was a serious let down.Queen Michael said:
The MCU villains have so far been weak. Fortunately, that doesn't distract from how good the Marvel movies have been. It think the reason why that they can focus more on the heroes than having the obligatory villain origins that most comic book movies have.
With the Marvel movie villians it just seems like a case of 'whoever's next in line'. The heroes are pretty much locked, but obviously the villain needs to die at the end. In one stand-alone movie this doesn't matter, but when you're making an entire series of movies, each one needing a new villain, they'll eventually start to feel disposable.
I agree that a good chunk of the MCU villains have been pretty weak. I think that the main issue with most of the villains is that they don't make it through their debut movie. Most of the super hero movies seem to have the first movie be the hero's origin, and then have sequels be the origin story for a villain while the hero deals with emotional shit. Those two factors combine into the villains getting about half a movie to make an impression before being murdered off. It also gives some reasons why Loki is able to stand out of the crowd by actually surviving long enough to get some growth.
I would argue that the best MCU villains are the ones that have never made it past their intro movie, and that if it takes more than one movie to make your villain interesting, maybe he's not that interesting at all. Hey, Hannibal Lecter showed up for a total of 16 minutes in the first movie he was in and he became an instant staple of the Best Villains Ever lists.LostCrusader said:
I'm not sure how true this is but I heard that parts of the elf guy in Thor Dark World's story were cut out to make room for Darcy and that one nobody guy. That kind of stuff really bothers me I mean I know that thanks to Whedon these movies need to be all wacky and zany but do you really have to cut out time for the villain to make room for Darcy?
I liked Justin Hammer and fail to see any way that he could have been executed better. He is Tony Stark without the cool, without the engineering know-how to back up his ego. Plus he didn't die like most of the others and we never saw his trial so he could technically come back in a supporting role offering funding to anyone who promises death to Tony et al. Amusingly, the animated Avengers made him even more of a ponce, but also a dangerously short-fused one willing to kill his own people for insults to his intelligence.
Red Skull is Red Skull. Facist-devoted maniac who makes the real Nazis look nice by comparison, and always interested in the theory behind controlling large masses of people. Again, I can't see any way he could have been done better. Maybe this points to a lack of depth in some iconic Marvel villains in the original material compared to the Distinguished Competition, but I'd rather have a dull villain than a dull hero. We want to be cheering for the hero and either laugh or growl about how much of a dumbface/bastard the villain is when their motives start to crumble in on themselves and expose them for hypocrites.
Red Skull is Red Skull. Facist-devoted maniac who makes the real Nazis look nice by comparison, and always interested in the theory behind controlling large masses of people. Again, I can't see any way he could have been done better. Maybe this points to a lack of depth in some iconic Marvel villains in the original material compared to the Distinguished Competition, but I'd rather have a dull villain than a dull hero. We want to be cheering for the hero and either laugh or growl about how much of a dumbface/bastard the villain is when their motives start to crumble in on themselves and expose them for hypocrites.
You know, I'm trying to think of solutions for this, but almost all of the major villains that I can think of belong to a different studio. Like Magneto, Doom, Galactus, Apocalypse, Dr. Octopus, the more recent Norman Osborn. Does anybody know who holds the license to Kang the Conqueror? Because without him I'm thinking the whole "Avengers" situation is in dire need of super villains. I guess after the Doctor Strange movie they can try to build up Parker Robbins. I mean, they'd have introduced the 3 sources he's currently found for magical power.
I know nothing about the comics outside of a few things I heard from my friends, and some stuff from Linkara. Personally, I prefer that the actual hero is set up, and want to follow the hero through the story. It would be nice if the villains were more developed, but the hero needs to be developed first before I care about the rest. I should want the hero to succeed, and that gives enough reason for wanting the villain to fail. I feel that some of the villains weren't that bad, red skull, winter soldier, the one from thor 2 wasn't to bad, and Loki. If they could do some tweaking, they could make things better than they are, but I don't see the villains as problematic, at least at the moment.
I totally agree and a really stand out villain is what's missing from the MCU for me.
In both The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy they didn't have enough screen time to deal with both the team dynamic in the same movie without it being bloated. I'm totally fine with Ronan the Accuser and the Chituari being disposable in favour of establishing internal conflict but the sequels can't use that excuse.
As for Thanos, by the time they get to him I hope he will have some screen time and has the potential to be more than genocidal power obsessed maniac #313. Ultron also has potential I believe to be a genuinely good villain.
Loki could and indeed should work but it really is only Tom Hiddleston making him fun because for a trickster god he's pretty poor at scheming so far. His plot to take over in Thor 1 is woefully underwhelming and so are his use of illusion abilities. That could be so much fun if they just cut lose a bit with it!
As for the rest: Mandarin was clever, Killian was generic, Whiplash was woefully underused, Red Skull was really boring, Abomination was fun but basically anti-hulk, the elf dude in Thor 2 was awful and Winter Soldier was good for the fight scenes. There are only a couple of what I would call "bad" villains but there's just nobody special yet which is a shame.
In both The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy they didn't have enough screen time to deal with both the team dynamic in the same movie without it being bloated. I'm totally fine with Ronan the Accuser and the Chituari being disposable in favour of establishing internal conflict but the sequels can't use that excuse.
As for Thanos, by the time they get to him I hope he will have some screen time and has the potential to be more than genocidal power obsessed maniac #313. Ultron also has potential I believe to be a genuinely good villain.
Loki could and indeed should work but it really is only Tom Hiddleston making him fun because for a trickster god he's pretty poor at scheming so far. His plot to take over in Thor 1 is woefully underwhelming and so are his use of illusion abilities. That could be so much fun if they just cut lose a bit with it!
As for the rest: Mandarin was clever, Killian was generic, Whiplash was woefully underused, Red Skull was really boring, Abomination was fun but basically anti-hulk, the elf dude in Thor 2 was awful and Winter Soldier was good for the fight scenes. There are only a couple of what I would call "bad" villains but there's just nobody special yet which is a shame.
I always thought this was a villain thing :/
I mean being all high and mighty thinking of everyone else as their puppets or minions or lesser beings and that being their doom, not taking shit seriously enough.
From what I remember when I watched shows as a kid, only the spidey villains (Octopus, Rhino, Shocker, Scorpio) took their nemesis seriously while everyone else had some bad guy who showed up once, got their asses kicked and that was that, never returning.
I didn't watch too many shows for long periods of time, so I could be very wrong. I remember the RedSkull always was careful not to get noticed cause he knew C.America was a pain in the arse.
I mean being all high and mighty thinking of everyone else as their puppets or minions or lesser beings and that being their doom, not taking shit seriously enough.
From what I remember when I watched shows as a kid, only the spidey villains (Octopus, Rhino, Shocker, Scorpio) took their nemesis seriously while everyone else had some bad guy who showed up once, got their asses kicked and that was that, never returning.
I didn't watch too many shows for long periods of time, so I could be very wrong. I remember the RedSkull always was careful not to get noticed cause he knew C.America was a pain in the arse.
Just like with Ronan, he knew he needed help, went to Thanos, got his own superstrength, thought no one could oppose him, blam! dead due to not being careful enough.
This is how I think most villains go and why they're boring.
This is how I think most villains go and why they're boring.