The MCU Villain Problem - Full Series

so it's no secret that the MCU is going down the toilet the effects are bad and the writing redefines Rock Bottom with each new entry but there's always been one element of these films that has always been subpar even during the mcu's peak the villains [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so let's break down each one and examine what exactly went wrong we start with the Iron Monger AKA Obadiah stain to put it simply Obadiah was just good enough he started out great Jeff Bridges played him well and his Dynamic with Tony was interesting to watch unfold but the problems rise up during the climax of the film because obadai pretty much just devolves into a psycho killer his final battle with Iron Man isn't very impactful and although his suit makes sense in the context of the film it's one of the first entries into the big gray blob problem in that most Blockbuster villains even outside of Marvel usually just end up being designed as large CGI messes with muted color palettes Obadiah wasn't nearly the worst villain we'll cover having many good moments that helped make Iron Man an amazing film he simply had a subpar end that set a bad tone for the future oh yeah and there was also this other angry bald man remember him he was vaguely teased to play the future Mandarin but then he just kind of vanished after this film next up we have the Abomination who is a textbook big gray Blob why they couldn't just make him green and scaly is beyond me blonde had some okay moments as a super soldier and it was very satisfying to watch the Hulk kick him into Oblivion but like Obadiah he just swapped into a big gray psycho killer with an entirely generic and forgettable CGI slapfest finale even people who defend this film typically only refer to the earlier military fight and just kind of skip over this one Speaking of the military General Ross had a very promising start with his efforts to stop the Hulk being the biggest highlights of this film unfortunately little did we know that this movie would be the last time that General Ross and Bruce Banner ever interact for the remainder of the MCU what an absolutely horrific depressing and sickening waist Abomination came back in She-Hulk with a slightly better design but needless to say that entire show was a fat booty fart Fest so enough said about that oh yeah and I also had the tiniest of teasers for the leader but then he just kind of vanished after this film hmm back to Iron Man with two new villains first we have basically a whiplash Crimson Dynamo mashup with Ivan vanco played by Mickey Rourke and right away Mickey rourke's Botox riddled vase is kind of a tough sell for a Russian popper but to his credit he does do a good job acting alongside him is Justin hammer and together these two essentially have the power and resources to be evil versions of Tony Stark the only problem is we kind of already saw that in Iron Man 1. watching Iron Man have a second to mirror match against the big gray blob is even less fun than it was the first time it was very cool to watch Iron Man and War Machine Battle hammers drones though and Justin Hammer had the potential to be a great reoccurring threat but then he just kinda vanished after this film Whiplash could have also made a great comeback if they set him up to join the masters of evil which is basically an evil Avengers team for those who aren't familiar but that also never happened Iron Man 2's villains just take the same issues from the first film and Amplified them moving on to Thor and what's this a villain that's not a big gray blob nope just kidding but at least that thing is just a side villain plus the destroyer's design is actually pretty clean as opposed to the standard Blobby mess we usually see also his design is pretty much plucked straight out of the books so bonus points for that Loki is the true antagonist of this story and while he would get better over time his first entry is rather uninspired Tom Hiddleston doesn't give a particularly outstanding performance here more so just playing a generic sad evil brother Loki is the god of mischief and Illusions whose Powers have nearly Endless Possibilities but all that really amounts to is a couple of fake clones here and there his final battle with Thor is just some sparkling weapon clashes he isn't entirely terrible but this whole movie was just rather dull and Loki's role in it only contributes to that notion we also get a glimpse at the frost Giants a race who have a famous rivalry with the asgardians but they will pretty much vanish after this film onto Captain America the First Avenger with the best entry thus far Hugo weaving played The Red Skull very well nailing the performance and having a great design though this movie overall is mostly just okay The Red Skull was a good addition at one point he does get confusing though when he betrays Hitler and renounces any affiliation with him because from a meta perspective we want our villain to be evil right well it doesn't really get much more evil than being a Hitler loving Nazi so why not just have him keep being that also this weird bomb playing hybrid plan was very strange and full of plot holes but as a character he has an impressive villainous presence and he serves as a dangerous foil to the ever hopeful and optimistic Captain America the red skull's Cosmic Cube teleportation seemed like a great setup for future events that ultimately led to nothing significant they had a perfect opportunity to bring him back as a disguised version of Robert Redford's character that would be a very comic book thing for him to do and that would give the character a chance to get a much needed boost in depth and complexity but we'll talk about that more in a moment it was good that they set up the Winter Soldier in this film but the way they did it was rather clumsy in the books he goes out while disabling a missile while Saving Captain America and the country itself in the process in the movie he gets awkwardly bumped off a Train by a nameless goon he dangles a bit then has a hideous green screen fall that was all very needlessly goofy on a separate note it was fun to see arnim Zola function as a normal human before his inevitable robotic transformation and as a whole this movie did an outstanding job setting up villains for future films it's just a shame that the future films failed to capitalize off of that and now it's finally time for The Avengers and this one was pretty solid Tom Hiddleston comes out of his shell and brings a much greater performance as Loki he's fun cunning and conniving acting as someone you can easily love to hate his big plan was to turn the Avengers against each other but that turned out to be a foolish idea not a great plan however it's a great fault in terms of narrative because Loki's downfall was his own hubris and a lack of respect towards his enemies that was very well established earlier in the movie on the downside Loki's lack of Illusion Powers is still disappointing he performs mind control which is interesting and has a good payoff but aside from that it's just more basic clone tricks that we've already seen are you ever not going to fall for that he could be doing so much more and he could be so much more terrifying when Loki is on the attack our hero should question every aspect of reality because any element of it could turn fake at any moment Loki's powers are extremely creative and unpredictable and can and should make him very dangerous plus is far more fascinating to watch instead of watching him fight the same exact way that everyone else does and as a result Thor becomes a much more compelling hero because outside of the movies he can't just face Loki in a head-on fight he first needs to be intelligent enough to crack Loki's scheme and find holes in his plans it's very difficult to know where the real Loki is at any given moment but once Thor finally finds the real Loki he's won his encounters with Loki should play out more so like mysterious chases instead of battles assisting Loki in this film is the chatari a series of big gray goons who get taken out in the least imaginative way possible when you resort to copying The Phantom Menace you know you've done something wrong Joss Whedon even says as much in the DVD commentary essentially saying that he killed them all all at once because he simply couldn't think of anything better to do well here's some ideas have them surrender and take them to a shield super prison and use their imprisonment to set up future stories or end the battle sequence with the Avengers preparing to fight the remaining soldiers to the better end than implied vegetarian defeat off screen since it would be clear at this point that a handful of remaining runs would be no match for The Avengers or simply have them Retreat back through the portal once their Mothership gets nuked point being there are many possibilities but making these clearly organic aliens all randomly die because their ship gets blown up is a moronic design in universe and is just lazy in writing at the end we get a brief tease for Thanos serving as the first of many great steps to Hype up the first major villain of the MCU now at this point I recommend you better grab a snack and get cozy because we're about to talk about Iron Man 3 and without a doubt this film is the first major critical failure to emerge from the MCU this movie made tons of money that it did not deserve and a major reason for this disastrous outing is this film's diarrhea-induced villains I wouldn't go in there for 20 minutes for starters we have Aldrich Killian who is basically a less interesting copy of Justin Hammer whose villainous motivations pretty much just boiled down to getting upset at Tony Stark for bailing on a meeting with him because he used to be an ugly nerd then we have him Trevor aka the guy they call the Mandarin this all of this was such a depressing travesty you guys need to understand this is by far the mcu's worst villain in terms of what he used to be versus what they bastardized him into the Mandarin is the quintessential Iron Man villain he is Iron Man's Red Skull his Loki his arch nemesis he's also one of the few Iron Man foes who isn't just another guy in a suit he's an incredibly powerful magic user but also a versatile and resourceful inventor that creates many powerful machines such as Ultimo a constantly evolving series of giant robots capable of defeating Iron Man on their own even being strong enough to challenge The Avengers as a whole the Mandarin is a jack of all trades master of all even if he's completely powerless and without resources the dude is still bad enough to trade blows with Iron Man using only his bare hands [Music] we put into perspective how big of a deal this guy is within the grand scheme of the Marvel Universe I'll refer to the first Ultimate Alliance game from 2005 in which Doctor Doom conspires with all of Marvel's greatest villains to join forces and take over the universe the Mandarin was also invited to this party but he immediately got kicked out because he tried to usurp Doom's Authority when you fight all the villains in this game you defeat them when you win your fight against the Mandarin all you get is his attention then he laughs in your face and poofs Away needless to say the Mandarin is a big deal amongst big deals and the MCU actually had an extremely promising adaptation as far as the trailers would lead us to believe in Iron Man's early days he was often pitted up against Asian opponents as a reflection of America's recent Wars in Japan Korea and Vietnam by the time the film started coming out his enemies were altered to have a more Middle Eastern origin since that was a more relevant conflict in modern America and as a result the Mandarin's race was also changed though it's a bit odd that someone in the Middle East would be called The Mandarin that aside it was a reasonable change only instead of bringing back the angry bald man from earlier it was decided that and Kingsley would take up the mantle yet another reasonable change based on the trailer he seemed cold calm and Powerful he had the presence of a man that was dangerous solely based on the look in his eye and the tone of his voice you'll never see me today is the first day it was left of your life do you want an empty life or a meaningful death he came off as someone who would push Iron Man to his limits nearly being able to destroy him and all of his loved ones while sitting comfortably thousands of miles away he would serve as Tony Stark's greatest challenge forcing him to both survive without his armor and inciting him to reach his most powerful state by unleashing the iron Legion that's how the trailer seemed but what actually happened Nessie my name is Trevor Trevor Slattery Mandarin see it's not real was you just nod off okay no the lovely speed boat what are you for another lesson blah blah blah what did we do to deserve this where where's the Mandarin so as it turns out when Tony Stark finally confronts the Mandarin he ends up just being a fraud this isn't the body double it's not a prank it is the guy who presented himself as the Mandarin only he's just a useless moronic actor who is Simply Hired to play the part and nothing more Iron Man's greatest Nemesis was devolved to be nothing more than a bad joke when you think about it he was a precursor that helped mold the MCU into what it came to be today and who did they use as the main antagonist Instead The Bee villain that everybody was aware of but cared nothing about how is it better to Hype up Tony Stark's ultimate threat only to replace him with some dude who's just a knockoff of another dude who only hates dark because he dipped on their meeting in favor of getting laid this subversion makes as much sense as hyping up the iconic Predator as your villain only to immediately kill it off in favor of having yet another big gray blob let it be known that I've only seen two shame black films in my lifetime and they both made my top 10 list of most hated movies ever seen why did the Marvel higher-ups decide to make this change well to put it simply Shane black views the original Mandarin as a racist Fu manchuesque stereotype and he also felt the need to subvert expectations on the terrorist antagonist archetype let's put this into perspective you had a prominent versatile powerful and intimidating Asian villain who was so skilled and intelligent that he was considered the ultimate rival for Tony Stark but you decided to reduce him to a stereotype and figured a better solution would be to erase that prominent Asian role in favor of a boring white man and gave him aesthetically unpleasing dragon tattoos in order to bridge that Gap in what universe is this a better change you Shane black are in fact a true racist for taking one look at this guy and immediately dismissing him for his immutable traits instead of seeing all the incredible storytelling potential a character like this could bring to the table and what was it all for anyway certainly not Iron Man's ultimate test but rather some orange guy for pepper pots to slap around and make jokes out of that was really violent it's also worth noting that Aldrich Killian was meant to be the head of aim an organization that was traditionally made up of evil scientists who were constantly creating super weapons to try and rule the world with one of their best inventions was to create their own leader Modoc so that's two major villains we lost out on in favor of cringing at this guy if you're going to make a big swerve to trick the Audience by taking the story in a way that was completely unexpected you don't make the swerve a downgrade do the exact opposite could you imagine how hyped it would have been If instead the trailers made us think this film is going to be all about aim and that's all there was to it but then 30 minutes or so into the film itself the Mandarin suddenly appears out of nowhere and starts taking over and dominating everybody if the film went down like this the film's reception would be completely flipped on its head plus you could even set up aim to be a threat again in a later film as they tease the inevitable invention of Modoc later down the line Marvel knew damn well that they messed up here too since they actually responded to backlash you know back when they cared about that sort of thing they made a whole live-action short with Ben Kingsley to establish that this ass clown is not the real deal and there is in fact a legit Mandarin out there with this whole production essentially serving as an apology an apology that would be more appreciated if it were properly followed up on with that in mind we'll jump straight over to Shang Chi because this guy was softly implied to be the replacement he's certainly an upgrade but that's not saying much and he comes with his own list of problems for one Iron Man is dead now so what's the point good job idiots you established the Rival for a corpse and two he still isn't the guy he's supposed to be this interpretation is just an evil mirror version of Shang Chi he doesn't have the versatility intimidation and ruthlessness required he is no more relevant to the MCU than Whiplash so they're over two on what should be an easy slam dunk that about covers Iron Man 3 but the pain train is still full steam ahead as 2013 was a rough year for Marvel next up is Thor the Dark World can you remember the villain go on name him if you guessed malekith you earned a high five okay now guess the other villain do you even recall a second villain existing it's curse how could anyone forget curse Jokes Aside it's pretty obvious what went wrong here he is a quintessential big gray blob this is what he looks like in the comics all kinds of colorful and not gray depending on the story he has organic armor that is a living part of his body with his best attribute being that he's nearly indestructible you could do so much to creatively bring Living Armor to the big screen but if it's not gray and boring Kevin wants nothing to do with it speaking of gray and boring malekith his personality is as colorful as everything else about him this is what he looked like in the books not quite the same it's possible that they thought malakith had a personality that was too similar to Loki's so they switched it up but guys anything is better than nothing and speaking of Loki he begins to make a journey towards redemption in this film that is a stark contrast to his comic self as comic Loki is pretty much pure evil through and through though his actions in this film could still be in character if followed up upon properly which isn't what happened but what I mean is Loki is a liar and a schemer as a reader you're taught that everything he he does is a trick and you have to try and read past his lies that is what we see in this film Loki pretends to change so he could fake a heroic death and sneak his way into ruling Asgard that is very on brand unfortunately Ragnarok completely fumbles the pass and just keeps him on this heroic path as if it wasn't a trick at all Loki's best Edge used to be that you could never tell what he was truly thinking in these films he pretty much lays out all his thoughts and emotions on a silver platter who wants unique characters with standout qualities anyway the people want basic pitches at all talk and act like they're the same person it doesn't help that he still never takes full advantage of his powers he could do so many cool things in this fight scene but the empty brained boobs behind the camera decided that knife was the best that they could come up with all in all this film as a whole was just severely lacking in imagination and its villains were no exception on to the Winter Soldier and this one actually wasn't too bad the Winter Soldier himself was very well done and stands out as having some of the best fight scenes in the entire MCU he's fast lethal and very dangerous getting a lot of results during his time on screen well done for him not too many complaints over here he is without color but it is Comic accurate and it does fit his character so we'll give him a pass the other villains in this film are not as praiseworthy Robert Redford's character is okay at best but there was a severely missed opportunity to use him as a vessel to bring back the Red Skull it doesn't matter if you need to recast him the story is begging to make this reveal it has Comic precedence it was perfectly set up and had all the right side villains perfectly in place as well anytime he was on screen I was just itching to see that wrinkly face get peeled right off but for reasons Beyond me it just never happened he was just an average slightly evil old man the setup for red skull's return ultimately amounted to nothing as he just turned out to be this random guy at this random Place who resembles his old self in almost no way at all and doesn't actually do anything super cool guys thanks for that the First Avenger was an okay film all around I don't know how many of you remember but Captain America was a late bloomer within the MCU and didn't really hit his stride until winter soldier came around this film is where he truly elevated and shined if the Red Skull had been brought back and was able to evolve and Elevate in the same way that Steve Rogers was able to then we could be looking back at the feud between these two as being one of the greatest rivalries within the franchise also in this film is crossbones traditionally a top mercenary for Red Skull who was just fine in this movie though he only had a smaller role as he was being set up for civil war there's yet another villain in this movie though and he is the greatest disappointment of all and he comes in the form of Arnhem Zola Dr Zolo is mainly known as a man living in a robot body who also served as hydra's top scientist often creating bizarre weapons and experiments to conquer the world with in the movie he basically gets a glorified Cameo where he gives a very blatant Exposition dump gets punched then blows himself up for no good reason and for no good payoff the setup in the first film was perfect but it resulted in pretty much nothing oh yeah and batroc the leaper was there too but batroc is mostly just treated as a joke villain so to cast him with George Saint Pierre for a short well-made fight scene is a pretty solid use for this character so no complaints for batroc now let's take a moment to pause and reflect on how things are going up to this point by now Marvel is very much a mainstream brand having produced many blockbuster hits they have established a great roster of Heroes so why can't they seem to get the villains right we talked about big gray blobs a decent amount but let's walk through why that's such an issue aside from the obvious ugly nature of it repeating the same design over and over creates a sense of irrelevance without saying it out loud Marvel's basically telling the audience that these guys don't matter and are basically only there to be punching bags with one being just as interchangeable as the other why should we bother to distinguish who is who if they all look and act the same anyway when you give each villain their own distinct color and personality you are naturally forced to be more invested in said villain and in turn the audience will pay more attention to them and perceive them as a more legitimate threat it should also be noted that at this point in the MCU the audience has become very comfortable knowing that the heroes will always win in the end and it should have been the exact opposite phase one is largely excusable because that was the time to get all our main Heroes established but by Phase 2 we know the heroes well enough so now it's time to set up more severe threats for them space meaning the heroes shouldn't always win commit to Loki taking over Asgard have the Red Skull take over Shield introduce the leader to take the Hulk out of the picture give us the real Mandarin and make Iron Man 3 The Empire Strikes Back of the MCU get up [Music] when you have prominent reoccurring heroes in all your films the best way to counter them is by having prominent reoccurring villains we know the MCU is a long-term plan so with that in mind it's okay to not let the heroes come out on top every time we'll discuss more of what that looks like later on but what that is not is introducing classic enemies only to immediately kill them off or setting up characters to be future threats only to ignore or forget about them after one film or placing a villain within your film simply because one needs to be there instead of taking advantage of the mcu's potential and using your antagonist to expand upon long-term storytelling with large setups and payoffs years in the making in the majority of my Marvel videos you'll see me compare the films and shows to the comics often faulting the films for deviating from them when I do this I'm not simply suggesting that something is bad because it Strays from The Source but rather I'm comparing and contrasting two interpretations of the same story if the comics tell the story better I will fault the film for not reaching its level of quality which tends to happen a lot with the MCU if the film tells a better story than the comic which very rarely happens then I will praise the film for its over rated quality if the movies deviate without necessarily being better or worse then I will make that distinction as well point being the main reason that I've refer to the comic so often is because they usually contain far better stories and Concepts than what I presented to us in the films and it is a goal of mine to let everyone know what they're missing out on in hopes that people will raise their standards and push Marvel to make better movies also it seems I've created some confusion when I talked about the angry bald man from Iron Man 1. as several comments have mentioned that he was shot off screen and presumably killed so he would have no way of returning for a later film so I would like to set the record straight first off an off-screen death in a superhero film is basically just a fancy way of saying see you later and I wasn't necessarily suggesting that he was for sure going to return as the Mandarin rather I was suggesting that the pieces were in place had they wanted to go down that road the name of his group The Ten Rings is an obvious reference to the 10 magical rings that the Mandarin uses to fuel his great power they also give him this evil ass scar so how can you not expect some big Sinister things from this guy but regardless they wanted to go with Ben Kingsley instead and I fully endorsed that being a better change had they played it straight I only brought up Baldi to hammer down the point that they could have built up their villains over multiple films but lacked the foresight to do so so I hope that clears things up lastly I mentioned what malekith used to look like in the books but I failed to mention what he did this guy is basically Marvel Starscream in the sense that he's a villain who's hated by both Heroes and other villains alike and despite being killed over and over again he always manages to somehow keep coming back with very schemes he's gotten on the bad side of pretty much everybody from Carnage to curse to Cable it could have been fun to see this Arbiter of chaos constantly popping up and interfering with conflicts that he would normally have no business being a part of it's rare to see villain versus villain encounters so his presence could be a fun shake-up you know instead of being a forgettable void now with that all out of the way let's get moving forward that brings us happily along to Guardians of the Galaxy this one is a little complicated let's start with Ronan the Accuser he's not a Big Blob but he sure has a lot of gray Ronin is decently used within this film as his cold and stray personality plays well Against the Wild and unorthodox Guardians however in the grander scheme of the MCU Ronan doesn't really stand doubt and hasn't really left much of an impact in other words he's just kind of basic and forgettable though not as forgettable as most other entries it's not that he necessarily needs a flamboyant look and personality to stand out but his failings more so come from the fact that he doesn't really do anything particularly interesting most of his scenes just include him doing generic villain stuff and while that can sometimes be a good thing when placed in the right context it does leave a little something to be desired plus would it be so bad to just brighten up the green a little it's hard to tell where his costume ends and the void of space begins we also have korrath in this film As A Minor Threat who in the comics he's a colorful alien in the movie he's just kind of an abnormally normal looking dude on remarkable very forgettable on the plus side nebula was also introduced in this film and she is one of the few standout exceptions she has a great design she has a sympathetic Edge wrapped in a hard exterior and Karen Gilling gives her a very memorable performance she becomes a hero eventually but her journey is a very subtle and natural progression that is a treat to watch unfold over the course of multiple films nebula was one of the few good ones it's just a shame that she got robbed have a great ending but that's a discussion for a future date it's also interesting that Guardians volume 1 introduced The Collector as well originally a member of a near Immortal species that also includes the Grand Master and we'll get to him soon enough The Collector was someone who would search the universe to you guessed it collect various species in order to ensure that life would go on after an ominous impending apocalypse he would often clash with Marvel's heroes when he would try to collect one of them or for other similar reasons such as having portions of his collection managing to get set loose his great collection would give him access to a nearly Limitless array of powerful weapons and armors that he would use to conduct his Antics the movie seemed to maintain his collecting but more so treated it like a hobby with no greater purpose and made The Collector himself just kind of a random guy as opposed to being a member of a very powerful species traditionally a clash between him and Thanos would have been a big deal but in the movies it's so irrelevant that it happens off screen next up is Avengers Age of Ultron and oh boy this is another one that's going to take a while before we can even talk about the main man we need to discuss Baron strucker why was he even here when the Red Skull would go out of commission Baron strucker would take his place as the head of Hydra and would use a life-draining gauntlet to maintain his youth over the decades he is used similarly in the film just kidding he literally does nothing of value honestly what was the point of having him there they got him all hyped up in the last post-credits scene only to just make a joke out of him when it was his time to shine the only reason he exists is to be a vessel to introduce Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch strucker isn't an A-list villain or anything so it isn't a major loss it's just frustrating because the MCU continuously does nothing with their villains when they could have done something they put too much emphasis on being funny and subversive and forget to add stakes and investment a potential worthwhile threat got completely wasted but it's fine because a couple people chuckled when he got beat up right now speaking of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver these two simply do not belong in this story and all they do is congest it it seems like they were only forced into this film because Fox was also wanting to use Quicksilver around the same time for days of future past but let it be known that the MCU Quicksilver was a serious step down from the now iconic X-Men Quicksilver it's not that these two were poorly Scarlet witch in particular got a decent introduction but the problem is that this film has a lot of characters to balance out and these two just get in the way of that the ones who suffer the most from this congestion are Ultron himself and especially vision for those who don't know Ultron originally created Vision to essentially be his right-hand man being the guy who would do all his dirty work he starts out as being Pure Evil and a major threat for The Avengers But as time goes on he begins to learn empathy and starts to see the good that Humanity has to offer which leads him to eventually betray Ultron and switch sides in the film we see nothing of vision until the way end where they jam-pack his introduction and position on the team right before the finale and it couldn't be a Messier intro we don't know anything about this guy he seems to have a deep understanding of the world and a pre-formed immoral Constitution yet he also seems to struggle with things like cooking and social interaction so where does his knowledge base start and end we reconfigured Jarvis's Matrix to create something new I'm not Ultron I am not Jarvis I am okay they also never explain his complex powers for you movie only fans did you know that his main powers to control his density he's able to fly in Phase through objects by making his density very light and he becomes strong and durable by increasing his density increasing density current weight 500 tons we don't get to see that in the movies and we don't really get much depth out of vision in general we don't get to see how Vision Comes to Love Humanity he just literally comes out of the box thinking that way with an ambiguous explanation as to why I am on the side of life Ultron isn't okay the MCU writers mainly just treat him as a static good guy who is as powerful or weak or as smart or as dumb as they need him to be if it were up to me I would cut out Quicksilver and Scarlet witch from this film entirely and introduce them at a later date so we can spend more time developing vision and Ultron as characters at the very least they could have introduced Vision early on as a villain who works alongside Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch and then have them all decide to switch teams together at the end while also developing the early stages of the romance in the process Ultron working alongside these two is an odd paradoxical mix up anyway ultron's whole MO is being anti-humanity and Desiring the extinction of the human race so to see him working alongside humans right out the gate then like getting sad when they leave is a very bizarre change that makes for an awkward story ultron's portrayal was in fact a very bizarre overall the nihilistic sarcastic subversive writing style of Joss Whedon was not a good fit for a more Primal story about the good of humanity in a fight for its survival we didn't can't seem to write a character that appeals to the good of humanity because he doesn't see it himself are doomed a yes and he can't write a straight cold killer because traditional archetypes are not his style instead he tries to make Ultron this LOL so Random funny guy to try and mirror rdj's Iron Man smaller people children lost the word there while it's appreciated to make an attempt to elevate this character and bring something new the execution just wasn't there unfortunately this new spin on the character means writing him the same exact way that Joss writes everyone else I'm glad you asked that because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan and as long as there is life in my breast I am I'm running out of things to say are you ready what's worse is that he has a terrible design being yet another big gray blob Ultron traditionally has an ever-evolving body due to the constant upgrades that he gives himself though his iconic face always remains relatively the same for the film there was a lot of room for creative freedom in that regard but they went with an over-designed look with way too many moving parts that when combined became messy and unappealing to look at that extends to his face as well which was a major blunder it seems that an attempt was made to make Ultron more expressive and relatable but like his relationship with the twins this design Choice clashes with its character's style this villain is anti-humanity the last thing he should be is expressive and human-like there is a good story but you could hit by using the dramatic irony of giving a killer robot human-like desires and faults but the point of that is that it needs to be ironic play him straight make him cold disconnected and ruthless but then slap some small cracks into his foundation a glimmer of empathy here a double standard there be subtle about it and slowly let it build up to his downfall example Ultron is modeled after Hank bim's brain so as a result he'll have a soft spot for the wasp and this will give him the subconscious desire to create his own wasp his low-key desire for Love Will contradict his motives and his desire to wipe out Humanity will become hypocritical then this broken logic will be noticed by vision and give him a bigger push towards switching sides humans are so horrible and imperfect then why are you acting just like one look at what you're doing you're making yourself a girlfriend you don't even see it do you you're becoming just like us the movie played with the idea of giving Ultron human-like faults but with no subtlety whatsoever to the point where he doesn't even act like a machine at all they had a unique concept sitting right in front of them but they scrapped it in favor of being mundane this is not a unique spin on the character this is just a stock Joss Whedon villain not to mention this design simply doesn't look good it's a clear downgrade to his intimidating classic look the minions shouldn't look scarier than the main boss the Age of Ultron film as a whole is packed full of problems so much so that I definitely want to make a dedicated breakdown to the entire thing at some point but for the sake of this villain discussion it's worth mentioning that Ultron simply does not fit well in this stage of the mcu's development this is a Thanos level threat yet he's been utilized as a stepping stone to hold our attention while we wait for Thanos to be built up and just to clarify I'm not making that claim based on power level but more so on popularity and depth of Storytelling to only use Ultron for one film with a botched congested adaptation is a serious waste and it doesn't do enough to add to the longer ongoing story Avengers 1 did well in that regard using Loki as an underling of Thanos and giving us a taste of what thanos's army has to offer it's a good way to build up things to come while still being an isolated story Ultron doesn't really offer anything to the infinity Saga Vision has a stone and we get new characters but the main villain himself is just kind of irrelevant here a better route to go would be to feature a villain who is more closely tied to Thanos and one that would raise the stakes for his arrival as far as Ultron goes he is big enough and has a diverse enough array of stories to have a dedicated Saga all to himself there is a lot more to say here including how the title of the film is taken from a comic with a wildly different story but like I said earlier I'll save the remainder of my criticisms for their own dedicated video so let's move on for now onward to Ant-Man featuring The Yellow Jacket we've already talked about this guy a bit recently but now let's go a bit more in depth in the comics the yellow jacket was an alternate super Persona Hank pin donned after undergoing personality changes and passing on the Ant-Man mantle to Scott Lang as yellowjacket pim's power set included a size changing gun the ability to fly and the ability to grow amongst other things obviously in the movie yellowjacket is completely different his identity is assumed by Darren cross who is essentially a less charismatic Bargain Bin John Bernthal his costume is a pudgy mess of yellow and black splotches and his abilities basically make him an evil Ant-Man with shoulder lasers and with his introduction comes more of the same standard issues Darren is incredibly vanilla he has a stock generic personality and he's just a standard mirror match that doesn't offer much worth remembering aside from getting hit in funny ways we'll come back to the problem with mirror matches in a moment but for now let's move on to Civil War some of you might think there might not be much to say here since this movie is pretty good and it's just Heroes fighting Heroes it's false no way not this time absolutely not this movie is one of the worst offenders there is some good here though so let's cover that first in this film we get a prime example of why you shouldn't make jokes out of your villains and we see the benefits of taking them seriously the Winter Soldier had a near perfect debut in his titular film they made it very clear that this guy was fast dangerous and would take our heroes out if they didn't give it their all they made him look like a badass and now as a result the Black Panther gets to look like an Uber badass with how deadly he looks when he's pursuing this guy he makes the world's most experienced assassin fear for his life you make your Heroes look good when you make your villains look good alright now on to the bad stuff I think I look pretty good so crossbones came back and it seems the MCU is making a trend out of wiping Captain America's villains in the first scene of the movie crossbones had a good setup in Winter Soldier and has a relatively good design in Civil War except for when they give him these doofy Rock Em sock'em puncho gloves for some reason it seems like they were trying to beef him up so he could be a match for Captain America but these gloves are just silly looking a normal knife would have been more effective here crossbones is used in this film as a replacement for Nitro Nitro is a powerful villain who has the ability to make himself explode in the comic he escaped prison with several other villains and went into hiding in a small suburban Town however their whereabouts were discovered by a bunch of rookie superheroes who ambushed them with a camera crew to try and make a name for themselves this is how it played out somebody snagged Nitro he's rabbiting don't worry I'm on it on your feed Nitro and don't bother trying any of your stupid exploding tricks oh baby don't you even know you're playing with the big boys now and then everybody died it's a powerful moment because these inexperienced Heroes provoke a villain to attack when he otherwise wouldn't have and a city got wiped out as a result of their hubris and desire for fame and thereby creating a good argument for superhero registration the movie makes an attempt at a similar scene but it's less effective because crossbones was the aggressor here and innocent lives are already in danger these Heroes were just responding appropriately then when crossbones tries to blow himself up Scarlet Witch does do the right thing and saves all the people around her but her fault comes in because she wasn't able to save absolutely everybody it's a classic case of having your cake and eating it too because the writers want their good guys to be good but they also need a reason for registration to exist and they want Scarlet Witch to be at fault while still being innocent at the same time it does just enough to get the point across of the story but by doing it this way the narrative becomes way more contrived than it needs to be in the comic the heroes were undoubtedly in the wrong and they were acting in an extremely irresponsible manner with more severe consequences and a far bigger Kaboom and would you like to know what crossbones did in the Civil War comic instead spoiler alert he killed Captain America so this is all a bit of a step down if you ask me General Ross returns in this film or I guess secretary Ross now the Secretary of State his role has basically been reduced to a glorified Cameo as he only exists introduce the heroes to the sokovia Accords this is the best he gets to do since the Hulk isn't allowed to be relevant anymore but what's even more disappointing here is that Ross is being used as a tepid replacement for Maria hill now this may come as a shock for you movie only fans but comic Maria Hill is just the worst she is a villain masquerading as a good guy during the time of a comic Civil War Nick Fury is out of commission so she takes over as director of shield and enforces superhero registration with an iron fist treating any Heroes that resist registration as being just as reprehensible as the villains that they take down she's a real smug prick about it too this antagonistic role is subtly set up in the first Avengers as Hill would constantly question Fury and there is even a deleted scene where she fully disapproved of the Avengers altogether you've filed several reports criticizing the director Fiori's actions since you joined Shield because he's Reckless we're at War and he thinks about superheroes however that was all scrapped in favor of what her being sarcastic gun shooty girl number 16 and doing absolutely nothing of relevance for the entirety of the MCU what a revolutionary change I love it when they remove a character's standout qualities so they can all just talk and act like they're all the same person you want superhero fatigue this is how you get superhero fatigue then we have Baron Zemo and like the Mandarin this one is yet another disappointingly tragic bastardization he had the potential to be one of the mcu's most iconic villains but like all the others they degraded him into yet another forgettable nobody in the comics there is a long bloodline of Baron zemos but two stand out as the most significant Heinrich who fought against Captain America in the 40s and the one we're here to talk about the most his son Helmut who fights Against The Avengers in the Modern Age side note the First Avenger quickly Montage through Captain America's entire war effort to skip straight to the end which seemed unfortunate at the time but it also seemed like a stroke of Genius as far as long-term storytelling goes because that would give them the ability to use flashbacks to reference other Captain America villains during World War II who had not been casted yet until later films such as strucker and Heinrich Zemo it's just too bad that the MCU failed to realize that they created this opportunity for themselves and never capitalized off of it that or they simply didn't care enough to connect those dots unlike Red Skull who was more of an evil mirror of Captain America Zemo is more so his rival in that like Captain America he is able to accomplish great things despite only being a relatively normal human he does this by being smart enough and imposing enough to persuade powerful people to his side even if those measures are deceptive and he's ballsy enough to order around Gods and Monsters alike essentially forming his own evil Avengers team you may call me master now kneel before me are you mad mortal Thor kneels before no one [Music] as I said kneel before your masters despite lacking power He makes himself important by having the knowledge and the plans that allow other villains to find success where they otherwise would not have alone and depending on the story he'll stand on his own by finding various weapons or power-ups to give himself The Edge on top of all that his design is very aesthetically pleasing just looking at all this amazing artwork makes you wonder how great he could have looked on the big screen had the MCU higher ups decided they wanted to put the effort in the casting was on point at least you can't go wrong with the Tarantino guy they had the right idea with him being a normal man with big Ambitions however they went too far and made him too normal they tried too hard to make him empathetic and relatable to the point where he becomes a boring fart that puts you to sleep whenever he's on screen he's not intimidating and he's certainly not dangerous his comic cell forms multiple super teams that rival The Avengers this guy looks like he'd struggled to make his dog go potty outside they bring him back in Falcon and Winter Soldier with an attempt to make more like his old self but yeah there were a lot of things they could have done to make things right but this was not one of them they would rather make their jokes and have him dance around like a fool and make a real character they gave him something that resembles his iconic purple mask but it looks like [ __ ] so I don't know why they even bothered if they're going to be that low effort about it why is Deadpool the only movie that knows how to make a good looking mask oh yeah and Captain America's gone now so there's really no point too little too late Baron Zemo could have been one of the all-time great movie villains instead we get this sad Pudge who dances around like a donkey he and the other villains are big brown stains in an otherwise solid movie and you wish to know why I lead because I am better than you I really think I'm in value shut up after Civil War we have doctor strange and this one is perplexing the main villain is casilius casillius is a rather obscure comic villain just being a servant for Baron mordo however in this film casilius is somewhat upgraded to take the place of Baron mordo as an evil mirror version of Doctor Strange that's all well and good except Baron mordo himself is also in this film and undergoes an arc that leads him to obtain a similar mindset as casilius then mortal goes on to do absolutely nothing but then when strange encounters an alternate universe version of mordo he speaks about his own mordo as if mortar was casilius you know you hated me where I came from so that begs the question why why why why why why any of this why casillius why didn't they just make Mortal the villain from the start instead of having two of the same guy moreover why does the MCU need so many mirror matches this is one of the most overused villain archetypes and at this stage of development the MCU is hurting itself for relying on them so much mirror villains AKA a villain who is an evil copy of the hero aren't inherently bad and can often be an interesting shakeup with good themes of the hero overcoming the worst aspects of themselves but more often than not they tend to get thrown into superhero stories because the writer can't think of anything more creative a Villain Like Venom is different enough from Spider-Man to justify him being around and a Villain Like The Winter Soldier has a strong enough impact on the story to Warrant his existence but casillius has neither of those qualities he's basically just a tutorial boss for strange to beat before he can do more exciting things he is just doctor strange but bad you know thematically speaking of course they don't do that literally until later the big problem with mirror villains though is that they take what makes your hero special and null it ant-man's Edge is that he shrinks but yellowjacket can do that too so as a result they just have a normal fight but small The Flash has super speed the reverse flash has super speed so when they fight it might as well just be normal people fighting but just at a faster speed superpowers can be fun tools to solve complex problems often stemming from villains with complex powers of their own but super speed is no longer super if it's just as fast as the other guy again this can work under the right story structure but writers overuse this Trope to the extreme to the point where it becomes mundane and boring within the MCU almost half the films contain a mirror villain of some sort make no mistake this problem originates from the comics but the comics are at least vast enough to the point where you can skip over the boring ones however the MCU cannot afford to make such mistakes and it shouldn't have to since the comics already exists and give us the benefit of hindsight for what works and what doesn't they have a massive pool of villains to pick from for each hero yet they always seem to go with Mr I'm you but evil this film does deserve some praise though due to their creative use of dormammu in the Marvel Universe dormammu is a very big deal and is a major threat the film says as much too but thankfully Doctor Strange has the time Stone which is powerful enough in and of itself to overrule dormammu and it makes for a fun shake-up during the final battle instead of the usual CGI slapfest that we normally get by doing it this way Dr Strange is able to save the day but dormammu isn't necessarily made out to be weak as a result and he has a chance to return later on as the proper Powerhouse that he is especially now that doctor strange has given up the time Stone and no longer has access to it at least I think he doesn't regardless this fight was praiseworthy plus it's memeable so bonus points for that I've come to bargain his design however was rather bizarre unlike his classic flame-headed look he's just a big purple mess that said it would be easy for someone as powerful as Dorma to change his form if he so desired so if dwar Mama were to ever return the MCU creatives could tweak his look if they wanted to welcome to part three let's get right into it with Guardians of the Galaxy 2. this is the best entry so far because it has taser face this is the quintessential perfect villain I think the reasons why are obvious so we'll just move right along also when this film is ego The Living Planet all around this guy was just okay not bad but not particularly great the reveal that he was star-lord's father made for an interesting conflict and Kurt Russell played the role well the main issue is that they didn't really seem to capitalize on the concept of having a living planet as a villain and creatively they could have done much more ego manifested himself into the form of a human for most of the film Which is less exciting than being a planet when he travels he uses a spaceship instead of floating around as a giant planet with a face they had a chance to show us something that we've never seen before in the big screen and they didn't really take it now I don't want to too harsh here because the Guardians films are often packed full of creativity but a missed opportunity is a missed opportunity when the time comes to fight he just kind of slaps at them with the CGI glowy tentacles at a slow and easy enough speed for Our Heroes to properly fight back against this is a death star that wants to eat you it feels like the scale of this conflict should be a little bit larger and the power that this creature displays should be a bit more frightening show the planet as a whole movie chasing down other ships and having Space Battles could you imagine how terrifying it would be to look out your window and see this thing chasing after you watching him just kind of gently smush the Guardians in some rocks made it feel like there really wasn't much at stake here there was a massive Gap in power between ego and the Guardians so constructing a battle between these two forces would be an understandably difficult task the team as a whole could have used either a power boost or some help to balance the scales a bit more all in all as I said he's not that bad though and still helped to make Guardians 2 an enjoyable film next up is Spider-Man homecoming with some mixed results let's start with the vulture this villain was pretty great the vulture would very often get dismissed as a joke villain but homecoming took him seriously and elevated the character to a higher level he had a great balance of being relatable while still being very much hateable Michael Keaton killed this role and the reveal that he was the father of Peter's love interest was an unexpected plot twist that made for an interesting Dynamic to watch play out his design was gray and a bit messy but he was still intimidating and he was shown to be a dangerous threat for a rookie Spider-Man and aside from being imposing the vulture stands out from other villains because the film puts a lot of effort into making it clear that this guy matters and is not just here to be the punching bag of the week they don't make an overabundance of jokes at his expense his complicated relationship with Peter is incredibly unique compared to other entries and he isn't just carelessly killed off at the end the Scorpion tease doesn't really go anywhere but that's beside the point the vulture feels like an important character within this world instead of just being an obstacle to overcome like most of the other villains in this franchise now with all that praise in mind we can't give homecoming too much credit because they also created this abysmal adaptation of the Shocker the character had some promise early on as he was played with a lot of personality and had the potential to evolve into a larger threat over over time but then he just got unceremoniously killed off out of nowhere then he got replaced by this other far less charismatic dude who will go on to do absolutely nothing remarkable on top of this bizarre and Reckless swap the Shocker also has no costume whatsoever and only one Gauntlet that is far less powerful than the ones he uses in the comics it is perplexing how they can portray one villain so well and one so horribly within the same film and I know what some of you might be thinking oh it's only shocker he's just a lame d-list villain so who cares if they portray him poorly if this is you get the heck out of my channel because in this part of town we like the Shocker and want to see this character get treated with respect plus you could argue that vulture is also a lame d-list villain but look at how great they made him look instead after homecoming we're on to Thor Ragnarok and oh boy this one is complicated we opened the film with Thor confronting the fire demon certer he then makes a joke out of said fire demon and defeats him easily we'll come back to this guy later Loki is also returning in this film but he hardly counts as a Villain at this stage he starts out by impersonating Odin and acting as the hidden ruler of Asgard but Thor figures out his theme immediately and the Revelation is played out as a joke then for the rest of the film Loki is treated as this sassy but well-meaning Rascal of a brother instead of The Psychotic murderous madman that he used to be in films prior All Is Forgiven so we're just gonna brush all that other stuff under the rug the idea that Loki played with Thor's emotions and made him think that he died a hero just so he could sneak his way into replacing Odin and ruling Asgard was a Sinister and tragic setup to the next great chapter in The Dramatic rivalry but [ __ ] it let's just tell some jokes instead he still never uses his powers to their full potential because who needs the magic of the Gods when you have a knife also in this film is the Grand Master the brother of The Collector who we touched on earlier this is a very fun villain in the comics because he's essentially a powerful being who finds Amusement in playing games with people's lives meaning whenever he's at odds with Marvel's heroes he will resolve conflicts with them by making them endure bizarre games that he will have fun watching doing things such as making them fight in death matches or having them search for hidden bombs throughout the Galaxy and he has the power to restore life to beans after they die so his storylines often make for Great one-off Adventures that make these high-stakes death heavy contests that can get neatly wrapped up in the end and reset as if nothing happened as he appears in Ragnarok he's a little different instead of being a member of a powerful alien race he seems to more so just be a normal human that just happens to be living on another planet and instead of playing these Cosmic games he seems to just be taking the place of the red King for those who are unaware the Red King has little to nothing to do with Thor as he is one of the main antagonists in the planet Hulk storyline he is a ruthless Tyrant who rules over his planet of slaves and Gladiators and forces the Hulk to fight for his entertainment when the Hulk crash lands on his Planet the Ragnarok film integrates many elements of Planet Hulk into its own storyline but it wears that comic like an unflattering skin suit more so than making a faithful adaptation out of it a grand mass for himself pretty much just gets a glorified cameo in this film he has no drawn out rivalry with either Thor or the Hulk with them subtly growing in strength from Gladiators to Champions to revolutionaries these two in instead inadvertently caused the grandmaster's downfall simply by pursuing their own goals of escaping instead of headlining a multi-film planet Hulk story arc the Grand Master and by extension the Red King storylines get reduced to a b plot one that is filled to the brim with crappy jokes and one that resolves itself without much intervention from the heroes they completely waste the potential of two great villains for the price of one for no good reason with no good trade-off and with no good payoff all we get from this monkey circus of a story is a couple of cheap member berries and name drops from the comics that only serve to remind us that better stories Exist Elsewhere and that we are wasting our time watching this movie who wants to adapt some of Marvel's greatest stories of the big screen when we could go for the easy joke instead speaking of we'll talk about the Executioner in a moment but first let's cover hella she's a bit tough to unpack because her portrayal in this film borrows elements from several different Origins the comic hella is fairly different as far as personality goes for starters she was the alleged daughter of Loki not Odin she's more of a neutral figure who only seeks to control Souls of the undead and finds The Souls of Thor and Odin to be particularly desirable however she's also fairly honorable and generally won't steal a soul like Thor's if she feels that he is good and deserving of a longer life she will often be at odds with Marvel's heroes due to her desire to collect souls and even though Loki is her father she won't hesitate to get into a confrontation with him if they have conflicting interests the film tweaks her to have a more deliberately evil and antagonistic role which isn't necessarily A Bad Thing and works well within the story though it does leave her feeling a bit flatter and less nuanced than she would be normally that goes for her powers as well as she traditionally has a wide variety of magic abilities mainly dealing with necromancy that allow her to be a more passive villain that rarely fights people hand to hand in the film she seems to mostly be reliant on these odd albeit interesting knife-spawning Powers I don't know why the MCU Associates as Guardians with knives so much but here we are one major point of Praise is her design it's just great and that can honestly extend to pretty much every character in this film except Meek the villains in particular each have their own bright standout costumes that make them memorable and easily identifiable even if they aren't on screen for a very long time they also happen to be fairly comic accurate which is always appreciated the one slightly disappointing element to Hell's design is that her comic self is half dead and needs to constantly wear a cloak to preserve her beauty and power if the cloak is removed she will be weakened and half her body will Decay the half dead element to her character is not present in the film and would have been fascinating to see in live action regardless her black and green aesthetic is both Eerie and eye-catching and the way she puts on her helmet makes for a good Lasting Impression all around hella was pretty decently used in this movie she looks great and accomplishes a lot in terms of ruining our Hero's life it's unfortunate though that her downfall came at the hands of Searcher and not Thor himself Ella is the villain that had taken the most from Thor up to this point she killed his friends destroyed his hammer and drove him out of his home yet he was never truly able to inflict his own Justice upon her and had to let someone else do it though one could argue that the Searcher reveal was a fun subversion and a nice shake-up from the typical final battle that said the use of Searcher in this film was underwhelming to say the least like dormammu Ultron and Thanos the presence of this guy within Marvel is meant to be a big deal for any Teen Titan fans out there that know about Trigon well he's a lot like that his role in this film is to bring about the destruction of Asgard yet he's treated like a funny plot device the film opens by making him into a foolish joke that gets slapped around if you want people to not care about your villains this is a textbook way to do it then when he returns a full power he is still foolish and can't seem to realize that he's wasting his time destroying an Asgard that is completely empty he is still not taken seriously as more jokes are constantly thrown around in his presence aside from this one shot of sad faces oh then the dude just ends up killing himself for some random reason while he takes out hell on Asgard it sure would have been inconvenient if he had survived that and had the ability to continue doing evil things such as pursuing the asgardians to Earth that totally wouldn't make for an exciting movie or anything no who wants to do that when we can subvert expectations in hilarious fashion moving on from Thor next up we have oh wait there's still this guy and he comes with his own special can of worms Scourge The Executioner the ultimate simp of the Marvel Universe this guy plays a similar role in the comics as he does in the films in that he betrays Asgard in order to serve his master by being her muscle and doing her dirty work so she doesn't have to lift a finger only unlike in the comics the MCU executioner is much smaller weaker stupider and far more useless than his original Self to the point where he does next to nothing of value in this film aside from having an oddly placed Doom reference in his death scene honestly all he really does in this film is trail behind hello looking sad even during moments like this where you'd expect Hela to delegate this sort of work to someone else like if not even to do jobs like this why even have this guy around there's also one other very notable difference that comes with this character you see in the comics the Executioner doesn't serve hella he serves the enchantress let's do something fun no not that clown this one and she has been glaringly missing from the entirety of the MCU she is probably one of the most popular villains that Marvel has never adapted to film yet and considering her executioner has already come and gone her chances of showing up at this point are slim to none and it's really unfortunate because her character has been involved in dozens of great Marvel storylines throughout all of Loki's mini schemes she tags along in a massive amount to them in the last video we talked about Baron Zemo and the Masters of evil and she was a key member of that group she is one of the most consistently reoccurring villains that Marvel has to offer and has crossed paths with many other heroes and villains alike so it's bizarre that she would be completely absent from a production like the MCU especially within the Thor films what's even more bizarre is her absence in light of the mcu's more recent agenda of pushing more diverse characters to the Forefront one would think that the enchantress would be a great candidate to introduce at this time because her main power is to force men to fall in love with her and serve her every command she is also a nuanced character who like Loki often dreams of either ruling or destroying Asgard yet she also has a genuine love for Thor and that complicates her convictions to her villainous goals this is a character that should have been there from day one as she could have been relevant throughout the entirety of the mcu's development from the Thor films to The Avengers to Civil War and so on like how are you gonna have a movie called love and thunder but discard the character that can weaponize love severely missed opportunity they brought in her Whipping Boy yet she doesn't even get so much as a name drop Thor Ragnarok as a whole had a decent main antagonist for one that was surrounded by a plethora of turd-like side villains one of which only serves to remind you of better villains that never came around that'll be it for part 3. as I'm trying to make these videos shorter in order to release them more frequently we didn't get that deep within the MCU this time but that's only because there was so much to talk about in the movies we covered at this point you may start to notice some patterns in where these ones went wrong versus the ones they got right very often the bad eggs include a crappy design they will have a bland personality they will often be a knockoff of the hero they will be used as punch lines for many tone deaf jokes and they will often accomplish very little in the short time that they are around before being abruptly killed off and their impact on the MCU as a whole will be so minuscule that it will hardly be worth the effort to try and remember the villains that leave the best Impressions often have great designs often last for more than one film and while they are on screen they will often be able to actually get a lot done and have a lasting impact on the larger story even after they are no longer around it's now time for black panther oh boy first up is Ulysses claw comic book Claw is a rather pathetic and slimy villain comparable to the likes of Gollum ironically enough he plays the servant role well but can also prove to be surprisingly capable and Powerful on his own like in the film he has a prosthetic arm that allows him to weaponize sound waves though unlike in the film Comet Claw is able to get to a point where his body is essentially made of sound it's comic stuff just roll with it this grants him insane durability and makes him nearly Immortal as he is easily able to reform himself after taking most swarms of damage obviously movie clog is nowhere near that level having been taken out by mere bullets though it should be stated that while he was around Andy Circus acted his heart out in this role and gave us a very memorable performance across two films it's just unfortunate that the MCU was so flippant with the death of its villains and too often it cuts off opportunities for characters like claw to return in more exciting forms also in this film is manape more commonly known as mbaku these days since they tone down the Apes side of his character quite substantially and that was probably a change for the better because of the implication comic Man Ape was basically just a big brute for black panther to face off against similar to Spider-Man's Rhino the MCU gave us a bit more of a mature and nuanced interpretation of the character making him less villainous and more so portraying him as a competitive rival to t'challa he got an upgrade in character development for sure but a downgrade in its power set in the books the white gorilla acted as a rival to the power of the Black Panther and man ape was able to manifest the white gorilla's power in the form of great super strength but in the film umbaku was just a relatively normal human it's understandable why they would tone down the ape stuff because of the implication but also taking away his superpowers in the process gives this character less of a chance to stand out than he otherwise could have had so now let's talk about killmonger he's a little complicated so let's start by pointing out the obvious the final battle between him and the Black Panther was atrocious even if the CGI wasn't horrendous this is still one of the worst uses of Amira villain as the prospect of watching two beans slap each other around while dealing zero damage because both men are invincible is quite a boring concept black panther is cool and fun to watch let's not dilute him as early as his first solo film by matching him up against a villain who is his equal in every way it wasn't all that necessary either as comic killmonger started out as more of a powerful Hunter similar to Craven who has died and been resurrected many times and the means of his resurrections have granted him superhuman abilities that are able to rival the power of the Black Panther if they were somehow able to convey killmonger getting his powers in this way on the big screen then seeing these alternative methods of gaining power Clash to see which is superior would be much more exciting than the X-Men one tier fight scene that we got his costume is meh it just kind of makes him look like a diluted knockoff Vegeta naturally it's a Super Saiyan bargain sale they did give him this epic mask but unfortunately he would just never wear it the motivations for this character are a larger topic for conversation as many people consider this aspect of his character to make him one of the better villains to emerge from the MCU due to the tragic nature of why he does what he does killmonger's father was killed in self-defense by tachaka after being condemned for stealing vibranium from wakanda killmongers sought to get revenge by overthrowing the Royal bloodline of wakanda and using the country's resources to start a worldwide Revolution many people considered killmonger to be the tragic hero of the story citing that he was right all along since his world conquering motivation stemmed from the idea that African people were oppressed all over the world but just as the Black Panther film as a whole was overrated so was the righteousness of this character as he had no problems killing anyone and anything that stood between himself and his goals including his girlfriend and his end goal was a global race war that would Grant his people Supremacy we're going to send by bringing weapons out to our war dogs they'll arm oppressed people all over the world so they can finally rise up and kill those in power and their children and anyone else who takes their side the world's going to start over and this time we're on top so yeah he was for sure the bad guy here needed to be stopped I don't know what that says about audience members who are sympathetic to his cause but regardless killmonger still deserves some brownie points for being written in such a way that would make him evil while still having many viewers at home rally to his side because of this quality this villain has been able to become more memorable than most whether his popularity is warranted or not is questionable but the existence of it is undeniable now we are finally up to Infinity war with arguably the best entry in the franchise Thanos he was hinted at ever since phase one and now it's finally his time to shine his design is great almost all of his dialogue is Infamous and quotable and this probably goes without saying but this villain has the greatest impact on the MCU out of the entire roster by a wide margin with his most notable achievement being that he accomplishes goal and actually won at the end of this film his scenes were packed full of great drama great action and great entertainment all around this is extremely high praise when you consider how great the expectations were surrounding this film after having been hyped up for the last decade if the MCU higher-ups were ever going to finally nail one of their villains now was the time after scores of films year after year having uninspired mundane villains it was so refreshing to see one finally dominate for a change all of Marvel's heroes had to team up against him yet they still couldn't match up what's even better is that we also got to see the children of Thanos aka the black order as side villains and even though they had relatively small roles they each gave memorable performances and felt like they were significant threat in their own right and they each had looks that weren't too difficult to tell apart there is a little trouble in Paradise though in the form of thanos's motivation and just how nonsensical it is I won't go too deep into that right now as I'll save a breakdown for that in a later video but in short this was a struggle of managing resource distribution to sustainable populations and he had a device that could create infinite resources he could have accomplished his goals without killing anyone another head scratching Factor within this film is the power scaling it is strange to have a scenario in which Scarlet Witch envisioned two of the strongest Avengers are in dire Peril but Captain America Black Widow and Falcon some of the weakest Avengers can step in to bail them out because of scenes like this it's difficult to tell just how powerful certain members of the black order are meant to be furthermore The Infinity Gauntlet doesn't really seem to live up to its name as characters like Iron Man and Doctor Strange can stand up to its power even if one stone is missing these two should still have no chance against it plus Thor being able to easily overpower it just seems like a straight-up plot hole the comic Infinity Gauntlet actually granted the user infinite power and unless Thanos deliberately held back most Marvel heroes would be literally incapable of challenging him the comic was truly a deep dive into what it would be like to accomplish The Impossible by fighting an omnipotent being the movie Gauntlet is said to have the same power but in practice it seems like it just gave Thanos a slight energy boost certainly not getting him anywhere close to Infinity that said these problems are far outweighed by the large amount of Praise that these villains deserve it's just incredibly unfortunate that this film was the first of a two-part series and one that had a severe dip in quality from one part to the next we'll talk about that soon but first we need to discuss these other movies because they are super relevant Ant-Man and the WASP had ghost a villain who is fighting against malekith for that top spot of being the most forgettable comic ghost is a rather obscure villain that was more so for Iron Man before later joining the Thunderbolts movie Ghost is a distat version of the character who has a similar costume only with all the fun sapped out of it this film made sympathizing with this villain a priority over everything else to the point where her Legacy is that she'll be remembered as the villain who is just sad all the time the idea of a failed lab experiment giving someone the physical characteristics of a ghost that struggles to maintain tangibility is a very fun concept and that could have easily made her far more interesting by feeding her looks and personality into a spooky ghost aesthetic instead they simply lean too hard on the tech side of the character and provided nothing that we haven't already seen before in some form or another maybe they'll improve her when she eventually returns in the Thunderbolt series or maybe with a roster this stacked they'll spare us for once and cancel this series before releases this film also had these other bad guys but honestly who cares this is just a stock evil business guy that only serves to waste time and space in this franchise due to how aggressively mundane he is his biggest crime is being there when anyone else could have been there instead so now let's talk about Captain Marvel the big bad that here is this toxic male who is in no way a threat to Captain Marvel and is only there to be dumb and get beat up making her look Uber strong and powerful by comparison we also get the introduction of the Scrolls in this film a powerful race of shape-shifting aliens they are kind of similar from comic to film only they came off as much more pathetic and helpless in the latter their war with the Creed is very much in line with the comics and is a very fun Concept in general having two powerful alien races go to war with each other with no clear-cut good guys or bad guys and with Marvel's heroes getting caught up in the middle this film makes a great conflict somewhat more black and white with the cree being the more clear-cut villains of the story this isn't inherently problematic because it does Focus the story a bit and the squirrels have a chance to return in a more threatening form during secret Invasion we'll see if that ends up being worthwhile still it is underwhelming to see such classic Marvel villains make their debut in such a helpless and pitiful manner their designs also feel a little bit too generic sci-fi they could benefit from a more enriched color palette by making the purples and blacks in their uniform more distinct and design their uniforms to be less like well everything else the Korean film are decent as far as design goes though their uniforms would be better off as white and green instead of black and green to help distinguish them from the Scrolls more the cree are led by the Supreme intelligence and the filmmakers took some liberties with this creature it would normally get depicted as a giant tentacally head in a jar but the Marvel higher-ups thought that would be too fun so instead they made it take the form of normal humans to be more relatable to whoever it was talking to Kevin knows that audiences love it when all their characters look and talk exactly the same besides why waste CGI money on classic villains when we have cats to anime poorly though ultimately these vast array of creatures are redundant to speak about because the True Villain of Captain Marvel is the entire universe for failing to revolve around poor Carol while simultaneously always trying to hold her down especially the men the villains in these movies are symptoms of larger problems though as these two films are subpar for a long list of reasons that go beyond just having a lackluster antagonist not to mention the faults within these characters are not all that different from what we already discussed in past videos so we'll move on for now but don't worry because once we get through the rest of these films we'll Circle back in recap what we covered and break down the importance of good villains in storytelling and explain why it was so criminal for Marvel to handle their villains as sloppily as they did plus we'll go over possible ideas for what they could and should have done to fix this but before we stray too far ahead I believe we were talking about subpar films with lackluster antagonists which means it is finally time to talk about Avengers and game we left off on a less than flattering Cliffhanger for this film so you may be wondering how could this villain be so bad when he was so highly praised in Infinity War well there's a lot of reasons so let's get into it the captivating and well-written Thanos that we grew to love in Infinity War gets killed off in endgame's opening scene then he gets replaced by this alternate Thanos who is underdeveloped less Dynamic and more cliche yeah my respects dark when I'm done done I will still be alive I hope they remember you what I'm about to do to your stubborn annoying little planet I'm gonna enjoy it very very much he will go on to accomplish far less and will forever live in the shadow of his former self why the russos decided to do this is beyond me they had a great villain perfectly built up and then just stripped him of everything that made him entertaining you could say they might have wrote themselves into a corner with how they ended Infinity War given that beating Thanos at this point would be a near impossible task except a similar situation happens in the comics but they resolve it in a much more satisfying way once comic Thanos kills off half the universe he just keeps on winning killing more and more powerful beings and growing in power until he feels that he no longer needs his mortal body so he abandons it then in doing this his hubris gets the better of him and he briefly leaves The Infinity Gauntlet vulnerable than of all people a tortured and near-death nebula is able to take advantage of the situation and claims The Gauntlet for herself undoing all the damage that Thanos caused and stripping him of his newly gained power in the process and thus making nebula the new big bad that needed to be stopped all this to say that killing the first Thanos was a needless and poor decision one that not only hurts Thanos as a character but one that also robbed nebula of her biggest moment not only is new Thanos less interesting than former Thanos but the Avengers are also unable to get justice for all the pain he causes them the russos have provided us memes at the expense of a good story having characters like Star-Lord Iron Man and Scarlet Witch get a second chance to redeem themselves against Thanos would have been a very exciting and satisfying there were many great rivalries that got built up in Infinity war that will just never go anywhere Drax dedicated his entire life to killing Thanos and he was barely even around when it finally happened no instead of all that we get a CGI game of cosmic keep away in which we just kill time watching our heroes fight villains that they have already beaten in far more exciting ways during the last film The Black order especially gets reduced from being formidable mini bosses to just be an extra fluff that fills up the screen so that our heroes can have something to occupy their attention Ant-Man literally just crushes one under his boot while on his way to do something more important and this entire Army has just become one big gray mess what happened everything was going so well in Infinity War Thanos 1 was brimming with life and color but now all of a sudden they're doing their best to make Thanos 2 as dull and absent as possible the black order was always dark and gray as her name would suggest but they worked in Infinity War because they were surrounded by bright and colorful locations that made them pop by contrast but in endgame everything is as gray and muted as they are so you can barely tell when one of them is on screen the dull colored palette of this final battle accurately reflects how unthreatening and predictable this conflict turned out to be you might argue that making Thanos and his army look so dark and colorless was a necessary decision for environmental storytelling in order to make this final battle seem more Bleak and helpless and plenty of other films use the same method of adding drama to great success that would be a valid point if only this villainous Force had any substance behind it whatsoever the heroes have organized the most powerful force we've ever seen them in up to this point on the other hand we have the gray and lifeless Thanos II substituting for the better Thanos one then there's a black order who we've already beaten in far more entertaining circumstances and everyone else here is just a gray blob whose only purpose in life is to get punched so they is no tension or drama in sight on paper this should be a squash in favor of the heroes and the fact that it isn't just makes this fight feel like a waste of time it's like the russos couldn't decide if they wanted to make this scene pure heroic fan service or an epic tension-filled final battle so they ended up creating this awkward middle ground with elements from both options that don't mix together all that well after end game we have technically one more phase 3 film in the form of Spider-Man far from home which barely counts as a Spider-Man film the big bad here is Mysterio and his presence actually brings up an important discussion as far as casting for adaptations go Jake Gyllenhaal was the one they picked for the job but as far as the comics go this is terrible casting because Mysterio is canonically ugly early on he was an aspiring actor but his hideous looks kept him from the spotlight so he hid under his Fishbowl and turned to a life of crime using Hollywood's special effects to make himself seem heroic while framing Spider-Man for his misdeeds the film takes great inspiration from the comic but it also takes great Liberties at the same time and with mixed results on one hand it's neat that they attempted to tie this film in with the other ones by making Mysterio and his allies former Associates of Tony Stark on the other hand these Tom Holland films consistently suffer from having way too much Iron Man in them and would benefit from standing on their own a bit more with all that in mind Mysterio was used pretty decently having a great design and getting a lot of creativity with how they display his powers the people who choreographed Loki's fights should take notes from this because yes Loki should be able to do a lot of similar things here and much more that's why it's so annoying when they just use knife one last snitpick is that they still do the annoying CGI helmet removal that gets way overused and takes you out of the movie by reminding you that these costumes are all CGI granted it makes sense that Mysterio could do this with his holographic abilities however it would be traditionally very out of character for my stereo to reveal his face this much you know considering especially while he's playing his hero facade and in spite of all the changes that the film made to his character it could still benefit from hiding Quentin Beck a bit more and leaving him to be a bit more mysterious especially considering the fact that he's trying to claim that he's not from this Earth but ultimately is probably for the best that they didn't make him ugly because this film has more than enough lazy migraine inducing cheap humor in it so I have no doubt that the writers wouldn't be able to help themselves and would relentlessly attack this low-hanging fruit Mysterio allegedly Dies at the End of This film but they could easily bring him back due to his deceptive nature should they ever decide to finally commit to a Sinister Six film now with all that behind us we move on to phase four and it's no secret that all these films and shows are filled to the brim with problems so it would be a bit redundant to only speak on the villains here so we're just gonna speedrun right through this section then Circle back with a conclusion on why it's so important to focus on this villain problem and look for some possible solutions so here we go phase four Wanda vision is up first and no the villain is not Agatha all along nor was it this heroic toxic male that tried to save this brainwashed town by using guns it also wasn't as Ambiguously absent white Vision either the real villain here is Wanda herself the woman who held an entire town hostage and forced him back out her fantasy against their will and while having them all fully conscious the entire time when you let us sleep we have your nightmares however the show doesn't quite see Wanda as the antagonist here and for some reason tries to vilify anyone that tries to stop her evil Deeds it's one thing to turn your hero to the dark side but that's not what we got instead we're told that it's understandable to behave like a batshit crazy person as long as you've had enough trauma they'll never ever know what you sacrificed for them no you sacrificed nothing and ruined these people's lives so you could selfishly play pretend like a child you are Evil later down the road Multiverse of Madness attempts to course correct Wanda so we'll come back to her in a sec Falcon and the Winter Soldier this one has the iconic super villain Carly isn't that fun she's a terrorist that does evil things then gives her free pass because Falcon pities her meanwhile the U.S agent is frowned upon because he kills the terrorists that he was tasked to eliminate but it was a bad thing because he did it while he was angry I guess it's a little bit bass awkwards anyway on to Loki where Loki is back to his old evil self but then he's not again two seconds later we also get the debut of Kang here in a rather unrecognizable form he's a bit softer and more pathetic when compared to the great conqueror that we're used to however I don't quite want to hit on this guy just yet simply for being different reason being that Kang here is a character with many different forms so it could be cool to see several lesser gangs show up early on as main villains in various films and shows to steadily hype up the debut of the one true all powerful Thanos level Kang it would be a unique and creative way to tie these various films together while also giving your major villain an active role throughout and by doing this the writers would be able to take liberties with these alternate versions of Kang that would make them stand out from each other despite them technically being the same person personally I'm not a big fan of multiverses and time travel as plot devices but if you're going to use them this could be a good way to make it interesting and this did seem to be what the goal was given what we saw here with Loki and also in quantumania although this concept may not end up reaching its full potential at this point given that Jonathan major seems to be getting canceled now so Kang's fate is up in the air at this point and we'll just have to wait and see how things play out for now on to Black Widow with this old chubby idiot that nobody remembers and also Taskmaster a cult favorite from the comics Taskmaster is a powerful mercenary that can mimic any fighting style that he Encounters in the movie he kinda does that only his power is not nearly as effective or utilized as creatively as it could be his costume is made to be way less fun and oh yeah they photoshopped a woman's head on his body for some reason and gave him this super shallow sympathetic Edge that makes him barely a good guy while also being completely void of any personality next up is Shang Chi but we already touched on this a bit in an earlier video so in short the Mandarin should be one of the all-time greatest villains put to the big screen but this dude is not that guy instead he's more so just an evil version of Shang Chi granted he has a little bit more depth than most villains nowadays but that's not saying much moving on to the eternals this one has an evil Superman because that's never been done before Hawkeye they brought back the once great Kingpin from the Daredevil series just so they could immediately drag him down to the level of all the other terrible villains in this franchise there's also some other bad guy guys but whatever now we're on to Spider-Man no way home and I'll actually slow down a bit here because this one is worth talking about as they brought back several villains from older films first off Sandman and the lizard were very clearly tacked onto this film last minute and the rules are so out of place and awkward that it probably would have been better if they weren't even there at all because all they do while they're on screen is take you out of the movie and remind you that the original actors didn't return and so the filmmakers try to hide that fact without a play CGI and dumb character decisions that said Electro Green Goblin and Doc [ __ ] are also in this film and are utilized far better Electra was not great in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 but this film realizes that and puts a lot of work into improving Electro and making him far more interesting meanwhile Doc Ock and especially the Green Goblin are not only just as good as they used to be but they're arguably better than when we last saw them you know as long as you overlook all the plot holes in bad humor they come with of course you know I'm something of a scientist myself Willem Dafoe kills it metaphorically and literally in this role as Owen Osborne as he easily bounces between being sympathetic evil and downright terrifying my only criticism is that I wish they gave him his iconic mask and purple Hood regardless the Green Goblin is meant to be one of Spider-Man's ultimate Rivals and in this film he is portrayed as exactly that and it should also be pointed out that this villain isn't all that powerful meaning you don't need a world conquering Multiverse shattering threat in order to make your antagonist compelling all you need to do is have them threaten what the hero wants to protect this point will be relevant later on one concerning aspect about the villains in this film is that they may [ __ ] the longevity of this franchise long term since they are all major Spider-Man villains but they all come from separate universes and won't be returning that means that if they ever want to say properly introduce an MCU Green Goblin then Peter will already have prior knowledge as to who Norman Osborne is and it'll be difficult to organically introduce either of the osbornes without cluing Peter in on where their stories will eventually end up they also established that Oscorp doesn't exist in this universe so he'll for sure have to be changed to some degree and these potential new characters want to compete with and try to top their alternate universe selves but for the most part already set a pretty high bar conversely this may push Sony to avoid reusing characters like Dock and Green Goblin in favor of establishing characters that aren't tainted yet which would still be a great shame because in MCU without Green Goblin or Doc is missing out time will tell if this will become a problem or not but this is another good reason as to why you should avoid using multiverses like this it's fun in the moment but it will break apart your world building long term next up is Moon Knight this villain walks on glass so that's pretty wizard I suppose Multiverse of Madness is up next with the return of Scarlet witch who is now in full-on mega villain mode for going all logic and reason in favor of relentlessly killing her way through the Multiverse to regain her children who she only spent a week with and who were never real in the first place she had some Neato spooky moments here and there but any positives you could say about her were deeply undercut by how random and silly her decision-making was like lady if you really want to have kids you could just go on a date and spare us all the trouble it's all just bizarre nonsensical here my only hope here is that they don't try to make are sympathetic and easily forgiven if they ever decide to bring her back she did a lot of messed up stuff that can't just get swept under the rug oh yeah shimogorath was there too the dimension conquering eyeball that most of you probably only know from Marvel vs Capcom except Marvel is not great at securing their properties so he's actually gargantos now not that his name matters because he's only here to act like a Mindless Beast with no personality that is far weaker than his comic self and gets killed off after one sloppily choreographed fight the only benefit he provides to this film is to make super nerds go that guy looks like that other guy Easter egg also in this film is a literal evil mirror of Doctor Strange he was super necessary and added a lot to the film with how he used music powers and died immediately it's not like the writers couldn't just make creative parallels between strange and Wanda because subtlety is for Chumps you see and apparently casillius wasn't enough of a mirror nor was Baron mordo so they needed to make things a little more obvious for their dumb monkey brain audience after Mom we got Miss Marvel Thor love and thunder and She-Hulk all of which share the same villain that being Kevin for allowing any of these projects to get made in the first place now to be fair many people cite Gore the god butcher as one of the few redeeming qualities to Thor 4 but to be honest that's about as flattering as saying the corn was the prettiest part of the [ __ ] I took last night we're just gonna skip over I am Groot and werewolf by night which speeds us along to wakanda forever with the iconic probably now canceled namur namur is a Bargain Bin replacement for the far more interesting name or this goes up there with the Mandarin and Baron Zemo as one of the worst comic to film adaptations within the MCU this guy went from bullying Magneto to having the same weakness as Super Friends Aquaman failure onto Ant-Man quantumania with a cameo from the WASP many complaints towards this film are about how the new Thanos got taken out by literal ants that complaint is valid however the MCU creatives could Salvage this by doing what we talked about earlier and establishing that this is just a lesser version of Kang with a proper much more powerful version still out there the Harry Potter series already expertly accomplished something very similar with how they hyped up Voldemort by making weaker versions of himself battle Harry Potter in the form terms of Professor quarrel Tom Riddle and so on Voldemort starts out the series in a weakened state so that a young inexperienced Harry Potter can stand a chance against him then they both steadily grown strength over the years until Voldemort was finally able to regain full power and Harry matured enough to stand a real chance against him if the MCU wanted to do something similar they could have these lesser Kang show up to fight other lesser Heroes like Ant-Man so that our heroes can catch on to this looming threat and have a chance to prepare for it so that when the real deal comes around they'll be strong enough to face him this could be the groundwork for an exciting story if they played outright although the mcu's ability to produce anything competent these days has fallen far from what it used to be either way the potential is still there modok also made his debut in this film and he has become the living embodiment of Rock Bottom now to be fair modak as a concept is silly and rightfully warns being made fun of to some degree given that he is basically just a giant head on a chair however he is still supposed to be incredibly dangerous and horrifying there are supposed to be layers to this creature instead they did the bare minimum to make him an easy and often literal punching bag it's just a waste of a once creative and bizarre villain if you want to use your villains to make jokes then use the wall or stilt man or any of the other dozens of terrible villains who have come and gone in the comics heck you could even just make one up if you have to please just don't waste great villains who have far more to offer than your terrible attempts at comedy last up as of the day I'm making this video is Guardians of the Galaxy 3 with the latest villain being the high evolutionary this guy was pretty decent they gave him a well-established and memorable personality still his design pales in comparison to his comic self and he feels like he doesn't really accomplish all that much for what was supposed to be the final villain for this group of Guardians regardless he was still more entertaining than most other entries on this list now I apologize for rushing to the end here but I really want to get to the point of why we're discussing all this in the first place why bring up problems from films that came out over a decade ago and why Focus specifically on the bad guys well to State the obvious villains are important in fact they are essential for the majority of superhero Stories the villain is the second most important character just behind the hero himself you you can make your Heroes as well written as possible but without a good villain to balance them out they themselves will naturally become less captivating and enjoyable The Avengers and the MCU as a whole exploded into the mainstream because it introduced moviegoers to A Whole New World of Fun exciting and interconnected Heroes who each have their own unique stories powers and big personalities there's a great appeal in watching how these different characters combine or Clash when mixed together and it's no wonder why Marvel became such a Powerhouse of a brand having built up Decades of great Heroes and stories to pull from prior to filmmaking however this MCU Journey can only be so exciting for as long as these characters face compelling enough adversity and Marvel ran into trouble very quickly when people started to notice that they didn't let's do a quick recap Iron Man was an amazing Film Iron Man 2 was significantly more mid because it retreads a lot of the same ground from the first film The Incredible Hulk had a dud of a finale because his villain was messy and only offered noise over substance Thor was a rather uninspired film and its main benefit was just setting up things to come some of which never did the First Avenger was slightly better but also created a lot of good setups with lackluster payoff The Avengers itself was great but its main villain was cursed to never utilize his full potential Iron Man 3 was a complete waste of a film because the director wanted to make punch lines instead of great villains Thor 2 was a snooze Fest of a film because it offered the most basic stock forgettable villains imaginable the Winter Soldier was another great entry with an excellent main villain however its side villains were severely lacking Guardians 1 had a set of basic villains but was balanced out with the introduction of his exciting new Heroes and a nebula age Voltron became the worst Avengers filmed by a wide margin because they did just about everything wrong with handling an otherwise iconic villain who could have offered so much more Ant-Man was an okay film but was prevented from being great due to yet another waste of a villain Civil War was great because it was primarily Heroes fighting Heroes but when the villain was on screen he single-handedly dragged down the film's quality and produced its most forgettable moments despite having the potential to beat its breakout star Doctor Strange was a basic film overall with the promise of a greater villain that is yet to be carried out Guardians 2 offered a decent villain But ultimately another one that didn't quite reach his full potential homecoming offered a great villain that carried this film along with terrible side villains that tried to drag it down Thor Ragnarok was similar to homecoming in that regard as well as reminding us of great villains who would never show up black panther presented a villain whose greatness was widely debated while also offering us one of the worst final battles in the franchise Infinity war was excellent nearly perfect in some aspects however his quality suffers thanks to his far inferior sequel that it is directly tied to Ant-Man and the WASP as a whole was a largely forgettable film and as villains were a major contribution as to why Captain Marvel presents a villain that was physically incapable of hurting his hero so try to make heads or tails of that and the game was spoon fed everything it needed to be one of the greatest films imaginable having one of the best villains in the franchise but in a bizarre maneuver it threw all of its greatness in the trash in favor of being significantly less compelling and enjoyable far from home was a cringe-heavy film whose villain was okay at best but one who couldn't quite carry the movie as effectively as vulture did in the previous outing then from there we have the horrific mess that turned out to be phase four to save the villains in most of these projects were bad is an understatement and so far Kang's attempts to recreate the hype that Thanos left behind mind have been about as successful as the shock Masters debut so what should they have done differently for starters let's examine what makes a good villain thematically speaking a good villain will stand for the opposite values that the hero stands for scar uses deception against his family to gain power and rules with fear while Simba challenges him in order to rule with loyalty and respect killmonger similarly parallels the Black Panther as an evil copy but he comes up short because his worst Deeds either don't happen get undone or don't affect the heroes at all instead of leaving the legacy of being a great villain his legacy is merely a debate as to whether his actions are Justified or not and they aren't just to be clear a villain made parallel to Hero by walking a similar path but never growing or learning from their mistakes Chick Hicks shows us everything that Lightning McQueen would have been had he never matured during his time in Radiator Springs yellowjacket attempts to parallel Ant-Man but instead of representing what Scott could be if he were on the wrong path he just takes what makes Ant-Man special and removes it by having the same power and just giving us a shallow final battle then as modak he does nothing to affect the heroes in any way being even more useless than Jar Jar Binks the villain can represent a goal that the hero aspires to reach Rattlesnake Jake was the true legend that Rango was pretending to be and as such Czech exposed Rango for his phony act however Rango defeated this villain by earning his respect and proving himself to be a legend in his own right now don't let the irony get lost on you and that all these examples I am using are being pulled from children's movies this villain problem isn't an issue of Disney watering everything down to be family friendly not that Marvel has always been all that family friendly to begin with but had that been the case it still wouldn't be a valid excuse in fact many of Cinema's greatest villains come from classic Disney cartoons but even if you strip all that fancy thematic stuff away and make your villain as simple as possible the potential is still there to make them great you don't need Gore bad language depravity great power or even great depth in order to make a good villain at their core all you truly need is for them to make the hero's journey as difficult as it could possibly be any other substance you add on top of that is a bonus a great villain could be as simple as a big shark or even just a tornado it's really not all that complex when you put it in simple terms so with that in mind it becomes all the more aggravating when Marvel botches it again and again example the T-1000 is an emotionless unrelatable void of a character whose only goal is to kill the protagonist he barely emotes he barely speaks and he doesn't do anything outside of his pursuit to kill yet in spite of his Simplicity he is still an iconic and celebrated villain due to how creatively and effectively he pursues his goal the way he's portrayed in the film makes him seem like an Unstoppable Menace and it seems impossible to Fathom how he could be killed the only way the good guys could find safety is by moving far away from him and hiding this is also in spite of the fact that they have their own Terminator to rely on it's made very clear that he is better than them in every way and it seems that if they even make one wrong move he'll quickly take them out and after a full movie of his deadly Chase it becomes highly rewarding to see the moment when the heroes finally find a way to come out on top sometimes you don't have to overthink it if the story demands a simple killer to be great then greatness is what you'll get if he plays his role well now if you compare the T-1000 to someone like malakith they are similar in that malekith is also an empty void with no personality or Nuance but the reason why this one works while this one does not is because Malachi sucks at being a villain anytime he and Thor are in the same vicinity Thor just pounds his face in he does kill Thor's mother but only after she slaps him around a bunch to the point where curse needs to step in and bail him out so aside from that kill he just spends the whole movie getting his emotionless face hammered in see the difference now let's take a look at another villain that worked arguably the most iconic villain to hit the big screen Darth Vader There Is No Escape don't make me destroy you he's massive he has this dark intimidating costume and a booming voice whenever he's in the room his presence is felt and aside from the Trench Run he largely dominates the heroes throughout all three films until the very end if anyone ever needs good inspiration for an antagonist this guy is a near perfect example and I do believe the MCU creators actually did follow his template only in the worst way possible it seems that most directors within the MCU each wanted to make their own Darth Vader forcing their villain to be big dark and scary even if they weren't like that in the books that's a fine thing to do with one character but when it happens again and again and again it very quickly becomes a boring Trope that I now refer to as the big gray blob not everyone gets to be Darth Vader sometimes he you need a job of the hut or a Boba Fett different enemies to fill different roles that make the world seem larger and make a more complete story Marvel Comics are packed full of many colorful and wildly distinct villains by intelligent design it's incredibly easy to not only tell these villains apart here but you can also learn a lot about their powers and personality just by looking at them character design is an extremely important element to the creative process of comics so it is Criminal to see so many great villains get their unique and iconic designs butchered by people who fail to understand who these characters are and were too short-sighted to think that maybe these guys shouldn't all look the same and if you're going to make the costume dark just be sure to not make it messy at the same time Darth Vader Voldemort and so many other great villains do have dark costumes but they also have simple designs that are easy to follow and remember too many of these modern villains suffer from being over designed to the point where it's difficult to tell what you're looking at and the lasting impression that they give you if any at all is just an image of nonsensical sludge what's worse is that Darth Vader was great because he got results and by getting results I mean having a serious impact on the story that can be defined as making a significant change in the hero's life killing off other important characters or being able to succeed in achieving their villainous goals this leads to a side discussion about fairness in terms of Victories and defeats in these stories because even if a villain does succeed and gets some kind of win it won't feel earned or narratively appropriate if the one is contrived or the heroes are written out of character in order to fail the inverse is also true and tends to be more common which is a huge reason as to why so many people hate modern Heroes too often these newbies lack the power or experience they should need in order to win yet they just do it anyway it doesn't feel earned and it's not satisfying in the slightest as audiences we expect the good guy to win in the end at some point but you can't just say it happens you need to explain why in a manner that is either clever or triumphant She-Hulk didn't have to earn anything in her story she just complained to the manager to get what she wanted Captain Marvel became super powerful and had this huge victory over the cree but it was not compelling in the slightest because her powers pretty much just came in arbitrarily when the writers decided it was her time to win Spider-Man was able to defeat Doctor Strange not because he was smarter or more powerful but because the camera cutting and close so you couldn't see what was happening then strange sat there and did nothing as the writers cheated to make him lose conversely as good as Infinity war was Thanos did not earn his win over the Hulk and this fight was the least satisfying in the franchise Hulk was given no reason as to why he fought so pathetically and the other Avengers are shown to be able to face Thanos in a much more competent way on top of that the Hulk was given no Redemption afterwards so the scene just comes off as the writer's not liking the Hulk and wanting to get rid of him in Iron Man 3 nerdy fake Mandarin here is able to cut through Iron Man's armor like butter despite previous films showing that his armor is extremely durable based on what we've seen it doesn't feel like he should be able to burn through these suits so easily and as a result Killian doesn't come off as powerful Tony Stark just comes off as incompetent for making his new suits far inferior to his old ones and stories like these packed full of powerful tools and abilities great care needs to be taken in order to maintain consistency and believability because otherwise it will quickly become apparent that the writers aren't pretty much thought into their stories and audiences will quickly become bored and checked out a villain who is easily defeated by an undeserving hero is hardly worth remembering so to tie this back to Darth Vader Empire Strikes Back was basically just two hours of him beating down the heroes left and right he was established early on as a powerful being and consistently remained that way right up until the very end while the story carefully crafted a satisfying explanation for his downfall even though you know the heroes will probably win in the end it seemed like a great mystery as to how they would accomplish this task because defeating the sky seemed impossible the opposite is true for most MCU films with the overabundance of tasteless tone deafening jokes the danger usually always feels very low if the heroes aren't taking this stuff seriously why should the audience obviously this is very problematic because how is a villain meant to make an impression when it feels like the heroes are never really in any danger let Tony Stark make his jokes and let him use his charm but when it's time to get serious let him get serious that's how he was in Iron Man 1 and that's part of what makes this film so much better than all the others on top of the bad humor the MCU villains could hardly ever seem to get anything done with very little exception we know that sequels will inevitably come take advantage of that and let the villains win once in a while let's see what would happen if the Mandarin came out on top by the end of Iron Man 3 let Loki Force his way into ruling Asgard and just let him be in control for a while don't just undo it right away let Ultron take over the world sure the heroes will win in the end eventually but it would be much more satisfying if the villains had their own series of wins first and let the conflict last instead of it always getting instantly resolved now don't get me wrong here endings are also essential and a lot of modern stories suffer from a lack of ending all I'm saying is to not rush the process instead of making the Red Skull a one and done threat making the main antagonist of the Captain America Trilogy you can still have other villains show up with unique stories but just allow this guy to better connect those splitting branches have the Red Skull return as Alexander Pierce in Disguise connector Baron zema's Origins back to Hydra and show that either his father or his grandfather served with the Red Skull during World War II stuff like that to make the red School seem like he has a larger presence within this world the Green Goblin killed Aunt May and then he just literally evaporated into another Universe no piss off with the Multiverse make a proper in-universe Green Goblin let him kill Aunt May then let him go on to have a long and devastating rivalry with Spider-Man to paint more of a picture of what I'm talking about here here's an example of what the MCU could look like if they implemented the changes I was talking about the biggest change right out the gate is that I would want to remove Thanos now don't get me wrong Thanos could definitely show up eventually but I think would be better to have our first major antagonist be a group that could more effectively take advantage of the MCU structure that being the masters of evil Thanos was great but his build up was mostly just a series of cameos that didn't really do anything aside from reminding us that he existed I've talked about the masters of evil many times in this series already but just as a refresher they're basically the evil Avengers having a group instead of one single villain would give them the ability to have just as fun of a build up as The Avengers themselves you can still have these one-off films like the Incredible Hulk and Iron Man but as we watched the hero roster grow so does the villain roster establish Baron Zemo early on as an evil Nick Fury of sorts paying attention to the various battles of the world and recruiting these various villains to his side and let us take the time to get to know these people and get invested in their stories then instead of having the Avengers battle this big gray CGI wall of nothing make the big final battle be essentially all the heroes versus all the villains make the entire event one big payoff that rewards dedicated viewers who invested their time watching each and every solo film leading up to this point this big change would also be helpful for post and game stories as well because once Thanos died audiences knew that most of the stakes and drama died with him so there was no longer a desire to continue watching however if you had multiple big name villains in the big finale then while some may get killed off you can allow others to live on and fight another day and to thereby help maintain audience investment going forward conversely if the Mandate is that we need to use Thanos then each film that precedes him should either directly tie back to him in some way such as Ronan or they should have a heavy impact on the hero's Evolution such as the Winter Soldier dormammu has little to no impact on the story aside from helping Doctor Strange show off the time Zone's power so how about we save him for later and replace him with Mephisto who is basically Marvel's devil for those who don't know and is also someone who played a big role in The Infinity Gauntlet comic height Mephisto up in a similar way that you did with dormammu but then bring him back later on and establish him as an underlying of Thanos 12 love how big of a threat Thanos is and to have Mephisto around as a villain to defeat an endgame give the villains of the other solo films a similar treatment and use them to steadily bolster thanos's Entourage take out villains like Ultron and Baron Zemo and save them for later in the meantime use characters that will be more directly relevant to the infinity Saga then you could take advantage of this carefully crafted Entourage and have all these various showdowns play out while the Avengers are trying to go through their Time Heist and end game that would probably be a bit more exciting than what we got which was just watching The Avengers sit around and talk about butts all day maintain Loki as an ally of Thanos and to make his inevitable betrayal an act that comes with selfish reasons then have Loki live on as a villain so audiences can have something to look forward to after end game and speaking of post-end game this is the time to really take advantage of your Heavy Hitters to recapture people's excitement Kang is a decent enough villain but his story is a bit messy to say the least and frankly he's not the most popular guy out there instead why aren't we hyping up bigger names like Dr Doom Galactus dormammu or even a second attempt at Ultron it's no wonder why people are losing interest in Mass because Kamala Khan and she we're given priority over the Fantastic Four and the X-Men and all we get from our next big bad is seeing him work a desk job watching him get beat up by ants and getting the promise of more unappealing messy cheap Multiverse Adventures that are guaranteed to lower the stakes and further butcher everybody's investment in the long-term story in favor of gimmicks that will rapidly cheapen the more they rely on them now hindsight is 20 20 and it's easy for me to sit here and say what should have been because I didn't have to Pioneer this massive undertaking in the first place making this massive interconnected cinematic Colossus of a franchise is an impressive feat so if they make a few mistakes along the way that's definitely understandable that said these problems have persisted for well over a decade now and have only ever gotten worse with time that is inexcusable Marvel do you want your fans to like your new crappy characters a guaranteed way to pull that off would be to put them up against the deadliest most ruthless most Unstoppable villains imaginable if you make your Heroes suffer at the hands of a powerful villain and to make their Journey towards Victory seem extremely difficult then fans will naturally rally to their side when empathy kicks in it's really not that complex but no and instead you'll either be too insecure and desperate to prove that your hero is cool so you'll make everything easy and fun for them or you'll be too eager to make your villain misunderstood and relatable to the point where you will forget to make them do anything bad and the heroes will randomly like them when they have no reason to think that way the villain problem goes beyond Marvel as well as many modern films shows games and otherwise suffer from boring gentle sad gray and unimpactful villains we need to go back to the days of the ruthless villains who are smarter deadlier more successful and more revered the MCU in particular is specifically getting called out in this video series because it comes from a legacy that should have allowed it to Pioneer a new era of classic cinematic villains year after year and that's not even counting the great powerhouses like Magneto Galactus and Dr Doom who they didn't have access to yet the Mandarin Baron Zemo Modoc Ultron the leader arnim Zolo malachith the enchantress claw ego and all the rest should easily have the ability to stand shoulder to shoulder with all the greats that came before and this video series was made to essentially serve as a memoriam to what could have been

Channel: Braeden Alberti

Views: 1,503,349

Keywords: mcu villain problem, hollywoods villain problem, mcu problems, the joker video essay, the leader hulk, captain america, the leader, the joker analysis, how to write the perfect villain, how to write a terrifying villain, secret wars comic explained, the dark knight video essay, secret wars explained, killmonger, the flacon, thunderbolts trailer, kang explained, thanos, avengers secret wars, secret wars, thunderbolts, avengers the kang dynasty, black panther video essay

Id: uY6gLpe1P7w

Length: 101min 11sec (6071 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 07 2023