LogFAQs > #896499188

Xeybozn posted...

Villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: 72/100

There are some damn good villains in the MCU. Robert Redford, Hela, Tony Stark... the list goes on. But the biggest issue with Marvel is that they just horribly mistreat the villains at the end of each film. Where Marvel Comics will always be superior is in the treatment of villains. Think of a cinematic universe as a wrestling show. You have to build your villains so that they stay in line with your heroes. The greatest wrestling feuds are built on more than one match-up. They are predicated on the notion that a babyface and a heel will collide and evolve with each individual meet. Loki, no longer a simple villain, is a clear example of how allowing a character to develop gives you the freedom to explore dynamic characters. Forcing characters to confront the consequences of their actions is the truly relatable side of storytelling. We are forced to all the time. A weak storyteller can't juggle the notion that at the end of the day, the hero doesn't stop the villain. Sure, there are times when you can punctuate the gravity of a situation with a death, but that sort of final permanence is so overused that the audience is inured to its gravity. Death in comic films should be a last resort.

I'll leave you with this: in comics we have death all the time. But the difference is this: the characters who die have hundreds of issues under their belts. Those deaths have so much more meaning because the characters have had more than half an hour of on-screen antics to build their emotional resonance within us. So we can kill Superman and have it mean something in a comic. We can't do that in a film when we've known the guy for 2 installments.
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"Reading would be your friend." ~Dave Meltzer