Board 8 > Infinity War trailer is here; potential spoilery discussion

(+) Yeah! (+)

Counting only the main villain of each movie:
Obidiah Stane: 5/10 - Serviceable but not memorable.
Abomination: 3/10 - I completely forgot about this movie.
Whiplash: 2/10 - I read the actor claim Marvel removed all of the scenes that gave his character depth. I believe him.
Loki: 8/10 - Good and memorable. This is counting all of his appearances.
Red Skull: 5/10 - Serviceable but not memorable.
Aldrich Killian: 3/10 - I had to look him up. His big beef with Tony is that he got stood up for a meeting. What a quality foe.
Malekith: 1/10 - Even people who defend MCU villains on average agree he's the absolute worst thing.
Alexander Pierce: 3/10 - In fairness, the movie is really about Bucky, but Robert Redford shows up to give an embarrassing performance as the sort of main villain.
Ronon: 4/10 - Serviceable but not memorable. The dance off is the only memorable thing about him.
Ulton: 4/10 - For all the potential he had, Ultron ultimately is just a quip machine. A literal one, in fact. At least he has great voice acting.
Yellowjacket: 2/10 - Oh look it's another evil businessman who wants to sell weapons to Hydra or something.
Zemo: 6/10 - I'm being generous with this 6, but he's not terrible.
Kaecilius: 2/10 - A complete nothing character whose motives are stupid. I get the movie is about visual spectacle, but come on.
Ego: 6/10 - I'm torn about Ego because he actually does have a really good and complex link to the protagonist, but as a character on his own he's another nothing villain with a generically evil goal. At least weird plant thing is neat.
Vulture: 8/10 - What, a villain with reasonable goals and methods and good acting? I'm shocked.
Hela: 5/10 - Cate Blanchett hamming it up is the only thing that saves Hela. Without her acting this would be yet another generic world conqueror.

Motives (Villains with more than one motive are counted for all categories):
Conquer a Planet/Universe and/or Genocide: 9
Destroy a Planet/Universe: 3
Sell Weapons to Bad Guys: 4
Revenge: 4
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Zemo was good. Pretty much the only villain who did everything he set out to do, too
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I know he doesn't actually count but Killgrave was a great villain
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bryans7 posted...

I always liked the Vulture, it takes balls to be an old man with the most basic superpower in the world and go up against Spider-Man on the regular.

Ive been reading Marvel chronologically from the beginning of the Silver Age lately. Vulture is actually an amazing Spidey villain early on, second only to Doc Ock
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(Also Spider-Man is the best book by a RIDICULOUS margin)
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Jakyl25 posted...

(Also Spider-Man is the best book by a RIDICULOUS margin)

You ain't kidding, those early X-Men issues are the very definition of phoned in.
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bryans7 posted...

Jakyl25 posted...

(Also Spider-Man is the best book by a RIDICULOUS margin)

You ain't kidding, those early X-Men issues are the very definition of phoned in.

They just had The Stranger kidnap Magneto and take him back to his planet, and Xavier is so confident hes gone forever that he takes his name out of Cerebros villain index.

This is 1965, I think he comes back
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Goku would easily defeat all these characters.
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He wouldn't beat Stanley Ipkiss
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https://zokpow.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/spiderman_vulture.jpg

The first two panels of this scene really won me over on Vulture
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ExThaNemesis posted...

Goku would easily defeat all these characters.

I feel like Loki could trick him into a game of wits instead of a simple fight like that one guy did in DBZ.
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Ipkiss would struggle with Kale.
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Anagram posted...

Counting only the main villain of each movie:
Obidiah Stane: 5/10 - Serviceable but not memorable.
Abomination: 3/10 - I completely forgot about this movie.
Whiplash: 2/10 - I read the actor claim Marvel removed all of the scenes that gave his character depth. I believe him.
Loki: 8/10 - Good and memorable. This is counting all of his appearances.
Red Skull: 5/10 - Serviceable but not memorable.
Aldrich Killian: 3/10 - I had to look him up. His big beef with Tony is that he got stood up for a meeting. What a quality foe.
Malekith: 1/10 - Even people who defend MCU villains on average agree he's the absolute worst thing.
Alexander Pierce: 3/10 - In fairness, the movie is really about Bucky, but Robert Redford shows up to give an embarrassing performance as the sort of main villain.
Ronon: 4/10 - Serviceable but not memorable. The dance off is the only memorable thing about him.
Ulton: 4/10 - For all the potential he had, Ultron ultimately is just a quip machine. A literal one, in fact. At least he has great voice acting.
Yellowjacket: 2/10 - Oh look it's another evil businessman who wants to sell weapons to Hydra or something.
Zemo: 6/10 - I'm being generous with this 6, but he's not terrible.
Kaecilius: 2/10 - A complete nothing character whose motives are stupid. I get the movie is about visual spectacle, but come on.
Ego: 6/10 - I'm torn about Ego because he actually does have a really good and complex link to the protagonist, but as a character on his own he's another nothing villain with a generically evil goal. At least weird plant thing is neat.
Vulture: 8/10 - What, a villain with reasonable goals and methods and good acting? I'm shocked.
Hela: 5/10 - Cate Blanchett hamming it up is the only thing that saves Hela. Without her acting this would be yet another generic world conqueror.

Motives (Villains with more than one motive are counted for all categories):
Conquer a Planet/Universe and/or Genocide: 9
Destroy a Planet/Universe: 3
Sell Weapons to Bad Guys: 4
Revenge: 4

I think if you're holding the motivations of a villain against them, you're not gonna like a looooooot of comic book villains.
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HashtagSEP posted...

I think if you're holding the motivations of a villain against them, you're not gonna like a looooooot of comic book villains.

I rate comic book villains on a few factors. In order, Complexity > Personality > Dialogue > Motive > Connection to Hero > Acting

Mind you, sometimes really amazing acting or connection to hero can make a villain rise about having boring everything else. The problem is that I'm not a fan of little quips and jokes that defuse tension, and the MCU seems to love those.
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Those ratings are mostly fair, but I think Ronan is better than you give him credit for.

Likewise the panel that sold me on Doc Ock

http://www.spiderfan.org/characters/images/doctor_octopus1/doctor_octopus1-03.jpg

So badass
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Doc Ock in Spiderman 2 is still pretty much top 3 of any comic book movie supervillain
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I'd agree with most of them, but think it's a bit unfair on a few

Like, summing up Yellowjacket as just "another evil businessman" may make sense if he was the villain of like, an Avengers movie or something. But in the overall scope of Ant-Man, that's actually a pretty big deal. Ant-Man isn't about planet-busting foes or saving the world. It starts with a guy who basically only has tech, gets betrayed and his tech stolen by his protege, and then said protege basically goes crazy from misusing said tech and goes after New Ant-Man's family. He's not gonna hold up against Hulk or Strange, sure... But Ant-Man is a small, personal scope, and the villain was very personal. I thought it was pretty well done.
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Vulture also helped with amazing casting
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GANON1025 posted...

I know he doesn't actually count but Killgrave was a great villain

And Kingpin!
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HashtagSEP posted...

I'd agree with most of them, but think it's a bit unfair on a few

Like, summing up Yellowjacket as just "another evil businessman" may make sense if he was the villain of like, an Avengers movie or something. But in the overall scope of Ant-Man, that's actually a pretty big deal. Ant-Man isn't about planet-busting foes or saving the world. It starts with a guy who basically only has tech, gets betrayed and his tech stolen by his protege, and then said protege basically goes crazy from misusing said tech and goes after New Ant-Man's family. He's not gonna hold up against Hulk or Strange, sure... But Ant-Man is a small, personal scope, and the villain was very personal. I thought it was pretty well done.

I agree that the scope of his villainy is appropriate for the story being told and the hero he's up against, but when it comes down to it, he's an evil businessman who wants to sell weapons to terrorists out of greed, and is insane because of his experiments or something (I don't remember exactly why he was nuts, just that he was). It's not like he's any more personal to Ant-Man than any other random bad guy would be other than that he takes Ant-Man's daughter hostage at the end. He's only personal to Ant-Man's mentor, and Ant-Man's relationship with Hank Pym isn't so complex that I think it carries over like Darth Vader/Obi-Wan in ANH. Like Doctor Strange, Ant-Man was largely about visual spectacle and not having interesting villains, and hey, that's alright.

More generally about the movie, Yellowjacket isn't even the thing I dislike the most about the movie. It's that they play up Ant-Man like a criminal who has to redeem himself, but they establish that he gave away the money he stole to other people to help them, deflating any redemption angle because he was never a bad guy.
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It's weird how drastically better the MCU tv villains are compared to the MCU movie villains.

Fisk, Kilgrave, Cottonmouth, and even Punisher (antihero, not a villain, but still) are all significantly better than even the best if the MCU movie villains
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Anagram posted...

He's only personal to Ant-Man's mentor, and Ant-Man's relationship with Hank Pym isn't so complex that I think it carries over like Darth Vader/Obi-Wan in ANH.

Eh, the point is that he wanted to be to Pym what Scott became in like five seconds, so he becomes personal to Scott because he's jealous. And in effect, both were kinda used by Pym.
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HashtagSEP posted...

Eh, the point is that he wanted to be to Pym what Scott became in like five seconds, so he becomes personal to Scott because he's jealous. And in effect, both were kinda used by Pym.

I guess that's true. I could see bumping him up to a 4/10 if you take that into consideration. Even so, he leaves no lasting impression on me. What other write-up did you disagree with, out of curiosity?
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Probably Abomination and Stane.

Stane stands out to me a bit because he's basically what Stark would have been if his experiences hadn't made him develop a conscience, though I wouldn't move him up too far, really.

And Abomination I thought was pretty well developed from soldier who just wanted to take Hulk down because of orders to it being more bitter and personal and pretty much an obsession to him.
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Up
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Yeah I thought abomination was, aside from the fight itself, pretty well done. Hulk villains by and large are pretty weaksauce anyway it's all about him and his self improvement/self loathing+anger management.
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Johnbobb posted...

It's weird how drastically better the MCU tv villains are compared to the MCU movie villains.

Fisk, Kilgrave, Cottonmouth, and even Punisher (antihero, not a villain, but still) are all significantly better than even the best if the MCU movie villains

Time.

You have a lot more time to develop them in the shows. If you had to truncate a season of any one of those shows, the first thing to go would be their fleshed out backstories and development.

For the movies, I don't think you need this amazingly developed villain for them. It would be nice, sure, but it's about focusing on the development of the heroes. Like Obadiah Stane gets dumped on, but I feel that he does a very good job. Guy pissed off that spoiled little Tony Stark gets to take over the company, then wants to ruin everything that basically Stane created in the company, and he is driven by greed. As mentioned, he's a mirror for what Tony Stark would have been without his experience in Afghanistan.

What else do you really need for Stane? To that effect, Whiplash was weak, but Justin Hammer was perfect for his job. He's Tony Stark lite. He's desperate to be the same man and get recognized like him so much that he is obsessed with copying him and trying to steal his tech.

I'd argue the reason that the Not-Mandarin villain in Iron Man 3 is actually weaker because they tried to tack on some dumb backstory of being stood up by Stark. If he were just an evil SOB who wanted to use this terrible super tech power, he would have been better. He also lacked personality, but that's what you need in these movies more than anything. Give a villain a solid motivation and a personality.

That's why Malekith sucks. He had no personality and his motivation just sucked.

Thor 1 doesn't get enough credit for how amazingly done the Thor and Loki story is told. The entire point of that movie is to tell the story of these two brothers and their parallels. To that end, we needed all of the time spent on Loki to help develop Thor.

Good villains in comics, for the most part, are the ones that help develop the heroes. I would argue Stane does a tremendous job of that. Justin Hammer does a lot less to develop Tony, but he does enough imo. He teaches Tony that his weapons are actually that dangerous, no matter how safe he thinks it is. Iron Man 3 villain does absolutely nothing for Tony, and that's why he sucks so bad.
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