10 Biggest Movie Tropes Of 2017
3. Horn-Headed CGI God Was This Year's "Guy Who Doesn't Get Out Of His Chair" In Villainy Tropes
Seen in: Justice League, Wonder Woman, Thor: Ragnarok
A couple of years ago there was a trend among the mega-franchises to introduce a big bad of such incredible alien power that all he actually did in the movie was sit in a distant throne and direct far less powerful minions to their inevitable failure. Now that Snoke and Thanos are finally getting their chance actually to enter the action, studios needed a new type of villain of sufficient threat to challenge the increasingly unstoppable heroes.
And it seems like executives at both Marvel and DC almost simultaneously responded to the question of "how can we create a villain powerful enough to be a real threat?" with the answer "a literal god... but, like, one with devil horns so we know it's an evil god." So that's what we got a lot of this year in movies in both comic book universes.
Like the never-gets-out-of-his-chair guy, these gods may provide power sets sufficient to challenge the hero, but they tend to lack either a compelling character arc of their own or - being mostly CGI creations - much real sense of physical presence. Ultimately, this tends to leave the final acts of their movies a little lacking in drama.
Having praised Wonder Woman earlier on as the star of 2017, it's probably worth pointing out that she was nevertheless a repeat offender in this area, facing off against CGI horned gods both old and new. TV's Fargo shows what a creepy villain David Thewlis can make when given the right role, in which case Wonder Woman's god of war Ares is definitely not the right role. His climactic scenes were the movie's major mis-step. Still, that didn't stop Diana from getting caught up in the same situation when fighting Justice League's largely character- and motivation-free new god Steppenwolf.
Even the lively and slightly subversive Thor: Ragnarok managed to summon up a pair of these creatures in both goddess of death Hela and apocalyptic demon Surtur. At least the former, mostly embodied by Cate Blanchett, had a bit of personality, but even so her scenes did not stand out as the high points of the movie.