10 Hyped Movie Villains Who Turned Out To Be Just Henchmen

6. Mathias Vogel - Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider Walton Goggins
Warner Bros.

With Angelina Jolie's cheesy Tomb Raider movies now being a thing of the distant past, the time was ripe for a new big-screen interpretation of the classic videogame heroine, a take that fell more in line with the now-commonplace "gritty" style of reboots populating the market.

Videogame movies have never had the best reputation, but - in the same way that William Fichtner upped the credibility of TMNT - the ever-reliable Walton Goggins gave Tomb Raider some promise when he was cast to play villain Mathias Vogel.

The leader of an expedition to uncover the legendary Queen Himiko's tomb, Vogel appears like he's firmly in command when we first meet him, and initially, he seems quite dangerous and menacing.

But it quickly becomes apparent that he's not really in charge at all. Vogel mentions that he's being ordered about by someone over the phone, and it becomes clear that he's only on the island because he's being bossed around by a higher power.

By the end of the movie, we learn that the organisation known as Trinity was behind the whole thing. They wished to acquire the tomb in order to weaponise it, so sent Vogel to the island as their lackey, using him to get their dirty work (literally) done.

Vogel had been an underling all along, and he was never in control of his own fate.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!