10 Marvel Movie Elements That No Longer Matter

9. All The Lame Villains

It's popular to rag on the MCU for their fairly disappointing array of villains, but it's a completely reasonable complaint all the same these days. For contrast, look at the earlier days of the MCU: Loki remains the villainous MVP with his devilish wit and charm, and Red Skull's reprise of an Indiana Jones-esque villain went down a treat. Hell, even in Phase Two, The Winter Soldier was an intense antagonist who naturally evolved into something else. These characters all have one thing in common: they felt like they mattered, making a significant impact in the world (Loki's deal with the Chitauri, Red Skull having the Tesseract, The Winter Soldier being from Cap's past) and being fleshed-out enough that we actually remembered them. Though Phase One did make us suffer through Whiplash and Justin Hammer in Iron Man 2, it's Phase Two where the ratio of good-to-bad villains really tipped: Aldrich Killian, Malektih, Ronan, Yellowjacket, and of course the fairly disappointing Ultron all felt like misfires where the bad guys were merely also-ran placeholders. The problem with most of these villains is that they're nowhere near as entertaining to watch as the heroes: while Loki can stand toe to toe with pretty much any Avenger when it comes to dialogue quality and screen presence, Malekith and Ronan in particular are just lame lackeys conjured up without much imagination. And naturally, none of them matter much anymore as we inch closer to Infinity War, where Thanos is slowly but surely being introduced as the focal villain... finally. Though Civil War will hopefully do Crossbones justice, there's also Doctor Strange, Guardians Vol. 2, Spider-Man, Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther to potentially rustle up more cardboard villains before the main event truly kicks off.