10 Problems With The Marvel Cinematic Universe Nobody Seems To Acknowledge

2. The Villains Are Lame

Superhero movies are almost always supposed to focus on the hero's journey, with adversaries playing the roles of those trying to stand in their way. This doesn't mean, however, that you under-develop the enemies to the point where they're given a simple motivation and it's left at that. Mickey Rourke admitted that he wasn't given much to work with for Ivan Vanko. Red Skull, Captain America's nemesis of all people, was barely even in the film to constitute a real threat. I don't think I need to say much about Aldrich Killian, who, as many have pointed out, was nothing more than a rip-off of Syndrome from The Incredibles. Malekith the Accursed, a powerful figure in Thor comics tied to Loki, was degraded to a Zod-like caricature projecting the sins of the father onto the son.

The worst part, of course, is that all these antagonists are played by wonderful actors: Mickey Rourke, Guy Pearce, Hugo Weaving, Christopher Eccleston. Marvel is bringing in these big names, yet the only villain they seem to care about is Loki - and even then his motivations have never been clearly grounded. In the first Thor it appeared to be daddy issues, while in The Avengers it wasn't even stated what he was up to. Tom Hiddleston is perfect as Loki, but he deserves to play a better-defined character.

And at the end of the day, all these problems unite into the biggest strife present in the MCU, and that is...