10 Things I Hate About The Marvel Cinematic Universe
5. The Antagonists Are Anticlimaxes
It's a perennial complaint, but one that hasn't yet been addressed: for the most part Marvel’s villains are eminently forgettable, even interchangeable, and their dastardly plans even more so.
Many MCU villains are actually dependent on the protagonists rather than independent of them. Not only do the Abomination, Iron Monger, Yellowjacket and Ultron all derive their origins and their powers from the heroes in their particular tales; you can easily argue that the various threats posed by Loki, Abomination, Whiplash, Ultron and Zemo are specifically created and/or motivated by said heroes.
Tony Stark in particular seems to make a habit of making enemies - all three Iron Man movies feature antagonists who are high-tech rivals heavily motivated by a desire to humble, depose or kill him, over and above any other goals or objectives.
Meanwhile, the Red Skull, Malekith the Accursed and Ronan the Accuser are essentially the same bad guy with the same plan based on the same mcguffin. The same goes for the shamelessly identical Yellowjacket and Iron Monger.
Doctor Strange’s Kaecilius is driven by grief and loss to destroy death itself and defies the laws of nature in the attempt - just as Strange himself and his own mentor do. And is Helmut Zemo even a real villain at all, given that he’s got the same motivation and origin story as the Punisher?
Of the rest, the mad Titan Thanos has been a background presence since 2012’s Avengers, but isn’t actually scheduled to make a proper appearance as the villain until Avengers: Infinity War in 2018. Loki is extraordinarily popular, which means he acts as far more of a flippant antihero (and inadvertent sex symbol) than a true villain - and he’s also largely incompetent in both Thor and Avengers. There were rumours that the real Mandarin, a genuine threat, might make an appearance in more than just a short film released as a Blu-Ray extra… but that seems highly unlikely now.
Finally, Hydra was a compelling antagonist in Captain America: The Winter Soldier... but you’ll notice that the film only detailed the opening skirmish of the battle against these fascistic terrorists while the follow-up, Avengers: Age Of Ultron, gave us one of the last major operations to take Hydra down in the opening minutes.
What happened to the middle of the vast, looming Hydra storyline? It took place on free television, in Marvel’s mediocre Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. show on ABC… which is a bit like deciding to have all the good bits of your novel published on the back of cereal boxes.