15 Worst MCU Villains (So Far)
10. Whiplash - Iron Man 2
Whiplash (Mickey Rourke), the lead villain of the MCU's disastrous third film Iron Man 2, was a deeply underwhelming lead villain and this can mainly be blamed on one thing: studio interference.
Mickey Rourke really went out of his way to make the character more complex and emotional and even visited a Russian prison to help get into character, but according to the actor many of the scenes which gave the character more depth were cut; given how oddly small Whiplash's role in the film is, that's easy to believe.
What's left of Whiplash in the movie isn't great at all. Thanks to the overly short screen-time, mediocre writing and complete failure to showcase Whiplash's potentially interesting motivations or take advantage of Rourke's acting chops, Whiplash is the very thing Mickey Rourke said he wanted to avoid playing: a one dimensional bad guy. He's savaged the film since and who can blame him?
This film was released around the time of Rourke's much publicized comeback in the late noughties but since this movie he's largely disappeared from the mainstream once again and one can't help but wonder if it was thanks to how bad his experience working with Marvel was.