7. Uninteresting Villains
The other day, I read an article that basically set out to say that Marvel are continually screwing up in villain department when it comes to their Cinematic Universe, and I thought: "Pah!" No way! They're doing great!" But then I actually thought about what that meant, and realised that this person was completely right. Aside from Loki, who Marvel obviously realise is their winning "villain," the bad guy line-up has been sorely lacking of late. Occasionally we get a villain with a bit of charisma, or a dilemma we can sympathise with, but it's not often enough. Iron Man 3? The Mandarin could have been great, but you know what happened with that, and we were treated to a generic bad guy in Guy Pearce's Aldrich Killian instead. Thor: The Dark World? Just about the most boring enemy ever conceived with that one. How about The Wolverine? Nothing memorable about the villain in that movie, either. Sure, there are exceptions: Bane, - no Joker, of course - is still heads and tails about the rest when it comes to being "bad," but the only real success story as of late has been Man of Steel's Zod. He had a personality, and motivations that we could identify with (even if we didn't agree with them in any way). Fact is, a lot of filmmakers seem to keep forgetting that they need to take risks with their villains - show us something fresh and new, and don't give us bad guys with the depth of a Scooby-Doo "baddie of the week" (which pretty much sums up Thor: The Dark World's Malekith down to a T). In most blockbusters and especially in superhero films, the villain usually drives the plot: it's seriously necessary that we're captivated by such characters.