Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Villain Ranked Worst To Best

7. Zemo - Captain America: Civil War

Plan: Revenge on a huge scale, to destroy the Avengers and avenge the deaths of his family.

Status: Locked up.

Some might say that an event as major as Civil War needed a villain bigger than Ultron, but the reality is that there was already so much conflict in the film that introducing a pantomime figure for added effect would have just been silly. The decision to instead go with a more personal story to balance the emotional battle raging between Cap and Iron Man was inspired.

Reclaiming Zemo from the more outrageous character in the comics, Daniel Bruhl's version is a haunted man driven to extremism, buoyed by authentic, humanist writing that makes his backstory and his actions all the more devastating. The image of a man who has lost everything is almost a cliche now, but thanks to the narrative misdirection and the conceit of pitting two sides against one another, he's on a different plane entirely.

The performance is great too: Bruhl is reserved and detached in a way that initially makes him seem like a typical sociopath, but the slow peel away of his story changes the perception of what villains can be in this sort of movie.