2024 UPDATE: I regret most of what I said here now, but I linked this post to many others on this blog now, so I can’t really remove it… Oh well…
Before we begin, let me make something clear: Yes, this is the article I’ve been intending to write for the last few weeks that kept getting delayed. Finally, right?! Well, now that we got that clarified, let’s get into today’s topic:
Ever since WandaVision kicked off, I’ve been thinking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe a lot more than usual, and asking myself “Why don’t I worship these movies in the same way that almost everyone else seems to?” Don’t get me wrong, I still like the MCU, for the most part. I even don’t mind all the fake-out deaths, among other weird little nuances. Nevertheless, something has always still felt a little bit “off” about it all to me. And I now think I’ve reached the answer, and it’s actually a common issue that many others have already pointed out before me… The problem is the villains…
Yes, it’s true what they say: Most MCU villains, quite frankly, just plain suck. That being said, however, I don’t think that’s entirely the MCU’s fault. As a matter of fact, I feel a lot of it has to do with the whole superhero genre itself being fundamentally flawed. Allow me to elaborate: If we define those original Superman comics from 1938 as the beginning of the modern-day superhero genre, it becomes clear that the entire archetype itself started as nothing more than a power fantasy for children. Superman fought bank robbers and the like because it was just convenient for the kind of storytelling that the comic-book writers were going for. The villains weren’t the point, the “power fantasy” of Superman himself was. But then, very quickly, readers got bored, so the writers needed to come up with foes that could potentially be more of a “match” for a character like Superman. The problem is this, though: What in the first place would even motivate these “super-villains” to want to be, well, super-villains?! Someone evil who has just as much power as Superman wouldn’t want to just keep robbing banks, would they? No, they’d want something more… But what exactly?
In the late 30’s and early 40’s, the genre itself was still primarily aimed at children, so the motivations didn’t need to be too complex. Just saying a super-villain wanted to take over the world “just because” was good enough back then. The problem is that such motivations haven’t aged well now. We expect more out of our stories these days, especially since teenagers and adults (and fuck, even some senior citizens!) want to indulge in all of this shit now too. But it’s difficult to come up with villainous motivations that are both compelling and can logically exist within a world that feels real, yet is populated with all these fanatical characters. The superhero genre itself was unique when it started, because Superman was a fantastical character who existed in an otherwise “real” world. But again, it’s hard to maintain that balance as the genre continues to evolve and become more complex. That’s why my favorite MCU films are usually the ones that don’t take place on Earth (Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: Ragnarok, etc.), cause I just see those as sci-fi movies instead.
And when I say “a world that feels real,” by the way, I mean “real” in a way that a child would perceive it. So it appears as a normal world on the surface, but is still very “black and white,” and often lacks a lot of the “gray” moral ambiguity that we often find in our own personal lives. And for the record: Yes, I know there were other masked crimefighters with secret identities and supernatural tools that existed in fiction long before Superman. That being said, from what I can gather, it seems that Superman was the first of these types of heroes who had powers that came from within himself, while other “masked, modern-day” heroes before him usually had to rely on external tools, like “ray guns” and whatnot. Therefore, as far as I can tell, my point above still stands.
So back on topic: Yeah, I feel like the superhero genre itself is a bit flawed at it’s core, and this becomes apparent when examining the roots. That being said, I also recognize the fact that big climatic fights between fantastical heroes and fantastical villains on the backdrop of a seemingly “real” world has just become a staple of the genre, by now. Even if it’s kinda stupid, I feel we’re at a point where such tropes might be inescapable, quite frankly. And you know what? I’m fine with that, for the most part. I’ve come to accept that generic, corny villains just aren’t gonna go away anytime soon. So I can tolerate them, as long as the superhero story in question still gives me other interesting and unique aspects to enjoy. I probably still won’t think the story is great, or even good, but I’ll at least think it’s fine! And hey, that’s at least still better than bad, right?! Yes, it’s true that most of these films would probably be just as good, if not better even, without the contrived villains that often feel shoehorned into these stories, but to put it simply: It is what it is.
Civil War came close to showing what it could be like when a group of heroes become naturally divided. Similarly, WandaVision came close to showing what it could be like when a hero actually ends up being the villain of their own story. Maybe we are finally taking baby steps towards more interesting stories for this genre. Only time will tell, I suppose. Regardless, at least the more “grounded” heroes like Batman and Spider-Man still tend to have a more compelling rogues gallery, since those villains usually aren’t aliens trying to destroy Earth or whatever, but rather just petty criminals in fancy costumes. For that very reason, a friend of mine recently described heroes like Batman and Spider-Man as “not necessarily superheroes, per se, but rather just crimefighters.” His words got me thinking that maybe we need to get back to less “superheroing,” and focus more again on just simple crimefighting, at least for a little bit. Same thing applies to Star Wars, actually. We’ve seen enough galaxy-wide wars for awhile, me thinks! Let’s just focus on some smaller stories there too. Then maybe in like another ten years or something we can go back to telling stories with villains on the scale of Thanos and Palpatine and whatnot.
But make no mistake; simply “scaling back” isn’t the only resolving factor here. After all, early MCU films were not yet on the scale of Thanos and the like, yet the villains still felt very cliche and, at times, boring. And to be honest, this can also be said about most other superhero films outside of the MCU as well, bar a few exceptions that really have more to do with well-casted actors than anything else (Heath Ledger comes to mind). Still, why do we all seem to be more forgiving of this with other films of the genre than we do with specifically the MCU? I think it’s because of this: As unique as the MCU can be sometimes, at the end of the day, most of them (the ones that take place on Earth at least) are still just fucking superhero movies, to put it bluntly. No matter how hard they try to break away from the mold, if they’re telling a story about heroes and villains with powers (or enhancements of some kind) fighting each other on the backdrop of “modern-day Earth,” then the flaws of the genre itself are still gonna show through. The problem is that we expect more out of the MCU, and always have.
From the moment Nick Fury introduced himself to Tony Stark and mentioned “the Avengers initiative” at the end of 2008’s Iron Man, we all perceived the MCU as being “something grander.” And for the most part, it is! But that doesn’t mean it’s immune to the issues that have been with the genre itself since nearly it’s very beginning. Had that movie been it’s own thing outside of the MCU, I bet many people would still look back on Iron Monger as “a cheesy villain,” but it wouldn’t be as big of a deal to them. No different than, say, the cheesiness of Willem Dafoe’s Goblin in the original 2002 Spider-Man, for instance, among other examples. I suppose it’s ultimately the price one has to pay for getting a franchise as big and complex and interconnected as the MCU.
Yet another factor to take into account is that, in the comics, all of these foes are often kept alive the whole way through, meaning they get just as much “breathing room” to grow over time as the heroes all get. Whereas in most films, both in and out of the MCU, you’d be lucky if the villain even survives passed one movie. Sure, some adversaries are able to make a good enough of an impression with just one film, like Loki. But for all you know, some of these other antagonists could’ve grown into fan favorites as well, if given more entries to “flex their muscles,” so to speak. Maybe that’s something we’ll start to see more of in the future as well…
Funny enough, that same friend I mentioned above also recently pointed out to me that Thanos’s plan actually makes even less sense than I had previously realized, cause once every fifty years or so, the world’s population would just grow back to where it was before. So really, unless some kinda one-child policy were to somehow be implemented across literally the entire universe, Thanos would need to do the snap once every fifty-odd years. But he destroys all the infinity stones in the beginning of Avengers: Endgame! Stupid Thanos!! Oh, well. Like I said throughout this entire post; super-villains are, by nature, kinda fucking dumb, as are most other villains with “world domination” motives (a lot of Bond villains come to mind). And if you’re one of those people who thinks that “a story is only good as it’s villain,” (I don’t but a lot of people do) then chances are you probably won’t enjoy many superhero stories, let alone the MCU. But once again, it is what it is…
Peace!
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