So, Nerdist & Collider recently posted articles ranking all Marvel Cinematic Universe villains from best to worst.
https://nerdist.com/every-marvel-movie-villain-ranked-from-worst-to-best/
Both lists nails the top and bottom of the MCU rogues gallery, but are big jumbled messes in the middle. This, of course, means we here at Title Run are obligated to come up with a better version of the same list. BUT...instead of just blindly naming our favorite and least-favorite antagonists, let’s start by laying out some common criteria for how we’re going to evaluate.
The Criteria
We’ll assess the best villains using the following guidelines:
Entertainment Value - Did I actually enjoy seeing this character on the screen?
Impact on the MCU - Did the character’s actions affect life outside of their one particular movie? Do they have a recurring role?
Relatable/Sympathetic - Did I care about this villian? Were there any valid or logical reasons for what they were doing?
Success - A villain gets bonus points if they’re actually able to execute their plan and/or accomplish their goal. There are actually more instances of this in the MCU then you might realize.
While Collider ranked the villains 1-25 and Nerdist went 1-19, we’ve decided to group them into four tiers to make the comparisons a little easier.
Tier 4 - The Expendables
You know the drill. These baddies served their purpose to advance the plot of the movie but were either forgettable, boring, or both. Nearly all of them lacked the depth to make them relatable or the long-term impact to make them relevant; most are just placeholders for their particular chapter in the larger MCU story.
Part one of this tier includes secondary bad guys projected as major adversaries, but who ended up having very minor roles in the grand scheme of the film.
King Laufey of the Jotunheim (Thor)
Surtur (Thor: Ragnarok)
Ulysses Klaue (Avengers: Age of Ultron/Black Panther)
Dormammu (Dr. Strange)
The rest of Tier 4 falls into the category of “Who was the villain in that movie?” Seriously. If I asked you to name the antagonist in “Iron Man 2” you’d be like: “Justin Hammer! Wait...wasn’t Mickey Rourke in that one too??” Here are some others that fit that mold:
Malekith the Accursed (Thor: The Dark World)
Emil Blonsky (Incredible Hulk)
Whiplash (Ironman 2)
Ronin the Accuser (Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 1)
Alexander Pierce (Captain America: The Winter Soldier)
Darren Cross (Ant-man)
Tier 3 - Solid, but still forgettable
These characters were enjoyable, but they lack the complexity and long-term impact to be higher up on this list.
Kaecilius (Doctor Strange) - Kaecilius’ turn to the dark side was actually pretty well-reasoned, but he’s ultimately just a pawn in a bigger scheme, and we were never given much reason to care about him.
General Ross (Incredible Hulk, Civil War) - He’s boring, overbearing, and one-dimensional, but his character is significant because of his role in pushing for the Sokovia Accords and imprisoning three of the Avengers in "Civil War."
Justin Hammer (Iron Man 2) - There wasn’t much complexity to Hammer. He was your run-of-the-mill shady business man, but his outlandish personality made him really fun to watch and he IS responsible for outfitting the first version of the War Machine armor.
The Grandmaster (Thor: Ragnarok) - While he lacks any sort of transcendent motivation for enslaving and killing people in gladiatorial combat, he gets the nod for sheer entertainment value. Jeff Goldblum’s over-the-top, bizarre portrayal of the character was absolutely hilarious.
Obadiah Stane (Iron Man) - There’s nothing particularly interesting or original about a corrupt businessman that screws his good-guy partner, but when Jeff Bridges using the full extent of his gruff charm to deliver lines like "Tony Stark built this in a cave...with scraps!"-- you can't help but love it.
Tier 2 - The Good Villains
Red Skull - It's difficult to articulate exactly what makes the Red Skull a good villain, but he just is. He's not emotionally complex or sympathetic, but he looks, feels, fights, and sounds like a formidable (if not somewhat cartoonish) bad guy. Within the MCU, we all remember Skull for putting Captain America on ice, but his greater significance is as the initial head of HYDRA. He also introduces us to the Space Stone (The Tesseract) and both Hydra and the Space Stone play crucial roles through the Phase I and Phase II movies as a result of what Red Skull started.
Aldrich Killian/The Mandarin (Ironman 3) - The bait-and-switch Marvel pulled off in "Ironman 3" was pure genius. After finally giving us a seemingly realistic portrayal of Ironman’s most well-known foe, they snatch the rug out from under us and reveal Killian as the mastermind behind the “fake” Mandarin. Killian is intentionally made less and less relatable as the film goes on to illustrate the mental deterioration the Extremis formula is causing, but the appeal of the character is the amazing effectiveness of a plan he’s had in the works for nearly 14 years.
Hela (Thor: Ragnarok) - Hela was awesome. Her cocky, sarcastic, menacing, murdering power made her absolutely captivating. She's completely one-dimensional as a character, but man does she play that one-note well. She’s arrogant, powerful, pissed off, and not afraid to kill a whole bunch of people. Without breaking a sweat she shatters Mjolnir, slaughters the ENTIRE Asgardian army, and runs Thor and Loki out of town to begin her own reign of terror. That’s right...she wins. Considering what we learn about Thor’s power (and weaponry) in "Infinity War," what Hela did to him in "Ragnarok" is a WAY bigger deal than it seemed at the time. Thor realizes he can’t defeat her and ultimately has to resort to destroying his entire home planet to take her down.
The Winter Soldier (Multiple films) - Bucky's transformation into the Winter Soldier is interesting because he’s a bad guy that you know doesn’t really want to be bad. Despite the fact that he spends most of "Captain America 2" trying to kill the main character, audiences can’t really hate him because of the emotional attachment Steve Rogers has to him. The Winter Soldier is always a sympathetic character because we know the kind of man he was before his transformation, and we know the torture he endured that turned him into the fractured soul we see on screen. Not only does the Winter Soldier tug at our heartstrings, his character is INTEGRAL to the dissolution of the Avengers.
Helmut Zemo (Captain America: Civil War) - Zemo might be the best evil strategist in all the MCU. He weaves together a mind-bending long-term plan to split up the Avengers that actually SUCCEEDS and sends shockwaves through the rest of the MCU. The character himself isn’t particularly dynamic, but his back story is emotionally resonant, and his impact of his plan on the MCU is enormous.
Ultron - (Avengers: Age of Ultron) The idea of Ultron as Tony Stark’s “illegitimate” robot child led to some interesting dynamics for the character. He had all of Stark’s entertaining arrogance and wit, but also his short-sightedness about how to fix the world’s problems. His plan to end humanity led to the MCU-altering Sokovia Accords and the creation of Vision, making Ultron a pivotal (although not especially popular) MCU villain.
Ego (Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2) - Ego’s relationship with Starlord is an absolute roller coaster of emotion. Your feelings about him do a complete 180 as the movie progresses; you go from almost teary-eyed at the charm, wit, and insanely cool powers he uses to reconnect with this long-lost son to hoping the Guardians blow his murdering douchebag face off. That’s a sign of an appropriately complex villain.
Adrian Toomes (Spiderman: Homecoming) - The car ride scene in "Homecoming " might be the most awesome and uncomfortable three minutes in all of the MCU. Toomes shows Thanos-level menace with nothing more than a lowered tone and some blood-chilling facial expressions. Why? Not because Peter Parker is a threat to his life of crime -- but because Peter threatens his ability to provide happiness and protection for his daughter. Toomes will do anything to protect his daughter and keep her happy -- even if it means killing her boyfriend. It's both savage and relatable at the same time, and that's what makes Toomes a great character.
Tier 1 - Villains I Can’t Get Enough Of
I decided to go ahead and rank these final three so that there could be actual heated, friendship-splitting arguments about who the top villain is. Let the discussion begin:
3. Killmonger - (“Black Panther” Spoiler Warning) Killmonger initially comes across as a typical angry and wounded “mad dog on the hunt” revenge character...until the scene on the Ancestral Plains. The vision he has with his father completely changed the way I felt about him. I legitimately felt the pain and helplessness of the character and the injustice of the way he was abandoned by his own family.
Not only that, but Killmonger actually DOES succeed in his plan for revenge. He defeats T’Challa and takes his rightful place (in his mind) on the Wakandan throne. T’Challa is eventually able to return and defeat him, but his death scene is a perfect example of what made the character so great. Defiant until the end, he boldly proclaims his refusal to receive treatment that will prolong his life so he can live in bondage in a Wakandan prison; he’d rather die a free man. That scene, like nearly every scene he’s in, displays a passion, intensity, and emotion that was infectious and scene-stealing. Killmonger is arguably the MVP of the most financially successful MCU movie to date.
2. Thanos - (“Infinity War” Spoiler Warning) He’s the most important villain in all the MCU, and appropriately, he’s one of the best. What makes Thanos great in my opinion is the surprising level of vulnerability he shows throughout the movie. He bleeds. He gets injured. He second-guesses his own decisions and mourns the sacrifices he has to make to accomplish his goals. He even cries. He might be pure evil, but he sure doesn’t feel like it. It’s hard for a murdering mad man to be a sympathetic figure, but Thanos at least succeeds in being a reasonable one. There is thought and care behind everything he does, and ultimately, he succeeds. He executes his plan to perfection and changes the Marvel Universe as we know it forever.
1. Loki - By the the time "Infinity War" rolls around, Loki has more or less ascended from villain to anti-hero. He’s not a good guy, but he’s too heroic and likable to be a bad guy. He is emotionally complex, predictably unpredictable, and any dialogue he shares with Thor is pure gold. (I’m literally laughing out loud thinking about when he and Thor did “Get Help” in "Ragnarok.") His dialogue is so intelligent and serpentine -- you know what he’s saying is complete B.S., but it’s presented so well that you start to question whether he really IS the evil one in any scenario.
That said, what makes Loki truly transcendent as a character is the vulnerability he shows. He’s conniving and arrogant, but he’s also wounded. He grows up in the shadow of his highly-favored brother, his adopted father hides his true identity from him for years, and the only Asgardian he truly loves (his mother) is killed while he rots in prison. His issues are real and deep-seeded. That along with his five film appearances make him, (in my opinion) the best villain in all of the MCU.
That’s the list. What would you change? Make sure to leave a comment and let me know.
Comments