Many detractors of the Marvel Cinematic Universe often state that outside of Loki and the Netflix series’ which have given us Vincent D’Onofrio’s wonderful portrayal of the Kingpin and David Tennant’s pitch perfect Killgrave we just simply have not been given a good villain to contend with in their plethora of movies to date.
The list which includes Red Skull, Malekith, Ronan the Accuser and even Ultron have all left audiences feeling a bit underwhelmed. It is an issue that hasn’t escaped the people behind the screen either.
Screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus who wrote the script for Marvel’s latest, Captain America: Civil War and who are also working on the next Avengers movie, Infinity War Part 1 have spoken to JoBlo about how they wish to rectify this with that movie’s villain, the cosmic despot Thanos!
“If you think about it, I get the criticism, but the early phases were all origin stories. It tends to create a similar villain. When it is no longer an origin story, I think you might have a little bit more freedom to create different villains. I’m sensitive to the problem. I get it. But it wasn’t the Robert Redford story, it was Captain America: Winter Soldier.
“It wasn’t the Red Skull’s journey [in The First Avenger], it was the journey of one guy going from ninety pound weakling to American hero and then going into the ice. So in a 120-minute movie it is difficult, and Thanos will possibly change that, but you want time spent. Excuse me for going on a tangent but I love the Marvel Netflix shows because you have so much more time to spend with your villains. It’s literally minutes and hours spent. We have 120-minutes and Jessica Jones had how ever many it had.”
While I agree with McFeely and Markus on some points made such as an increased runtime over two movies will be a great opportunity to establish Thanos more and deepen the character, it still doesn’t make up for the utter atrocity we got in Ultron in the last Avengers movie.
Its portrayal as a wise-cracking villain was more at home twisting its mechanical moustache than providing the cold, terrifying threat to the Avengers that it should’ve been.
Hopefully this signals a course correction for Marvel’s bad guys portrayed on screen.
What do you think?? Comment below!
Irwin Fletcher
I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.
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