Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

[cooleddie74]

To me Christian Bale's Gor the God Butcher feels like the biggest disappointment and waste of an MCU villain, and I actually liked Love and Thunder. But Bale, in spite of the good actor he is, just didn't deliver a good antagonist for the film, making him more of a dangerous pest you feel a lot more sorry for than intimidated by. There are considerably weaker MCU films that have better villains, and that's a recurring issue in big tent franchises.

The movie is so much better than the main bad guy.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Going back a bit, I think Ronan, Ultron and the Skrulls should have been multi-movie villains.
Lost potential.

Same can be said about most villains in Superhero films

 

[Set Harth]

Old school Kirk was never a rogue.

A stack of books with legs, or so they say.

 

[Nerys Myk]

A stack of books with legs, or so they say.

Into that longhair stuff

 

[theenglish]

I don't know how to make links to things outside of YouTube but if you look into Joseph Quinn interview and IndieWire it covers it. I will give one quote thought by retyping it.

"Myself and Kevin(Feige) were speaking about previous iterations of him and where we are culturally. He was branded as this womanizing,devil-may-care guy, but is that sexy these days? I don't think so. This version of Johnny is less callous with other people's feelings, and hopefully there's a self-awareness about what's driving that attention-seeking behavior."

The whole thing screams "watered down" even by PG-13 standards. I get what they are probably going to go for. A more polite,neutered version of Deadpool. He will make Dad jokes and like to show off but nothing that strikes me as all that interesting, especially since we already got a great version of the character in Chris Evans. I mean I know they aren't exactly making a A24 movie but Disney really seems keen these days on sanding down the edges and making characters less interesting with less personality more and more with each passing year.

By the time I started reading the FF, Johnny was dating Crystal. He teased Ben too much. He had temper tantrums sometimes. In the earlier comics, he was a teenager and had lots of teen girls swooning over him. I don't remember him as being a womanizer though. He was stubborn and often got his ass kicked by flying into a fight without thinking it through. It's been a long time since I've read those books, so I'm probably misremembering.

Boomerang is such a low level guy, it'd be like Shocker in Homecoming, he's there to serve a plot function and that's all he needs to do. I have to imagine they're planning to work in the roommate thing somehow, otherwise why even use him?

I'd enjoy seeing some of the rogues list as minor villains in different heists that Spider-Man stops during the course of the movie. Or, similarly, I'd like to see them as minor goons who face off against him on a trail that leads to the Big Bad.

You think Johnny is edgy?
Spidey in the early comics was a release for Peter. He could be cocky, sarcastic and irreverent. To be honest, that's been missing from the Holland films. Maybe the new one will bring that back.

And Peter and Johnny were good friends for awhile.

 

[StarTrek1701]

To me Christian Bale's Gor the God Butcher feels like the biggest disappointment and waste of an MCU villain, and I actually liked Love and Thunder. But Bale, in spite of the good actor he is, just didn't deliver a good antagonist for the film, making him more of a dangerous pest you feel a lot more sorry for than intimidated by. There are considerably weaker MCU films that have better villains, and that's a recurring issue in big tent franchises.

The movie is so much better than the main bad guy.

And to think Gor's introduction in the comics was legendary. A new villain with an interesting backstory. A worthy enemy to Thor with actual motivation.
For Love and Thunder all they had to do was truncate Gor's initial run and they'd have another billion dollar movie in their hands.
Instead we got Thor having another mid life crisis, Waititi's self insert character and Lady Thor who was hated for the entire run in the comics.
Marvel Studios have only themselves to blame for their current state.

Same can be said about most villains in Superhero films

Joker in TDK, Zod in MoS, Steppenwolf in ZSJL from DC side, Zemo, Loki and Thanos from MCU. It could be done.
The DC ones I mentioned may not be multi movie villains, but they were memorable.
At least Ultron's returning in VisionQuest, now get Ronan back in Captain Marvel 3.

 

[Jayson1]

To me Christian Bale's Gor the God Butcher feels like the biggest disappointment and waste of an MCU villain, and I actually liked Love and Thunder. But Bale, in spite of the good actor he is, just didn't deliver a good antagonist for the film, making him more of a dangerous pest you feel a lot more sorry for than intimidated by. There are considerably weaker MCU films that have better villains, and that's a recurring issue in big tent franchises.

The movie is so much better than the main bad guy.

To me that movie failed because they didn't use his potential like said, all the humor failed and Lady Thor also wasn't used well. It would be interesting if they took a more serious approach to the fact that to get those powers it's because Jane is dying from cancer. The movie should have been darker and more tragic. Would have also provided a change of pace from the previous one which was all fun and wacky adventure stuff. Which I liked but no need to try to hard to recapture that spirit again.

 

[Starkers]

Lady Thor was the best thing about the film, and it was great that Portman finally got something to get her teeth into, but stage four cancer jokes are a really specific kind of humour not suited to this kind of film.

I thought Bale was fantastic. He was just obviously making a different film to everyone else.

 

[Christopher]

Old school Kirk was never a rogue.

Indeed. He was pretty much the opposite of that to start with, a serious, ultra-disciplined military man who suppressed his emotions and needs in the name of his duty. (In the early episode "Mudd's Women," he was the only human male in the crew who didn't go gaga over the women, in contrast to later perceptions of the character.) He lightened up somewhat over the series, but he was still defined by his duty. The perception of Kirk as a renegade comes pretty much entirely from the movies, since it's stock movie plotting to have the hero defy the authority figures holding him back. (You can see the same thing in the Mission: Impossible franchise. The TV series was about a team doing covert missions at the government's behest, while the movies are mostly about a wrongly accused hero fleeing from his government over and over again.)

Going back a bit, I think Ronan, Ultron and the Skrulls should have been multi-movie villains.
Lost potential.

Same can be said about most villains in Superhero films

And there's another basic difference between series plotting and movie plotting. Movies being chapters in a longer series is unusual; by their nature, they're self-contained works. Even in the MCU, the interconnections between films are usually secondary to the done-in-one nature of the individual films. And that makes sense, given how infrequently films come out relative to installments of a comic or TV series. It also makes sense given how movie plans can change in response to real-life circumstances. Look how the MCU's attempt to set up Kang as a recurring villain backfired on them. It makes more sense to keep the interconnections subtle and prioritize telling a complete story in each film.

And Peter and Johnny were good friends for awhile.

They were initially rivals who played sophomoric pranks on each other, but it became a friendship eventually.

I read recently that Steve Ditko, an Objectivist who believed that people needed to rely on themselves, was opposed to the idea of superhero team-ups, thinking that a hero who needed help from others wasn't worthy of respect. So when he had Spidey and the Torch cross over, he had them bicker constantly and get in each other's way and totally fail to work as a team. https://www.cbr.com/spider-man-steve-ditko-superhero-team-up-protest-human-torch/

 

[Set Harth]

The DC ones I mentioned may not be multi movie villains, but they were memorable.
At least Ultron's returning in VisionQuest, now get Ronan back in Captain Marvel 3.

Well technically Zod is a multi-movie villain...

 

[Anwar]

Instead we got Thor having another mid life crisis, Waititi's self insert character and Lady Thor who was hated for the entire run in the comics.
Marvel Studios have only themselves to blame for their current state.

Gor was nothing but a glorified oneshot villain in the comics, and Lady Thor wasn't hated either. In fact, her run sold better than Thor's had in years. The idea she was hated was revisionist history by Bitter Comicsgaters.

Joker in TDK, Zod in MoS, Steppenwolf in ZSJL from DC side,

Oh, you mean where they take the lazy way out and make the villain the real star of the show?

 

[Set Harth]

Oh, you mean where they take the lazy way out and make the villain the real star of the show?

Like in the best Marvel movie?

 

[theenglish]

Gor was nothing but a glorified oneshot villain in the comics, and Lady Thor wasn't hated either. In fact, her run sold better than Thor's had in years. The idea she was hated was revisionist history by Bitter Comicsgaters.

I didn't read that run and I didn't know who Gor was from the comics going into the movie. I do remember FOX news criticizing a female Thor when that comic came out.

 

[Jayson1]

Like in the best Marvel movie?

Thanos was good but he was still not the star. Tony Stark I feel really owned Endgame. Right down to a great goodbye.

 

[Set Harth]

I wasn't talking about Endgame.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Not sure how Johnny being well behaved actually enhances the story.

For all anyone knows, Johnny is generally well-behaved, but gives in to fear and irrational decisions once Galactus makes his presence known and/or the FF are forced to flee (one would assume) to the prime Earth.

So many villians

Yep, and that runs the risk of watering down each, or lacking necessary development.

Plus, they're both great street-level villains and Brand New Day certainly appears to be promising that kind of adventure, one that many of us (myself included) are certainly hungry for.

Street level (including organized crime) with some occasional higher-tech adversaries (e.g. Green Goblin, Ock, et al.) is Spider-Man at his best.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Joker in TDK, Zod in MoS, Steppenwolf in ZSJL from DC side, Zemo, Loki and Thanos from MCU. It could be done.
The DC ones I mentioned may not be multi movie villains, but they were memorable.

Without question regarding the DC movie villains. Easily among the best of any superhero movies to date.