OMG, this whole “my villain is better than your villain” thing isn’t really happening, is it?
Joker Origin Story Announced
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It's not a fair competition - there have been only two first-rate antagonists in the MCU - Loki and Killmonger, both of whom are surprisingly complex and sympathetic. That franchise really isn't built around the performances of the heavies, who tend to be moustache-twirlers and/or nonentities.
Nah. There's more.
No, they just don't subscribe to that outdated "Villains Act, Heroes React" thing and remember the hero is the focus of the story. Something DC and FOX couldn't learn.
No one is forcing him to do anything, but his extreme reactions are due to investing his entire identity into Marvel, or their movies and the fact that there are other successful comic book creations in print, film and in pop culture overall (some 80 years and running for DC). It is an irrational, extremist position which prevents him from realizing that Marvel has never been the end-all of superhero content..
True enough.
The liberties taken with the source materials in the MCU are wide enough to drive a tank through.
There's endless and detailed analysis all over about how unfaithful the MCU has been to the source they're claiming to respect. They are by no means "the comic come to life" in many cases.
Yes--his entire motivation was utterly nonsensical, and not in the "b-but he's insane" way, but from a storytelling / creation perspective, Thanos was just hollow.
No more than Nolan Joker, Harvey Dent, Magneto or Ra's Al Ghul. All of whom had lazy and nonsensical motivations.
But then again, they put effort into his appearance and didn't just make him Josh Brolin in a purple and gold dress suit and that annoyed folks ashamed of comic books.
It isn't, but it has been getting the most opposition for daring to think outside the box compared to how the Reeves and Burton movies were done back in the day.
They're closer to it than FOX and WB traditionally have been.
Yes, even as a fan of the MCU, I couldn’t really say that their villains are their strongest suit. Staine from IM is fun but he’s Jeff friggin Bridges, of course he’s fun. You’ve a lot of very decent actors from Chris Eccleston to Jude Law, to Mickey Rourke to Lee Pace but few, if any of them, made much more than a fleeting impact.
I do think that Josh Brolin imbued Thanos with more personality and pathos than might have been expected, to be fair, but obviously everyone’s mileage will vary.
To be brilliant, antagonists have to have some dimension - hanging a superficial noble or sympathetic motivation on a cardboard villain doesn't do it, but is typical of the sort of paint-by-numbers storytelling that the MCU inclines to.
In truth, what sometimes makes villainous characters in stories shine is the opposite of that: digging into the kinds of motives and behaviors that all people share to some degree but that we see as flaws or limitations in ourselves. The sort of things we're not proud of, but intuitively understand. That's what enables the audience to empathize with a "bad" character while not using being moved to approve of them or to cheer them on against the protagonist.
In truth, what sometimes makes villainous characters in stories shine is the opposite of that: digging into the kinds of motives and behaviors that all people share to some degree but that we see as flaws or limitations in ourselves. The sort of things we're not proud of, but intuitively understand. That's what enables the audience to empathize with a "bad" character while not using being moved to approve of them or to cheer them on against the protagonist.
To be perfectly honest if there was one stand out performance for me throughout the series it was Brolin, although it's hard to ignore the sheer volume of great actors involved.
This is an incredible leap that you continue to make: anyone that is critical of the MCU is somehow ashamed of comic books.
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks..."
How about the things we are proud of?
Yeah, pretty much. There's some likely projection going on.
Worked for Magneto and Ra's Al Ghul.
Too bad that's not what Joker did, it tried to have its cake and eat it too by saying Arthur was a heroic character.
Whenever a new Batman movie comes out, there's next to no criticism of the core concept. Because it's always "grounded" thus acceptable. Whenever a new MCU movie comes out, no matter how successful the series as a whole has been, there's always criticism of the concept because the audience doesn't think the plot will work because it's too comic-booky and not grounded.
Now why is that? Why, after all the success, can the audience still not accept non-grounded stuff?
I have no love of The Dark Knight trilogy. I found it dull. Sorry. Much in the same way I find the vast majority of the MCU dull. It isn't that it isn't grounded, it is that it relies way too much on SFX and paper thin stories.
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The Dark Knight trilogy relies on SFX?? What movies did you watch...
Two part answer. 1) The "audience" obviously can - thus the success. Not everyone can or will because everyone can never agree on anything. 2) Non grounded movies clearly don't take place in the universe we live in, so they are harder to relate to. Also, they don't follow our rules of physics, or any rules really, so any problem can just be solved by making some random solution up, even if that wouldn't make any sense is the real world. It's the type of storytelling that encourages lazy writing.
Yeah, as much as some people might not want to admit it, the MCU really has changed a lot of stuff from the comics. The main reason I'm not to bothered by it is because I think overall they do a pretty good job of capturing the feel of the comics and the characters, even if the details are changed.
Yeah, the villains have been a pretty consistent weak point in most of the MCU movies. Most of the time they have seemed to end up being not much more than someone for the hero to fight at the end of the movie.
I forgot to add Michael Keaton as being one of the better MCU villains. Jake Gyllenhaal was also good, though the “wronged by Tony Stark” trope is getting tiresome.
Yes--a constant protest is a defense--admitting that the MCU so often represents the worst of the source medium, instead of its best (which comes in different forms). The MCU does not represent superhero comics as a whole genre, and anyone truly confident in their entertainment choices would not need to defend it every waking second of the day, while attacking the work of other publishers/studios, as if doing so protects/elevates the MCU. It does not.
He always feels that the MCU is under attack when the opposite is true. The MCU doesn't have a single rotten movie on RT for example.