Has Marvel Fixed Its Villain Problem?

The MCU is a phenomenon. I think it's always a little hard to be aware of how big a movie is when it first comes out, but for over a decade, we've had this massive franchise that is now twice as many films as Star Wars and has made about twice as much money (which means Star Wars is just as big per-movie) and it's clear that we're witnessing something huge and historic in cinema history.

Despite being movies about super-powered titans fighting each other with magic and/or super-science, the real strength of the MCU is its characters. With so many movies under their belts, the primary cast of the Avengers has had time to grow - both personally and in their relationships with one another.

But one of the early criticisms of the MCU was that, by contrast, its villains sucked. With the notable exception of Tom Hiddleston's Loki (who, true to the comics, was the villain of the first Avengers team-up story) we generally had a parade of really uninteresting bad-guys, even when they were played by really good actors, like Lee Pace's Ronan the Accuser or Christopher Eccleston's Malekith.

As such, the crappiness of Marvel villains has been a go-to critique of the movies.

But is it really true anymore?

In more recent years, the MCU's villains have often been interesting, fun, or compelling.

Probably the most notable is Michael B. Jordan's Erik Stevens/N'dajaka/Killmonger. Despite being a brute and a tyrant, his motivations are understandable, and rooted in a yearning for the utopian homeland that he was denied. Black Panther was explosively popular - in part due to the amazing production design and the feeling of "yes, finally" that we got by having a fiercely and proudly black superhero movie, but also, I think, largely due to the realization of its sympathetic villain and Jordan's compelling performance.

But Killmonger isn't really an exception, even if he's the best example.

Civil War had Zemo - another broken and sympathetic but ultimately villainous character. Thor Ragnarok had Hela, who was a delightfully over-the-top vamp. Ant Man and the Wasp arguably didn't have a true villain, when we discovered Ghost's motivations. And then we've got Thanos.

There was an absolute ton riding on Thanos being a compelling character. Teased since the first Avengers movie, we needed to believe Thanos was truly the biggest threat they'd ever faced. The easiest way of doing that is to simply have him beat your toughest guys - having him win a slug-fest with the Hulk accomplishes that pretty well.

But what truly made Thanos work was that you got the sense that he is a man of pure, total conviction. He absolutely thinks that he is the hero of the universe, and that the dark deeds he has done have all been for a crucially necessary greater good.

Even though he's completely wrong and insane, and that his argument would fall apart the moment you pointed out that, for example, population growth is exponential, so in a couple generations the population of the universe would probably get back to where it is now, he makes it clear that he is not trying to be the bad guy. He doesn't hate our heroes. It'll be interesting to see what becomes of him in Endgame.

So, what are we to make of this?

My sense is that the folks at Marvel work very, very hard to make this franchise work. And I think making villains more compelling must be a goal they set out to accomplish, and the work seems to be paying off.