Why does Marvel keep using the same villain for every movie?

Anghus Houvouras on Marvel’s villains…

Next year Marvel Studios will turn ten years old. This milestone is being marked with a celebration that Kevin Feige touched briefly upon. There’s certainly a lot to celebrate. Marvel’s foray into feature films has been an unmitigated success financially and with the ticket buying movie public. Whether you love the Marvel movies or have been lulled into a state of ambivalence by their painfully formulaic construction, it’s impossible to argue their success or how much they’ve changed the Hollywood blockbuster.

I’m one of the precious few waiting for Phase Three to end. The exhilaration I experienced with Iron Man ended right around the closing credits of The Avengers. I’ve become tired of the Marvel Cinematic Universe because of the films have been nothing but copy/paste productions for the last five years. Sure, there are a few exceptions. James Gunn created something special with Guardians of the Galaxy and Doctor Strange managed to stick the landing with an intelligent third act instead of the usual sensory overload explosion fest.

Like the aforementioned Doctor Strange, I was looking forward to Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, mainly because the excellent source material felt like a springboard into unexplored cinematic territory. The first trailer bolstered my faith in the potential for a Marvel film that deviates from the mediocre Marvel formula. Vivid colors, awesome visuals, cool looking action. This feels like something fresh. But then I saw it… the moment that mule-kicked my anticipation and decimated by belief that Marvel movies can take us someplace new.

It’s in the final moments of the trailer when we see Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger make his power play to take over Wakanda by donning a slightly different version of Black Panther’s costume. This reveal was alluded to earlier this year when the Black Panther toys were revealed. It turns out the villain for Black Panther is once again the evil version of the hero.

Seriously? Sweet lord how many times can Marvel play this card?

It all started with Iron Man, where Tony Stark has to defeat his arch-nemesis Obadiah Stane who has donned a familiar suit of armor. The hero is forced to face down the evil version of himself. The Incredible Hulk has to fight The Abomination… an evil version of the Hulk transformed by the same formula. Captain America squares off against The Red Skull, each combatant changed by a super soldier serum developed by Doctor Abraham Erskine. Thor fights his brother Loki, the evil ‘yang’ to his heroic ‘ying’.

The villains have always been the weakest link of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Phase Two gave us more simple variations of the hero: Whiplash was a copy/paste of Iron Monger. The Winter Soldier is basically the evil Captain America. Ant-Man faced off against copy/paste clone Yellowjacket. There have been a couple of villains who have broken this mold. Civil War gave us Zemo, a very human villain with a nice tragic backstory. But for the most part the villains of the Marvel Cinematic Universe feel more like an obligation than a purpose drive character.

The revelation that Killmonger eventually transforms into an evil Black Panther is so deflating. With the rich catalog of characters and villains in the Marvel Universe, couldn’t they find an angle that doesn’t require the dark mirror cliche? Does every Marvel origin story require these uninspired villains emulating the hero they’re out to destroy?

Based on the continued success of these films, it seems clear that I’m in the minority with this particular criticism. However, it still feels like I’m tripping on a fist full of crazy pills every time Marvel wheels out another cookie-cutter, copy/paste villain.

These movies deserve a better class of criminal.

Anghus Houvouras

Mark Kroberger
You ‘do’ realize that this is phase ‘3’ of the Avengers ‘crossover’ storyline, right? So far, the main story that every film (not just the Avengers films) has been a part of, is a lager story that will conclude in ‘Infinity War-Part 1 & 2’, which ‘then’, the ‘Infinity/Thanos’ story will end, and then, the next big storyline and phase ‘4’ begins. It’s my hope, as rumors have only fueled that hope, that the Fantastic Four will be brought into the MCU universe to fight Thanos, seeing that in the comic book (aka The Infinity Gauntlet), nearly the entire Marvel universe goes to war against Thanos, including various ‘cosmic’ entities like ‘Galactus’ (which I hope, if in the main battle, ‘looks like the Big G from the comics). Phase 4, I am taking a wild guess, will involve the Skrull invasion, as they took over and replaced many superheroes and villains without anyone noticing.
Of course, ‘I’ still want to see a Iron Man 4-6, which involves a huge storyline called ‘The Armor Wars’, which if done ‘after’ all of the Avengers movies, could see Iron Man fighting villains like Titanium Man, Crimson Dynamo, and maybe even Doctor Doom.
Radb707
Omg. It’s like you’re complaining that they’re using the arch nemesis from the comic books. Sorry, man, but that’s a comic book trope. What are they supposed to just ignore that? Hey you know that Red Skull guy who has the same abilities as Captain America? Let’s NOT spend the first movie with him. Daredevil shouldn’t fight Kingpin the first season. No way.
- FeRD
  In fairness to the argument here (though I don’t entirely agree with it), Kingpin is most definitely not the evil version of Daredevil. You kind of wandered off your own point there, or at least wandered away from actually responding to the original complaint. (There’s also the fact that Vicent D’Onofrio’s take on Wilson Fisk was absolutely inspired, a tour de force that nobody in their right mind would complain about. But it isn’t what the post is complaining about!)
  “Just like the hero, but eeeeeeevil” is indeed a comic book trope, though not one of its most inspired. It’s a cheap way to create well-matched adversaries, someone they can go up against and ultimately defeat, but without the victory seeming either unlikely or inevitable. But it’s not some sort of “arch-nemesis formula” or something. it’s just that the MCU may have disproportionately mined the trope for villains.
  Abomination is a second-string member of the Hulk’s rogues’ gallery, really. The Leader would place higher, and isn’t even remotely an “evil Hulk” type. But the MCU chose to shove Leader to the sidelines, and make Abomination the main antagonist for some reason. Plenty of Iron Man adversaries manage to refrain from facing off against him in power armor, it’s just that for the films they like the symmetry. (Of course, the MCU is just as capable of making those other adversaries suck, too — cf. The Mandarin)