Obstacles
Name a Marvel villain from Phase One or Two. Now describe what he wanted, in his own words, and why he wanted it. For most of them, you can’t, and that’s the problem. Villains are where I lose patience with Marvel. I’ll sit through a lot of quipping and a lot of sky beams, but when the bad guy is a grudge in a cape, I stop caring whether the heroes win. Mads Mikkelsen standing around in eye makeup with nothing to play is still a sorry sight.
Malekith, the dark elf from Thor: The Dark World, wanted to plunge the universe into darkness. Why? Because he was a dark elf. Ronan, from Guardians of the Galaxy, wanted to destroy a planet over an old war nobody explains. Kaecilius, in Doctor Strange, wanted to bring an evil god to Earth, and Mads Mikkelsen, among the best actors alive, was given almost nothing to play.
These characters are obstacles. They exist so that the hero has something to fight in the third act, and when they’re gone, nobody remembers them. The MCU has produced dozens of them: evil twins with the hero’s powers, warlords with a glowing object, armies of faceless creatures and a sky full of debris.
There’s a structural reason, and it applies to any long-running series.
Why the Machine Makes Them
A franchise can’t let its heroes change much. Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Thor had to be around for the next film, and the one after that, and the team-up after that. So the villain can’t really hurt them, can’t really win and can’t challenge them enough to change who they are.
A real antagonist is dangerous because they threaten to change the hero. They make an argument the hero has to answer, and sometimes the hero can’t. That’s exactly what a franchise built on stable, marketable heroes can’t allow very often. So the villain gets reduced to a punching bag with a grudge, and the audience senses it.
The other reason is time. Marvel films spend their running time on the heroes, the team banter and the setup for the next film. The villain gets a few scenes of scowling and a speech before the fight. Nobody, not even a great actor, can build an inner life in that space.
For Writers
The MCU’s heroes had to stay the same for the next film, so its villains could rarely threaten to change them. A villain who can’t change the hero can’t really threaten them.
The same trap waits for anybody writing a series. When your protagonist has to be intact for book seven, it’s tempting to give them villains who can’t really touch them. The reader notices, even if they can’t say why, and the tension drains away.
The fix is an antagonist with the power to change your hero, even in a series, one who wins something permanent: a relationship, a belief, a piece of the hero’s certainty. The next book is better for it, because the hero has been through something real.
The Seven Who Worked
The exceptions prove the rule. Across more than thirty films, I count seven villains who were real antagonists, with reasons, inner lives and arguments that mattered. Every one of them was given something the obstacles weren’t: time, motive and a real connection to the hero. They’re Loki, Alexander Pierce, Ego, Zemo, the Vulture, Killmonger and Thanos. Seven out of more than thirty, spread across more than fifteen years of films and billions of dollars.
Loki and Pierce
Loki, in The Avengers and the Thor films, is the first great MCU antagonist, and he works because he’s family. He’s Thor’s brother, jealous, wounded and brilliant, and every fight between them is a fight about love and belonging. Tom Hiddleston made him so compelling that the franchise eventually turned him into a hero.
Alexander Pierce, played by Robert Redford in The Winter Soldier, works for the opposite reason. He’s no monster. He’s a respected statesman who believes that order is worth any price, and he makes the case with calm, reasonable conviction. His argument, security against freedom, is one real people make every day. That’s what makes him frightening.
Ego, Zemo and the Vulture
Ego, Kurt Russell’s living planet in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, is Peter Quill’s father, and he’s charming and loving until he isn’t. The horror of the character is personal: Quill finally finds the dad he always wanted, and the dad turns out to be a monster who killed his mother.
Zemo, in Captain America: Civil War, has no powers and no army. He lost his family in the battle of Sokovia, and his plan is to make the Avengers destroy each other. He succeeds. Daniel Brühl plays him with quiet grief, and he’s one of the few villains who wins.
Michael Keaton’s Vulture, in Spider-Man: Homecoming, is a working man cheated by the rich and powerful, and his grievance makes sense. Then comes the twist that he’s the father of the girl Peter is taking to the dance, and the car scene that follows is the tensest few minutes in the Spider-Man films.
Killmonger and Thanos
I think Killmonger, in Black Panther, is the MCU’s best villain, because he’s right about something.
Michael B. Jordan plays a man abandoned by Wakanda, raised in poverty in Oakland, who sees a nation hoarding its wealth while people who look like him suffer around the world. His methods are monstrous. His grievance is real, and T’Challa ends the film changing his country’s policy because Killmonger forced the question.
Killmonger is the one I think about after the credits. Jordan plays him with so much hurt that I catch myself agreeing with him for whole scenes, and the film is braver for letting me.
Thanos, in Avengers: Infinity War, is the other great one, because the film is really his story.
He has a philosophy, a daughter he loves in his twisted way and a plan he carries out with terrible calm. And he wins. The film ends with half of all life gone and Thanos watching a sunrise, and no other Marvel villain came close to that kind of weight.
What the Seven Share
Look at the seven together and the pattern is obvious. Almost all of them have a personal connection to the hero: a brother, a father, a girlfriend’s father, a trusted leader, a cousin. Almost all of them have a grievance the audience can understand, even if they reject the methods. And almost all of them get real screen time, scenes where they talk, explain and reveal themselves, instead of just scowling before the fight.
The obstacles have none of that. No connection, no understandable grievance and no time. Kang, the multiverse villain Marvel spent years building toward in Quantumania and the Loki series, is the most expensive example of the problem: a vast, vague threat with a speech about conquering timelines, and nothing personal at stake for anybody.
Kang frustrates me more than any of the others. Marvel had years to build him and still gave me a threat I can’t describe in one sentence. Everything about him is scale, and none of it touches anybody I care about.
For Writers
The seven MCU villains who worked share three things: a personal connection to the hero, an understandable grievance and enough screen time to reveal themselves.
Those three things are a checklist for any antagonist.
Ask whether your villain is connected to your hero in a way that makes their conflict personal. Ask whether a reasonable reader could understand, even briefly, why they want what they want. And ask whether they get scenes of their own, where they talk, argue and reveal who they are.
If the answer to any of those is no, you probably have an obstacle. Obstacles are fine for a chapter, a storm or a locked door or a hired thug. A book needs an antagonist.
Villains in Other Franchises
The contrast with the best superhero films outside the MCU is telling. Heath Ledger’s Joker, in The Dark Knight, has an argument about chaos and hypocrisy that Batman can’t fully answer. Magneto, in X-Men, survived Auschwitz and has every reason to fear humanity. Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus is a good man ruined by his own ambition. Each of them makes the hero, and the audience, uncomfortable.
I’ve written more about how those earlier films handled their villains in Why the 2000s Superhero Films Were Better Than the MCU. The short version is that when a director is allowed to take a villain seriously, the whole film gets better.
Twists Instead of Characters
When Marvel does try to make a villain interesting, it often reaches for a twist instead of a character. In Iron Man 3, the terrifying Mandarin turns out to be an actor hired as a front, and the real villain is Aldrich Killian, a spurned scientist with a grudge. The twist is clever, and a lot of people loved it. It also left the film with a villain whose motive boils down to Tony Stark once being rude to him at a party.
Mysterio, in Spider-Man: Far From Home, works better, because his lie is the whole character and Jake Gyllenhaal clearly enjoys it. But the pattern is the same: surprise replaces motive. A twist can make a villain memorable for a scene. Only an inner life makes one memorable for a film.
The Cost
Weak villains don’t just make bad third acts. They drain the stakes from the whole film.
If the audience knows the villain is a disposable punching bag, they know the hero is safe, and a film where the hero is safe is a film with no tension. That’s why so many MCU films feel pleasant and weightless, and why they fade from memory so quickly.
The best MCU films, Infinity War, Winter Soldier, Black Panther, Civil War, are the ones with the best villains.
Coincidence has nothing to do with it. The villain is where the film’s danger is. Take the danger away, and all that’s left is a group of charming people waiting for the effects team to finish the last battle.
Craft Note
Craft Note
The Antagonist Problem comes down to a simple truth: a story is only as strong as its opposition. The MCU spent its energy on heroes and treated villains as plot furniture, and its films paid for it in stakes and memory.
An antagonist with a real argument forces the hero, and the reader, to think. An obstacle only forces them to fight. Write your villain’s side of the story, in their voice, before you write the book. If you can’t make their case convincingly, the reader won’t feel the threat.
Seven Out of Thirty
The MCU’s villain problem is structural. A franchise built on heroes who can’t change has little room for villains who could change them, so most of its antagonists became obstacles.
The seven who worked, Loki, Pierce, Ego, Zemo, the Vulture, Killmonger and Thanos, show what the rest were missing: a personal connection, a real grievance and time to be somebody. I’d give up a dozen sky-beam finales for one more villain like those seven, and I think the films would have stayed with me longer if Marvel had made that trade.
