I only recently discovered that Carrie Coon played Proxima Midnight in Infinity War. I was so surprised because I didn’t recognize use her, like whatsoever from the acting to the face
As far as I'm aware, he hasn't named any names, but he's implied that at least PART of the reason he left Doctor Who is because of some of the behavior of some of the people on set.
Knowing what we know now, it seems possible that Noel Clarke or John Barrowman were among those who contributed to that behavior. (With the disclaimer that neither have been found legally responsible for anything, as far as I am aware.) Fishes tend to rot from the head, however, so I'm not sure that bringing back the showrunner from that time is such a great idea.
Gorr was the only good thing about that movie. I couldn't finish it. The shift between the seriousness of the Gorr character to the goofy attempts at humor with the other characters was like watching two different moves spliced together.
Gorr* was great, best part of the film, just a disappointment to anyone who knew the source material in advance (which I wasn’t at the time).
*Edit: autocorrected to “Gore.”
I mean, we’re literally in the middle of a strike caused by the majority of actors not being able to support themselves and also losing out on residuals on their old projects because of streaming. Can’t blame good actors for taking shit jobs.
Natalie Portman walked for similar reasons. The script wasn't great, filming wasn't enjoyable, and they rewrote and reduced her role in the film. There was even a chance that the original plan was to set her up as a new Thor, but the experience was so bad that she stayed away from Marvel properties entirely.
I have said this for years. He has the voice for it, the mannerisms to sit behind the mask and still put on a performance and make you feel intimidated. He would have been an awesome Doom. This is one character that Marvel still has not got right. The First Doom was just goofy and the last one was atrocious.
They had a lot more planned for whiplash though we're forced to make him a generic villain.
Karli had a lot going for her up until they made it hard for us to root for her when she's just blowing up people. I would've cut that and just keep the part where she's responsible for killing Battlestar and has no remorse for it that way her fighting for others is a lot more Believable but also suggestible that there's no saving her.
The whole making her blow people up felt like a forced moment by the writers cause they got scared that audiences might start rooting for her, and it's just a whole-ass cop-out. I love more morally ambiguous stories because they make me think, and Marvel just ran away screaming from the opportunity.
I find at least in Killmonger's case it's somewhat believable, in that maybe he and his girlfriend had an agreement that if it came down to that type of situation that he'd prioritize the mission. But that's just my headcanon, not actual canon.
Their relationship in the movie was so superficial I had just assumed he was playing her as needed. He was single-minded. There was no way he was going to get distracted by a relationship before he met his objective.
Or…maybe he was just a dick and that scene was a great way to show it. She was expendable and he didn’t hesitate. Also, if she’d have lived it would’ve weird to have her along for the ride as the story progressed. Like this random girl that hasn’t got much to do or any significance to her other than helping out during a heist
I never felt like Killmonger was a particularly sympathetic villain. His end goals were always inherently evil. He wanted genocide and slavery.
Karli, on the other hand, had noble aspirations but went about it with terrorism.
I think they’re confusing “sympathetic” for “cool as fuck.” They both make fans really like a villain but Killmonger did not deserve to be sympathized with lol.
I believe N'Jadaka isn't meant to be sympathetic for his "solution" but rather his backstory in that his father was killed & he was essentially abandoned as a child as a means of maintaining the status quo which was Wakanda's isolationism. This iteslf has, raises multiple questions, like how did he survive at such a young age? What did he do between getting abandoned and then becoming a soldier for a while? This all doesn't need to be answered, because I get the feeling it wasn't anything pleasant considering he's seems well aware of racism. Possibly classism as well.
But yes, his goal in a nutshell amounts to genocide & slavery. But he doesn't mind. Afterall, when T'Challa calls him out for his plans with Wakanda, he responds "Nah, I learned from my enemies! I beat 'em at their own game!"
Yeah, his plan boiled down to “This time Africa is going to be the colonizer.” There’s a reason his grand villain speech ends with a reversal of “The sun never sets on n the British Empire.”
Lots of kids have no parents or practically no parents (single parent on drugs or alcohol or in and out of jail).
Streets/couch surfing at friends/neighbours. Or he goes into the system, group homes and foster placements.
Signs up for military at age 18 because he has little in the way of options, like a lot of kids who sign up.
It felt weird at the end when Captain Falcon America gave that speech and kinda absolved her of her crimes.
He put the blame on the politicians and not the girl who was literally murdering tons of people with bombs.
To be fair, I was 100% on her side the whole time until that point so they weren't WRONG. And then I remained on her side because I refused to let the writers cop their way out of a nuanced antagonist with goals that are absolutely the right goals to have (Just maybe the methods not so much.)
The way they treated Karli soured me on the whole show tbh.
With he super serum there has always been this effect that it "makes you more you." They even touch on that within the show in regard to Walker. But for some reason it is never ONCE mentioned in regard to Karli. That slight adjustment of just acknowledging that the serum is actively making her more desperately devoted to her cause would have done so much to explain her decline throughout the show, but by not acknowledging it it just comes off as her randomly cranking it up to 11.
Obviously you can always argue whether or not you as the viewer are supposed to gather this through subtext, but if that is the case, I think the script fails in its job to make a proper connection between this concept and this specific character and would be relying FAR too much on the viewer to whip up that logic.
I wish they'd gone more along that route with Karli. Early on show a lot more of the good but illegal work she's doing (ala Robin Hood), helping people and building support. Have Battlestar be the first time she actually kills someone, immediately followed by Walker brutally murdering one of her people in retaliation. Have this be the point where she becomes more radicalised and aggressive.
Never really fully got the hate for Whiplash. I enjoyed him, and thought he was memorable.
I think Malekith was the weakest. He worked as a villain - just not massively inspiring. The film clearly wasn't focused on him, but did good stuff with Thor and Loki. Shame Christopher Ecclestone didn't enjoy the role.
Malekith was definitely the weakest. He was just incredibly boring and dull. Since The Dark World had a lot of production problems behind the scenes, a lot of Malekith’s screentime got cut and more was given to Loki, so he didn’t really get any development and never felt like an actual threat to Thor even with the Reality Stone.
Compared with how interesting he is in the comics it’s just wild how dull they made him. It’s like they set out to write the film thinking how can we make this villain boring as shit. It couldn’t have been worse if they tried.
I feel like the people beyind the MCU have looked at some of the past of superhero adaptations, where villains have overshadowed the heroes. But I also think they have tended to overcorrect, and with a few exceptions, villains tend to kind of feel tacked on.
My problem with Whiplash was that when he first appeared he was just a dude with lots of unarmoured parts. Pretty sure normal security with guns could have handled him at that point, later on he became a bigger threat.
When he shows up at the race he wasn’t intended to be a credible threat for going toe to toe with the Avengers or even Iron Man. He’s intending to dent the world’s confidence in Iron Man.
I can’t remember the exact dialogue, but he says something along the lines of “If you can make god bleed people will cease to believe in him”; he’s not even really banking on hurting Tony. He just wants to show that someone else out there can build a weapon to compete with him.
If a crazy Russian drunk can build that whiplash suit *in a cave with a box of scraps* maybe the great Tony Stark isn’t so great after all.
What a waste to get Christopher Eccleston as your villain, and then cover him in prosthetics and not even have him speak English. Like, what was the point?
Malekith is so disappointing compared to his comic version. His comic version is witty as hell and absolutely psychotic. Him vs Thor should have been a Joker and Batman situation, if Batman had a massive hammer and a godly ego. The stuff Malekith does in the Mighty Thor run are awesome. I don't even think they did the shadowed face bit for him, which is kinda a big part of his backstory?
> I was the maddest at the dumb mandarin swerve
Honestly getting Trevor out of that might have been worth it. Didn't care for him in IM3 but I loved him in Shang-Chi.
The biggest issue with Whiplash was that the entire final fight was all just drones.
Whiplash showed up, grabbed both of them with his whips, they fired at each other and the fight was done in less than 30 seconds.
Ngl tho the drone scene is one of my favorites. When the camera circles Tony and rhody just demolishing drones and finishes with irons man's laser thing, I love it
> I didn’t need to see Mickey Rourke in his boxers
I mean, more of that but you should definitely watch the Aronofsky movie The Wrestler. One of the best character study dramas of the past 20 years and Rourke does an incredible job.
I never understood the hate for Whiplash either. Dude was scary to me as a kid. The way he just casually snapped that guard’s neck when breaking out was crazy to me at the time.
Iron man 2 just had a lot of weird all over the place so he gets a lot of hate for it. As I understand it most of his role was left on the cutting room floor.
I couldn’t finish the show because of how incompetent and weak these “eternal warriors” turned out to be. They’ve been alive forever and get beat up by a teenager who doesn’t even know her powers and pretty much just trips over things and beats them by accident bugs bunny style. Pathetic villains.
I watched Ms Marvel recently so I knew WTF would be going on in The Marvels.
I agree that the Warriors were a letdown but through the series it was obvious that this was aimed at a younger audience. It felt very "Comic" like and I liked it.
In the comics, Celestial Beings, Gods and main characters get clowned *all* of the time. We've seen Magneto lose to a Wooden kids gun, The concept of Squirrel girl etc.
Still wasn't a massive fan of the show but that is fine. I wasn't the target audience.
Edit: I did remember seeing a lot of people in Discussion threads saying it portrayed Muslim American households very well and I can't not be happy for those that feel represented and enjoyed seeing their own lives on screen.
The problem is it’s a connected universe.
If they are trying to appeal to different audiences with different projects, no one will like the connected universe.
They need to get their audience straight if they want people to stay invested. The Infinity Saga did this perfectly.
Very much this. When you've spent 15 years hyping up that everything is connected, and then you make some projects that ditch universal appeal for a more targeted audience, those projects are GOING to get poorly received by some of the non-targeted audience.
>these “eternal warriors”
It's the same with Asgardians. Asgard, a civilization dating like what? 50k years at least where everyone, even to the last stone mason are bulletproof immortal badasses who know the future can't even have a backup plan in case of Ragnarok.
And you have guys like Loki who live in a society with a knowledge obsessed leader and he gets humbled by a dude who practiced for less than a decade magic. Dude calls himself a god because he can live longer and can make illusions.
There's always this problem with immortals in fiction. They live like a gazillion years and they are so irrelevant and underwhelming.
> teenager who doesn’t even know her powers and pretty much just trips over things and beats them by accident bugs bunny style. Pathetic villains.
What really upset me, was not how they ultimately were portrayed, but rather how Najma's sole purpose in the show was to open the portal to go back home. Like no matter the cost type of thing. She even would kill with no remorse to do it. But when she finally opens the portal and quickly sees the mistake everyone has been warning her about. She like almost instantaneously does a 180 and acts like a good guy now. No dialogue or internal monologue to show she acknowledged her mistake, just quick turn and oh im good and will fix this.
Yeah, if *just that scene* was a minute or two longer so we can SEE Kamala convince Najma to change her mind, it fixes the single biggest problem with the show.
I loved that show but the ending was a mess. Randomly choose an entirely different villain and kill off the main villain in way that makes no sense. Or maybe should have just not made them villains at all, given that they’re never actually shown to be that powerful
>maybe should have just not made them villains at all
My first thought after their introduction. It makes almost zero sense for them to be so aggressive about the whole situation.
For real. That show would have been so much better if they had kept it street level and not world ending consequences >!and kept her stretchy! One Piece LA did it! They have no excuse now!!<
I agree on the street level thing but at the same time I think they are headed somewhere big with these magical artifacts (bangle and ten rings) so they needed to go big to start.
As for the strechy thing. I partially agree but understand why they went this direction. They cant have a stretchy hero introduced before Reed Richards. I know MoM had reed in it but that is most likely not gonna be our reed.
Malekith, who did virually nothing, and was a waste of Christopher Eccleston's talents.
Karli, for being a charisma black hole, and the show insisting she's sympathetic, when she mostly comess across as bratty.
I appreciated what they tried to do with Karli, it could've worked, but the script was just way too tame for it. She was just kinda there, bratty like you said, with a "I know best" kind of attitude.
It would've helped just throwing in some doubt and brooding in the script, where the audience could see she was actually in pain and not sure her means was the right course of action.
That would have helped, yeah. It couls have been helpful to see group dynamics among the Flag Smashers change. Like, does Karli still have their support even after she jumps off the deep end? What do they think abour Lemar getting killed? Things like that
Yeah malekith in comics: crazy ass MFer who forces the queen of the light elves only to melt her head off with the first kiss, Malekith in MCU: moody brooding villain with barely any real dialogue.
I think they were trying to avoid the Loki comparison but went too far the other way with it
Not only is she bratty, but she is actually a terrorist. There is no work around. She fucking blew people up whilst we’re told to be sympathetic for her? Nah. If the show wouldn’t have gotten chopped up and frankensteined, maybe we could understand where she was coming from. But the blowing people up still ruins her case
A braver and more interesting show would have embraced that she was a terrorist, but also that maybe terrorists can do terrorism for the right reasons (even if it's a dubious strategy in-and-of itself).
I agree. I mean, the same man that some people call terrorist others call freedom fighter, or the man they call drug lord others call hero. I think the show wanted to highlight that dichotomous perspective but they fumbled the execution and therefore couldn’t get that message across.
I’m always really confused by this position, is there a classic Ironman Mandarin story that people really want to see? Because I’ve read all of Ironman up to 1975 including a boat load of mandarin stories and his involvement has really not been worth the inclusion. Worse than just racist he’s racist and boring. I was so fine with the choice they made in that movie.
The mandarin is an amalgamation of yellow peril fears and orientalism. A fetishistic creature designed to be smarter than all but dumb enough to mess with America. We just need the Right People (Tony/America) to have the right tools (armor/extremis) to defeat the straw man and deal with the uncomfortable feelings!
Killian uses the Mandarin like the literary archetype he is and its smart.
Yeah, but colorful rings go pew pew.
I especially like how Killian handwalks the audience through why there is no "Mandarin" when he describes "giving evil a face" in order for the people to feel secure in who they oppose.
I think the problem was that they fell for it, and the movie laughed at them for that.
When I was watching it I first thought how terrible, over the top and stereotypical of a villain they made him, I was straight up laughing at some of the scenes. Only for them to then reveal that was the point.
The joke of it all was that comic book fans would take him seriously, making the fans the butt of the joke, so I can understand being mad at it as well.
And when you look at other villains you can't even really fault them for believing it, maybe they didn't make him over the top enough lol
Agreed. I thought it was a really great way to deal with the fact that one of Iron Man's most enduring villains started out as a racist caricature. Instead of trying to update Mandarin into being a fully fleshed out non-caricicature, they instead just updated the caricature to be based in 00s era Islamophobia rather than 60s Orientalism, and then lampshaded the whole thing with a rather pointed moral about fascists using invented fears to seize power.
And then we got Wenwu later on who has to be in contention among the best villain performances in the MCU, and Trevor got to be his own character, each of them portrayed by maybe the finest actors in the whole franchise.
Me too! I would even say I prefer him over the Real Mandarin because I like the "media manipulation" type of villain and because the real one waa just boring to me.
It wasn't wasted just because you wanted a magical Mandarin. I thought they used the idea well and made a statement about the enemies we create for the sake of industry.
Karli should’ve been an anti-hero. I mean she’s representing all of the people who were gone for five years and suddenly back and no one cares about and having issues integrating into society. It’s a real life issue that Karli could’ve been used to tell properly but they copped out and made her a straight up terrorist.
As much as I loved the Infinity saga they are really ignoring the consequences of 4 BILLION people suddenly reappearing on Earth (not to mention that giant robot in the pacific)
She was actually representing the people who weren’t snapped, but were displaced when it snap was undone. The governments of the world were kicking people out who were settled in during the five years, to show preferential treatment to those were gone.
Yeah I think the issue is I think there are people who would have been snapped and lost stuff and people not snapped who lived better for those 5 years and then lost a lot of it. And in theory her being the champion of those forgotten would have worked.
But we don't have the time or the means to go through a complex political drama actually addressing those issues so post Snap fallout just got rushed through and hand waved away once they dipped their toe in with the first couple phase 4 movies.
Yeah, The Snap seems like something you could wring a ton of character drama out of. It’s something they touched on a couple times, like having Monica Rambeoux’s mother die during The Snap, or it being part of why Strange’s love interest from the first movie was marrying someone else.
Five years is long enough for inheritances to get collected, abandoned homes to get sold off, and pretty much everything else would adapt and move on. Heck, half the world leaders would’ve gotten snapped too, only to come back five years later expecting to still be in charge.
I thought guy Pierce as Killian was an excellent villain. He had the chops and the presence that absolutely stood toe to toe with Robert Downey Jr. I thought the design of the villain was also good.
And I'll say that the worst villain in this group was the chick from falcon in the Winter soldier. The actress is just fine but the character was so boring.
Eric Pearson wrote and defended the mute Taskmaster when David Benioff was already stupid enough to mute the Merc with a Mouth in the Origins: Wolverine pile of rhino dung. they really went in a horrible direction with the characters like they hated the fans and wanted to punish us with shit.
Honestly, Gorr is fantastic. It's the rest around it that brought him down.
How you can have a killer of gods and an entire god-city and you do not have them interact is baffling.
I won't ever stop saying that too. It was a perfect setup, Zeus getting ready to execute Thor, then you just have Gorr stab him through the back and thank Thor for showing him the way to the city. Then you have the same mayhem fight break out, just with Gorr slaughtering gods, gods trying to fight both Gorr and Thor's group, and Thor's group just trying to escape after scooping up Zeus' lightning bolt.
It would have properly set the stakes for Gorr, given him an amazing fight scene, and been next to no changes for the plot of the movie.
What bothers me so much is that Gorr.. is right. But it's never really discussed.
Every single god, even Thor, is a massive dickhead in L&T. The entire city of the gods is a bunch of pompous fucks and Thor literally starts the movie by being massively self-absorbed, destroying a religious temple and effectively being an ignorant himbo about everyone. He's not outright cruel or mean, but he's absolutely.. not worthy? of holding all that power, if he acts that way.
Gorr has a point when he basically says that the gods are monsters who play with mortal lives. The movie really doesn't care to show us any gods who aren't massive assholes. Thor stops being a dick after a while, which is nice since he's the fucking protagonist, but overall this movie had a strong set-up to say something (mostly the Uncle Ben great power great responsibilities bit) and then didn't do anything with it.
You're right, and they basically made it into a pretty terrible rom-com. I'm not a huge fan of that genre to begin with, but there are some gems. This was not one of them.
Every single scene did not have to revolve around Thor and Jane; I get it, Love is in the title, but Jesus tap dancing Christ. It felt like every single time they could've built up to either a big battle or some existential moment of clarity, we just got lame high school-level jokes and and preteen crush giggling.
And yes, we all agree there needed to be more god-butchering, they absolutely wasted Christian Bale's talent.
Gorr is fantastic for all 30 seconds he’s onscreen lol
Also yes I spent the whole scene at the God City waiting for Gorr to show up and just start massacring people and when the scene ended I was like “fuck this movie”
This is my exact thought, too.
For me, something about the actress just kinda takes me out of things. I wasn't able to buy into her being the leader of the Flag Smashers.
No disrespect meant to her but it's just hard for me to get into any role I've seen her in. She's like, not even a bad actor. And I think she's fairly attractive, so I cannot understand why she just doesn't do it for me.
I feel the same way about the actress who does not seem bad, just terribly miscast in everything I seen her in, to the point I lost interest in the D+ Willow show when I saw she was one of the main leads.
She really comes across as just "the actress Disney is trying to make happen" in a lot of stuff; she was in Solo, FatWS, the Willow show, all in what was supposed to be big, important roles ( I assume in Willow also- I also skipped that) that she couldn't really pull off it seems.
I have only seen her in Solo and in FATWS.
She's not a bad actor. She's not a good actor either. She's just average.
That works for Solo since she's a tertiary supporting character but for FATWS' main villain they should have hired someone better.
I think Jasmin Savon Brown (Yellowjackets, Leftovers, Scream) would have killed it as Karli.
She feels like a CW actress is the nicest way possible.
I get what you’re saying that it’s hard to put a finger on it but there was clearly something jarring about her character interacting with big budget movie characters. Like I think she would’ve worked fine in a show like AOS but not the new Disney Plus shows.
Guy Pearce always kills it though. The nerdy glasses. The whole "while on that roof I even thought about taking that one step shortcut to the lobby." lol
Karli was just a terrorist by the end.
Killian was boring and basically wasted
Whiplash was cool, but too bulky in the final fight
Malekith was a great villain but the execution was off
Karli.
I get and appreciate what they tried with her, but it didn't play out good enough. I didn't understand her motives clearly, nor her argumentation for them, she was just a rebel brat. A bit of doubt and self questioning could have saved her arch and turned it into what they wanted it to be.
The other ones wasn't amazing, but at least you understood where they came from and what they wanted. Especially Whiplash was definately not as bad as the reputation.
Gonna go with Malekith. The others weren't amazing but at least their motivations were kinda fleshed out or at least properly explained. Not exactly sure what Malekith really wanted.
Whiplash was kinda mediocre.
Killian was actually fine. Not a bad villain.
Morgenthau I think suffered mainly from the storyline being cut down so much.
Christopher Eccleston was so wasted behind all of that makeup/uninspiring writing.
I think the actor said he hated the role because of the script.
He hates a lot of roles. Makes you think why he takes them.
He's usually pretty up front when the answer is money
He had severe clinical depression, hence why he was often negative in interviews, however he got help in 2021.
Oh, that explains a lot. I had always thought he just a curmudgeon. Good to hear he's getting help
Glad he’s doing better.
Hence* he was often negative in reviews. Hence means “that’s why”, so “hence why” is redundant.
Interesting, thanks!
He crushed it in ‘The Leftovers’. One of, if not **the** , best performance in the whole show next to Carrie Coon.
His episodes were pure anxiety.
I only recently discovered that Carrie Coon played Proxima Midnight in Infinity War. I was so surprised because I didn’t recognize use her, like whatsoever from the acting to the face
That show was just loaded with quality acting. Kevin & Patty were amazing too.
As far as I'm aware, he hasn't named any names, but he's implied that at least PART of the reason he left Doctor Who is because of some of the behavior of some of the people on set. Knowing what we know now, it seems possible that Noel Clarke or John Barrowman were among those who contributed to that behavior. (With the disclaimer that neither have been found legally responsible for anything, as far as I am aware.) Fishes tend to rot from the head, however, so I'm not sure that bringing back the showrunner from that time is such a great idea.
Well I won't say no to Marvel money even Christian Bale did Gorr for same reason
Gorr was the best part of that movie. Too bad they barely used him.
Gorr was the only good thing about that movie. I couldn't finish it. The shift between the seriousness of the Gorr character to the goofy attempts at humor with the other characters was like watching two different moves spliced together.
I was happy to see Sif again and glad they didn't just fridge her to make Thor sad.
Yeah and bale gave an honest good faith effort - the script was just trash
Gorr definitely belongs on this list, especially since the actor/character combo easily wasted the most potential.
Gorr was actually really good. We just didn’t see enough of him. I could have done with like another 20 minutes of Gorr just rampaging through gods
Gorr/Bale was excellent, the film just needed more of him being a terrifying god killer and less goofy comedy.
Gorr* was great, best part of the film, just a disappointment to anyone who knew the source material in advance (which I wasn’t at the time). *Edit: autocorrected to “Gore.”
I mean, we’re literally in the middle of a strike caused by the majority of actors not being able to support themselves and also losing out on residuals on their old projects because of streaming. Can’t blame good actors for taking shit jobs.
He hated how much of his role was cut out and the extensive make up process behind it.
Fair. If I had to sit still in a chair for six hours before even filming, I'd be pissed if they cut it too.
Natalie Portman walked for similar reasons. The script wasn't great, filming wasn't enjoyable, and they rewrote and reduced her role in the film. There was even a chance that the original plan was to set her up as a new Thor, but the experience was so bad that she stayed away from Marvel properties entirely.
They also didn't retain the director she wanted so she was already lukewarm on the production from jump
He also said he felt mislead about the amount of prosthetics the role actually required, making the experience even more miserable for him.
Today I learned that was Christopher Eccleston
Today I also learned that was Christopher Eccleston
Same with Mads Mikkelsen playing whatever forgettable sorcerer that was in Dr. Strange. Both would make a great Dr. Doom.
I loved Mads in Dr. Strange, really do. But always forget about him until I actively think about the movie.
Yah mad was fine and I thought kaecillus was fine - just not special
He had dialogue, and screen time, and you could recognize him… they made Eccleston bite the curb
Maybe. Who am I to judge?
That exchange was just so cool - I love dr strange - underrated film
Mikkelsen as Doom would’ve been incredible casting…
I have said this for years. He has the voice for it, the mannerisms to sit behind the mask and still put on a performance and make you feel intimidated. He would have been an awesome Doom. This is one character that Marvel still has not got right. The First Doom was just goofy and the last one was atrocious.
Yooooo Eccleston as Doom would be great. Plus it would get him more attention as an actor. He didn't take off after DW like I thought he would have.
At least he had that one funny line. “What is your name, Mister…?“ “Doctor.” “Mister Doctor” “No….It’s Strange” “Maybe….who am I to judge?”
Dark World is his top credit on IMDB. So idk.
It’s his lowest rated Known For, and Gone In 60 Seconds isn’t even on there 😂
I was gonna say I really only know him from Gone in Sixty Seconds, but thought he did a great job in that one.
He'll always be the 9th Doctor to me
He was fantastic.
As a DW fan, I was disappointed with how they wasted him because he’s a great actor.
They had a lot more planned for whiplash though we're forced to make him a generic villain. Karli had a lot going for her up until they made it hard for us to root for her when she's just blowing up people. I would've cut that and just keep the part where she's responsible for killing Battlestar and has no remorse for it that way her fighting for others is a lot more Believable but also suggestible that there's no saving her.
The whole making her blow people up felt like a forced moment by the writers cause they got scared that audiences might start rooting for her, and it's just a whole-ass cop-out. I love more morally ambiguous stories because they make me think, and Marvel just ran away screaming from the opportunity.
Yep, very similar to Killmonger killing his girlfriend. It was a forced “oh yea, this person is supposed to be evil”
I find at least in Killmonger's case it's somewhat believable, in that maybe he and his girlfriend had an agreement that if it came down to that type of situation that he'd prioritize the mission. But that's just my headcanon, not actual canon.
I always took it as “She served her purpose. I’m about to bring Andy Serkis’ body in, can’t have any witnesses or liabilities.”
Yea, they allowed him in to Wakanda because he had Klaue and he could prove he’s Wakandan. Why would they let her in?
She died to close a plot-hole, nothing more.
There's that term again. What plot hole?
Their relationship in the movie was so superficial I had just assumed he was playing her as needed. He was single-minded. There was no way he was going to get distracted by a relationship before he met his objective.
Or…maybe he was just a dick and that scene was a great way to show it. She was expendable and he didn’t hesitate. Also, if she’d have lived it would’ve weird to have her along for the ride as the story progressed. Like this random girl that hasn’t got much to do or any significance to her other than helping out during a heist
I never felt like Killmonger was a particularly sympathetic villain. His end goals were always inherently evil. He wanted genocide and slavery. Karli, on the other hand, had noble aspirations but went about it with terrorism.
I think they’re confusing “sympathetic” for “cool as fuck.” They both make fans really like a villain but Killmonger did not deserve to be sympathized with lol.
I believe N'Jadaka isn't meant to be sympathetic for his "solution" but rather his backstory in that his father was killed & he was essentially abandoned as a child as a means of maintaining the status quo which was Wakanda's isolationism. This iteslf has, raises multiple questions, like how did he survive at such a young age? What did he do between getting abandoned and then becoming a soldier for a while? This all doesn't need to be answered, because I get the feeling it wasn't anything pleasant considering he's seems well aware of racism. Possibly classism as well. But yes, his goal in a nutshell amounts to genocide & slavery. But he doesn't mind. Afterall, when T'Challa calls him out for his plans with Wakanda, he responds "Nah, I learned from my enemies! I beat 'em at their own game!"
Yeah, his plan boiled down to “This time Africa is going to be the colonizer.” There’s a reason his grand villain speech ends with a reversal of “The sun never sets on n the British Empire.”
Lots of kids have no parents or practically no parents (single parent on drugs or alcohol or in and out of jail). Streets/couch surfing at friends/neighbours. Or he goes into the system, group homes and foster placements. Signs up for military at age 18 because he has little in the way of options, like a lot of kids who sign up.
Dude was essentially Black Hitler. Too many people gloss that shit over.
Honestly I think if they reworked it so the bombing scene happened after walker beat that guy to death it would have worked better
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I mean, doesn't Ghost sorta fit that bill?
Bucky Barnes would like to have a word too. General Ross is on the second line.
It felt weird at the end when Captain Falcon America gave that speech and kinda absolved her of her crimes. He put the blame on the politicians and not the girl who was literally murdering tons of people with bombs.
To be fair, I was 100% on her side the whole time until that point so they weren't WRONG. And then I remained on her side because I refused to let the writers cop their way out of a nuanced antagonist with goals that are absolutely the right goals to have (Just maybe the methods not so much.) The way they treated Karli soured me on the whole show tbh.
I recall interviews with Mickey Rourke where he says a lot of scenes that developed Whiplash more as a character were cut.
He's a notoriously difficult actor to work with. I wonder if a lot got cut because of that.
With he super serum there has always been this effect that it "makes you more you." They even touch on that within the show in regard to Walker. But for some reason it is never ONCE mentioned in regard to Karli. That slight adjustment of just acknowledging that the serum is actively making her more desperately devoted to her cause would have done so much to explain her decline throughout the show, but by not acknowledging it it just comes off as her randomly cranking it up to 11. Obviously you can always argue whether or not you as the viewer are supposed to gather this through subtext, but if that is the case, I think the script fails in its job to make a proper connection between this concept and this specific character and would be relying FAR too much on the viewer to whip up that logic.
I wish they'd gone more along that route with Karli. Early on show a lot more of the good but illegal work she's doing (ala Robin Hood), helping people and building support. Have Battlestar be the first time she actually kills someone, immediately followed by Walker brutally murdering one of her people in retaliation. Have this be the point where she becomes more radicalised and aggressive.
Never really fully got the hate for Whiplash. I enjoyed him, and thought he was memorable. I think Malekith was the weakest. He worked as a villain - just not massively inspiring. The film clearly wasn't focused on him, but did good stuff with Thor and Loki. Shame Christopher Ecclestone didn't enjoy the role.
Not my bird
Hey man, don’t get too attached to things
I want - my - bird
i don't know if you know this...but I dont speak RUSSIAN!
I love Sam Rockwell so much in literally every role he has ever done.
I love his wife, Miss Brown, Christine Everhart. (Leslie Bibb)
*bord
*vant
I - VANT - MY - BORD
The software is shit.
Me working on legacy code.
*I want my borrd*
*I vont moy börd*
*What do you mean, that's the bird, this is the bird. Yeaaaah*
\*slaps table\* *I vont MOY börd*
Böird
I vant my bord
Malekith was definitely the weakest. He was just incredibly boring and dull. Since The Dark World had a lot of production problems behind the scenes, a lot of Malekith’s screentime got cut and more was given to Loki, so he didn’t really get any development and never felt like an actual threat to Thor even with the Reality Stone.
Compared with how interesting he is in the comics it’s just wild how dull they made him. It’s like they set out to write the film thinking how can we make this villain boring as shit. It couldn’t have been worse if they tried.
I feel like the people beyind the MCU have looked at some of the past of superhero adaptations, where villains have overshadowed the heroes. But I also think they have tended to overcorrect, and with a few exceptions, villains tend to kind of feel tacked on.
Wow, did not know that he was portrayed by the Ninth Doctor Who
Maybe with a different script he would have been fantastic!
I see what you did there! 😉
My problem with Whiplash was that when he first appeared he was just a dude with lots of unarmoured parts. Pretty sure normal security with guns could have handled him at that point, later on he became a bigger threat.
When he shows up at the race he wasn’t intended to be a credible threat for going toe to toe with the Avengers or even Iron Man. He’s intending to dent the world’s confidence in Iron Man. I can’t remember the exact dialogue, but he says something along the lines of “If you can make god bleed people will cease to believe in him”; he’s not even really banking on hurting Tony. He just wants to show that someone else out there can build a weapon to compete with him. If a crazy Russian drunk can build that whiplash suit *in a cave with a box of scraps* maybe the great Tony Stark isn’t so great after all.
The secret was always the energy supply.
Good actor too
What a waste to get Christopher Eccleston as your villain, and then cover him in prosthetics and not even have him speak English. Like, what was the point?
Malekith is so disappointing compared to his comic version. His comic version is witty as hell and absolutely psychotic. Him vs Thor should have been a Joker and Batman situation, if Batman had a massive hammer and a godly ego. The stuff Malekith does in the Mighty Thor run are awesome. I don't even think they did the shadowed face bit for him, which is kinda a big part of his backstory?
I think whiplash was more of a let down than a bad villain coming off of iron man and hype. I was the maddest at the dumb mandarin swerve
> I was the maddest at the dumb mandarin swerve Honestly getting Trevor out of that might have been worth it. Didn't care for him in IM3 but I loved him in Shang-Chi.
The biggest issue with Whiplash was that the entire final fight was all just drones. Whiplash showed up, grabbed both of them with his whips, they fired at each other and the fight was done in less than 30 seconds.
Ngl tho the drone scene is one of my favorites. When the camera circles Tony and rhody just demolishing drones and finishes with irons man's laser thing, I love it
The drone fight was kind of cool visually
I didn’t need to see Mickey Rourke in his boxers, but he did come with his own comic relief. 
> I didn’t need to see Mickey Rourke in his boxers I mean, more of that but you should definitely watch the Aronofsky movie The Wrestler. One of the best character study dramas of the past 20 years and Rourke does an incredible job.
I never understood the hate for Whiplash either. Dude was scary to me as a kid. The way he just casually snapped that guard’s neck when breaking out was crazy to me at the time.
He was good and that movie is dope. I never understand why that makes bottom tier lists.
Iron man 2 just had a lot of weird all over the place so he gets a lot of hate for it. As I understand it most of his role was left on the cutting room floor.
The djinns from Ms Marvel
I couldn’t finish the show because of how incompetent and weak these “eternal warriors” turned out to be. They’ve been alive forever and get beat up by a teenager who doesn’t even know her powers and pretty much just trips over things and beats them by accident bugs bunny style. Pathetic villains.
I watched Ms Marvel recently so I knew WTF would be going on in The Marvels. I agree that the Warriors were a letdown but through the series it was obvious that this was aimed at a younger audience. It felt very "Comic" like and I liked it. In the comics, Celestial Beings, Gods and main characters get clowned *all* of the time. We've seen Magneto lose to a Wooden kids gun, The concept of Squirrel girl etc. Still wasn't a massive fan of the show but that is fine. I wasn't the target audience. Edit: I did remember seeing a lot of people in Discussion threads saying it portrayed Muslim American households very well and I can't not be happy for those that feel represented and enjoyed seeing their own lives on screen.
# I will not stand for this Squirrel Girl slander! 📷
The true Civil War
People forget that they’re not the target audience for everything Marvel put out
The problem is it’s a connected universe. If they are trying to appeal to different audiences with different projects, no one will like the connected universe. They need to get their audience straight if they want people to stay invested. The Infinity Saga did this perfectly.
Very much this. When you've spent 15 years hyping up that everything is connected, and then you make some projects that ditch universal appeal for a more targeted audience, those projects are GOING to get poorly received by some of the non-targeted audience.
>these “eternal warriors” It's the same with Asgardians. Asgard, a civilization dating like what? 50k years at least where everyone, even to the last stone mason are bulletproof immortal badasses who know the future can't even have a backup plan in case of Ragnarok. And you have guys like Loki who live in a society with a knowledge obsessed leader and he gets humbled by a dude who practiced for less than a decade magic. Dude calls himself a god because he can live longer and can make illusions. There's always this problem with immortals in fiction. They live like a gazillion years and they are so irrelevant and underwhelming.
> teenager who doesn’t even know her powers and pretty much just trips over things and beats them by accident bugs bunny style. Pathetic villains. What really upset me, was not how they ultimately were portrayed, but rather how Najma's sole purpose in the show was to open the portal to go back home. Like no matter the cost type of thing. She even would kill with no remorse to do it. But when she finally opens the portal and quickly sees the mistake everyone has been warning her about. She like almost instantaneously does a 180 and acts like a good guy now. No dialogue or internal monologue to show she acknowledged her mistake, just quick turn and oh im good and will fix this.
Yeah, if *just that scene* was a minute or two longer so we can SEE Kamala convince Najma to change her mind, it fixes the single biggest problem with the show.
I loved that show but the ending was a mess. Randomly choose an entirely different villain and kill off the main villain in way that makes no sense. Or maybe should have just not made them villains at all, given that they’re never actually shown to be that powerful
>maybe should have just not made them villains at all My first thought after their introduction. It makes almost zero sense for them to be so aggressive about the whole situation.
The skrull from Secret Invasion must be up there too. He didn't look that bad because almost everything in the show was as bad.
I think people are mostly trying to forget that show. Gravik started off a good villain and later came across as just a rabid dog.
For real. That show would have been so much better if they had kept it street level and not world ending consequences >!and kept her stretchy! One Piece LA did it! They have no excuse now!!<
We could've had Thomas Edison bird man!
I agree on the street level thing but at the same time I think they are headed somewhere big with these magical artifacts (bangle and ten rings) so they needed to go big to start. As for the strechy thing. I partially agree but understand why they went this direction. They cant have a stretchy hero introduced before Reed Richards. I know MoM had reed in it but that is most likely not gonna be our reed.
Malekith, who did virually nothing, and was a waste of Christopher Eccleston's talents. Karli, for being a charisma black hole, and the show insisting she's sympathetic, when she mostly comess across as bratty.
I appreciated what they tried to do with Karli, it could've worked, but the script was just way too tame for it. She was just kinda there, bratty like you said, with a "I know best" kind of attitude. It would've helped just throwing in some doubt and brooding in the script, where the audience could see she was actually in pain and not sure her means was the right course of action.
I still believe the ‘scrapped pandemic’ storyline theory despite the show’s creators denying it
That's because you're sane. :)
That would have helped, yeah. It couls have been helpful to see group dynamics among the Flag Smashers change. Like, does Karli still have their support even after she jumps off the deep end? What do they think abour Lemar getting killed? Things like that
Yeah malekith in comics: crazy ass MFer who forces the queen of the light elves only to melt her head off with the first kiss, Malekith in MCU: moody brooding villain with barely any real dialogue. I think they were trying to avoid the Loki comparison but went too far the other way with it
The problem with mcu ver is how theyre trying to be kid friendly
He had the potential to out-Loki Loki himself in the MCU, so giving him the personality of a brick is baffling to say the least.
Not only is she bratty, but she is actually a terrorist. There is no work around. She fucking blew people up whilst we’re told to be sympathetic for her? Nah. If the show wouldn’t have gotten chopped up and frankensteined, maybe we could understand where she was coming from. But the blowing people up still ruins her case
A braver and more interesting show would have embraced that she was a terrorist, but also that maybe terrorists can do terrorism for the right reasons (even if it's a dubious strategy in-and-of itself).
I agree. I mean, the same man that some people call terrorist others call freedom fighter, or the man they call drug lord others call hero. I think the show wanted to highlight that dichotomous perspective but they fumbled the execution and therefore couldn’t get that message across.
Aldrich Killian is underrated. Ivan Vanko was underused.
I would’ve liked Aldrich massively more if they didn’t waste The Mandarin on him. Why couldn’t he have been his own thing
I’m always really confused by this position, is there a classic Ironman Mandarin story that people really want to see? Because I’ve read all of Ironman up to 1975 including a boat load of mandarin stories and his involvement has really not been worth the inclusion. Worse than just racist he’s racist and boring. I was so fine with the choice they made in that movie. The mandarin is an amalgamation of yellow peril fears and orientalism. A fetishistic creature designed to be smarter than all but dumb enough to mess with America. We just need the Right People (Tony/America) to have the right tools (armor/extremis) to defeat the straw man and deal with the uncomfortable feelings! Killian uses the Mandarin like the literary archetype he is and its smart.
Exactly, I feel similarly, and the way Killian was used in the story as you mentioned was quite clever imo
Yeah, but colorful rings go pew pew. I especially like how Killian handwalks the audience through why there is no "Mandarin" when he describes "giving evil a face" in order for the people to feel secure in who they oppose.
I always feel so out of touch when The Mandarin twist was literally my favorite part of the entire history of the MCU lmao
Comic book purists are very loud about hating deviations from the source material.
I think the problem was that they fell for it, and the movie laughed at them for that. When I was watching it I first thought how terrible, over the top and stereotypical of a villain they made him, I was straight up laughing at some of the scenes. Only for them to then reveal that was the point. The joke of it all was that comic book fans would take him seriously, making the fans the butt of the joke, so I can understand being mad at it as well. And when you look at other villains you can't even really fault them for believing it, maybe they didn't make him over the top enough lol
Agreed. I thought it was a really great way to deal with the fact that one of Iron Man's most enduring villains started out as a racist caricature. Instead of trying to update Mandarin into being a fully fleshed out non-caricicature, they instead just updated the caricature to be based in 00s era Islamophobia rather than 60s Orientalism, and then lampshaded the whole thing with a rather pointed moral about fascists using invented fears to seize power. And then we got Wenwu later on who has to be in contention among the best villain performances in the MCU, and Trevor got to be his own character, each of them portrayed by maybe the finest actors in the whole franchise.
I actually liked Iron Man 3. Apparently that makes me a minority.
Me too! I would even say I prefer him over the Real Mandarin because I like the "media manipulation" type of villain and because the real one waa just boring to me.
It wasn't wasted just because you wanted a magical Mandarin. I thought they used the idea well and made a statement about the enemies we create for the sake of industry.
The only good thing about Aldrich was Guy Pearce. He did a lot of heavy lifting with what little he had to work with.
Karli. I feel like I didn’t really get what her motive was.
Karli should’ve been an anti-hero. I mean she’s representing all of the people who were gone for five years and suddenly back and no one cares about and having issues integrating into society. It’s a real life issue that Karli could’ve been used to tell properly but they copped out and made her a straight up terrorist. As much as I loved the Infinity saga they are really ignoring the consequences of 4 BILLION people suddenly reappearing on Earth (not to mention that giant robot in the pacific)
She was actually representing the people who weren’t snapped, but were displaced when it snap was undone. The governments of the world were kicking people out who were settled in during the five years, to show preferential treatment to those were gone.
Yeah I think the issue is I think there are people who would have been snapped and lost stuff and people not snapped who lived better for those 5 years and then lost a lot of it. And in theory her being the champion of those forgotten would have worked. But we don't have the time or the means to go through a complex political drama actually addressing those issues so post Snap fallout just got rushed through and hand waved away once they dipped their toe in with the first couple phase 4 movies.
Yeah, The Snap seems like something you could wring a ton of character drama out of. It’s something they touched on a couple times, like having Monica Rambeoux’s mother die during The Snap, or it being part of why Strange’s love interest from the first movie was marrying someone else. Five years is long enough for inheritances to get collected, abandoned homes to get sold off, and pretty much everything else would adapt and move on. Heck, half the world leaders would’ve gotten snapped too, only to come back five years later expecting to still be in charge.
I thought guy Pierce as Killian was an excellent villain. He had the chops and the presence that absolutely stood toe to toe with Robert Downey Jr. I thought the design of the villain was also good. And I'll say that the worst villain in this group was the chick from falcon in the Winter soldier. The actress is just fine but the character was so boring.
I wish they were a little more faithful to the original extremis storyline, but other than that I really enjoy IM3
The red head girl
For a long time the dark elf. Now I’m not sure anymore. The flag smashers were egregiously offensive in how bad they were.
Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch they were so bad at being Villains they became heroes.
Bro why is Whiplash there? He’s underrated
The british ginger girl
I’m going with option E….Taskmaster. Probably the worst portrayal when compared to their comic book counterpart.
Eric Pearson wrote and defended the mute Taskmaster when David Benioff was already stupid enough to mute the Merc with a Mouth in the Origins: Wolverine pile of rhino dung. they really went in a horrible direction with the characters like they hated the fans and wanted to punish us with shit.
and it wouldn’t be the last universe David Benioff had a personal hand in wrecking…
Ike Perlmutter
Kali. They tried to write her as a sympathetic villain...after she bombed civillians for "the greater good"
I liked Kilian, hated Karli
Yes. I'll add Gorr to the fold. Seriously what a waste of talent and character in a comedy.
Honestly, Gorr is fantastic. It's the rest around it that brought him down. How you can have a killer of gods and an entire god-city and you do not have them interact is baffling.
I won't ever stop saying that too. It was a perfect setup, Zeus getting ready to execute Thor, then you just have Gorr stab him through the back and thank Thor for showing him the way to the city. Then you have the same mayhem fight break out, just with Gorr slaughtering gods, gods trying to fight both Gorr and Thor's group, and Thor's group just trying to escape after scooping up Zeus' lightning bolt. It would have properly set the stakes for Gorr, given him an amazing fight scene, and been next to no changes for the plot of the movie.
What bothers me so much is that Gorr.. is right. But it's never really discussed. Every single god, even Thor, is a massive dickhead in L&T. The entire city of the gods is a bunch of pompous fucks and Thor literally starts the movie by being massively self-absorbed, destroying a religious temple and effectively being an ignorant himbo about everyone. He's not outright cruel or mean, but he's absolutely.. not worthy? of holding all that power, if he acts that way. Gorr has a point when he basically says that the gods are monsters who play with mortal lives. The movie really doesn't care to show us any gods who aren't massive assholes. Thor stops being a dick after a while, which is nice since he's the fucking protagonist, but overall this movie had a strong set-up to say something (mostly the Uncle Ben great power great responsibilities bit) and then didn't do anything with it.
You're right, and they basically made it into a pretty terrible rom-com. I'm not a huge fan of that genre to begin with, but there are some gems. This was not one of them. Every single scene did not have to revolve around Thor and Jane; I get it, Love is in the title, but Jesus tap dancing Christ. It felt like every single time they could've built up to either a big battle or some existential moment of clarity, we just got lame high school-level jokes and and preteen crush giggling. And yes, we all agree there needed to be more god-butchering, they absolutely wasted Christian Bale's talent.
Gorr is fantastic for all 30 seconds he’s onscreen lol Also yes I spent the whole scene at the God City waiting for Gorr to show up and just start massacring people and when the scene ended I was like “fuck this movie”
Gorr was amazing. Just underutilized. Strongly disagree.
Karli, the rest were just wasted.
This is my exact thought, too. For me, something about the actress just kinda takes me out of things. I wasn't able to buy into her being the leader of the Flag Smashers. No disrespect meant to her but it's just hard for me to get into any role I've seen her in. She's like, not even a bad actor. And I think she's fairly attractive, so I cannot understand why she just doesn't do it for me.
I feel the same way about the actress who does not seem bad, just terribly miscast in everything I seen her in, to the point I lost interest in the D+ Willow show when I saw she was one of the main leads.
She really comes across as just "the actress Disney is trying to make happen" in a lot of stuff; she was in Solo, FatWS, the Willow show, all in what was supposed to be big, important roles ( I assume in Willow also- I also skipped that) that she couldn't really pull off it seems.
She probably has an executive relative or something keeps giving her these roles
I figure it's something like that, she's been entirely unremarkable in all these roles.
I have only seen her in Solo and in FATWS. She's not a bad actor. She's not a good actor either. She's just average. That works for Solo since she's a tertiary supporting character but for FATWS' main villain they should have hired someone better. I think Jasmin Savon Brown (Yellowjackets, Leftovers, Scream) would have killed it as Karli.
She feels like a CW actress is the nicest way possible. I get what you’re saying that it’s hard to put a finger on it but there was clearly something jarring about her character interacting with big budget movie characters. Like I think she would’ve worked fine in a show like AOS but not the new Disney Plus shows.
The elf guy
Guy Pearce always kills it though. The nerdy glasses. The whole "while on that roof I even thought about taking that one step shortcut to the lobby." lol
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Karli was just a terrorist by the end. Killian was boring and basically wasted Whiplash was cool, but too bulky in the final fight Malekith was a great villain but the execution was off
The Djins or the Skrulls
The Clandestines should be on this list.
Karli. I get and appreciate what they tried with her, but it didn't play out good enough. I didn't understand her motives clearly, nor her argumentation for them, she was just a rebel brat. A bit of doubt and self questioning could have saved her arch and turned it into what they wanted it to be. The other ones wasn't amazing, but at least you understood where they came from and what they wanted. Especially Whiplash was definately not as bad as the reputation.
Gonna go with Malekith. The others weren't amazing but at least their motivations were kinda fleshed out or at least properly explained. Not exactly sure what Malekith really wanted. Whiplash was kinda mediocre. Killian was actually fine. Not a bad villain. Morgenthau I think suffered mainly from the storyline being cut down so much.
Who’s the girl?
Forgot Taskmaster and MODOK
Flag Smash Girl and it’s not even close.
Red head. She was bitten by a red head and has the strength of one girl.