Marvel Cinematic Universe has created a lot of memorable heroes who embody characteristics like loyalty, strength, will power, a conscience that comes out of having immense power. Superheroes like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America have all been bestowed great powers that they could easily use for selfish reasons, but they don’t. Instead, heroes become heroes because they take great responsibility in their actions towards others. To quote that famous line from Spider-Man- “With great power comes great responsibility.”
MCU however, has yet to create impressive villains to battle the heroes. Apart from Loki and Thanos, villains have been a lackluster part of every Marvel film. This has been an intentional move Marvel took to showcase their heroes. Marvel villains which have been featured so far tend to be doppelgangers of the main characters. People who have been bestowed the same amount of powers as the heroes who choose to take the darker route because the appeal of power is more attractive than being a martyr.
The Iron Monger played by Jeff Bridges,for example, is forgettable for to Iron Man but whose presence is needed to show Tony Stark’s better qualities. Loki is also another villain who has as much power as Thor but plays out those powers for his selfish reasons and prerogatives. MCU producer and head honcho Kevin Feige explains our sentiments of why doppelgangers are so popular in Marvel movies while using Doctor Strange villain as an example:
“Kaecilius doesn’t know Strange from a hole in the wall. He predates him. But when you’re teaching an audience about sorcerers and that reality and you’re going to talk about the past anyway and you’re going to get into their history anyway, much better to tie-in your bad guy with that instead of laying all this groundwork of parallel dimensions and sorcery and say, by the way, a meteor hit on the other side of the world, it went under the water, and this evil thing developed. What does that have to do with magic? Nothing… That’s not the way we’ve developed them up to this point.”
Phase 4 will hopefully focus on introducing more memorable villains into MCU as new heroes will also emerge. Avengers:Infinity War will be the first movie in MCU which does not feature a doppelganger villain [Thanos] and hopefully won’t be the last.
