Even George R.R. Martin is Tired of MARVEL’s Villains

But not necessarily for the reasons you might think.

A big deal has been made for a very long time about how, aside from Loki, the villains of Marvel Studios movies are generally pretty terrible. They often exist simply as plot devices to further the protagonist’s story and tend not to have an awful lot of characterisation. Red Skull and Malekith were both evil for the sake of evil, Ronan’s motivations were quite stereotypical and dull and Yellowjacket’s reasoning didn’t really necessitate dressing up in a suit that looks like a bumblebee and shooting things. It’s ridiculous to think that every creative who works or has worked for Marvel doesn’t understand how to make a good villain, so we can only assume that they don’t view it as important as getting the hero and the other characters right.

Fans are – rightfully so – pretty tired of this, and it turns out that one of those fans is none other than George R.R. Martin, the author of A Song of Ice and Fire (okay, fine, Game of Thrones). The book series is famous for many things, one of them being the absolute emphasis on characters and the deconstruction of heroic and villainous archetypes; if you only take away one thing from them then it’ll probably be that there is no good or evil. While they are typically synonymous with comics for the average joe, if you actually read some then you’ll realise how the characters are so much more complex than that, which is why it’s unfortunate that Marvel Studios are really nowhere near getting that right yet.

Writing on his Not-a-Blog in a review of Ant-Man, Martin said at the end,

While Yellowjacket makes a decent villain here (in the comics, of course, he was actually one of Hank’s later identities, after Giant-Man and Goliath), I am tired of this Marvel movie trope where the bad guy has the same powers as the hero. The Hulk fought the Abomination, who is just a bad Hulk. Spider-Man fights Venom, who is just a bad Spider-Man. Iron Man fights Iron Monger, a bad Iron Man. Yawn. I want more films where the hero and the villain have wildly different powers. That makes the action much more interesting.

He does have a point, one I admittedly haven’t really considered before. I understand where he’s coming from with villains like Iron Monger and Abomination who aren’t awfully interesting when you strip away all the low-titanium alloy and reptillian skin, but Venom?!? C’mon, George.

I thought he of all people would have held character in higher regard over superpowers but I guess not; both are incredibly important, but character comes on top every time. Great villains fall on either side of the spectrum. Red Skull is a result of attempting to use the super soldier serum that enhanced Captain America and he’s a great villain whereas the Penguin couldn’t be any more different from Batman. However, I suppose since Marvel doesn’t really develop the villains’ characters then they need to rely on powers to diversify them. Given what we know about Phase III, I think this issue might be rectified.

Now, it’s time for the obligatory “get back to writing The Winds of Winter!” message. Ah, fandom.