4 Mystery Villains The Marvel Movies Have Already Set Up

Spoiler Alert!

After a huge set piece like Avengers: Endgame, viewers are wondering what’s next? How do you top that?

Sure, the Black Widow prequel is coming out soon, and the Disney+ world has listed a number of projects, such as Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, and my personal favorite: What If?

While these projects are fantastic, they lack the structure that the Avengers movies lent to the world. Everything was built around the Avengers, Thanos, and Hydra. This kept everyone up-to-date on the same basic story. We forget that Thanos was introduced in the first Avengers movie.

Who’s the next villain that can unify the Marvel world against them? Will it be the Mandarin, who will make his first appearance in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings? After all, hints of his existence were dropped all the way back in the first Iron Man movie, which started it all.

However, I have a few more ideas of villains that could easily be introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Maestro

This book is phenomenal. Check it out.

The Maestro is the smart Hulk turned evil. First appearing in 1992, The Maestro has all of the Hulk’s brutality and all of Banner’s intellect. He rules an alternate future and carries dead heroes’ weapons as trophies, such as Captain America’s shield and Wolverine’s claws.

The finale of Endgame sets this up perfectly. We have a smart Hulk using a time travel device. It was Banner’s decision to create the “Time Blip” that brought people back, but didn’t change things. What unforeseen circumstances did he mistakenly create? What better way to bring in one of the most dangerous villains the Marvel Universe has ever known?

 

 

Kang and the Young Avengers

The Young Avengers was a team that stepped up after the Avengers were disassembled. Each member had some link to an official member. However, it was not in the way you would think. Variations of this team have already been introduced:

Hawkeye: Clint Barton’s daughter was already seen teaching his daughter how to shoot. He called her Hawkeye and that character will be the star of her own Disney Plus series.

Wasp: Ant-Man’s daughter was shown all grown up in Endgame, and able to take on her father’s role.

 

Yeah, this Sean Astin-looking kid could be a super villain.

 

 

Iron Lad: The Young Avengers’ answer to Iron Man was a teenaged boy from the future. It turns out that he’s a teenaged version of Kang the Conqueror. Kang is someone who travels throughout time, amassing armies, weapons, and power. Kang had been collecting younger versions of himself from various timelines. This particular one didn’t want to grow up to be a monster so he escaped through time. He tried to find the Avengers to get help, but found the team had disbanded, so he started his own team. This could be Harley Keener, the prodigy that helps Tony Stark in Iron Man 3 and shows up at his funeral.

This collects the first stories.

Hate Monger

If there was ever a time for us to need to see Captain America punching out hate, it’s now.

First appearing in Fantastic Four 21, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the Hate Monger was a hooded figure who manipulated people into fighting each other. In his first appearance, it turns out that the Hate Monger was actually a clone of Adolph Hitler. Future incarnations have different people under the hood.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has already introduced the Red Skull and Nazi Germany, so there’s not much of a stretch to have another step in this direction. They have also showed how an organization like Hydra can infiltrate every level of American life. Even Arnim Zola, who appeared in the Captain America movies, played a role in keeping Hitler clones and the Hate Monger alive.

This collection includes the first appearance of Hate Monger.

 

This is the first appearance of Hate Monger.

 

The Void

Robert Reynolds was a homeless man battling addiction, with gaps in his memory. As it turns out, he was one of the world’s most influential heroes, the Sentry, with powers that would take too long to list. In the course of his career, he cured the Hulk, and made Peter Parker a famous photographer, and basically made everyone’s lives better.

But no one remembers this. That’s because the Sentry had a dark half called the Void. In order to keep the Void at bay, Dr. Strange and Reed Richards had to wipe out the memories of everyone who had ever seen the Sentry.

In other words, the Sentry and the Void could be behind the scenes of every Marvel movie so far. He could have helped the Hulk cure himself, prevented Thanos, and everything else, but it had to be undone because the Void was even worse than what transpired.

 

 

Who Wrote This?

I did. My name is Chris Lundy, and I also write short stories, children’s books, comic books, gaming stuff and YouTube comedy and things like this:

What I Hope To See In Avengers: Infinity War

Besides just hoping beyond hope that the movie will be as good as it looks, there are some things I really want to see in Avengers: Infinity War.

Cameos: Presumably, the movie is going to end with a cliffhanger where Thanos blinks half the heroes out of existence. Therefore, they need to recruit some more for the next movie. I hope that the final scene, or the after-the-credits scene, is of Nick Fury trying to recruit someone. You don’t see who they are in the beginning, then the camera pans out to show Patrick Stewart and Halle Berry. Also would be good to see Ian McClellan or Hugh Jackman there. This would make everyone go nuts. Colossus would be a good choice, too, because it would hint that maybe Deadpool would be in the next one. Or, you could have Deadpool leaning on the window of the X-Mansion looking in, with a sign that says “I want to be in the crossover, too!”

Room To Breathe: With this many characters, it’s going to be hard to give them enough room where the whole movie doesn’t feel rushed. At this point, they are all established, so we don’t need to waste time on reminding people who they are. Captain America: Civil War did a good job of having a lot of characters and still feel true to them all. This would be the next step.

A Simple Plot: Screenwriters try to dazzle us with labyrinthine plots (later Pirates of the Caribbean movies), to show how smart the villain is (Batman Vs. Superman). These usually fall flat. Thankfully, Thanos is not known for his subtlety. Following the MacGuffin that has been weaving through the entire MCU since the first Captain America movie should be enough.

The Avengers fixed the problems of the Marvel prequels

At one point during The Avengers, I suddenly realize that here I am, in a big screen theater, full of people, watching a live action Thor and Iron Man fight. And it’s good.

Decades of comic book movies have brought us to this point: Where we can have high budget movies with A-list actors and directors bring our comics to the screen for the mass audience.

Sure, there have been some bumps along this road. But Marvel’s The Avengers paved over a lot of them.

Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts had more charisma in five minutes of screen time than in the previous two movies put together. (But why was she dressed like that?)

Chris Evans stopped being a boy in man’s clothes who didn’t emote (like how he was throughout the whole Captain America movie) and started being the take-charge man of principle that we all know he is.

The Hulk looked less like a cartoon, and more like a big, green Mark Ruffalo (This is a good thing). Ruffalo did a good job playing the conflicted Bruce Banner, and you could see in every scene that he’s trying to hold it together. I think Edward Norton could have done it well, too, but these things happen.

Black Widow was given something to do. Instead of just slinking around and kicking people, she was the brains of the operation in a way that Stark and Banner couldn’t be.

I should add here that I liked all of the previous movies, but The Avengers became the rug that really tied the room together.

Joss Whedon’s fingerprints were all over this thing. The bickering. The long stretches of dialogue. The humor.

There were times when a few characters are talking, then it switches to another scene where a few characters are talking, and then another. Compare that to the X-Men movies, where there’s a few minutes of dialogue and then someone is attacked. It was a welcome change, with all the testosterone flowing around, for people to have intelligent, character-revealing dialogue.

I’m very happy for Whedon. He helmed a very large, very expensive, and very high profile project and he did it well. However, I do NOT want him to direct any sequels. Whedon has a tendency to get too familiar with his characters, rendering villains harmless and heroes little more than people who just hang out together.

The plot was paper-thin, when compared to what Loki attempted in the Thor movie. But, this movie was all about bringing the heroes together, and there might not have been room for an overly elaborate villain plot. That’s debatable. The heroes spent almost as much time fighting each other. That may have been the plot, actually.

Loki was a bit too brutish with some of his combat. I don’t see him as the type to bring down helicopters with an energy weapon while riding on the back of a truck. He is the master of illusion. However, maybe his fight was just a ruse. As you see later, when he gets caught.

There was a hint of romantic subplot that may happen at some point, but there was no burden of forced romance when there are a bunch of big storylines running around.

So, I’m very psyched for a sequel, although I have no idea how they’re going to top the villain they introduced (I saw it coming, for the record!) for the eventual part 3.

You Wouldn’t Like Me When I’m Pouty

Superheroes are supposed to be sexy…right…?

On the cover of today’s Entertainment Weekly, there was one Avenger who I didn’t recognize: Mark Ruffalo as Dr. Bruce Banner.

Banner is supposed to be a 90-pound weakling, someone that bullies kick sand at before he discovers Atlas. The physicality is part of his character – the Hulk acts out the things Banner can’t or won’t. He wasn’t lucky enough for a super soldier serum like Captain America’s Steve Rogers. He goes crazy instead.

But the cover of the magazine has Ruffalo sporting this come hither pose, as cheesy as a Ben Stiller Zoolander. I had to laugh a little. I guess he needed to compete with the other hunks in the movie. (When I went to see Thor, the ticket taker said to me “Chris Hemsworth…definitely worth the price of admission.”)

Review: Captain America, Scourge of the Underworld

This is definitely one of those cases where I had already heard of the story, and that ruins the surprise. But I probably wouldn’t have been so eager to read it had I not known what the story was.

 

For spoilers sake, I’ll leave out as much as I can.

 

The book contains stories about all the different Scourges. If you’re like me, you thought there was just one. Honestly, they should have stopped at one.

 

The original Scourge was a vigilante who gunned down costumed villains. He didn’t just go after B- and C-listers. He actually went for Kraven and Hobgoblin, but they got away. The B- and C-listers like Miracle Man weren’t so lucky, probably because the writers saw less potential in them for future stories.

 

My biggest surprise was that the storyline crossed over into so many books. Often it was just one page. Villain shows up. Bang. Justice is served. The worst issue in the series was in The Thing, where Ben Grimm, Miracle Man and Scourge are all on the same bus.

 

The best issue in the series has him going after Hobgoblin in Spider-Man’s book. Flash Thompson was just unmasked as the Hobgoblin, even though it turns out to be a trick, so Spidey’s got to protect him from Scourge. These big crossovers tend to be awkward when they sprawl into other books, but this was a real strong way to tie in to the current Spider-Man story seamlessly.

 

Usually, when you read an older book, it’s a bit dated. Here, not too much felt old, surprisingly. I think the only thing that was glaring was that during this era Steve Rogers made his living as an artist drawing the Captain America comic book. Seriously. I don’t think this would have flown these days. Not with a character like Cap. If Peter Parker was an artist and not a photographer, then I definitely could see Marvel hiring him to draw Spider-Man. Then he’d have to draw Spidey being a bumbling fool or be told by his editor “You’re drawing him too muscular! Everyone knows Spider-man is a weakling!”

 

The entire storyline was very well done, and could have created a villain with a great future. But, the ending was perfect.

 

The later Scourge stories were less exciting. Once writer Mark Gruenwald said that there was a Scourge program, and that once one was defeated, another took his place, it started to get old. An organization like this is interesting. But I think an individual acting alone is much more interesting. The later stories tended to be retreads of the old story. I guess that’s the way it is with comics. If you like it once, they’ll try it again over and over until you don’t like it anymore. They played with the toy until it broke.

 

Several people took on the identity of Scourge over the years, mostly with the same motive. One notable stand-out was that Red Skull had hired someone to be a Scourge to take out his competition. Unfortunately, we don’t see much of this Scourge’s exploits in this book.

 

Also unfortunately, in the copy I read, the title on the cover and spine of the graphic novel read “SCOURGE of the underwolrd.” Nice job, Marvel editors. Still, it wasn’t as bad as an X-Men collection I read. There were character bios in the back, and they were completely unedited. There was actually a note from the editor to the writer (Write about this for 3 or 4 lines…) that went to print.

WHAT I LEARNED: If you’ve got a good story, know when to end it. I often retread the same thing over and over again. If it can be done once, why not again? Because it’s boring. That’s why not.

 

Thor is like an Avengers crossover

Even if you don’t like Thor, you will go see it because you want to know what’s happening in the Avengers movie.

This is a trick comic companies have been doing for years: You only buy Uncanny X-Men, but they want you to also buy X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force, Generation X, Astonishing X-Men, Wolverine and Dazzler. So, they parse the story up and put a page or two into every title, forcing you to buy it.

Now, just think of it as a multi-million dollar film deal. They want you to watch each one, so they put Samuel L. Jackson into all of them, and spread the storyline around a bit, and then you’re hooked.

That said, it was a good movie.

Acting was solid. Costumes. Sets (except the New Mexico town seemed like it was built in the literal middle of nowhere).

Loki’s plot was good. He had me guessing. And he was a well-rounded character, not what I’d expect. Also, I appreciate that his plot wasn’t a MacGuffin. He had a real motivation, and it was layered.

The only issue was there was a bit of a reality problem. Like I said in:

https://whatilearnedbywriting.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/super-hot-super-genius/

I just don’t buy the idea of a beautiful young single scientist who just so happens to be in the right place at the right time. Maybe there are hundreds of young, gorgeous scientists who are busy chasing storms, spelunking volcanoes and exploring ancient ruins. Anyway, half of the movie is in Asgard, which has a lot of digital animation. And the other half is on Earth, with this relationship that’s blossoming between a scary stranger and a brilliant scientist who turns into a 13-year-old schoolgirl every time the Thunder God smiles in her direction.

I asked my friend Michelle, one of the people I saw it with, if she thought it was too weird. She didn’t think so. My reason for asking is that most super hero movies to date have been pretty grounded. Ideas like mutants and radioactive spider powers introduced slowly and carefully. Then, we have the 9 realms, Asgardians, Destroyer, the Warriors Three, Heimdall (who kicked ass) and the Rainbow Bridge. And…wow…is this too much for people to swallow?

Granted, maybe this movie isn’t for grandma and grandpa. Unless your grandpa is Stan Lee.

It helped that Sif and the others were pretty one-dimensional to begin with. You’re not really going to get into the mind of Fandral or Volstagg. That’s OK. You got enough of them to know their motivations, and not to get them confused with other characters in armor.

It’s worth seeing, if you can suspend disbelief about gods and about awkward romance blooming. Especially if you want to see Avengers.

Disclaimer/background: I’m a traditionalist. I don’t think people should break rules of storytelling unless there’s a good reason. I write comic books, short fiction and children’s books. Just to put my comments in perspective, these are my interests and favorites: My favorite superhero is Spider-Man, and I also like Justice League and Batman. My favorite comic writers lately have been Kurt Busiek, Peter David, and Geoff Johns. I am a huge Transformers fan. In children’s books, I go either simple or meta: either really simple stories or books about stories. In movies and books, I am more impressed with something small that makes me feel something rather than something I’m told is a “must-read” or a must-see.”

I make silly videos and post them here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/verylittleknowledge