Thor Ragnarok – Comparative Opinions Episode 67

Welcome to the Comparative Opinions podcast! This week hosts Holly and David made it to Thor: Ragnarok, and the time to talk about it is now! This is the last episode of Comparative Opinions this year, we’ll be back in January! So yeah, spoiler-light and then spoiler-filled discussion of Thor: Ragnarok, which turned out to be a hard movie to talk about without spoilers… short answer: go see it!

Comparative Opinions is a weekly half-hour-ish podcast hosted on ComparativeGeeks.com. Subscribe for new episodes every Sunday!

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Music is by Scott Gratton: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Scott_Gratton/Intros_and_Outros

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Top Five Marvel Cinematic Universe Villains

I’ve heard it said, and I’m not sure I can disagree, that Marvel doesn’t have the best or most compelling villains in the Cinematic Universe. Some of that is that some of their best – Doctor Doom, Galactus, Magneto, Spider-Man’s rogues gallery – are all locked up in movie rights.

There’s been a lot of one-off villains, with various levels of comic history. But I think that they’re getting better, now that the heroes have been more established. And hopefully Thanos is awesome… But for now, my list of top 5 MCU villains.

Problem is… I don’t know if I can put them in an order to say who’s best. For one thing, the television show villains – who have been getting good – have a lot more time to breathe, to develop. They’re not a one-off problem. They’re people. Evil, messed up people. So let’s do the list chronologically, and in the comments, you tell me who you think is the best!

The Nine Alignments of Thor

The top voted topic for an alignment grid from our poll a while back was the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We did a really popular one for Guardians of the Galaxy a while back, and in that same vein, we’re going to do a few other of the movie franchises on their own.

With people visiting this week, this is our plan for the week, so hope you like! Today: the nine alignments of the Thor movies!

The Beloved Villian

The recent fandom around villains lately has been huge. The YouTube channel “How It Should Have Ended” has had the Super Hero Cafe for a while now, but recently has added the Villain Pub. There is an obvious desire to see more of these villains then we already do. At the same time not all villains rise to this level of fervor and obsession. So what makes us fall in love with a villain?

There are a lot of villains in movies, books, video games, and more, but what distinguishes some from the others. There are villains that are still good villains. They progress the story forward, they thwart the hero, but more than simply stating I am the bad guy with no more too them. At the same time there are certain things that the villains who we love have that the others do not. There motivation, character depth, and mystique all have that little something extra. First, let’s look at what makes a generally good villain and why they might not get the same sort of attention.

Too Many Villains Syndrome

We just got a new trailer for The Amazing Spiderman 2. I admit that the first one was better than I expected so I am tentatively looking forward to the next one. The preview definitely dropped a lot of hints for comic book fans, but it also brought up another issue and that is the too many villains syndrome. So far we have Rhino, Electro, and Green Goblin as villains in this movie, including Oscorp as an evil corporation. This is a lot of villains to introduce in a movie and to give enough back story to make them interesting.

To be a good story you need a villain who is memorable and who is not a paper cutout of the idea of what a villain should be. They need to be multifaceted characters and have more to them than just being bad guys. It takes time to develop the character of a good quality villain that could not just stand in for any other villain. So when you have too many villains you can end up with none of them being that interesting. Also, in the attempt to develop the villains further you can end up either making the movie too long and / or creating an unfocused story with too many directions.