Kevin Feige: Marvel has a villain problem

Despite Marvel’s dominance of the superhero genre over the last decade their Cinematic Universe just can’t seem to shake off the criticism regarding its villains.

While Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the combined efforts of The Avengers have enthralled us over 14 movies, only Tom Hiddleston’s Loki has stood out as a worthy foe. But rather than overlooking this criticism, Kevin Feige has now acknowledged that the accusations made against Marvel and its villains is valid.

According to io9, Kevin Feige made this admission while on the set for ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2’ back in April, remarking,”It always starts with what serves the story the most and what serves the hero the most. A big criticism of ours is that we focus on the heroes more than the villains, I think that’s probably true.”

Kevin Feige even went into more detail about why Marvel have prioritised their heroes over their villains, explaining that they have previously just been added to serve a purpose for the protagonists.

“Ronan’s great, Lee Pace did an awesome job, absolutely serves it, but certainly was there to go up against our heroes and to give our heroes a reason for coming together,” Feige continued. “Loki, a great character, serves, in a lot of ways, Thor. Zemo served that conflict between Cap and Iron Man [in ‘Civil War’].”

Feige even compared Marvel’s approach with ‘Iron Man’ to ‘The Dark Knight’, both of which were released in 2008. “One focused on the villain, one focused on the hero, and we at Marvel looked at them, like, ‘Yeah we focus on the heroes. We don’t mind that. We like that,” Feige recalled, before then immediately insisting that he wasn’t dissing one of the greatest movies ever made.

But while Feige admitted that ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2’s’ villains Ayesha and Taserface will serve the story rather than being overly ostentatious, Marvel’s president suggested that this problem will finally be addressed in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’, as he remarked, “In a movie that has a lot of characters, you could almost go as far as to say [the villain Thanos] is the main character.”

We’ll see if that’s the case when ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ is released on May 4, 2018, while between now and then we’ll have to contend with the paltry foes in ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2’, ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’, ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, and ‘Black Panther.’

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