The Top 5 Worst Parts of the MCU

 

2.) Darcy from the “Thor” Films

Let me be real with you for a minute, while there is something else occupying the top spot in the interest of being professional, THIS is my number one most HATED thing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I don’t know Kat Dennings, I haven’t seen her in anything else so I have no idea if this is a case of the actor being awful or just the writing of said character. Darcy is meant to be the comic relief of the “Thor” movies even though it’s not like if you cut her completely out of the films the “Thor” movies would suddenly become completely humorless. So on top of being frankly USELESS to both films, she is SO FREAKIN’ UNFUNNY! I can’t think of a comic relief that has failed this badly in recent years. Yes there are tons of bad comedy characters, but normally even the worst can get SOME sort of laugh even if it’s just accidental. I have never laughed once at ANY of her “jokes.” When I came out of the theatre for the first “Thor” film I immediately remarked how I was waiting for a lighting bolt to hit and kill her. Everything from the unfunny “current” catchphrases she spout out of her face hole to the fact this person studying to be a scientist can’t even pronounce the name of Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir the least bit close. I have no idea how “Thor: Ragnarok” will shape up. As stated in the earlier article the “Thor” films have been the weak link for the Marvel films, but I’ll still see them. I’m just not really excited for them per se as I squirm in my seat with rage each time that THING again appears calling itself Darcy. Here’s a completely honest promise Marvel, if in the next film Darcy is FINALLY killed off (preferably a stupid death to match her stupid existence) I will give the third “Thor” film a perfect rating regardless of everything else. Although this is null in void if you dare try to make me feel sorry for her in that moment (I’m looking at you Hob from “Robocop 2”).

Just an aside, but you want to know what the funny thing is? Marvel basically redid this character in another one of their films, but it worked there because the character actually contained a little thing called… humor. The Michael Pena character from “Ant-Man” is an actual comic relief side character who I enjoyed seeing.

 

1.) The Mandarin Twist

Not going to lie, the “just fix it” solution to Tony’s panic attacks would have probably taken this spot if this stupid twist hadn’t also happened in the film. As stated in a previous entry, there’s no denying that Marvel has a number of lackluster villains. While many call it a flat out problem I think that may be a bit of an overstatement especially since I think that line of thinking is what makes a lot of people overlook the genuinely excellent performance of Robert Redford in “Captain America: Winter Soldier” which is a total shame. I just wanted to open with that before talking about an actual legitimately awful Marvel villain. So in the comics Iron-Man is not well-known for his rogue’s gallery. So if there’s one character you’re going to have in the film versions it would be The Mandarin. However Jon Favreau and company elected to hold off until a future sequel as not only is he a difficult character to adapt on his own, but there was also the baggage of the fact in the original comics he was pretty much a racist caricature. Now the character has evolved past this in the comics, but I’m sure Marvel just didn’t want the headache of that. So in the first “Iron-Man” film the terrorist organization that held Tony Stark hostage was called the Ten Rings in reference to the ten magical (they’re really alien technology) rings used by The Mandarin (get the difficulty?) and fans knew he was coming. The trailers for “Iron-Man 3” started to hit and we could see our new Mandarin played by Sir Ben Kingsley. Not only is he one of the best actors ever, but from the trailers it looked as though they had cracked how to portray him. In the first half of the film it seemed to be the case, he was serious and even kinda scary. They captured the feeling of real terrorist videos very well. That’s all the good and that needs to be addressed to fully capture why this sucked so much.

At about the halfway point we learn that The Mandarin is NOT the main villain, technically he’s not even really the Mandarin. He’s a drunk actor, yes Marvel Studios paid whatever Sir Ben Kingsley’s asking price is just to punk us. So all of that cool stuff like mercilessly killing a hostage and his voice was all an act from a spaced out fart joke spewer. Now I’m not a huge Mandarin fan from the comics or anything, but I totally get anyone comic book fans who were disappointed by this. However all of this could have been forgiven if the actual villain of the film had been anything special. Here friends is where we get an actual awful Marvel villain. It turns out Guy Pearce (as Aldrich Killian) is the real puppet master. Now beyond the fact he is so unbelievably bland, (seriously Marvel how do you make someone who LITERALLY breathes fire boring?!) but has quite possibly the weakest, most lame motivation to be a villain. It basically all boils down to “you made fun of me when I was a nerd so now I’ll destroy you!” Seriously that’s the basis for this character hating Tony Stark and putting his over-complicated plan into action. So what you have is a crappy villain who teases us with what looked like an interesting, cool villain but turned out to be another different though equally crappy villain. They even tried to salvage it in the film (they must have known it was going to piss off viewers) by having Pearce say in the climax “I am the Mandarin!” but no, sorry there is NOTHING about this character that is even remotely similar. Marvel even had to dedicate an entire short film of their’s to try to fix this by having Sir Ben Kingsley’s character broken out of jail by a group telling him their master wants his name back. Now IF this actually leads to something in the films in giving us a real (and hopefully good) version of The Mandarin but since the “Iron-Man” films are done, it seems unlikely so as far as I’m concerned this is still crap and in my opinion the worst thing in the MCU.

 

 

What do you think? What parts of the MCU did you hate the most?