The Top 5 Worst Parts of the MCU

Some may remember an ARTICLE from last week about the best moments of the MCU.

Well this week we look at the MCU’s shortcomings before we get to see how “Captain America: Civil War” turns out. My qualifiers, I’m not doing little moments like the other list. I honestly had a difficult time coming up with this due to the fact Marvel (in my opinion) has yet to make an awful movie. There are certainly some that are not terribly impressive, but at this point they have at worse only made average films. This is for more abstract aspects across the entire films… it’ll make more sense as we get into the list.

And SPOILERS, obviously.

5.) No memorable Film Scores

This is more of a particular issue for me as I often feel film scores are majorly neglected in modern movies. So it’s not an issue exclusive to the MCU, but for being huge superhero films it feels unacceptable to me. Remember the themes to “Batman” (Danny Elfman) and “Superman” (John Williams), of course you do. Could you hum them? Again, the answer is of course. That’s one thing I’ll give the DC films over Marvel (and thus far that’s the only thing I’m giving them) with Han Zimmer doing the music, we do have some memorable themes in the films. However more to the point, what’s the “Captain America” theme? Or “Iron-Man?” No, the Black Sabbath song doesn’t count as cool as the “i am iron-man” lyric is. The only one in the bunch I can remember is the first “Avengers” film, although I couldn’t help but feel it sounded an awful lot like the “Judge Dredd” theme. Alan Silvestri doing both might be a reason why. They aren’t bad music by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s nothing to keep it in your brain after you leave the theatre. For me the music in films is important and I hope this is something that gets fixed.

4.) Red Skull Just Being Average

No I’m not saying Hugo Weaving was bad as the Red Skull or even that the character was written poorly, just that he didn’t fulfill the potential that he could have. The Red Skull is my favorite Marvel villain ever. I may think that Dr Doom is better and possibly the greatest comic book villain of all-time, but Red Skull is still my favorite. Sympathetic villains are just fine, but sometimes the pure evil ones are even more engaging. You feel sorry for Magneto and understand where he comes from, similarly there is SOME humanity in Dr Doom. Not much but it is there and it can be reached, I just wouldn’t bet on that in a confrontation. However, even though the Red Skull is human he has no humanity left. And the Captain America Red Skull fights are like Batman and Joker in just how complete opposites they are in every aspect. Like matter and anti-matter clashes against each other. I never really got that feeling in the movie “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Don’t get me wrong Hugo was a superb choice, but he never really felt like his true nemesis in the film. He was alright and maybe if he appeared in more sequels he could have really shown off just how despicable he could be. I wanted an amazing villain and I only got an OK one, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. And this is something that I think sums up most of the movie villains in all of the MCU. They’re not bad per se, they’re just OK when they could be so much more. Whiplash had a great set-up and motivation, but unfortunately never went anywhere and lost his unique weapons. Ronan the Accuser fits into this, as does Malekith and Iron Monger. Or like The Leader in “The Incredible Hulk” which had a great foundation, but they haven’t decided to do anything with. Most say Marvel has weak villains and I can’t completely disagree.

3.) Hulk and Black Widow Romance

Again it’s actually kinda hard to outright say that this sucked because it worked on its own terms, but still I would have preferred not to have seen this. What I mean by that is this is that in context, this sort of falls apart. One it feels so out of left field especially since in “The Avengers”, Black Widow was clearly very afraid of the Hulk and that was actually something I really liked in it. Up to that point she and a lot of the S.H.I.E.L.D. members didn’t feel human. This part really did a lot to make Black Widow feel like more of a 3 dimensional character. She may be this badass spy, but she’s still human and the Hulk is f*@#ing terrifying to normal humans. Also as a fan I couldn’t help but think every time they kissed “Bruce! Did you forget about Betty?!” Overall it just felt like an unnecessary detour that both characters would be better suited for other things. Despite being all connected and planned out ahead of time, there have been a few plot points that remain unresolved. This is one plot thread I’d be OK with them also forgetting.

Click to see the last 2 entires!

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?