Guardians of the Galaxy: Thanos, Avengers 3, and the Marvel Villain Problem

This article contains some Guardians of the Galaxy spoilers.

No need to speculate about that Avengers 3 villain anymore (as if there was ever any doubt). Thanos was revealed in all his luminous purple glory in Guardians of the Galaxy, which has been met with near universal acclaim by critics and fans, demolishing records for an August opening, generating significant word of mouth, and even placing its wonderfully curated soundtrack at numero uno on Amazon and iTunes. Thus, it's easy to overlook and forgive its faults.

Guardians of the Galaxy is tremendously entertaining (and funny), sports some truly beautiful imagery, and relies the very least on Marvel easter egg hunts and franchise seeding of any of their films in recent memory. But like nearly every Marvel film, it has a half-hearted third act full of the expected blockbuster pyrotechnics that lacks any real sense of danger. Some of the blame falls on the impressively visualized but otherwise forgettable Ronan the Accuser (who is brought to life quite well by Lee Pace, so this isn't his fault) and Benicio del Toro's Collector, bafflingly limited to two scenes after such a hefty tease at the conclusion of last year's Thor: The Dark World. In other words, Marvel has a bad guy problem that they need to address, and fast, before letting Thanos really take the spotlight.

After ten movies, scratch that...ten wildly successful movies, Marvel Studios, for all of their crowd-pleasing accomplishments, have delivered us exactly one truly memorable villain (Tom Hiddleston's Loki, in case you had to ask). To use some Marvel-speak, we’re about to enter “Phase Three,” and three is two integers higher than the number of genuinely worthwhile villains they’ve managed to put on screen in the last six years. The problem even extends to their TV division, where Agents of SHIELD sleepwalked through most of season one with nary a villain capable of convincing even the truest of believers that anything of consequence was ever at stake.

While Warner Bros. have yet to even show any interest in matching Marvel's superhero output over the last several years, they've managed to deliver a host of villains who provided the necessary menace. While not every movie can walk the horror movie line that Heath Ledger's Joker did in The Dark Knight, even a secondary baddie like Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow carried more weight than most of the punching bags Marvel have delivered. Tom Hardy's Bane not only broke Batman but crafted a nightmarish vision for a Gotham City that looked uncomfortably like New York. For that matter, whatever problems Man of Steel had, it's hard to fault Michael Shannon's General Zod as being unmemorable. 

There’s an argument to be made that characters like Iron Man and Thor don’t have the most potent jerks in their closets to begin with, so it’s understandable that they’d have to face a parade of soldier villains in the course of their respective franchises. Maybe the problem here is that a sizable chunk of Marvel's best villains simply aren't available for use at Marvel Studios. Spider-Man, owner of arguably the best rogues' gallery in all of villaindom, is currently entrenched at Sony. Doctor Doom, conceivably the most iconic villain in Marvel's entire stable is only available for 20th Century Fox, along with Magneto, who has already headlined five movies and has talents like Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender giving him life.

There's little doubt that Tom Hiddleston's Loki is the most indispensable performance to come out of these films since Robert Downey Jr. actually gave Tony Stark a personality and a sense of humor. But Loki is very much a god of mischief, not a god of real evil, and with the exception of a few moments in The Avengers, it's far too easy to root for him while he's busy charming everyone in sight. If you're hoping to get some kind of crowd-pleasing "Loki saves the day" moment in Avengers 3, well, nobody would blame you, and Marvel may just deliver. On the other hand, no sane person really wanted to see the Joker, Bane, or Ra's al Ghul succeed in the Dark Knighttrilogy.

The best that Iron Man had to offer, the Mandarin, had to be subverted (brilliantly or otherwise, depending on who you ask) in order to steer away from some of the more uncomfortably racist implications of the character for his appearance in Iron Man 3. Was Ben Kingsley's Mandarin memorable? Certainly. Is he a villain truly worthy of the third installment of a massive superhero movie? Probably not.

But when the potential of an all-time great villain like the Red Skull (and a potentially perfect bit of casting in the case of Hugo Weaving) is squandered, something just ain’t right. Anyone remember much of what Johann Schmidt got up to in Captain America: The First Avenger other than get turned into a rainbow at the end? No? Me neither. I do hope we get to see him again.

The less said about Malekith in Thor: The Dark World, the better. Christopher Eccleston is a footnote in an otherwise entertaining film, but wasting a well-designed character (with a Walt Simonson pedigree) and a brilliant actor like Eccleston with the mere handful of scenes Malekith ended up with only compounded the movie's other flaws. On the other hand, outside of an exceedingly charming Robert Redford, Captain America: The Winter Soldier lacked one true villain for us to hang our hatred on, instead playing a long game with a redemption arc for the title villain that may not pay off until future movies. A fine story, but since the actual Winter Soldier's identity was a mystery to nobody long before opening night, why would audiences ever think that this was a stakes-raising baddie?

Marvel need to deliver on Thanos in a big way. By the time Avengers 3 hits theaters in 2018 (we’re betting on that July 6th release date), they will have teased audience’s with the Mad Titan’s presence for six years, and Avengers 3 will be their 19th movie (let that one sink in). Six years is a longer lifespan than most entire franchises get, let alone the build-up to one villain.

Thanos isn't a character whose motivations can be introduced and dismissed in a handful of expository lines of dialogue (Sibling rivalry! A nazi! A corrupt industrialist with a grudge!). Keep in mind, this is a guy who early in his villainous career wiped out his own home planet in order to get the actual, physical manifestation of Death to fall in love with him. Then he went about the business of acquiring items of unimaginable power in order to achieve godlike power. He doesn't think small, there are potentially cosmic ramifications to his actions, and in terms of raw power, he's going to be one of (if not the) most destructive villains in movie history.

Thanos still has work to do before Avengers 3 which is all but certain to be an adaptation of some form of the Infinity Gauntlet story. There are still more Infinity Stones to be collected, which will be fodder either for more of Marvel’s famous post-credits sequences, or will allow for him to appear as a major or minor antagonist in future Marvel movies...namely any potential cosmic Marvel sequels or spinoffs. In fact, Thanos would be a crucial component of several potential franchises in the newly-minted cosmic corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: namely, Nova, Captain Marvel, or the inevitable introduction of Adam Warlock. While there are plenty of opportunities for Thanos to deploy more soldier villains (like Ronan) down the road, he's going to have to take center stage at least once before then if any of this is going to have a meaningful impact in an Avengers 3 that will handily feature the largest superhero movie cast of all time.

Could a Thanos solo movie be in the cards? Marvel’s recently published Thanos Rising would make a fine basis for a Thanos film and would allow people to connect with the character in ways that we may never get to do if all we get to see of him are ominous scenes of string-pulling or a few more stingers. Guardians of the Galaxy is the first Marvel movie to give us an idea of the truly reality-warping scope of the Infinity Gems, and as Thanos works to gather the rest, the stakes should get higher and higher. This isn't the kind of thing that can get done in the first fifteen minutes of Avengers 3.

Ultimately, Thanos needs to earn the godlike power that's coming to him, both in terms of the story and in the eyes of the audience. The little we've seen of Josh Brolin's performance is encouraging enough, and if he's signed on for the six-picture deal usually reserved for the heroes of these films (we asked...he's not talking), he should have plenty of time to develop. If nothing else, we'll see him again in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 in 2017.

The Marvel formula has, thus far, been a simple one, and it's made even the less impressive films at least thoroughly entertaining. You make your hero, flawed though he or she may be, as enjoyable as possible to watch on screen, you keep the stakes big and loud if not demonstrably high, and you break the tension at every opportunity with some wit. It works.

But eventually, audiences may start to see through the storytelling sleight-of-hand and realize that there has yet to be a moment where we really thought the villain would come out on top in a battle, let alone a war. They simply aren't dangerous enough. If Thanos is going to face the combined might of nearly twenty installments worth of superhero movies after six years of build-up, "not dangerous enough" is a luxury that not even Marvel can afford.

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