Is Thanos the Best MCU Villain?

Spoilers ahead!

Avengers: Infinity War set out to be a huge, climactic start to the final main wave that originated back with Iron Man in 2008. In this installment, audiences are finally getting a front row seat at the big bad Marvel has been teasing since the first Avengers film: Thanos.

Infinity War takes a macguffin approach in this story, the main items the characters are fighting for being the six infinity stones. The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy team up to keep the stones from Thanos but, if you've seen the film, they fail to do so and half of the universe gets wiped out Left Behind style. The Avengers couldn't beat Thanos because he was much too powerful for them. This, in turn, should make him the best villain in this cinematic universe, correct?

Well, not quite.

Marvel has had a rocky track record when it came to good villains in their films for the past 10 years. There are great ones like Killmonger (Black Panther), Vulture (Spider-Man: Homecoming), some interesting ones like Ego (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) and Loki (The Avengers), and a lot of bad ones like Iron-Man-but-Evil (Obadiah, Iron Man), Hulk-but-Evil (Abomination, The Incredible Hulk), and Ultron, just to name a few. Though the batting average is very low for a quality antagonist, the bar is set pretty high thanks to Killmonger and Vulture. But why are they such great villains if they don't nearly have the power of Ultron, who was able to replicate himself and turn a piece of earth into a world-destroying meteor?

It's because power doesn't equal character. Character, instead, involves more of the boring bits like aspirations, motivation, goals, and the use of power to achieve those goals. (This can also be applied to real life, so take notes). A resonating character has those boring bits in a fashion that mass audiences can sympathize or even empathize with. Finally, a great villain has those boring bits where both the audience and the hero can sympathize with and even challenge the hero's own boring bits. In an alternate and oversimplified way, the villain needs to think they're the hero and make some sort of sense.

The Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming (portrayed by Michael Keaton) is a simple yet satisfying approach on creating a villain. Our hero, Peter Parker, needs to learn that with great power comes great responsibility and just because you're strong enough to stop a bus doesn't mean you're experienced enough for an Avengers-sized mission. Instead, Peter learns to focus on helping when he can, being that friendly neighborhood Spider-Man he didn't realize New York needed him to be, and taking down the Vulture who is using power to corrupt New York.

Believe it or not, though, Vulture and Spider-Man are nearly identical. With different motives, of course. Vulture also believes in power and responsibility, but his vision is skewed. He only sees the surface of the situation when Tony Stark causes him to go out of business. Vulture uses his power to provide for his family, albeit breaking the law to get what he wants. His motives for his action plus his personal tie to Peter's life causes Peter to pause about letting Vulture win so he can finally have a chance to date the Vulture's daughter, but Peter analyzes the bottom-line: Vulture is breaking the law and it's Spider-Man's responsibility to stop him.

Though Vulture is nowhere near as strong as Abomination, he was able to get into Peter's head to make him question his morals and almost win. He was a challenge physically for Peter, being able to fly and whatnot, but what really made him stand out was the moral debate among hero and villain, both feeling like they're being held back by those with power.

Black Panther's Killmonger is both a step forwards and backwards from Vulture, but we'll get to that in a moment. Character-wise, though, I believe Killmonger is the best villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far. He has a general agenda that not only speaks volume in the film but also in our society: Getting revenge for a history of slavery. On top of that, he has a personal agenda to get revenge on the death of his father. His plan is to take over Wakanda by force and use/share its resources to shape what would be, in his eyes, a better world. (Another note: A hero can realize he's becoming what he seeks to destroy and turn away from it. A villain only realizes it too late.)

T'Challa, unfortunately, falls a bit flat as a character compared to Peter Parker. He sort of struggles with the growing pains of being the new king of Wakanda and considers opening Wakanda to the rest of the world, but strongly sides with keeping Wakanda reserved until he feels the rest of the world is ready. His agenda is just protecting Wakanda and stopping a vibranium trafficking ring. With this, Black Panther almost falls into the role of a passive protagonist.

However, there is still a dynamic clash of motive and morals between Black Panther and Killmonger. The YouTube channel Wisecrack actually has a great video further analyzing Killmonger's dynamic in the plot which can be seen here. Essentially, Black Panther sets its hero and villain as two sides of the same coin, studying ideologies such as justice versus revenge and isolation vs colonialism. Mix in the fact that Killmonger is also Wakandan, the hero and villain are symbolically cut from the same cloth and challenge one another's motives. However, a villain is blind to a hero's reasoning, seeing the hero as weak and foolish, but discovers in the end that the he himself was wrong. In this case, the hero also realizes he was wrong and the the villain's ideals had some reason to them. The villain had a justifiable goal with the wrong way to execute it, pushing T-Challa to open Wakanda to the world.

Now let's look at our big purple friend Barney - er, I mean, Thanos.

Is this mooning?

With an exceptional performance from Josh Brolin and great CGI, Thanos really dominates the screen. His power and might, doubly so. Stakes can actually be felt as the fate of the universe rests in the hands of the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. He's BIG and POWERFUL, but his boring bits don't challenge the heroes'. At least, not intentionally.

In his eyes, Thanos is the hero. Further encompassing this is the fact that he's actually the main character of the film. To save the universe from famine, Thanos wants to wipe out half the population so that there are enough resources for everyone (and I'm just going to assume he wants to do this every few hundred years or so). His intentions are good but his execution is poorly handled, making him the bad guy. However, his intentions don't bring any kind of sympathy from the heroes because the heroes never thought of population size as a problem. All they try to do is preserve as much life as possible.

HOWEVER, in the act to preserve and protect life, the heroes end up losing. Star-Lord's anger over the death of Gamora causes the team to lose their chance to steal the gauntlet. Scarlet Witch's attachment to Vision kept her from killing him until it was too late. Captain America creates the mantra "We don't trade lives" and it ends up becoming their downfall. On the flip-side, Thanos was willing to sacrifice everything to achieve his goals including killing his own daughter.

HOWEVER (again), it's not Thanos challenging the heroes to make the sacrifices but rather the heroes trying to devise a plan to stop an unstoppable force with the least amount of collateral. Thanos doesn't taunt with saying that they could have won if they were only willing to do what he did. In the end, the heroes ended up becoming their own villains and Thanos was just the big rock with a personality heading towards earth.

I'm not saying Infinity War is bad, but it's not exactly great either considering the more recent superhero movies. I still greatly enjoyed my time with it and look forward to part 2 of this story next year where hopefully Thanos is given the proper treatment to become Marvel's greatest villain. Until then, the top 3 MCU villains for me are, in order, Killmonger, Vulture, THEN Thanos.