Magnificent Bastard/Film/Marvel Cinematic Universe

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has a handful of particularly brilliant and impressive villains.

"I am...inevitable."

The Films

  • Obadiah Stane in Iron Man. He engineered Tony Stark's kidnapping, sold weapons to both sides of an armed conflict, and was thorough enough to eliminate the witnesses not on his payroll. Who knows what else he'd been up to before the film started? If Stark had only succumbed to his heart failing before the climax, Stane would have succeeded with his plans to mass-produce iron suits.
    • Ivan Vanko and the Mandarin from the sequels also qualify. The former being a Genius Bruiser who hijacked Smug Snake Justin Hammer's plans of mass-producing his own Iron Man units so that they could instead be his instruments in taking revenge on Tony Stark for stealing his father's work and glory. All while keeping his composure, even right before his own death! The latter is even moreso since he turns out to be Aldrich Killian who is using an actor named Trevor Slattery to pose as the Mandarin character in fake terrorist videos used for covering up the explosions caused by the Extremis project of Killian's company, AIM. He played Trevor, Tony, the Ten Rings, and the freaking American government as part of his plan to become the country's leader who could control and capitalize off of the war on terror.
  • Loki Laufeyson, adopted son of Odin and brother of Thor who styles himself as the Norse God of mischief and trickery, unsurprisingly has had his moments in this trope's territory:
    • In Thor, Loki manipulates the events behind his brother's banishment, then helps Laufey, the king of the Frost Giants and Loki's biological father, attack Odin only to kill him and launch what seems to be a justified attack on Jotunheim, all while keeping Thor in the dark on Earth. Like the above example, his downfall is in lying to Thor about what's happening in Asgard, as it motivates Thor to become worthy of his hammer and reveals Loki as the villain after Thor reunites with his warrior friends.
    • Loki's Magnificent Bastard status continues to evolve in The Avengers when he kicks off the film by opening a portal, stealing the Tesseract, killing about a dozen people, and taking control of the minds of Hawkeye and Selvig. He later reveals his plot to seize control of Earth--all fueled by a personal vendetta against Thor. Though for some, his magnificence takes a hit due to just how petulant and arrogant he is, with his defeat being a result of him going off the handle and ranting like a madman before being slammed into submission by Hulk.
    • By Thor: The Dark World however, Loki goes from being confined to a jail cell, hated by all, never to see his mother in person again, for the rest of his very long life to the King of Asgard, having faked his own death and taken on Odin's countenance. As a result, he now possesses the Tesseract again! Bravo, Loki - you little shit! And then comes Thor: Ragnarok, where he's easily exposed and humiliated by his brother before giving up villainy entirely. As you can tell by now, whether he counts as this trope or not is very much a Depending on the Director sort of thing.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Alexander Pierce is easily one of the craftiest agents HYDRA has at its disposal, and effortlessly takes control of S.H.I.E.L.D and comes dangerously close to winning. While he's a merciless maniac willing to kill hundreds of thousands of people for the sake of ushering in his ideal new world order, his chuminess towards his enemies makes him very difficult to hate, and unlike the power-hungry Red Skull or Arnim Zola, he genuinely believes that he's ushering in a perfect utopia for all.
  • Helmut Zemo from Captain America: Civil War, as well. He isn't a baron or Nazi nobleman like in the comics, he's a grieving family man who blames the Avengers for his family's deaths during Ultron's attack on Sokovia and seeks to completely destroy them. And despite being one of the least evil and destructive villains in the series? He pulls it off by manipulating Captain America and Iron Man into coming to blows, causing a chain reaction that splits the team into opposing factions and ends with it the team fractured beyond repair. Magnificent doesn't even begin to describe him.
  • Adrian Toomes, a.k.a the Vulture from Spider-Man Homecoming is even less destructive and murderous than Zemo, and is just as scarily competent. Despite being a lowly salvage worker, Toomes and his crew have been ripping off convoys of Chitauri/Ultron/Stark weaponry and selling them to common criminals as Toomes' personal finger towards Tony Stark thanks to Damage Control cheating him and his men out of a hefty payday. And he manages to make bank off of his arms deals for several years before Spider-Man stumbles upon one of his operations, but even then he not only comes close to killing him on a number of occasions, but even figures out his secret identity from subtle clues regarding Peter Parker's behavior and innocent statements from his daughter. And despite being willing to kill him or go after his family, Vulture still likes the kid and refuses to rat him out to the vicious Mac Gargan and other criminals out of gratitude for him saving his life and treating his daughter well.
  • And of course, one of the smartest and most dangerous villains of the MCU would be Thanos, the Mad Titan himself. Reimagined as a Malthusian galactic conqueror, Thanos is driven to kill exactly half of all life in the universe in order to ensure that no other planet befalls the overpopulation crisis that befell his homeworld, and has personally overseen hundreds of murderous conquests across multiple planets already. Despite losing two Infinity Stones that are crucial to his plans, Thanos bounces back spectacularly in Avengers: Infinity War by pulling off a crazy game of Xanatos Speed Chess that has him rapidly steal Infinity Stones across the universe in record time while constantly using the power of the stones to outwit and overpower the heroes every step of the way. And by the end of the movie, he gets exactly what he wants: all six stones in the Infinity Gauntlet, and half of all life in the universe destroyed with a snap of his fingers. And when what's left of the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy ambush him at his house in hopes of reversing the snap, he's revealed to have destroyed the stones to prevent exactly that from happening. While he's a vicious madman who refuses to listen to reason or put even his loved ones' needs before his own, Thanos manages to remain likable thanks to his polite nature and philosophical chats with many of the heroes who try to stop him. He even shows grandfatherly kindness to the ones he mortally wounds!

TV Series

  • You know you're looking at prime Magnificent Bastard material when a villain is revealed with a bombastic musical number. And Agatha Harkness/Agnes from WandaVision delivers in spades. She effortlessly infiltrates Wanda's sitcomized corruption of Westview and successfully tricks her into thinking that she's a friendly neighbor and not an outsider, which others have failed spectacularly to do so. And in hopes of stealing her Chaos magic, she helps drive a wedge between her and Vision while emotionally assaulting her with flashbacks of her traumatic past and the repressed guilt of mentally torturing people into acting out her fantasies. And she does all this while remaining as perky, witty, and hilarious as ever.
  • He starts off as an overly emotional manchild, but make no mistake: Wilson Fisk truly asserts himself as the Kingpin of Crime the way he did in the comics. As a rule, his enemies not named Matt Murdock don't tend to survive for very long, and when he isn't brutally murdering them himself, he's throwing them into the way of the Punisher, or having them rubbed off by his arsenal of friends in high places which include FBI agents such as Bullseye/Dex. And even life in prison doesn't slow him down, as he's able to manipulate his way into being put on "house arrest", where he's free to build his criminal empire back up to its former glory. While his beloved wife Vanessa brings out his more tender side, underestimate Fisk at your own peril.
  • Madame Gao is just as clever as Fisk, who she has collaborated with in the past. Not only has she done an excellent job at establishing The Hand's presence in NYC, but she's a skillful and charismatic manipulator who has tons of loyal followers at her beck and call, and even manages to pit Danny "Iron Fist" Rand and his pals against each other when they get the upper hand on her.
  • Ditto for Shades from Luke Cage, who makes his killing as a calm, cool, collected, and ultra-competent henchmen for crime lords such as Cottonmouth and Black Mariah, even helping the latter toss Luke Cage himself in prison after framing him for the murder of Cottonmouth. But he's no mindless stooge: despite his love for Mariah, he has lines he won't cross and when she drives a wedge between the two by orchestrating a mass murder of innocent civilians, he stabs her in the back and helps bring her down.
  • Hive from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D is not just a powerful Inhuman, but one of the most dangerous and intelligent villains in the show. When he isn't orchestrating the destruction of humanity with his Inhuman cultist followers, he's running circles around S.H.I.E.L.D and turning them against each other through his clever manipulations, such as convincing Daisy into becoming his personal spy.
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