"You still think we're making you a super hero, You... a dishonorable discharge, hip-deep in hookers. You're nothing. Little secret, Wade: This workshop doesn't make superheroes, we make super-slaves. We're gonna fit you with a control collar and auction you off to the highest bidder. Who knows what they'll have you doing? Terrorizing citizens, putting down freedom fighters, maybe just mow the occasional lawn."
— Francis "Ajax" Freeman revealing his true plan to Wade Wilson (the future Deadpool), Deadpool (2016)
Similar to the comics that inspired them, live-action film adaptations of Marvel Comics—whether on the big screen or on the small screen—have a lot of vile villains.
- Animated works can be found here.
- Related material can be found here (literature) and here (video games).
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
The following have their own pages
Other examples
open/close all folders
Sony's Spider-Man Universe (by release date)
Examples
- Venom (2018) has both halves of the Big Bad Duumvirate:
- Dr. Carlton Drake is the CEO of Life Industries with a god complex. Coming into possession of the symbiotes, Drake experiments with homeless people, having them attached to and devoured by the symbiotes in massive numbers to learn how to control them, even using the Symbiote to murder a doctor who assists Eddie Brock. When he merges with the Symbiote Riot, Drake eagerly embraces his newfound power and assists Riot in killing all in his path, intending to bring the Symbiotes to devour all humanity to satisfy his ego.
- The Riot symbiote is the "team leader" of the planned symbiote invasion force coming to Earth, and one of the four symbiotes brought back to Earth by the Life Foundation. Riot escapes, surfing from host to host and eating them alive from the inside-out—with two of his hosts being an old woman and a little girl—while leaving a slew of slaughtered innocents behind him. Riot bonds to Carlton Drake in the climax to send out a probe to bring the rest of his kind to Earth and allow them to feed on all humanity, massacring the entirety of Drake's staff when he's informed there may be a delay. Riot is apathetic to the death of even the other symbiotes who died in Carlton Drake's care, and decides to even kill Venom when he goes renegade.
- Venom: Let There Be Carnage: The Carnage symbiote, after being born from a distillation of Eddie Brock/Venom's blood within the body of the psychotic murderer Cletus Kasady, comes to bloody life by massacring a prison's worth of guards in order to break out. As sadistic as Cletus but with none of his redeeming features, the Carnage symbiote murders and eats dozens of innocents on the streets of San Francisco, such as those who plead they have innocent families and a priest it munches for a cheap power-up, and it gleefully intends to slaughter the rest of San Francisco. In the climax, the symbiote tries to murder its "father" Venom alongside Eddie's ex-girlfriend Anne, and callously attempts to kill Cletus's beloved partner-in-crime Frances "Shriek" Barrison out of sheer annoyance with her powers and the effect they have on it.
X-Men Film Series (by release date)
Examples
- X-Men: First Class: Klaus Schmidt, aka Sebastian Shaw, is a mutant supremacist who believes humans to be inferior to mutants. As a Nazi scientist, he used his position to try to find "gifted" mutants, and upon finding a younger Erik Lensherr, he killed his mother after Erik failed to impress him with his powers, solely to motivate him, before subjecting Erik to horrible experiments. After the war, he adopts the Shaw identity and ingratiates himself to high-ranking members of the government with his Hellfire Club, manipulating Russia and America alike. Shaw assaults a CIA facility, murdering every agent within, and when one of the young mutants stands up to him, Shaw, despite his creed of "not harming his own kind," murders him without hesitation and with barely-concealed enjoyment. Shaw's ultimate goal was to push Russia and America into nuclear war, allowing mutantkind to thrive in the aftermath and creating a kingdom of mutants that he himself would rule. Even when thwarted, Shaw planned to absorb all the nuclear radiation in his atomic sub and unleash it upon Cuba to destroy it personally and trigger atomic war.
- X-Men: Apocalypse: En Sabah Nur, better known as Apocalypse, is the world's first mutant, and once ruled Egypt as a tyrannical god-king. Awakening in modern times, he decides the world needs him to rule it once again and sets about recruiting new "Horsemen" by manipulating lost and despairing mutants. One of the Horsemen is Magneto, consumed by grief with the deaths of his wife and daughter. Apocalypse starts by killing the factory workers at Magneto's workplace and introduces his plans for the world, an attempt at kidnapping Professor Xavier resulting in the death of the X-Man Havoc. Apocalypse reveals his intention to possess Xavier, taking his mental powers so he can go into the minds of anyone on Earth whenever he wants. He then proceeds to forcibly reshape a whole city into a massive pyramid and has Magneto alter the magnetic poles of the Earth, causing widespread death and destruction. When his attempt to possess Xavier fails the first time, Apocalypse attempts to draw him out of hiding by throttling his foster sister Mystique and using her life as leverage. Dismissing even his own Horsemen as useless, especially if they fail him, Apocalypse's grand plans for the world are a way of elevating himself back to godhood, and he intends for everyone he deems "weak", mutant and human alike, to perish in the flames that create his new utopia.
- Logan proves that sometimes Humans Are the Real Monsters:
- Dr. Zander Rice is the head of the X-23 experiment. Before heading the X-23 experiment, Rice orchestrates the near-total genocide of mutantkind with a sterilizing virus that eradicates the X-gene, with survivors butchered by his second-in-command, Donald Pierce, and his Reavers to be used for raw material. To create a perfect killing machine afterwards, Rice has numerous women forcibly impregnated with the X-gene, taking their mutant children and murdering the women once their use expires. Rice conducts torturous experiments on the children to breed them into mindless assassins, with full emphasis on treating the children as "things" — a mindset which leads to some of the children committing suicide. Rice ultimately breeds a clone of Logan he dubs X-24 to serve the project's purpose and orders the children all killed, dispatching Pierce to commit further atrocities in his pursuit of the children once they escape. Once Rice himself comes into the fray, Rice looses X-24 onto an innocent family and callously watches as it butchers the entire family and Xavier himself, later rounding up all the children just short of the Canadian border and threatening to kill them all before Logan. Completely devoid of any compassion or feeling towards the subjects of his horrific experiments, Zander Rice ultimately becomes one of the most deplorable characters in the series, mutant or otherwise, in his pursuit to control mutantkind.
- Donald Pierce is the psychopathic cyborg in charge of the Reavers, Transigen's military might. As the head of security for Transigen, Pierce took part in the butchering and vivisecting of many mutants for their raw materials, also assisting in the X-23 experiments alongside Zander Rice, entailing the forcible impregnation of women with mutant genes, murdering them after they give birth, then raising the resulting children as tortured lab rats to be turned into submissive slaves and assassins in adulthood. When the children began rebelling and even killing themselves to escape, Pierce was tasked with putting them all down, and proceeded to execute several of the children. After many of the kids escape with the help of the nurses, Pierce tracks down head nurse Gabriela, brutally tortures and murders her, and continues hunting the children — torturing and killing anyone in his way in the process. After he and Rice unleash the vicious X-24 onto a small family to slaughter them all, Pierce lays a trap for the escaped children, rounding them up for a mass execution while beating one into submission before releasing X-24 one last time to kill Logan. Motivated only by power, cruelty, and xenophobia, Donald Pierce is easily one of the most depraved villains Logan has faced, mutant or not.
- Dark Phoenix: Vuk is the leader of the D'Bari Empire and author of an insidious plot to control the Phoenix Force and rule the Earth after using the Phoenix Force to wipe out all life on Earth. Tracking the Phoenix Force to Earth, Vuk murders a woman and takes her appearance before killing the woman's husband by stopping his heart. Vuk subsequently finds and murders Jean Grey's father John after interrogating him about Jean's whereabouts, noting that it's harder to understand someone while they're screaming. After managing to find Jean, Vuk persuades her to try embracing her powers and to not bother with ideas of morality. When the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants confront Jean, Jean is overcome with remorse, and Vuk "volunteers" to take the Phoenix Force away from her, knowing full well that Jean will be killed. After the mutants are captured and she is prevented from completely absorbing the Phoenix Force, Vuk and her forces attack the train transporting them to take the Phoenix Force from Jean, killing dozens of soldiers. Utterly without empathy even towards her own people, Vuk was unlike any threat the X-Men had faced before.
- Deadpool duology:
- Deadpool (2016): Ajax, real name Francis Freeman, is the cold and detached leader of an operation that purports to create superheroes. Ajax uses his recruiter to lure in people with nothing to lose before he implants the potential for mutant genetics into them. However, to awaken the mutant gene, Ajax subjects them to hideous, continuous torture and experimentation to produce the necessary stress to awaken it. Wade Wilson himself is eventually placed in a chamber that alters air levels to constantly make him feel that he is asphyxiating. After this awakens Wade's mutant gene, Ajax comments he could fix Wade's ruined looks, but remarks that it would be no fun and shuts him back in the device out of sheer cruelty. When Wade escapes, Ajax impales him and leaves him to burn alive in the ruins of the lab, along with any other prisoners remaining. The superhero operation is also revealed to be a front: the victims are fitted with collars to turn them into slaves and sold to the highest bidder for the remainder of their lives. When Wade, now Deadpool, is hunting him, Ajax tries to lure the latter out by kidnapping his former girlfriend Vanessa Carlysle and then locking her in the asphyxiation device right in front of Wade.
- Deadpool 2: The Headmaster of the Essex House for Mutant Rehabilitation is a deeply prejudiced zealot who runs his orphanage like a conversion therapy camp for mutant children. The Headmaster constantly tortures the children as a means of trying to force out their abilities, having abused Russell Collins to the point of leaving scars on his neck. Russell's deep-seated anger and mistrust caused by all this risks resulting in him burning the Headmaster and the orphanage to the ground, killing all the other kids trapped inside and becoming the supervillain Firefist.
Other Continuities
Examples
- The Amazing Spider-Man Series: Norman Osborn is the morally bankrupt founder of Oscorp Industries, using the company for selfish purposes amidst claims of good intentions. Having worked with Richard Parker to develop physiological mutations and enhancements, Norman planned to abuse their research in a variety of ways, namely selling biological weapons to foreign countries. When Richard refused to go along, Norman arranged the murders of Richard and his wife Mary. Continuing their research through the abused Dr. Curt Connors, Norman uses his emissary Ratha to pressure Connors into experimenting on humans, then to inject an experimental drug into an entire hospital of veterans under the illusion it is a flu shot. Norman further finances Ravencroft and its heinous, torturous experiments on inmates, and it is Norman's emotional abuse and neglect of his son Harry that plays a major role in the boy going mad. Though the desire to cure his degenerative disease partially motivates him, Norman cares most for power and legacy, and ruins countless lives to secure both.
- Blade Trilogy:
- First film: Deacon Frost is a younger vampire who sets himself apart from the older vampire hierarchy and their preference to remain in the shadows to rule humanity from behind the scenes, desiring to openly reduce all humans to cattle by incarnating the evil blood god La Magra. Frost maintains a network of nightclubs where hapless humans are frequently killed for the vampires' feasts; kills a vampire elder in an exceptionally painful way by removing his teeth and letting him burn up in the sunrise; murders one of his human minions For the Evulz; throws a little girl into traffic to distract Blade; attacks Blade's mentor Whistler and leaves him for dead; and sacrifices the entire vampire council as part of the ritual to summon La Magra. However, Frost's worst crime is his past attack on Blade's then-pregnant mother and his transformation of her into a bloodsucking monster, later rubbing this fact in Blade's face to hurt him.
- Blade II: Eli Damaskinos is the Overlord of the Vampire Nation, and the true villain behind the Reaper outbreak. A believer in the pureblood rhetoric of vampires, Damaskinos schemes to create an entirely new race of vampires to overthrow and slaughter humanity and vamprekind alike, with Damaskinos as the progenitor of the new species. In his quest for this, Damaskinos oversees routine mass murder of humans to harvest their bloods in such quantities as to fill factory reservoirs, and Damaskinos personally bathes in large pools of his victims' blood. Willing to forego all semblance of empathy or humanity to achieve his desires, Damaskinos experimented on his own son Jared Nomak to turn him into a Reaper before targeting him for death, and Damaskinos later sends his daughter Nyssa and her elite squadron to die at Nomak's hands, uncaring of the swathes of life lost in the process so long as he can raise an entire brood of vampire children to be experimented upon.
- Captain America (1979): Lou Brackett is an immoral industrialist and, in truth, mad-dog killer who kept his best friend Haden working on a neutron bomb against his will for months by keeping his wife hostage. When Haden is murdered by his men without disclosing where the film reel keeping the last blueprints of the bomb is, Brackett furiously has his men look all over for the reel while disposing of any loose ends like Steve Rogers, whose transformation into Captain America he facilitates through repeated attempts on his life. Brackett kidnaps Rogers' friend and Haden's daughter and threatens to murder them to keep everyone off his tail, planning to use the bomb to murder the entire population of Phoenix to cover his theft of gold depository worth a billion dollars, wiring the bomb to go off if his heart stops to kill everyone in Phoenix anyways in the event of his death.
- Daredevil (2003):
- Bullseye is a swaggering Psycho for Hire who prides himself on his unerring aim and his total lack of regard for human life. Retained by Wilson "The Kingpin" Fisk as a troubleshooter, Bullseye is a mess of barely contained violence who regularly murders in his off time. Over the course of the film he kills a man for insulting him in a bar; chokes an elderly woman to death for talking too much on a plane; murders another man in order to steal his motorcycle; and stabs one of Fisk's guards to death with pencils after deciding he'd rather not go through security. That's in addition to killing Nikolas and Elektra Natchios, and two of their bodyguards, on Fisk's orders, and trying to hunt down an already wounded Daredevil for the heinous crime of making him miss.
- Wilson Fisk in the director's cut is worse than in the theatrical version. Fisk started out a hitman who killed Jack Murdoch, before rising into a powerful businessman and The Kingpin of crime in New York, controlling the criminal element in the city and helping criminals avoid jail time. Introduced killing two of his bodyguards for no discernible reason, when the public becomes suspicious, Fisk orders the murder of his former business partner Nikolas Natchios, intending to have him framed as the Kingpin, calling in Bullseye to do the deed. Fisk also has a prostitute murdered when she was leaking information she got from what of his associates. When Matt Murdoch interrogates a Dirty Cop on Fisk's payroll, he learns that when Fisk calls a hit on someone, he has the target's whole family killed as well, with Fisk ordering Bullseye to go after Nikolas's daughter Elektra. When Daredevil finally confronts Fisk, Fisk unmasks him as Matt, telling him that his killings were "just business" and, when beaten, threatens to get his revenge on Matt by revealing his identity.
- The Fantastic Four: Doctor Doom, real name Victor Von Doom, was once a friend of Reed Richards who was nearly killed and crippled by an experiment gone wrong. In vengeance, Doom spent the next ten years plotting the death of Reed and anyone associated with him. When the titular team gains their powers, Doom captures them and plots to drain them. In order to steal a diamond to power a laser beam, Doom massacres the Jeweler's gang and takes Alicia Masters as a hostage. Giving the Four an ultimatum of either surrendering to him or have New York City be destroyed by the laser, Doom starts a painful process to drain their powers, and plans to execute Alicia just to torment Ben Grimm. When they escape, Doom fires the laser at New York and confronts Reed once last time. Defeated, Doom lets himself fall just to deny Reed the satisfaction of saving him.
- Fantastic Four Duology: Dr. Victor Von Doom, devoid of his normal redeeming qualities, is the CEO of Von Doom Industries and is obsessed with gaining power at any cost. After an accident in space exposed him and the Fantastic Four to a cosmic storm, Doom blames the resulting bad press on Reed Richards. After he gains powers himself, Doom believes he's become a god and tricks Ben Grimm into helping him to gain more power for himself, before trying to murder the entire Fantastic Four. Later Doom returns and allies with the Four in order to catch the Silver Surfer, only for Doom to betray them and steal the Surfer's board to gain unlimited power, refusing to give it up even after he's told that the Silver Surfer needs the board to stop Galactus from devouring the world.
- Fantastic Four (2015) (aka Fant4stic): Victor Von Doom is a gifted young genius who worked for the government to develop a device that would be capable of transporting people across dimensions. After joining with Reed Richards, Johnny Storm, and Sue Storm, he was able to finish the device, and together with them he traveled in an alien dimension where, after an accident, he gained superhuman powers. Desiring to create his own world in that dimension, Victor was not happy when government agents retrieve him, and thus slaughtered many of the scientists and soldiers in the base, including Johnny's father, before planning to use the teleporter to create a black hole on Earth and destroy the entire planet, solely out of God complex and hatred for humanity.
- Generation X (1996, British version): Dr. Russell Tresh is a cheerfully maladjusted sociopath and Mad Scientist who introduces himself attempting to open up the brain of a conscious and struggling mutant for his brain cells. Intending to use these mutant brain cells to gain power over both the real world and the dream dimension, Tresh uses his inventions at first merely to subliminally influence people to buy products before using them to mind-control his boss into jumping to his death for "betraying" him. Seeking revenge over his old business partner Emma Frost, Tresh sinks to his absolute lowest when he, to force the hand of her student Angelo/Skin into helping him, threatens to mentally torture Skin and his girlfriend for hours every night and promising to literally Mind Rape his kid sister. When Skin caves, Tresh decides to reward his loyalty by drilling into his brain while he's still awake, promising his friend Jubilee is next on his table.
- Ghost Rider Duology:
- Mephisto is the ultimate ruler of Hell and seeks to spread his influence on Earth. In the first film, he seeks the contract of San Venganza and collect the thousands of souls he bargained with, and tricked Johnny Blaze into a deal that cursed him with the Ghost Rider to save Johnny's father from cancer, only to kill Johnny's father the next day to let Johnny know he's his property. Later, Mephisto sends Johnny to kill his rebellious son, Blackheart. In the sequel, Mephisto, as Roarke, reveals that in order to walk on Earth he needs a human body; not only does this limit his power but his current body is now dying. Among his previous host bodies were Josef Stalin, Idi Amin, and John Wayne Gacy. To create a permanent and powerful host body, Mephisto conceived a child with Nadya Ketch. It's also revealed that in order to create the Ghost Rider, Mephisto dragged Zarathos, the Angel of Justice, into hell, torturing and twisting him into insanity. When Nadya and her child Danny escape, Mephisto masterminds a demonic conspiracy of murder to get his hands on Danny in preparation to destroy the boy's soul, possess him and bring about The Antichrist. When Johnny, Nadya and Moreau disrupt this ritual, Mephisto makes a final attempt to flee and abduct Danny before his final confrontation with Ghost Rider.
- First film only: Blackheart, a prince of Hell and the son of Mephisto, is given more characterization in the extended cut. Jealous of his father's power and angered by the fact that he gave the power of Hellfire to a lowly human instead of him, Blackheart plans to obtain the contract of San Venganza, which would grant him the power of a thousand evil souls who made a Deal with the Devil. Blackheart plans to use the power of the contract to create Hell on Earth and devour as many souls as he can, then using his new power to overthrow his father. Throughout the movie, Blackheart murders almost every human he encounters, only sparing those who can serve his plans later. On his search for the contract, he heads to the Caretaker and starts beating him for information on where the contract is. He then decides to kidnap Johnny Blaze’s girlfriend, Roxanne, and hold her hostage, promising her release for the contract. Not even his partners are safe from him, as he only sees/uses them as muscle against Ghost Rider, and quickly abandons one of them when he starts losing to him.
- Spirit of Vengeance only: Ray Carrigan is a sadistic mercenary involved in all kinds of crimes, including drug and arms trafficking, as well as kidnapping children. Hired by Mephisto to capture the young Danny, Carrigan and his henchmen attack the monastery where he's hiding and mercilessly massacre all the monks before catching the kid and his mother Nadya. Despite their history, Carrigan prepares to execute Nadya while smiling maniacally, but he's stopped by Ghost Rider who eventually kills him. However, Mephisto later resurrects Carrigan as a demonic being with the power of decay, so that he can continue his mission. After testing his new powers by horribly killing a random civilian, Carrigan goes to the Sanctuary, where he brutally slaughters every monk while cracking jokes and treating the whole thing like a fun game. Then, he kidnaps Danny and brings him to Mephisto, knowing full well that the demon is planning to sacrifice him to steal his body and become powerful enough to rule over the world. When Johnny Blaze, Nadya, and Moreau come to save the kid, Carrigan gruesomely kills Moreau, tortures Johnny for his amusement, and tries again to murder Nadya. Even though he started as a normal human being, Carrigan rivals high-level demons in sheer sadism and cruelty.
- Howard the Duck: The Dark Overlord is a genuinely threatening, serious villain despite the zany premise of the story. Part of a race of intergalactic conquerors who were once sealed away, the Dark Overlord escapes by possessing the body of Dr. Jennings, immediately revealing his intentions to bring about the extinction of all life that isn't his kind. Demolishing a diner and brutalizing the patrons before kidnapping Howard's girlfriend Beverly, the Dark Overlord later bombs an entire street of car and vaporizes a cop for calling him the wrong name. Intending to transplant more of his kind into the bodies of select humans before wiping out the rest of mankind, the Dark Overlord assumes his true form before viciously torturing Beverly and Howard's friend, boasting once more that all life will fall before him.
- Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998): Arnim Zola once developed a horrible bioweapon called the Death's Head virus, almost employing its use in World War II to kill all of Hitler's enemies and win the war for the Nazis before HYDRA collapsed. An aging but remorseless old man thirty years later, Zola gleefully takes the opportunity to remake the virus for the schemes of HYDRA's current head Viper, allowing her to use it to gas HYDRA's command and attempt to gas all of Manhattan to cause millions of deaths in the process. When Zola's mind is read, the only thing that is seen is a passionate, frightening devotion to warfare, destruction, and the death of millions—a dream Zola eagerly hopes to realize through the Death's Head virus.
- The Punisher (1989): Lady Tanaka is the leader of the Yakuza and intends to muscle in on The Mafia's territory. To do this, Tanaka has the bosses' young children kidnapped with anyone who might interfere murdered, including a harmless babysitter. Tanaka promises to return the children, but her true intention is to sell them into child slavery. When Frank Castle is captured along with his friend, Tanaka has them tortured on a modern-day version of the rack. At the end, when the most powerful mob boss has teamed up with Frank to get the kids back, Tanaka holds a knife to the child's throat and orders his father to kill himself.
- Spider-Man 3: Edward "Eddie" Brock Jr. is introduced as a slimy rival to Peter Parker for the Daily Bugle job, but evolves into something truly wicked as the film goes on. Established as a selfish, creepy jerk who is obsessed with Gwen Stacy after just one coffee date, Brock is nonetheless eager to photograph her near-death experience to make a profit. After a failed attempt at framing Spider-Man as a criminal and praying for God to kill Peter for exposing this, Brock stumbles across the symbiote and merges with it to become Venom. Immediately trying to devour an entire street of civilians and cops in the tie-in comic The Black, Venom stalks and nearly attacks Gwen in an attempt to make her "love" him, then kidnaps Mary Jane Watson to molest, torment, and use her as a hostage to lure Spider-Man out, planning to decide via coin flip whether he kills her while forcing Spider-Man to watch, or does the inverse. Venom leads Sandman in slaughtering multiple teams of cops who try to rescue Mary Jane, and when Spider-Man finally shows up, Venom brutally beats him, tries to murder Mary Jane, and kills his best friend Harry as he watches. In a trilogy populated with tragic, misguided antagonists, Venom is a petty psychopath concerned only with himself.
