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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Strange is interesting, in that he's generally built on the idea that brute force lacks impact vs intellect: most of his major enemies are several orders of magnitude more powerful than he is when it comes to strictly magical force vs magical force, so Strange typically beats them with magical finesse.
There's a lot you can do with magic, as long as the rules are internally consistent, so the best writers for him stretch their imaginations while keeping it all in a way that still makes reasonable sense.
Him beating Dormammu in the MCU, for example, by exploiting a form of magic and a concept of reality Dormammu has no understanding for to gain an advantage, is a pretty classic Dr. Strange way of fighting a bad guy.
He does get a buff in Infinity War, but at the same time I felt like the first Dr. Strange movie did a shit job of presenting the abilities of a society of wizards in the first place.
Edited by KnownUnknown on May 17th 2019 at 11:43:19 AM
Here, I'll give you a list:
- Nightmare
- Shuma Gorath
- Chthon
- Umar
- The Dweller-in-Darkness
- Mephisto
- The Empirikul
- Mister Misery
If you truly aren't happy with anything in the MCU, then...perhaps the MCU isn't for you?
Edited by alliterator on May 17th 2019 at 11:44:40 AM
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Punch sleep in the face!
I just love Shuma-Gorath's Badass Boast: "Before all was, I was. Before time was, I waited. I fed on the screaming souls of the universes. I drank the spoiled milk of dead stars. I am the emptiness outside all understanding. I am Shuma-Gorath."
Edited by alliterator on May 17th 2019 at 11:45:50 AM
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I like plenty of things in the MCU. They just tend to be tempered by things I don't like.
Like, I think the reason I keep instinctively sidestepping all those entities you're describing is because I worry they'd just be monsters. That they wouldn't be written as interesting characters. Plus a lot of them sound darkness related.
Edited by GNinja on May 17th 2019 at 6:49:10 PM
Kaze ni Nare!There's a risk of that. The MCU did sometimes drop the ball with adapting antagonists as interesting in earlier titles, my absolute least favorite being when they screwed up Kurse in Thor 2 and turned what could have been an interesting character arc (which probably would have helped save the movie, imo) into a generic brute.
But they've been somewhat better about it recently. Ego's one of the most powerful antagonists the franchise has ever had, and he was fantastic.
There are rough power levels in the MCU, strictly in terms of physical strength. Black Widow is stronger than a normal human because of her training, but Captain America and Black Panther are stronger than her because they're super-soldiers. Spider-Man and Iron Man are stronger than Captain America. Thor and Hulk are stronger than Iron Man.
There are also a bunch of exceptions. Scarlet Witch is a great character to compare to Dr. Strange. Both of them fit the Squishy Wizard trope, with the physical strength of a normal human but absurdly strong telekinetic or magic attacks to compensate. If either is caught off-guard or hit by something while they're concentrating on something else, they can be taken out easily.
Dr. Strange, in the comics, tends to be the strongest human sorcerer, but his main villains tend to be beings beyond the purview of human perception. He fights gods, demons, and eldritch beings from other dimensions, and they tend to be even stronger than he is, requiring him to use his wits and tactics to outmaneuver or trick them. The ending of Dr. Strange, where he uses the Time Stone to trap Dormammu in a time loop and won't let him go until Dormammu agrees to stay away from the Earth, is a classic Dr. Strange-style victory, and is the kind of thing you should expect from Dr. Strange going forward.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 18th 2019 at 2:18:17 AM
If you want your villain to just look cool and be threatening, you have to do it right, otherwise it's going to come off flat. And then you get stuff like Thor 2.
To elaborate: a story is only as good as its primary antagonistic forces, which drive the plot. If your "villain" is only there to look cool and be threatening, then they are not - in fact - one of those primary antagonistic forces, so something else has to fill that role instead.
That antagonistic force doesn't have to be the villain. It doesn't even have to be a person. It could be an idea, or nature, or the hero themselves. But you have to have a clear, strong idea of what it is.
The problem is, because these movies tend to have a very typical structure, writers and directors get complacent and try to have their cake and eat it to: they want these stories to be hero focused first and foremost, but then also want the supervillains to be the biggest, most personally driving antagonists in their heroes' lives. And in trying to clumsily juggle both, you get stuff like the Iron Man sequels.
The only MCU movie that really succeeds in having “the villain” not be that primary antagonistic force is Civil War: Zemo’s there causing events to happen, yes, but the primary conflict is against Steve and Tony’s inability to compromise. It’s a sign the Russos knew what they were doing. Another good but non-MCU one in recent memory is Deadpool 2, and you could argue Shazam is an example as well.
This is also, on a related note, why some movies fail at having multiple villains: when the want every one of them to be the biggest, most prominent antagonist, and obviously they can’t all be. Whereas succeeding at multiple villains involves keeping those villains’ roles in the plot straight.
Edited by KnownUnknown on May 18th 2019 at 11:58:49 AM
Well, mostly worked in Ragnarök. Hela is flat as f... but next to nobody cared because she has a really cool look and is played by an actress who can pull awesome off.
Also, Heath Ledger's Joker is an example for this. And naturally the majority of Disney's villain line-up.
But I think the MCU does it right by usually putting the focus on the hero first and then doing a more layered villain in a later movie.
Edited by Swanpride on May 18th 2019 at 12:00:49 PM
Iron Man 2 is the film that comes to mind in regards to not properly understanding how to balance the conflict properly.
Vanko gets some scenes early in the film that show him as having potential to be a good villain, but on the whole the film is much more about Tony's self-destruction, so he just feels superfluous and like he's there because of a genre obligation.

(sigh) Sorry.
To be specific about what I was saying about Dr Strange. My fear was more coming from his title as Sorceror Supreme. Him being established as knowing all magic and being a master of all magic seems REALLY powerful. So I worry that a story would need to do some contriving or have Strange conveniently forget certain things he can do.
Edited by GNinja on May 17th 2019 at 6:37:06 PM
Kaze ni Nare!