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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Just to give two cents, I like Mr. Negative's take on the "villain with a split personality", as an alternative to rehashing that element with any of the Osborns and/or Curt Connors.
And I think Li/Negative is an interesting take because of the element that his original, "real" personality was a bad person and his evil personality is a result of him repressing his memories/culpability in his dominant good personality.
And I really would like to see Kingsley adapted. It's rare to have evil characters that are completely sane.
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I initially thought that it wouldn't make sense for MCU!JJJ to turn out to be a good guy, since he's clearly inspired by Alex Jones. However, I think you could do something close to the current status quo under Zdarsky and Spencer and have JJJ as a formerly respected journalist who went in a modern tabloid direction to keep his paper in business but have him end up as a better person and also turn around his business operations.
The Hippo
is where it's at.
Seriously though, I like the idea that the movie has the plot of a bunch of villains going after a bounty on Spider-Man. Kraven or Scorpion (or both, that'd be fun) become the main bad guy, and take center stage on the story, but the idea would allow for lots of minor bad guys to also show up, try to get the bounty and get their asses kicked.
We could totally see guys like Boomerang or Kangaroo or White Rabbit or whoever, show up, ambush Peter who has a nice action sequence while quipping about how weird they are, then take care of X or Y assassins and get back to unraveling the overall plot.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 11th 2020 at 10:21:43 AM
And everyone's favorite Spider-Man villain, The Walrus
.
Speaking of John Wick, they could do something like the third movie.
Basically the third movie will be Peter having to fight a lot of supervillains, with a lot of C-lists, Kraven and Scorpion among them.
Many might say that having too many villains in a movie would be a mistake. But it is noteworthy that the only ones with real importance would be Kraven and Scorpion, the others would be basically Elite Mooks to have fight scenes.
Edited by JoLuRo075 on Jul 12th 2020 at 8:29:00 AM
That would be intersting, I mean aside of suicide squad(who dosent count because is a villian movie) often superhero set with a number of two villians per movie, MAYBE three if you are bold.
having a group of C lister could be intersting
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"There's a guy who's name happens to be Dmitri. I don't know if that's exactly set-up.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean the complaint is accurate. Winter Soldier has more villains than Spider-Man 3 does, and did just fine.
The key to having multiple villains is to balance them adequately.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 12th 2020 at 10:24:39 AM
The Spider-Man 3 problem is more accurately defined as it having had 3 main villains. Goblin Jr, Sandman and Venom all had to compete for screentime to be the main threat, as all three were kind of positioned as the main thematic threat simultaneously and thus strangled one another out.
Winter Soldier by contrast pretty calmly settled on having a duo of main villains cooperating (Pierce and Winter Soldier) and having three tertiary ones (Zola, Batroc and Crossbones) sprinkled throughout.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."![]()
Exactly. Winter Soldier has a Big Bad (Pierce), two of The Dragon / Number Two (Sitwell, then Crossbones when Sitwell is defeated), The Heavy (Winter Soldier, when he's not being played for sympathy), a Predecessor Villain / Bigger Bad (Zola), and a Starter Villain (Batroc), all of whom occupy different roles within the plot at different times.
The idea of having Zola be the originator villain who conceived the plan the villains are using and Pierce be a devotee who has the power and is executing that plan is especially good - as it allows both of them to feel like the Big Bad without stepping on each other's roles.
Another good movie that made loads of villains work was The Dark Knight. The Bigger Bad (Maroni), A Dragon Ascendant (Joker), a Tragic Monster (Two-Face) and a Starter Villain (Scarecrow). It's all about keeping everyone's niche straight.
But Spider-Man 3 ran into the problem a lot of superhero movies did back then, that every single villain has to be the biggest, most important and personal threat the hero has ever faced, dominating their life for the duration, and took it to its worst extreme by having everyone try to do that all at the same time. Fans just took a cursory look at it blamed the idea rather than the execution, as fans tend to do, missing what actually went wrong.
The original idea for Spider-Man 3, with Sandman as a regretful minion to another, eviller villain (I think it was Vulture), with Harry's subplot as well probably would have worked better due to not being so muddled with villain roles.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 12th 2020 at 11:03:31 AM
I think Spider-Man 3 would have been fine if Sony hadn't forced them to include Venom. Even so, I still think it's a pretty good movie for having to work a new main villain into the plot.
Honestly, Amazing Spider-Man 2 suffered from much the same problem. It's pretty clear the higher ups were more concerned about setting up a universe than what's good for the movie itself.
Edited by FGHIK on Jul 12th 2020 at 1:28:44 PM
There's a guy who's name happens to be Dmitri. I don't know if that's exactly set-up
A spy named Dmitri, later revealed to be a double-agent working for the villain, who has the ability to create illusions and change his appearance. Dmitri is unaccounted for at the end of the film. That's absolutely set-up for Chameleon.

I think the Raimi Goblin's mask was pretty decent? They could go for a more comic faithful design though.