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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Oh no, you're way too late for that. At least his fanbase is relatively smaller than Loki's was?
They're fairly different in many senses. I think the most obvious is that Loki is first and foremost a spotlight hogger who wants attention and validation while Zemo does what he does solely for ideological gratification. Zemo wants his "thesis" (i.e. superheroes are a pox upon mankind) proven correct, Loki just wants to plug the hole in his heart and has next to none ideological consistency other than "trying to do whatever he thinks will make him happy". Conversely in Zemo's half of the equation is sympathetic because of this legitimate, sincere ideological zeal to his ethics rather than personal gratification. They're wrong ethics, but they're ethics nonetheless and he sticks to them (vaguely) well. Loki meanwhile is sympathetic because craving happiness is a very human motivation we all can sympathize with.
On the topic of Draco in Leather Pants, though, they do run similar risks. They're both extremely privileged and vaguely tragic pretty white boys whose justifications are sympathetic but shallow in a way that lends itself to audiences (and writers) taking them at face value. I don't think The Falcon and The Winter Soldier (terrible as it was) was trying to argue that Zemo was right per see (as there's a minimal effort for Sam to shoot down his arguments and Zemo's still a loosely antagonistic figure) but it tries to give his ideology a lot more coherence than it actually has while giving a coat of paint over the many obvious leaps of logic he makes. The logic of the narrative is basically "he's not entirely right, but he's more right than you think", but from that to Lokism of "he was entirely correct and did no wrong" is a fairly small walk.
I think with Zemo the most glaring incoherence that his ideology has is that he's a very proud blue-blooded wealthy aristocrat who despises superheroes due their unearned "special" privilege, despite his entire social status resting on unearned special privilege. I'm not sure if the MCU is ever addressing that, though.
Edited by Gaon on Jul 27th 2022 at 1:09:36 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I love Loki the Drama Queen. He's such a fun villain to watch compared to most others in the MCU.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I feel like the thing is Zemo is more sympathetic than Loki cause he follows an understandable philosophy born out of genuine tragedy.
Meanwhile Loki is just a selfish git with self-esteem problems who takes out his self-loathing on others. As human as it is, there is something immensely detestable to cause so much pain and suffering simply because daddy didn't tell you he loved you enough.
Edited by slimcoder on Jul 27th 2022 at 1:18:08 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."I mean, I came away from both Civil War and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier thinking that, for all Zemo sometimes rightfully criticizes others' egotism, and for whatever Strawman Has a Point he might have, ultimately he's still a self-serving hypocrite who approaches issues from a position of It's All About Me himself.
I expect Thunderbolts to lean into presenting him as a charismatic demagogue who is a sincere believer that he's selflessly doing the right thing, but his major flaw is that he fails to realize his own selfishness, and that this will be the source of others' conflicts with him.
Edited by AlleyOop on Jul 27th 2022 at 4:58:48 AM
I agree with that.
Zemo is a man who, when push came to shove opted to murder a lot of people (including the king of another nation) in order to enact his plan to destroy a group devoted to defending the world against other threats.
Yes, we have to ignore that the Avengers (or rather, Tony Stark) did create the thing that lead to the death of his family, but he still decided to do what he did, and his plan was to then kill himself rather than face justice.
I think the thing that works with Zemo is that, even if the narrative doesn't always do a good job of refuting him, he's still kinda a bad guy because his methods wouldn't change.
He'd have destroyed the Avengers even if Tony hadn't built Ultron.
He'd have killed the Flagsmasher even if they'd surrendered peacefully rather than needing to be captured.
Because he's convinced he's right, and will pursue his agenda no matter what anyone thinks.
One Strip! One Strip!I like MCU Zemo a lot more than MCU Loki, although I think both have character writing problems by this point. Loki's just become a pretty trite character uplifted by a very gifted actor. He hasn't been allowed to be an actual villain for about a decade of real-world time, so it's pointless to even include him in the same category as Zemo. He's portrayed as more sympathetic these days than maybe even his own brother.
Conceptually Zemo was at his most interesting to me in Civil War when his pitch was that he was more codified as a common man fighting gods with his wit alone, but Falcon and the Winter Soldier making him closer to his source material's classic Diabolical Mastermind type shenanigans made him more boilerplate. Still, Bruhl is great and the character is still allowed to be ruthless and machiavellian while showing off some style and a lot of wit. It's fun seeing this guy with comparatively little physical prowess just spinning his wheels to come out on top. Actually an archetype I miss in comic book adaptations these days: the physically inept (either straight up or in comparison to the hero) mastermind whose brain is the real threat". At the Distinguished Competition I was a little bummed they adapted Shazam's Doctor Sivana (pretty much the OG Mad Scientist of comics) but made him a explicit Evil Counterpart to Shazam who can match him blow-for-blow.
I miss that classic dynamic of the insanely powerful hero coming up against a guy he could explode with a punch, but the guy is simply so absurdly intelligent he can concoct stratagems (and invent wild, creative scientific abominations) to match him no matter where he is. Like Gaiman once said: "It's a pity Lex Luthor has become a multinationalist; I liked him better as a bald scientist. He was in prison, but they couldn't put his mind in prison."
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That would be the hope.
It seems to be very difficult for Hollywood to write a super-intelligent villain believably. I've seen at least a half-dozen videos making fun of Zemo's plan from Civil War, Joker's plan from Dark Knight, and Lex Luthor's plan from Batman vs. Superman, because they all depend on Gambit Roulettes: things going their way that the character could not possibly know or predict.
A true evil genius is like Adrian Veidt: they've already won before you even figure out their plans. That's great until you realize that that there's no way for the heroes to realistically beat them.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 27th 2022 at 4:58:47 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Arguably the closest thing we’ve had to supervillains in real life had lucky shots or times when they were foolishly overlooked. The Killdozer guy
got away with building a tank in his shed for over a year and nobody who passed through blinked. What matters less depressing is “plot holes” and more how compelling their character is.
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jul 27th 2022 at 1:57:33 AM
I think there's a mix of factors. There is a genuine difficulty in making supervillain plots because they're unrealistic by default. Any wild stratagem of those is going to rely on a good deal of luck and good timing, and film audiences have acquired a habit of despising anything that doesn't run like a swiss clock. Veidt's plan (since you brought it up) for example is also fairly convoluted and reliant on blind luck so it wouldn't blow up in his face (and it might have blown up in his face anyway given the story's ending: "Rorschach's Journal: October 12th, 1985..."), the story just obscures that masterfully (and the fact it seems to work without a hitch makes him look better).
Zemo's stratagem in Civil War (since we're on the MCU and Zemo), for one, is wild and luck-reliant but it's pretty plausible within the comic book constraints he's in. In fact, his plan is incredibly straightforward and to the point, most of it is just engineering situations that put the Avengers at odds with one another and never letting them fully stop to go "wait a minute, we're being played" while he slinks away in the fog of war. There's several points it could have completely derailed but that goes for, as I said, any evil plan.
Pretty much.
Edited by Gaon on Jul 27th 2022 at 1:56:24 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Sure, those are all reasonable points, but the problem with the Manipulative Bastard as a villain concept is that the heroes have to be oblivious to their plans for a certain portion of the story and then suddenly flip and be able to beat them at the end. While this can be done well, usually it is not.
It sounds like Kang is going to be playing the ultimate version of this trope, starting in Quantumania, and I'm very eager to see how it plays out.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 27th 2022 at 5:00:48 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"That comes down to giving the heroes a reason to fall for the deception, even if it’s obvious. In Far From Home, it’s clear as day that Mysterio will turn out to be the villain, but we know that Peter is hurting for a father figure ever since Tony died and Quentin seems so affable that we buy that Peter would swallow the bait even when the hook is evident.
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jul 27th 2022 at 2:08:17 AM
There is also the option of the heroes constantly counter-planning against the villain and the villain thus having to counterplan around that. For a major blockbuster example, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise largely consists of various factions trying to one-up one another in convoluted gambits.
In comics, Doctor Strange is a character particularly suited for this sort of thing, as he's notorious for being a machiavellian plotter of sorts himself (an aspect the movies retained) but he's yet to meet a match in the MCU.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I think the best way to handle Zemo moving forward is to make him, at best, extremely grey, where he's dashing and charming and one hell of a Magnificent Bastard whose logic is deeply flawed but also not entirely wrong, but who is, at the end of the day, not a guy to root for or who you'd want to root for. After all, he's not wrong about a lot of things, but he's so self-righteous, hypocritical, intransigent, and Machiavellian in his methods that no one could reasonably call him a hero or even an Anti-Villain, and in his crusade, he ultimately becomes exactly what he hates without being able to see it.
I mean, he destroyed the only group who stood a chance at stopping Thanos, and we've never heard what he had to say about the Snap, or his potential role in it.
One Strip! One Strip!I've thought of a Establishing Character Moment If the do introduce Doom to the MCU. Someone in a crowd snarks after hearing Doom's grandiose way of speaking, who is then immediately shot dead by Doom, who says to the rest:
Edited by Avenger09 on Jul 28th 2022 at 2:49:20 PM
I don't think Doom's Establishing Character Moment shoul be reacting to jokes. It should be something like him covered in shadows in a gothic underground lair playing with superhero-shaped chesspieces as he announces "LITTLE DO THEY KNOW...THAT DOOM IS AT HAND!" before he crushes one of them in his armored fist and the flash of a lightning strike reveals his silhouette as a church organ blares his leitmotif in the background.
This being only a slight exaggeration of how he was actually introduced
◊.

Loki never acted purely for giggles; his miniseries reveals him to be harboring a deep sense of inferiority that he suppresses by asserting dominance over others at every opportunity. Sometimes this takes the form of pranks and sometimes murder, but it's all coming from the same place.
Zemo is okay, I guess, in Civil War, but I was far more interested in the dynamic between Steve and Tony than in him.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 27th 2022 at 3:47:10 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"