Best and worst rogues galleries in comic book movies

The Overlord

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 4, 2005
Messages
2,464
Which comic book movies series has the best rogues gallery so far? Which comic book movie series has the worst rogues gallery so far?
 
So far I'd say the Batman Begins series has made the best use of the most characters(Ra's Al Ghul, Scarecrow, Mr. Zsasz, The Joker, Two-Face), but the X-Men trilogy almost ties it. I think movie-Magneto is better than any of the Batman Begins villains, maybe Colonel Stryker too.... also, I liked how they crammed in(appropriately!) as many villains as they could, like Mastermind and Deathstryke, because they knew they wouldn't have time or room to use them properly so just went for the fun/coolness factor of having them onscreen.
 
So far I'd say the Batman Begins series has made the best use of the most characters(Ra's Al Ghul, Scarecrow, Mr. Zsasz, The Joker, Two-Face), but the X-Men trilogy almost ties it. I think movie-Magneto is better than any of the Batman Begins villains, maybe Colonel Stryker too.... also, I liked how they crammed in(appropriately!) as many villains as they could, like Mastermind and Deathstryke, because they knew they wouldn't have time or room to use them properly so just went for the fun/coolness factor of having them onscreen.

True maybe Deathstrike and Mastermind weren't the most developed characters, but they served important plot functions so I like them. The X-Men movies had about 3 Big bads (Magneto, Stryker and Phoenix) but you had a few cool Dragons (Mystique and Deathstrike) and a lot of good canon fodder villains, maybe not well developed, but good to see anyway.

I agree with you about the recent Batman movies making good use of his rogues gallery, that may be the best.

I also think movie Spider-Man is a good choice as well, I liked movie Gobby, I really liked movie Doc Ock and even though Spidey 3 had too many villains, I kinda liked Venom, Sandman and Harry.

Now going down the scale a bit, I thought Daredevil and the Hulk, movie wise, have okay rogues galleries. DD had Kingpin, Bullseye and Eelktra and they were decent I guess. Hulk has: General Ross, Abomination and Absorbing Dad, I like Ross and Abomination and absorbing Dad was okay till the end of the film. Neither of those characters had super great rogues galleries in the comics.

Iron Man its too early to judge, he has only had one movie and Iron Monger was really the only villain of note. Stane was decent though, he posed a believable threat and ultimately Tony Stark was the focus of the film and the so the villain stealing the spotlight is a no go. It will be interesting to see how they handle the Mandarin in the next film, see if he has super powered henchmen or not.

Blade's rogues gallery is pretty redundant by nature.

Now we get to the dregs. Sure there are some easy choices, the Catwoman movie (evil make up lady) or Ghost Rider. But those are too easy. My choice for worst Superman, 5 movies and the only good villains we have are Lex and Zod and I'm not too crazy about that version of Lex. Sure 80s effects meant that Lex and Zod were the only options for the first few movies, but the fact that the 2006 film didn't have Metallo or Parasite, is unforgivable.
 
Nuclear Man is badass. I don't care what anyone says. You really can't get more eighties than Nuclear Man.
 
Last edited:
You know what there is one movie series that i forgot, which may have a worst rogues gallery then Superman's, the Fantastic Four!

Seriously the FF movies had: a lame version of Doom and cloud Galactus! the only cool enemy was Silver Surfer and he didn't even stay a villain.
 
Movie Doctor Doom is another one of my guilty pleasures when it comes to movie villains. He's Julian McMahon, so he can get laid any time he wants and he's got teh electrissity powerz!! He's a very shallow, leave-your-brain-at-the-door type villain. A bit like the FF movies, themselves.

To be quite honest, I think the original Batman franchise has the worst villains. Superman and others may have had mediocre villains, but the original Burton/Schumacher movies had flat out bad, offensively stupid villains. Obviously Nicholson was excellent (despite what The First Church of Ledger popularily likes to believe), but the Penguin, Catwoman, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and Bane were all stupid, over-the-top and not a whole lot like their comic book counterparts. The Riddler was okay, but at the end of the day, it was just Jim Carrey in 1995, at the height of his speed-freak career, doing his thing, with a fairly decent plot and scheme to support it.
 
Last edited:
Best I think is tied between Spider-man and Batman begins.

Here's why :

Joker & green goblin = While two very different people with different styles they both have similarities, Both Crazy as hell and great in the crazy role. Both fit the franchise they are a part of perfectly. And after the end of the Dark Knight it's safe to say both are going to have effected the heroes in a way that is seen through out the folloing movie(s) Also both are responsible for two villains who share a similar fate.

Two face & New Goblin Both are friends who turn evil. Both die in the films they are in. But more importantly both at least in my opinion are wasted by killing them so soon and hardly doing anything in the film. Sure two face had his moments as did harry but over-all a waste I feel.

Venom & scarecrow. another two were wasted in the both films. Venom should have gotten more screen time and scarecrow should have had a proper defeat as he was beaten by a girl with a stun-gun then next film he's trying to be good? Also another reason I mentioned them as Venom in his film will be good. That means neither got what they deserved as Villains. Like them or not, I like venom but I don't really like scarecrow and I think both needed more.

Ra's Al Ghul & Doc Ock - Both of these started by helping the hero. Doc Ock by getting him to get over loosing his powers and his love life. Ra's Al Ghul by training. Both turned around to be very serious threats. But both IMO suffer from been out shinned by Joker & Green Goblin.


I left of the crime bosses as I don't see them as main villains. And Spider-man has Sandman but Sandman makes for any part the others were lacking compared to the batman series making them Equal IMO.



Worst = Superman. He's had Lex then Zod & friends (Though Zod was cool) and Lex again,. Then a evil computer and an evil him then Lex again and Nuclear man then Lex ........ AGAIN! Superman's villains besides Zod have all sucked at least to me. Now had Lex been business lex even if it was just in returns then Two could have been good but overall Superman's villains are piss poor.
 
The best in my opinion is the Joker from The Dark Knight (2008). That film emphasizes him as the antithesis to Batman, moreso than any of his previous incarnations. It also manages to create a unique, fascinating version of the character .... This is a Joker unlike any we've ever seen before, but it's still true to the character .... It doesn't diminish the character with an origin story (in the Joker's case, an origin story does kind of diminish the character because "mysterious" is as much a part of the Joker as his craziness). For all we know, there was no failed comedian or Red Hood or chemical vat - there's just this "Joker"; he has no reason for being and no reason for spreading chaos. This Joker fits perfectly in Nolan's universe .... It's scary, ugly, remorseless, pure evil .... and we love it. We love to see him stick pencils in people's heads. We love to see him carve smiles in people's faces. We love to see him light people on fire, and feed people to their attack-dogs. We love to see him hurt and kill and plan and spread chaos. Because he's the Joker.

The Green Goblin was decent, but the best villain in the Spider-Man movie series in my opinion is Doctor Octopus. It's practically him jumping off the comic page and onto the big screen. Perfect actor for the role, exactly how I imagine Doc Ock in the comics. And the arm special effects were ****ing superb. Spider-Man 2 (2004) is probably my second favorite comic book film, after TDK, and Doc Ock is one of the reasons why (don't misunderstand me, he's not one of the most important reasons .... the second movie is probably the closest thing the filmmakers are going to come to when it comes to making a perfect Spidey movie, and a lot of it was the Peter and Aunt May portion, the way they handled the Peter-MJ relationship at that point in the series, the parts with Peter "losing" his powers and contemplating giving up his life as Spider-Man [but changing his mind and donning the costume again when he sees that boy's faith in Spidey], and the train sequence). But yeah, Ock was tight.

Magneto was done well. Shakespearean actor, anti-hero, sympathetic backstory, decent costume, plastic prison. The films do a decent job of translating Mags and Charles' relationship onto the big screen, and stressing the differences in their ideals (which ultimately led them apart) .... Magneto is the Malcolm X to Charles Xavier's Martin Luther King JR. I think Stryker was cool too, him and his attack-dog Deathstrike were badass. The whole military side was a cool part of the character, even though he was just a reverend in the comics.



The worst villains .... well, Galactus in Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) was pretty ****ty. In fact, that whole movie series is one big turd, and I wouldn't doubt that the unreleased, low-budget '90s FF movie is better than both the new versions combined. How you gonna make Galactus into a damn cloud?! A gigantic dude wearing a ridiculously-tall purple helmet would be less retarded than this.

Red Skull. From the 1990 Captain America movie. Everything about that movie sucked ***. Red Skull was an Italian Fascist officer named Tadzio de Santis who, as a child in 1936, was kidnapped by Italian army stormtroopers and subjected to experiments led by Nazi scientists attempting to create an ubermensch. The United States replicate the serum and test it on a polio-stricken adult man - thus, Captain America is born. The Skull plans to launch a missile at the White House, and Cap is sent to deactivate it. Cap is defeated and gets tied to the missile. As he grabs ahold of the Skull, the Skull is forced to cut off his own hand in order to avoid being launched into destruction with his "American brother." In DC, a young boy named Thomas Kimball (essentially Bucky) takes a photograph of Cap and the missile as they fly overhead. Cap forces the missile to change course and land somewhere in Alaska, where he remains frozen until 1993. Kimball goes on to become a Vietnam hero and, eventually, the POTUS. The Skull is alive and has had extensive plastic surgery and a daughter. He is the leader of a powerful crime family, and it turns out that he was involved in the murders of MLK, JFK, RFK. Now the Skull is targeting Kimball for assassination. Cap is found in Alaska and thawed out by researchers, blah-blah-blah. You get the picture. This guy's a douche.

Bruce's daddy, David ("Absorbing Dad"), from Hulk (2003). There are so many things wrong here. He gets put into a mental hospital after conducting dangerous experiments to cure his son Bruce, who has inherited David's mutated genes. David killed his wife after his research was shut down. Years later, he spies on Bruce (who now has the adopted last name "Krenzler"....WTF) as a janitor at the facility where he works. He uses Bruce's DNA to make Hulk-dogs (the Hulk-dogs were actually in the comics) and eventually subjects himself to radiation, gaining the ability to absorb the properties of any object he touches. But David wants Bruce's power, and by the end of the film, when he has bitten into an electrical wire and gained its conductive properties, he tries to absorb Bruce's Hulk powers.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top