I don't necessarily consider 'unintelligent' villains a bad thing, but I do agree with Overlord that the Ultimate universe does need a few more brains.
The problem is that the Ultimate Universe just seems to be written in a way that if 90% of people who actually turned out to be smart, logical and cunning fellas, would never turn to villainy.
As Zombipanda points out, the UU revolves around a superhuman arms race. That kind of authorial intent pretty much allowed Bendis, et al to talk about the inherent self-destructiveness of the human race and the role that equalities and inequalities of power have in maintaining a sane social order in modern society.
Thus, if ANYbody in the Ultimate Universe was actually smart, then they wouldn't be a villain. They'd start thinking long-term or look past being petty twits who just want to have a piece of the world. And if you look at the villains of the Ultimate Universe, petty twits is exactly what they are. Some examples:
- THE GOOD: Magneto wants a new social order, so he's basically a terrorist who may have some kind of ambition for himself. He's crazy and greedy with a goal. Crazy and greedy for not just himself, but for all of mutantkind by espousing an order in which humans are just obsolete.
- The BAD: Theoretically, Norman Osborn was smart. He built a bio research company out of almost nothing. But by the time we meet him, he stopped being a scientist years ago and was pretty much just after a fat, lucrative contract. His intelligence took a backseat to his own greed.
- THE UGLY: Theoretically, Victor Van Damme is also a smart guy. But he's got an inferiority complex that pretty much stunts him of any kind of ambition. He's too busy picking on everyone to set any real goals for himself.
There is a difference between intelligence with wisdom, one could be completely intelligent in certain areas, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have psychological problems or personality defects that turns them into bad people.
Look at bin Laden, he had more than enough money to live a comfortablelife, but now he is living in a cave and sendsd all his time comming up with ways to kill people. Same deal with Hitler or Stalin, they were intelligent people, they didn't have to do bad and destrctive things, but because of their personality, they did so anyway.
Its completely realistic that all those intelligent people yoiu mentioned are still villains, it happens in real life all the time. Humans just aren't rational some times.
If you look at something like the Holocaust, you would realize it doesn't make sense. There was no reason to do it, it was counter productive, diverting war resources to a project with no military benefit. The victims of the Holocaust posed no real threat to the Reich, its why the Holocaust was considered one of the ost evil things in history, it was evil for evil's sake. Plus its pretty clear that the process of the Holocaust was created by intelligent people, stupid people would never create something that complex. Someone like proves there are intelligent people out there, with no morality or wisdom.
That's what I was going to say. Although it might be too early to know for sure.
But his intelligence is super powered base, its like he was someone who had spend years honing and developing their wits, he was just a guy who become super intelligent because of super powered human engineering.
To be fair, though, that's because Batman doesn't have powers. :wink:
I agree to a point. Spider-Man should have more villains without powers, but if you're picking from 616 villains, most of Spidey's villains have powers. Same with the X-men, Fantastic Four and Avengers (Ultimates), which are the only books represented in the Ultimate Universe at the moment (Outside of crossovers). If there were, say, an Ultimate Daredevil series we'd probably see more non-powered villains, as Daredevil is, arguably, Marvel's Batman. It's just difficult to give super-powered heroes non-powered villains. There are, of course, exceptions (Lex, for example), but it's relatively rare.
Actually in the 616 universe there are quite few Spidey villains with no real powers: Chameleon, Shocker, Vulture, Mysterio, etc. There are other rogues galleries where a hero with powers faces off against villains who rely on gimmicks, like several of Flash's villains: captain Cold, Heat Wave, Trickster, captain Boomerang, etc.