Marvel Villain Plans: Analysis and Ranking

[metaphysician]

I recently watched the following video by Nando v Movies:



I don't agree with all his assessments, but it got me thinking about Marvel villains and their plots and schemes. As a result, I decided to do my own overall assessment of MCU villains and villain plans. However, I am going with a suggestion from the comments, and judging each villain on *two* areas: Concept and Execution. 'Concept' will be matters like "What goal does the villain want to achieve, and how well does their overall strategy fit with advancing that goal?" 'Execution' will be more tactical matters like "How good are they at choosing specific means that enact their overall strategy, and especially how well do they handle unexpected challenges and opportunities?" Obviously, there will inevitably be ambiguity over what counts as Concept vs Execution, where grand strategy meets specific tactical decisions. I will rank each on a 1 to 5 scale, where 1 is "awful", 5 is "awesome", and 3 is "average"; each point above 1 will be worth half a star for a final star rating, just because.

I will cover each movie one at a time, and eventually the canonical TV/streaming shows. I might block out spoilers for the more recent stuff, but honestly it will be a while before I hit them. Obviously I am posting this here because I'd like to spawn discussion, so feel free to post all the ways you think I'm wrong and blind and utterly biased, just try to be polite and constructive about it.

 

[metaphysician]

Iron Man

As the first movie in the MCU, Iron Man has two villains to consider.

1. Raza

Concept: Raza's overall goal seems to be fairly straightforward- lead his guerilla army to conquer an increasingly large portion of the Middle East/Central Asia. His means to do so are "acquire high tech weapons, one way or another". Its fairly straightforward and not completely implausible. There are a whole bunch of vague questions with regard to the whole Ten Rings organization ( including which one Raza actually answered to ), but just as it stands in this movie, I'm inclined to rate his conceptual planning a 3, for being fairly average and straightforward. No obvious brilliance, no obvious flaws.

Execution: . . . oh boy. Execution is a different story. Raza and his subordinates committed a lot of really, really stupid moves. The big one being how they backstabbed Obadiah Stane, the underworld arms dealer who was supplying them with munitions, and then tried to pretend that nothing had changed at all when they slunk back to him after the whole "Keep Tony in a cave" thing blew up in their faces. Poorly monitoring Tony, despite providing him with tools and materials to build technology, and despite the whole reason they were doing so was because they believed him able to build wonder weapons, comes a close second. He earns a 1 for execution, along with the ignominious death canon dealt him.

Ranking: *

2. Obadiah Stane

Concept: Obadiah's overall goal, and thus his plan, changed once in the movie. Initially, he wanted complete control over Stark Industries by getting rid of the irksome Tony Stark. Later, after that failed and Stark invented the miniature arc reactor, his goal was to acquire said arc reactor tech so he could duplicate it. In both cases he wanted power and money. His overall strategy was fairly sound. In the first case, kill Tony Stark in a way not traceable to him. In the latter, lock Tony out of corporate affairs while acquiring all the parts he can and duplicating the work. Concept, I give him a 4, there is a reasonably solid connection between his goals and his strategy.

Execution: Dicier. In both cases he made a number of unforced errors. None quite as mind boggling as Raza, but still. His assassination plan relied on a third party he couldn't completely control, he basically admitted to black market arms trading when Tony confronted him on the matter rather than having a plausible cover story, and he didn't really lock out Pepper. In the end he was left doing the supervillainous equivalent of "grab the suitcase of cash and run", and it was mostly due to his mistakes. Execution, I give him a 2, he mostly suffered from not being quite as smart or invincibly positioned as he thought he was.

Ranking: **

 

[metaphysician]

The Incredible Hulk

This movie has three villains, sort of.

1. General Thunderbolt Ross

Concept: Okay, so General Ross wants to capture the Hulk. Why does he want to capture the Hulk? That is where things kind of break down. In theory Ross works in secret weapons research, and presumably wants the Hulk so he can reverse engineer him. However. . . he already has a super soldier serum, that has been rejected for producing unacceptable side effects, and he thinks he will achieve something better with the Hulk, who is even *more* uncontrollable and unsubtle? Why? I suppose you could argue its more about the ego and hating Banner and his former relationship with his daughter Betsy, but if so, he's bad about admitting that to himself. I suppose you could also argue that its more about proving his own professional success with the black ops pentagon circles, and a useless weapon could still be a professional win. I give him a concept rating of 2, which might be generous, but at least his goal isn't logically impossible.

Execution: On consideration, Ross's tactical level means of pursuing the Hulk are actually not *that* bad, as long as you presume he's working on still incomplete information about the Hulk and the Hulk's capabilities ( which the movie does leave some room for ). Extensive surveillance for the expected signs of Hulk activity or contact, efforts at surprise takedown in Banner form, and once it becomes clear that Hulk can no sell conventional forces, he brings in unconventional forces. Even giving Blonsky the serum isn't that big a mistake, and only ballooned because Blonsky did something pants on head stupid. For execution I give him a 4, he's not brilliant but he actually does adapt well.

Ranking: ** ( Savour this, Thaddeus, you are probably never going to see these heights again. *cough* )

2. Emil Blonsky

Concept: Does Blonsky even really have a 'plan'? He has a goal, "I wanna be superhuman", but his strategy for achieving such is either "Ask someone to make me super" or "Tell someone to make me super". He also has no discernable purpose for becoming superhuman, other than 'not get older', with no ideas shown for what he would use his superhumanity to achieve. Blonsky isn't really a thinker, and if it weren't for him very specifically taking actions of his own agency, I'd probably not even consider him a villain in his own right, but a named minion enacting the orders of others. For concept I give him a 1, because he didn't conceive of plans.

Execution: Insofar as he pursued his goal, the height of his tactics were 'hide his mutation for a few hours' and 'threaten the mad scientist into shooting him up with super juice'. The latter of which is a *terrible* idea, as the only information he had available would have said the likely results are 'insane monster' or 'dead'. Oh, and while he did turn into the Abomination, he. . . pretty much skipped to just random violence for no discernable purpose. For execution I also give him a 1, because it was only dumb luck he didn't end up dead. He basically demonstrated the tactical skill of a drug addict spiraling down to self-destruction.

Ranking: Zero, Zilch, No Stars At All

3. Doctor Samuel Sterns

Concept: Sterns' goal is to achieve various mad science results by studying the Hulk's biology. His means to achieve this goal is "Make friends with Banner so that he trusts him enough to come on board". That's a fairly solid plan, at least given the limited info in the movie. I rank it a 4 on the concept level.

Execution: He does, in fact, do mad science with the blood samples and such, and he stays off the radar successfully until Ross invokes SHIELD's cheat level surveillance resources. OTOH, his in person pitch is not the greatest for persuading Banner that further mad science is a good idea. Its not the worst one ever though, either, so I give him a 3 on execution.

Ranking: **1/2

 

[metaphysician]

Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 has two villains with a bit of an odd relationship. No, I do not consider Rhodey, Fury, or Romanov as villains, they are clearly treated by the story as being in the right with respect to Tony and his spiraling behavior. Senator Sterns, likewise, is totally evil in retrospect but has no meaningful role or agency in this story.

1. Ivan Vanko

Concept: I'm gonna be a bit harsh here. Ivan's goal is "revenge for crimes against my family", which is somewhat irrational but fine as a goal. His strategy is. . . pretty terrible. 'Attack my enemy in a big flashy way, which will hopefully either kill him or disgrace him'. Frankly the only reason it worked as well as it did was due to Tony's unrelated problems, without which Ivan's first attack would have barely done anything and been the only attack. On concept he earns a 1, he may be a genius but his strategy was caveman level.

Execution: Better. His first attack wasn't great but he at least picked a relatively vulnerable public moment. He earns some points back for his second opportunity, where he pretty cannily exploited Hammer's opportunity and vulnerability to jack greater resources and arrange a much bigger more spectacular attack. For execution I give him a 3, merely average but still much better than his strategy.

Ranking: *

2. Justin Hammer

Concept: Hammer's goal is to show up Tony Stark, to outdo him and prove himself better. Not able to do this of his own talent and resources, he comes up with the plan of freeing/kidnapping someone who is proven both to be a technical talent *and* someone with a grudge against Stark, in order to take advantage of their skill. This is not a bad strategy. I give him a 3 for concept.

Execution: Oh boy. Everything about how he actually handles Vanko, OTOH? Bad. He poorly monitors him, openly disrespects him, and otherwise does everything possible to both place himself at Vanko's mercy while inspiring no loyalty. Its not just that he could be betrayed, he all but begged to be betrayed. And he got betrayed. For execution he gets a 1.

Ranking: *

Ironically, if the two actually achieved a rapport, they could have been a legitimately dangerous duo, with Hammer providing a decent amount of vision and strategy, and Vanko taking those visions and hammering them into reality.