If any superhero could sell you insurance, it’s Ant-Man. Though Scott Lang was technically a criminal to begin with, he was always your harmless, peace-loving cat burglar type, and in his new heroic role has retained his urbane charm, likeability and distaste for needless violence. Still, every hero needs a villain, and in the Marvel Universe they tend to be grandiose.
In the little guy’s latest outing, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, he comes face to face with a villain who appears to have modelled himself on Gengis Khan.
Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) has been forced for long millennia to slum it in the quantum realm, a mysterious universe hidden beneath our own, but now plots to use the scientific breakthroughs of veteran inventor Hank Pym to break free of his trap, gain control of time and cause chaos across multiple dimensions. That’s what I call a plan.
Only Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and his partner Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) stand any chance of stopping him, and journey into the Quantum Realm. But before they confront him, Kang misses no opportunity to make numerous windy speeches describing the mayhem he will shortly unleash. In this regard he seems similar to Thanos, the granite-faced giant who thwarted and almost destroyed The Avengers in his pursuit of intergalactic greatness.
Played with a flourish by Josh Brolin, and brought to life through the wonders of CGI, Thanos talked a good game but came up short in the end, and for me lacked a crucial element that ought to be in the armoury of every great supervillain — a sense of humour. Come to think of it, Kang the Conqueror isn’t exactly Jerry Seinfeld either, but all of my favourite supervillains have a yearning to make their enemies laugh, and one is a thwarted stand-up.
Kang the Conqueror, played by Jonathan Majors, is known for his sense of humour
The modern superhero craze has its roots in the adventure comic books of the 1930s and 40s, in which the likes of Batman, Superman and Flash Gordon first appeared. Short film serials brought their adventures to the cinema, but it was television that cemented the idea of superheroes in the public imagination.
In the mid-1960s, Fox produced a TV series starring Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as his suspiciously loyal sidekick, Robin. The show’s creator, William Dozier, emphasised the absurdity of their story, and during three seasons and a feature film the prudish duo got to utter such priceless lines as “even drinkers are people, Robin”.
One thing the caped crusader has never been short of is nemeses, and that pricelessly camp 1960s show was coming down with them. Small boys of a certain age were forever marked by the sight of Julie Newmar in a catsuit, Burgess Meredith gave it socks as the chain-smoking Penguin, and Spanish-American actor Cesar Romero was The Batman’s most implacable foe, the Joker. Romero, though, played him for laughs, sporting purple suits and spouting dodgy puns.
First, though, came another verbose prankster, in the 1978 motion picture Superman. Richard Donner’s film set the template that all superhero movies would follow, and has stood the test of time extremely well. Christopher Reeve was perfectly cast as the Man of Steel, but the choice of Gene Hackman to play Lex Luthor was inspired.
At that point, Hackman was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, famous for his gritty turns in films such as The French Connection and The Conversation. Not known for his comic timing, he was a revelation as Luthor, a grandiose and morbidly sensitive supervillain who wears a variety of ornate wigs to hide his baldness.
Gene Hackman was a revelation as Lex Luthor in the 1978 Superman film.
In order to get Superman’s attention (which he craves) Luthor steals a nuclear warhead and uses it to trigger an earthquake in California. “Everyone has his faults,” he tells Superman, “mine’s in San Andreas.” And as he watches his hefty henchman Otis approach, Lex muses, “it’s amazing that brain can generate enough power to keep those legs moving”. Supervillains just don’t come any better than Hackman’s Luthor, and his characterisation is definitive: when Kevin Spacey and Jesse Eisenberg took on the role, the results were not impressive.
Hackman played Lex again in Superman II, but was eclipsed as the main villain by the rebel Krypton leader, General Zod (Terence Stamp), an entitled despot who kept ordering everyone to “Kneel before Zod!” No fun at all.
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The success of the Superman films convinced Warner Brothers to have a go at bringing Batman to the big screen, and Tim Burton’s 1989 blockbuster was inspired in part by Frank Miller’s Dark Knight comics.
Michael Keaton was an interesting choice to play Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy with a secret crime-fighting double life, and brought an uneasy vulnerability to the role. But Burton and his producers must surely have known what they would be getting when they cast Jack Nicholson as the Joker.
Nicholson’s Joker was a gangster disfigured and driven mad after falling into a vat of chemicals. There were aspects of Cesar Romero’s giddy portrayal from the 1960s TV show — stupid jokes, circus props — but also signs of an underlying psychosis: during the film, it emerged that it was he who shot dead Bruce Wayne’s parents in an alley. Nicholson’s performance sailed beyond the merely fruity into something either brilliant or awful — I’ve never been able to decide which. But darker Jokers were on the way.
Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for his turn as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s 2008 epic The Dark Knight, and had apparently locked himself away in a hotel room for a month in preparation, reading comic books and studies of psychopaths. His Joker is, perhaps, the most realistically scary supervillain of them all, a demented nihilist who, as Alfred the butler puts it, “just wants to watch the world burn”.
Heath Ledger apparently locked himself away in a hotel room for a month in preparation for his role as the Joker in Dark Knight
In 2019, Batman’s sworn and mortal enemy got his own film, Todd Phillips’ Joker, which gave the character an origins story. As played by Joaquin Phoenix, Arthur Fleck is a failed Gotham City stand-up comedian whose bitterness propels him towards violence. The film was like a cross between Taxi Driver and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer: a sequel is in the works, and meanwhile Barry Keoghan may play the Joker opposite Robert Pattinson in a forthcoming Batman movie.
So much for the Joker, whose shadow hangs heavy over the superhero movie, but the Marvel franchise has produced some memorable villains of its own.
We mentioned Thanos, but before him came Ultron, an AI program created by Tony Stark that develops a god complex and decides, not unreasonably, that the best way to bring peace on Earth would be to eradicate man. Voiced by James Spader, Ultron had a good excuse for not seeing the funny side of things, as indeed did Gorr (Christian Bale), the last inhabitant of a parched and starved planet who, in Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) vows vengeance on all gods, including Thor.
Gorr certainly got the God of Thunder’s attention, but everyone’s favourite Marvel villain would have to be Loki, Thor’s tricksy half-brother whose sibling jealousy leads him to make some questionable decisions. Such as betraying Asgard, posing as his father, invading New York and forming a disastrous alliance with Thanos.
Tom Hiddleston’s portrayal of him is a comic delight, and by sleight of hand manages to create a villain we can secretly root for. Intriguingly, Hiddleston has described Loki as “like a comic book version of Edmund in King Lear, but nastier”, and says his performance was inspired by Peter O’Toole. Whatever inspired it, it was great, and Thor is coming down with charismatic, villainous siblings.
In Thor: Ragnarok (2017), the funniest of the Marvel films, and my favourite, a dying Odin reveals that his passing will unleash from a dungeon their older sister Hela, Goddess of Death. This is not good news for anyone, as Hela (Cate Blanchett) never met a throat she didn’t want to slit, and now intends to take the throne of Asgard. “You’re in my seat,” she tells Thor, when she shows up at the palace looking splendidly gothic in a black catsuit and antlers. Blanchett’s Hela made for an unforgettable supervillain.
In his various iterations, Spider-Man has overcome all sorts of villains, and in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) most of them came back to haunt him. A corrupted spell created by Dr Strange has summoned various enemies from alternate universes, including Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), an unhinged scientist with four metallic tentacles attached to his person. Bitter and grumpy, Otto achieves the fuming despair of a Shakespearean villain. Jamie Foxx’s volt-spewing Electro also shows up, as does Willem Dafoe’s cackling Green Goblin, and it takes more than one Spider-Man to stop them.
Some supervillains deserve a better film. Harley Quinn has her origins in a 1990s Batman comic, and comes equipped with a sob story. Turned to the bad by the Joker, who pursued her then dumped her, Harley is brokenhearted and bitter, vicious to a fault. Margot Robbie first portrayed her in the 2016 DC movie Suicide Squad, a nasty and brainless production.
But Robbie was brilliant as Harley, with her punkish aesthetic and chewing gum drawl, and has utterly convinced as the rebellious felon in two further films, Birds of Prey (2020) and The Suicide Squad (2021). Sometimes, villains are more interesting than heroes.
