As we’ve recently discussed, the villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have really let the franchise down. That’s not to say they’ve been bad enough to make the franchise poor, just that it would’ve been even better if its villains weren’t so drab and poorly depicted.

There have been exceptions – Loki, Red Skull, Ultron, and even Helmut Zemo, for example, were all good in their own way – but most of them have been terrible. That must improve in future movies to prevent an eventual backlash that might see fans lose interest in the franchise.

So what can be done to make the villains of the franchise better in the future? That’s what this article is going to be about. Here are ten ways the MCU can improve its villains.

Be More Faithful To The Comics

Look, nobody’s saying that every villain in every comic book movie should be a carbon copy of the version in the comic books – heck, some of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s best villains, like Loki and Ultron, are really quite different from their comic book counterparts – but making it so they’re completely unrecognizable in comparison to the source material is just silly.

The prime example is Iron Man 3’s depiction of the Mandarin. Instead of being a Chinese martial artist with ten alien rings of power, he was a bumbling British actor perpetrating a ruse so Aldrich Killian could do his evil thing.

That kind of thing causes an uproar among the fans. In the future, having villains that at least more closely resemble the characters they’re based on would be a good idea for Marvel Studios to take on board.

We mentioned Loki in this entry, and the next entry relates to Tom Hiddleston’s character, too.