Pick The Actors More Carefully (And Stop Wasting Them)

There should be two rules regarding casting actors as villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: 1) Pick the villain actors more carefully. 2) When great actors are cast in villainous roles, stop completely wasting them and give them a chance to make the villains in question their own.

Examples of bad casting have included the likes of Guy Pearce as Aldrich Killian/The Mandarin, Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko/Whiplash, Lee Pace as Ronan and Christopher Eccleston as Malekith – but it’s the underutilization of great actors that is Marvel Studios’ main problem.

The likes of Thomas Kretschmann as Baron Strucker, Djimon Hounsou as Korath, Frank Grillo as Crossbones and Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery/The Mandarin were all severely wasted in minor (or at least relatively minor) roles. If you’re going to cast big, talented actors, for goodness sake make the most of them!

Now, regarding how much of a threat the MCU’s villains have been, let’s move on to the next point.