Captain America: Civil War Screenwriters Address Marvel Villain Problem

For much of Phase two, you couldn't look at a think piece or geek news site without seeing one chief criticism of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies: for every one Loki, you get five generic, barely fleshed out villains.

In an interview with JoBlo, the screenwriters of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, and the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War directly addressed the "Marvel Villain Problem" for the first time.

"I get the criticism, but the early phases were all origin stories. It tends to create a similar villain," said Stephen McFeely, one half of the writing team with Christopher Markus. That points to specific criticism made here at Comicbook, where we looked at the prevalence of doppelgänger villains, enemies with virtually identical power sets (see: Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Ant-Man, Captain America, Incredible Hulk, and non-Marvels like The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, and many, many more). "When it is no longer an origin story, I think you might have a little bit more freedom to create different villains. I'm sensitive to the problem. I get it," McFeely continued. "But it wasn't the Robert Redford story, it was Captain America: Winter Soldier. It wasn't the Red Skull's journey, it was the journey of one guy going from ninety pound weakling to American hero and then going into the ice. So in a 120-minute movie it is difficult, and Thanos will possibly change that, but you want time spent."

Both writers are excited about getting to go more in-depth with Thanos, though.

"We can reveal nothing, but we are equally fascinated; legitimately, we are fascinated by Thanos," Markus said. "There are a lot of reasons we took the job but one of them was now, we get to take the biggest villain marvel has ever had and try to do him justice," added McFeely. They teased they'll be "willing to pull from anything Thanos is in" as far as comicbook source material goes, as well.

Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, which will be retitled, hits theaters May 4, 2018.