Seven Movie Supervillains Who Deserve a Reboot

Behind every good superhero is a cast of colorful supervillains for them to fight.Marvel and DC have hundreds of fantastic supervillains on their rosters, waiting to take over the world and destroy a few superheroes in the process.Unfortunately, while comic book lovers know how great many of these villains are, some of Marvel and DC’s superhero movies have failed to bring these dastardly characters to life.Luckily, the reboot has never been more popular in Hollywood, and even comic book superheroes are getting second and third chances on screen.If the Kingpin, Lex Luthor or Joker can get rebooted for a new generation of film/movies, what’s stopping other great supervillains from finally getting their moment on the big screen?Here’s some movie supervillains we think deserve a second chance:

Doctor Doom

Doctor Doom is arguably Marvel’s greatest supervillain, which makes Fox’s treatment of the character so disappointing.  Twice Fox has delivered Doctor Doom duds on the big screen, first in the 2005 Fantastic Four movie and then a decade later in last year’s disaster of a reboot.  Both movies had the same fatal flaw when translating Doom to film: instead of showcasing Doom’s unmatched arrogance, they instead made Doom a petty revenge-driven character with an origin tied to the same accident that gave Reed Richards and his family powers.  Tying Doom’s origins to the Fantastic Four (sort of) worked in the Ultimate Fantastic Four comics, but it only cheapened Doom’s motivations and character in the movies.  Hopefully the next Fantastic Four movie reboot skips over Doom’s origins and skips straight to Doom being an unrepentant evil megalomaniac.  

Venom

Spider-Man 3 had too many flaws to list, but one of the movie’s most egregious sins was wasting Venom, one of the Webcrawler’s strongest villains, as an almost throwaway antagonist. While the movie somewhat faithfully portrayed Venom’s origin story, we barely got to see Venom in action as Spider-Man was too busy dealing with Harry Osborn, Sandman and his own awful dance moves.  It didn’t help that Venom was played by Topher Grace, one of the few actors who made Tobey Maguire not look and sound like a whiny wimp in the movies.  Venom deserves a full movie to himself, not as one third of one of the worst superhero movies ever made.  Hopefully Sony and Marvel will learn from Spider-Man 3‘s mistakes and feature Venom in a movie where he can terrorize Spider-Man on his own instead of getting lost in a crowd of supervillains.  

Galactus

When Fox announced Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, fans expected to see Galactus in all of his purple horn hatted glory descending upon New York to eat the city (and the rest of planet Earth).  Instead, comic fans got a thunderstorm in space as the main villain of the movie, with only the briefest of teases that Galactus might lurk within. Galactus is a galactic level threat, one that probably deserves multiple movies to fight and defeat.  While we’ll probably never see Galactus fight the Guardians of the Galaxy or the Avengers, hopefully Fox can make a Fantastic Four movie that captures the inevitable force of nature that is the Devourer of Worlds. 

Dark Phoenix

Jean Grey’s transformation into the Dark Phoenix is one of the most powerful X-Men stories ever told.  So it was pretty disappointing to see X-Men: The Last Stand turn Jean Grey’s evil alter ego into a lackey of Magneto that only existed to kill her father figure and one true love, Cyclops.  Part of the problem is that the X-Men movies ditched the Phoenix Force’s cosmic origins and instead implied that the Phoenix was simply Jean’s untapped power.  If Marvel can successfully make a movie about talking raccoons in space, Fox could surely make an X-Men movie set in outer space that showed the true power and danger of the Phoenix Force.  Luckily, it seems we might get our wish, considering the end of X-Men: Apocalypse. 

The Riddler

If you were a comic book fan during the 1990s, you probably spent the latter half of that decade trying to forget Jim Carrey’s portrayal as the Riddler in Batman Forever. There was nothing technically wrong with Carrey’s over the top and bombastic version of the Riddler, it’s just….that’s not really who the Riddler is.  Sure, the Riddler has a flare for the dramatic, but he doesn’t typically dress up in a leotard or act like a poor man’s Joker. The Riddler works best as a cerebral foe for the Batman, a narcissist with a chip on his shoulder who has obsession with proving that he’s mentally superior to Batman.  It’s a shame we never got a Riddler in the Christopher Nolan directed Batman movies, as he would have been a perfect foil for Christian Bale’s Batman.  

Red Skull

The only glaring weakness in Captain America: The First Avenger was the generic depiction of the Red Skull, Captain America’s greatest foe.  Instead of coming off as delusional and dangerous, the Red Skull seemed oddly…uncharismatic for the leader of an even eviler version of the Nazi regime.  The Red Skull needs to ooze with hatred in order to be effective as a foil to Captain America, but Hugo Weaving’s portrayal was boring and uninspired and the movie hurt for it.  It’s unlikely that the Red Skull will return in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but if he does, hopefully he’ll show a little more enthusiasm while trying to kill his most hated enemy. 

Ronan the Accuser

Another villain that failed to make any sort of impact of moviegoers, Ronan the Accuser might be the most generic supervillain in all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  With paper thin motives and almost no personality, Ronan was the worst part of the Guardians of the Galaxy by a long shot.  It’s a shame, because the comic book version of Ronan is a much more nuanced character, a powerful warrior driven by honor out of service to the Kree Empire.  Hopefully a future movie can showcase Ronan’s motivations instead of turning him into a generic one note supervillain.