Tag Archives: Heath Ledger

Top 5 Marvel Cinematic Universe Villains- Part 1of 4

It took me a few minutes to make completely sure this wasn’t just photoshopped Tea Party propaganda.

A couple of days ago, I had the immense pleasure to watch the newest installment in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, Guardians of the Galaxy. I don’t want to get too much into it, as I plan on writing a formal review after I watch it once more, because holy crap was that movie awesome, but I will say that one of the very few shortcomings of the movie was the unspectacular villain, Ronan the Accuser. The so-so baddie ended up working well with the movie, and I’ll get into why some other time, but it got me thinking about the different villains in the MCU, and I realized that aside from Loki, there aren’t many that get a ton of love. It’s not usually through any fault of their own…

Though there are exceptions.

… I just find that maybe the moviegoing public doesn’t find them quite as interesting as, say, Heath Ledger’s Joker, Jack Nicholson’s Joker or Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor. Hell, even Mr. Freeze from Batman & Robin is remembered for all the  more than, say, Obadiah Stane from Iron Man, albeit for all the wrong reasons. So, in order to both celebrate the new movie, and to throw Marvel Studios a bone (To go along with billions of dollars in worldwide gross), I decided to count down my top 5 favourite MCU villains.

First of all though, I limited myself to only villains who were the main antagonist in one of their film appearances. Therefor, villains like the Abomination, the Mandarin and Nebula, who were being created or controlled by a “puppet master” for lack of a better term, are not included. All clear? Good. Let’s start with 5 and 4 on our list.

Also, I may possibly go into spoiler territory, so be aware of that.

5. Aldrich Killian

Winner of “Most Punchable Face” at the 2014 Academy Awards.

Appearance: Iron Man 3

Portrayed by: Guy Pearce

The founder of A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics), Aldrich Killian had the misfortune to be diagnosed with a debilitating disability. To overcome his handicap, he injects himself with a virus of his own creation, Extremis, which not only cures his disability, but ends up giving him heat-based superpowers. Instead of doing something awesome with that power…

Seen here: Doing something awesome with that power.

…Killian uses his high intellect to manipulate the Vice-president into doing… Well, something. I don’t remember shit about the whole conspiracy, and all I really remember from the movie was that there was  less to the Mandarin than you thought, Pepper Potts still sucks, and Shane Black has still got it.

Also, Robert Downey, Jr. called a young boy a pussy, so you know, that’s pretty awesome.

In all honesty, it was kind of a crapshoot for the number five spot between Thunderbolt Ross and Aldrich Killian for the fifth spot, but I finally went with Killian because of the reveal of just exactly how diabolical and complicated his power-grab was (I Google’d it between paragraphs). The problem is that he didn’t really do much to distinguish himself, even with his badass skill set, and, for fucks sake, he let Pepper Potts kill him. So, yeah, he barely gets on this list ahead of Thunderbolt Ross (Whom I barely remember) and Ronan (Who I’ll get into later).

To be continued…

 

Ben Affleck is Batman… And I’m (Somewhat) Okay With That!

I was gonna do a quick bit on why I’m an awful, awful person (Maybe some other time), but something much more important caught my attention.

Specifically: Who the hell cast Ben Affleck as Batman?

Does… not… compute…

So, unfortunately for my dead in the water burgeoning writing career, I will be wrestling with this for an indeterminate amount of time. For now, having seen Daredevil, but having also seen Argo and Good Will Hunting, I am choosing to reserve judgement and urge everybody to please remain calm. Remember how everybody was pissed when Heath Ledger was cast as the Joker? Well, that turned out okay, right?

Previous career-defining role: A gay cowboy.

Of course, Brokeback Mountain was actually a good movie, while Gigli was not… But then again, Gigli was released ten whole years ago. I, personally, choose to judge Affleck by his most recent work. Unfortunately, even the great movie that was Argo is lost on the idiot who still calls him “Ben Asslick” ten years after that was relevant in any way.

Am I saying that I would have cast Benny as the Bat? No. I probably would have gone with a relative unknown, or a TV actor like, I dunno, Jon Hamm? Would Jon Hamm have been good as Batman?

Okay, yeah, they should have cast Jon Hamm.

I choose to remain “optimistically cynical” (Shit, does that make sense?) about our new Batman, but come on Internet. Calm the hell down. Give the poor man (Or filthy rich man. Whatever) the benefit of the doubt. And for chrissakes, can we stop using Gigli as the be-all and end-all when talking about Ben Affleck? In fact, you’re on the internet right now, so go watch Argo and then come back and tell me he sucked in it. Go on, I’ll wait!

…

So how was that? That’s right asshole, you LIKED Ben Affleck in that movie! Now shut the fuck up about Jennifer Lopez already!

Or so help him, Ben Affleck will shove his Oscar so far up your ass, you’ll think you’re watching Pearl Harbor again.

…

(They probably should have cast Jon Hamm.)

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(Or Karl Urban…FUCK! It should have been Karl Urban!)

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