March to Infinity: Top Villains of the MCU Movies Part 2: The top of the pile.

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 Here we are with the top of the MCU villain pile. Now before I go on here's my traditional link to the previous review to get everyone up to speed.

https://ondavidsbrain.blogspot.com/2018/10/march-to-infinity-top-villains-of-mcu.html

 With that here's my count of the top 9 MCU villains.

#9 The Winter Soldier from Captain America The Winter Soldier.

 Sure while the Solder himself wasn’t the big mastermind in his own movie he was still the major threat and provided a great personal conflict between him and Cap. Normally while I’m against characters that have little to no agency in their own story in this case it’s an exception since any self agency he had was striped away by Hydra. Steve’s one time best friend turned into a cold, emotionless killing machine, striped of his memories and free will and replaced with every form of killing known to man made for a fantastic conflict for Cap, trying to save thousands of lives while trying to free the man trapped inside the monster. If his internal conflict wasn’t enough to captivate you his relentless and deadly fighting prowess will certainly do the job. Thankfully Bucky was saved eventually, only for Infinity War to happen, but still whether he’s Bucky Barns, The White Wolf or the Winter Solder he’s a man you don’t want to find his cold Robot hand on your throat.

#8 YellowJacket from Ant-Man

 Ok now why is this guy so high up on the list when when you break it down he's just another asshole in a suit like he rest of the Iron Man villains. Well aside from the awesome costume I feel that there's more of a personal antagonistic connection between Darren Cross and Scott Lang compared to the previous examples. While Scott was personally trained and earned the trust of Hank Pym Cross on the other hand may have been taught by the man he was basically seen as the failed son due to a combination of Hanks ego and the lost of his wife Janet causing him endless grief. The result was a man who had absolutely no scruples in selling this dangerous technology to the highest bidder, in this case being remnants of Hydra. I kind of see the relationship between Cross and Lang in a similar vain of Gene and Big Boss in Portable Ops, both were in someway shaped and influenced by The Boss but where one has actually earned the respect of their mentor all the other inherited was a hollow shell of a legacy.

#7 Ultron from Avengers: Age of Ultron

 On paper this guy is a genuine threat. An AI granted sentience and consciousness via the Mind Stone having the persona of Tony Stark, full access to all information on the internet and able to transfer his consciousness to any Wi-Fi signal on the planet, all wrapped up in a super powerful metal body with a God Complex, odd daddy issues and a pretentious comeback to any argument you can label against him. That's not even taking the fact that he's also a one man army and an army of one since he can control multiple bodies simultaneously and even transfer his consciousness into them when his main body is too damaged. This guy nearly managed to destroy the entire earth and even though he ultimately failed he set the stage for the events that would tear the Avengers apart. Now if that doesn't make an interesting villain I don't know what to tell you.

#6 Vulture from Spider-Man Homecoming

 Now aside from the aesthetics and design of the Vulture suit; which are still awesome there's some things about this incarnation of Adrian Tombs that I really do like. For one thing this isn't just some asshole billionare with delusions of grandure or a powerful alien with a god complex and a magic stone, he and his crew were just a bunch of blue-collar Joes trying to put food on the table whose operation just kept getting more and more out of control. Trying to make a living is one thing, but reverse engineering alien technology and selling these weapons to criminals, yeah a few sparks is all it takes to set the whole forest ablaze. This coupled with the charismatically threatening performance of Micheal Keaton makes this version of the Vulture one of the highlights of an otherwise ok Marvel movie. I doubt that this is the end of the Vulture however considering the ending and loose plot threads of Spider-Man Homecoming maybe he'll be back for an actual Sinister Six movie.

#5 Ego the Living Planet from GOTG Volume 2

 First of all I was honestly surprised that Marvel even could use the this guy in GOTG Vol 2 in the first place considering the then rights issues between Marvel and Fox who owned the Fantastic Four movie rights which Ego fell under at the time. But what they came up with when all those issues were cleared up was worth the headaches in the end. Diverging from his comic book counter part this Ego is the father of Starlord and planed to terraform several planets into versions of himself to satiate his loneliness and the key to all of this is with the power of another being like himself, thus he tried to create many children but they were incompatible with his power, all except for Peter Quill. I mean that alone would make him a sizable threat, a monster who was this close to destroying most of the galaxy but what really places him here was that he was the one who gave Peter's mom the Cancer that killed her. I believe that Peter's real daddy said it best about him, "That guy was a jackass!"

#4 Helmut Zemo from Captain America: Civil War

 "An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again, but one that crumbles from within, that's dead, forever." This one sentence sums up the impact, motivations and menace that drives this former Sokovian solder. After Ultron launched his attack on Sokovia he thought that his family would be safe, at least until he found their bodies, and where were the Avengers? He knew he could never out power Earth's mightiest heroes, so he waited until the time was right, acquired all the pieces he would need, set up Cap's best friend Bucky for the murder of King T'Chaka and just sat back and watched them tear each other to pieces. Zemo might not have been the most powerful or the most cunning villain, but he did what no other villain could do, he broke the Avengers.

#3 Loki from.. just Loki

 What else is there to say about Loki? He was the break out villain of the MCU and Tom Hiddleston brought this petulant, mad trickster god to life. From his first appearance in Thor where he was the well meaning but misguided prince of Asgard to the would be despot of the first Avengers movie Loki was the one who drew those butts to those seats. Much like the God Dan Kuroto Loki started off as pretty standard bad guy and while he can come off as scheming and mad he mostly became the focus of really good comedy. Though considering what happened in Infinity War I doubt he'll be making any more mischief for the Avengers; for for the trickster god that made the MCU we have one thing to say.

#2 Erik "Kilmonger" Stevens from Black Panther

 If you haven't noticed with this list most of the top ones are characters that I can empathize with or detest the most. The former were misguided but you could see how their circumstances lead them to become the antagonists that made our heroes lives that much worse while the later is often too big of a threat to just ignore. These two views can't be intersected more than with Erik Stevens Aka Killmonger. Born the son of Wakandan Prince N'Jobu Erik having lost both of his parents; plans to continue his father's plan by taking over Wakanda to conquer the world by giving their advanced weapons technology to oppressed Black people all over the world, leading to his own brand of conquest, violent revolution and vengeance. While his grievances against both Wakanda and the western world is more than justified; he plans to just continue the cycle of death and madness just with a different hand on the trigger.

  I also have a good rule for villains, any standard villain can easily oppose the values of the protagonist but a great villain is also one that the hero can learn from. If not as a cautionary tale but by acknowledging that while their cause is justified their actions or motivations are just as abominable as the ones they're trying to oppose. T'Challa by fighting and learning of the plight of Killmonger knows that Wakanda can do real good for all the people of the world, not just for those of African descent. Of course this would be for nothing without the excellent acting of Michael B. Jordon, this coupled with the upcoming Creed 2 means that yes, we can let him off the hook for Fant4stic. I could go on but if I did I'd just be plagiarizing Wisecrack so I'll just cut out the middle man and point you to their video on why Killmonger is the best villain since Heath Ledger's Joker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUgO7NtgNF0&t

#1 Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War

 Here we are at last, the absolute best villain of the MCU, Thanos the Mad Titan. Now while Killmonger is the most empathetic and understandable Thanos not only has the same empathy and understanding behind his actions, he also has the power to not only make things hard on earth but the entire universe. Now like everyone I got more than annoyed when for all of his talk Thanos just did little over the course of the MCU past Avengers. Sure he may have backed Ronan and Loki but other then that he really didn't have that much of a direct presence. But as soon as he got his big purple ass off of that chair and we saw him hovering over the Asgardian escape vessel that was when we knew that he was here to play, and he came to win!

 Just like Killmonger Thanos' actions while abominable are actually understandable and most horrifyingly, logical. Having seen his home planet of Titan destroyed by overpopulation Thanos made it his goal to insure that no planet had to suffer that same fate, by wiping out half of the populations of the planets he conquered to save them from themselves. However he eventually realized that going planet by planet wasn't enough so he sought the Infinity Stones to wipe out half of the sentient life in the universe. The worst thing about this is that he succeeded, but not without cost, for him to get the final Infinity Stone he had to kill the one person he truly cared about, Gamora.

 Now I know that eventually this outcome will be undone because how could Spider-Man have a sequel if he's a pile of dust; but when we were watching this movie and we saw Thanos snap those fingers all we could think about was "Mr Stark, I don't feel so good." What really sold me on this version of Thanos aside from the scene were he acquired the Soul Stone was the last scene where Thanos sat down on that porch on that farm and had that look on his face that said "I did it". To be honest only one other movie has made me feel this way and hit me that hard watching a villain take this somber victory was when Homura was taunting Sayaka at the end of Madoka Magica Rebellion. Both Thanos and Homura overcame terrible hardships, made unconscionable decisions, gave up everything that they cherished all to achieve their goals, for Thanos to save the Universe, for Homura, to give the one person she loved a chance to be happy, the price was the uprooting and destruction of everything.

 Thankfully they changed his motivations from his original comic book incarnation. Where there he was a nihilist who literally wanted to court Death only to fail and be upstaged by a murderous Canadian tumor. Here, he's fully aware of how monstrous his actions are but feels that it's his duty to cary out this horrible task, even if he's only remembered as a demon. That kind of conviction coupled with his goals actually being based on something that happened to him and not just some hypothesis or theoretical outcome not only justifies his crusade but actually gives him a sympathetic perspective as he genuinely hates himself for killing Gamora to acquire the Soul Stone. Of course he's nothing without the acting of Josh Brolin, his acting coupled with the brilliant script makes a giant purple emo into a powerful, terrifying and nuanced character, in a word, Fantastic.

 So there is my list of the top Villains of the MCU. If you feel like anyone was shafted "cough Kilgrave cough Kingpin cough cough" just let me know in the comments. Well with the year almost done I feel the need for a quick break, you know holidays and all that. But before I do I feel the need to play catch up. So next time I'll get started with the reviews of the Space Squad movies. Starting with Girls in Trouble then Dekaranger Gavan Space Squad wrapping up with, ugh Dumbluck and his gang of idiots one last time, though first Luigi's Mansion for the 3DS, Happy Halloween!

Special thanks to my Patreon backer Jesse for his support.

Captain America The Winter Soldier is owned by Marvel Studios  and The Walt Disney Company. Based on the character created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.
Ant-Man is owned by Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures. Based off the comic book character created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby.

Avengers Age of Ultron is owned by Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and is written by Joss Weadon. Based off the Characters created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Spider-Man: Homecoming is owned by Sony Pictures Releasing, Marvel Studios, Pascal Pictures and Colombia Pictures
Guardians of the Galaxy is owned by Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Motion picture studios based off "Guardians of the Galaxy" created by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning.
Captain America Civil War is owned by The Walt Disney Company, Marvel Studios and is based on the Comic "Civil War" Written by Mark Millar
Marvel's The Avengers is owned by Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Joss Whedon and Kevin Feige. Based off the comic by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

One Piece is owned by Eiichiro Oda, Toei Animation, and Viz Media

None Piece is owned by PurpleeyesWTF.

Black Panther is owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Marvel Studios and Ryan Coogler. Based off the character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Avengers: Infinity War is owned by Walt Disney Studios motion Pictures and Marvel Studios Based off the original comics Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

Anime Review: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Part 1: Tea and snacks by the sea with Batman.

Please be sure to read, comment, spread the links, re-tweet and follow me on Twitter @OnDavidsBrain! and support me on Patreon.

 To think that this franchise has been around for only 5 years and hopefully it's still going. I mean if there's more manga spin offs and video games (that unfortunately aren't getting ported over here! Not bitter just need a wish here or two there and it should be good.) being made to this day and a potential new movie coming out; eh I'm guessing somebody must still be into this little show, including me. Now I'm sure that some of you have a similar story to mine about how you stumbled across this show. You were in your college dorm room when your little brother tells you about this amazing new anime. At first you're put off when you hear it's a magical girl series since the last time you saw a show in that genre was Sailor Moon on Toonami back in the day and maybe catching a glimpse or two of Princess Tutu when there were episodes on Comcast on demand back around 2006 or something and you decided you wouldn't give that genre a second glance since well given the general demographic of those shows.

 But he insists, you say "what the hell got some time to kill" so you catch the dub on a streaming site and three episodes later BAM!!! You've started the journey to discovering one of your all time favorite anime, as well as the only magical girl anime that you can stand, aside from Kill La Kill (but that's more of a parody of the concept as well as a topic for another day). 

 Now I know the show is five years old by this point but this is one of those shows that I feel deserves every spoiler warning I can give it since it is one of those shows you need to come in as cold as Mr Freeze's tombstone to fully enjoy. As for dub or sub, I've always been a dub man myself but hey whatever floats your boat. Now since this review is going to be as spoiler free as I possibly can I'm not going to be talking about the show itself since not only is it 12 episodes long but if you can watch it on Netflix, Crunchyroll, PSN store, iTunes Hulu, the clouds, I don't want to hear any complaints about "I don't have the time" boo-hoo-hoo so I'm just going to give my two cents on the characters and how I feel about them. 

 We'll start off with the character that I feel kinda gets the shaft, Miss drill curls herself Mami Tomoe. 

You know, just looking at her makes one thing pop into my head.

 Anyone else, or is it just me? Anyway Mami first shows up to save Madoka and Sayaka's butts from some of the witch Gertrude's familiars and since Kyubey says the two have the potential to be Magical Girls she offers the two the chance to tag along with her and see what it is exactly that they're getting into. Now in terms of her relevance in the story Mami serves the purpose of showing Madoka and Sayaka and by proxy the audience what it is to be a magical girl, the risks involved with making a contract and some of the sacrifices that come with it. She also demonstrates the true danger that the witches and their familiars present, that these are less like Sentai monsters and more like the Horrors from Garo.

They kill indiscriminately, embody pure uncompromising evil and that even the most skilled warrior can be killed by one
if they don't have their head in the game.

 Brief aside here I love the design of the Witches, these are some of the most interestingly designed monsters I've seen in quite some time. No two looking exactly alike and range in animation styles, from GC to negative space to looking like if Terry Giliam tried to become a Sentai villain. Most of these creatures look like if a Dada art gallery was trying to kill you. Not to mention once you learn the truth abut where these things come from there's a whole new level of symbolism to analyze. Needless to say, I love these things.

 Back to Mami, she seems to be, well the most human, she didn't become a magical girl under traditional circumstances (for these types of MGs anyway), lives with the regret of her wish and tries to mask the loneliness of the death of her parents by focusing her time on her magical girl duties. This is expanded on in her spin off "The different story" but suffice to say she tries to make friends with other magical girls but it doesn't end well since it turns out that she's an oddity among the MGs. Their general attitude seems to be that they only fight witches for the sake of their own wishes above saving people from them or being eaten by familiars. Yet from that standpoint Mami really is no different, she says that she fights to protect people but in reality she fights to drown out the fact that she is completely alone aside from Kyubey. This loneliness also drives her to do some rather unsettling things when it comes to Madoka and Sayaka.

Not like that!

 Knowing full well the dangers of what it means to make a contract she was willing to coax Sayaka and Madoka into wishing just so she wouldn't be lonely anymore. While this is still understandable it still doesn't do much to redeem her from a hard logical standpoint. While she can talk the talk and walk the walk we see that her mental scars run deeper then first thought, in another timeline (yes I'll cover that later) when the final truth of magical girls is revealed to the group Mami goes nuts and tries to kill the others before being put down by Madoka. As horrible as that sounds Mami is ultimately the most compassionate of the five since knowing what lies at the end of the road and having what little stability crumble around her she does what most people would consider to be the best option by trying to kill the others. 

And the fact that death is honestly the best option over the alternative says how messed up and horrible being a magical girl in this world ultimately is. 

 So with Mami's attempted murder spree this leads to her only victim. Her former protege Kyoko Sakura, oh boy Kyoko. 

Behold the most powerful bum you'll ever see aside from Al Simmons.

 Among the core five Kyoko has at best the second most tragic backstory. She enters the story after hearing that Mami was killed and that Sayaka has taken her place with Kyoko's goal initially to kill Sayaka and take over Mitakihara's hunting grounds. Now being far more experienced in combat then the greenhorn Sayaka she nearly does kill her until Homura intervenes. The second encounter between the two reveals yet another truth, that the soul gems that the girls draw their power from, really does live up to the name on the tin. These girls are ultimately zombies and if they move more then 100 meters from their bodies it shuts down and is nothing more then a corpse without the magical girl in close proximity to animate it.

 While Kyoko reacts like someone told her she was having burgers for dinner, Sayaka, yeah not so much so to try and clue her in Kyoto tries to show Sayaka why she is the way she is by telling her backstory. Her father was a priest who drove his family to starvation when he started preaching his own ideas and was excommunicated by the church. Desperate, Kyoko wished to Kyubey for people to listen to her father's preachings. It worked well for a while but when her father learned the truth he started drinking heavily, called Kyoko a demon for brainwashing people to listen to him and killed himself along with Kyoko's mom and sister right in front of her and setting their church on fire. So yeah, after a backstory like that anyone would change their outlook a tad. 

 The details are elaborated on in The Different Story as well but suffice to say Kyoko turned into the one looking out for #1. So why is she trying to help Sayaka you may be asking? Because she reminds her of her when she first contracted, eager to fight for justice and their loved ones and making their wish for the sake of said loved ones. She just wants to stop Sayaka before the wish blows up in her face. Needless to say it didn't work out that way but she still tried.

 Kyoko is the type of character that takes precisely zero crap from anyone. She's a loaner who had the world take a dump on her but she managed to brush the shit off and fling it right back at anyone who pisses her off. Even if said person ceases to be a human and is nothing more then a monster. She then exits the show on her own terms by using all of her power to destroy a witch in a desperate attempt to save someone she cares for, dying as the person she was and not what she became.

 Speaking of Sayaka let's cover her next. 

We see her as your typical teenage girl, happy with friends and has a crush on her childhood friend Kyosuke but doesn't know when to share her feelings with him.

 After Mami died Sayaka decided to finally make her wish after Kyosuke told her to stop seeing him. See he was a talented violinist who was caught in a car crash; while he'll mostly recover the damage done to his hand is far too severe to ever play again.

Sounds familiar.

 The doctors flat out told him that unless magic and miracles exist he'd never play again and with Sayaka constantly showing up and bringing him CDs of violin performances it didn't exactly cheer him up so much as pour salt and lemon juice in his wound. So taking that to heart Sayaka made her wish to completely fix Kyosuke's hand. From there one would think that Sayaka would follow the traditional route of a magical girl protagonist, however after her first fight with Kyoko she started to distance herself from Madoka. After Madoka accidentally exposed the soul gem rule Sayaka lamented that she could never be with Kyosuke since she's essentially a zombie and cried her eyes out on Madoka's shoulder. From there things went from bad to worse.

 After Kyubey told her that magical girls can block out any pain they feel she started to follow Guts' fighting style and go into berserker frenzies when fighting witches, even going so far as not using the grief seeds she's collected to prove that she's above Kyoko's methodology. This of course causes her to lash out at Madoka and drive her away when she was only trying to help. But to be fair it isn't exactly helpful since she was saying pretty much the exact wrong things to her. These and several other events all culminate in the reveal of the ultimate truth of Magical girls. First time I saw this scene my jaw dropped, honest as sunshine on this. 

 It was so obvious and yet, just WOW! I mean way to hide something in plain sight! Unfortunately Sayaka, while she claimed the best of intentions was just like Mami, she fought to hide and avoid facing the truth until it blew up in her face.

You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

So come back next time when we discus the last 3 of our main characters.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is owned by Gen Urobutchi, Studio Shaft, and Studio Aniplex.

Archer is owned by Adam Reed, Floyd County Productions, Radical Axis and FX Productions.

Batman: The Animated Series is owned by Dc Comics, Warner Brothers and Paul Dini.

Garo is owned by Keita Amemiya and TV Tokyo.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is propriety of Hirohiko Araki, David Production, Tokyo MX, Warner Bros Entertainment and Viz Media.

Roundabout is owned by Yes, Atlantic Records and Eddie Offord.

Kamen Rider is owned by Ishinomori Productions, Toei Productions, and Bandai.

One Piece is owned by Eiichiro Oda, Toei Animation, and Viz Media

None Piece is owned by PurpleeyesWTF.