Anti Villain / Marvel Universe

Marvel Universe

Comic Books

Comic Books

• Captain America:
  • Armadillo is a minor enemy, but Cap has never regarded him as anything but a confused individual, a good man who keeps making poor decisions with his life. Having fairly low intelligence and little personal initiative, he's easily manipulated by smarter people. Stuck in a monstrous body, his ultimate goal has always been simply to find a cure for his condition, and he has acted heroically on several occasions. Cap has hope that one day he'll see he's a better man than he thinks he is. He even recommends that Armadillo receive guidance counseling rather than prison time in his official evaluation!
  • Cap profiles dozens of villains in Heroic Age: Villains, and considers a number of them to be victims of circumstance or misunderstood rather than evil. The Bison, for instance, is a young man who cut a raw deal that turned him into, well, a bison man. He only hires out his services as a villain because he can't get work any other way and he wants to provide for his girlfriend.
• Fantastic Four: Doctor Doom has been known to defend his actions on this basis from time to time, especially in regards to his iron-fisted rule over his small Eastern European homeland Latveria. Considering Doom showed the Four the apocalyptic mess that the insane Prince Zorba made of the land after he took the throne, the Four were forced to agree that Doom would be preferable and help him retake the throne after Zorba orders a murderous purge of the population to thwart his predecessor. The Four would have been more than willing to immediately take down Doom afterward if he hadn't installed mental inhibitors in them to force them to leave instead.
  • Doctor Doom has some despicable moments that subvert this trope, mainly selling the soul of the only woman he loved to demons in order to gain mystic power and send the Richards children to hell. But depictions on Doom and what Doom should be like is a matter writers can't seem to agree on, and various people at Marvel make a point to declare stories about Doom they don't like as having not really been him, or simply file them under Canon Discontinuity. Even his aforementioned rule of Latveria can go from a beloved kingship with happy citizens to a fearful populace run by an egotistical dictator. In other words- he's sometimes an Anti-Villain. It depends on the writer.
• The Incredible Hulk: In Skaar Son Of Hulk, Axeman Bone may be a brutal warrior but, as he makes a point of expressing, at least he knows what he's doing (trying to unite his people and re-establish formal society on Sakaar) and when to stop, unlike the aimless and animalistic Skaar.
• Marvel Zombies:
  • Doctor Doom turns out to be the only world leader who actually manages to save his people from the zombies (by sending each of them to alternate worlds of their choosing via a jury-rigged dimensional portal) while staying behind to fight off the attacking zombie heroes and then, after being infected, destroying the machine so that even he can't go after his subjects once he's turned. He does this in part by using the weak and elderly as zombie bait, though.
  • Magneto suffered a very similar fate in the same overall storyline, although he did so without being as coldly Darwinistic as Doom (though it's implied that his only concern, at least at first, was saving mutants.)
• Sub-Mariner: Namor goes between this and Anti-Hero, sometimes in the same book. Sometimes in the same panel.'' Most (if not all) of the villain side comes from his loyalty to Atlantis above all.
  • Perhaps best summed up by his belonging to a super-secret group of good guys (the Illuminati) and a super-secret group of bad guys (Norman Osborn's inner circle) at the same time. And apparently doesn't see the need to tell either group about the other. It's even been implied that at least once, he left a meeting with one group and went immediately to a meeting with the other group. Talk about blurring the lines!
  • Who else but Namor can claim to be best pals with both Captain America and Doctor Doom?
  • In Sub-Mariner: The Depths, while Namor is frightening and vicious, he is ultimately just defending his home from trespassers who refuse to heed his many attempts to make clear their presence is unwanted.
• Silver Surfer: The Silver Surfer is one during his earliest appearance, where he's still a Herald of Galactus, but quickly makes a Heel–Face Turn. After Annihilation, he briefly returns to the role and occasionally acts as an Anti-Villain during guest appearances for a few years before returning to the status quo.
• Sleepwalker: The villain Spectra is first seen planning to steal a valuable synthetic diamond and sell it for drug money, until the diamond becomes involved in a Freak Lab Accident that imbues her with its light-based energies and gives her superpowers. While she initially seems poised to become a supervillain, she has apparently had a change of heart by the time Sleepwalker runs into her again, having taken to using her light-projecting powers to make an honest living, and only intervening to stop Sleepwalker when she thought he was a villain. Once the misunderstanding was sorted out, Spectra later helped Sleepwalker defeat the Ax-Crazy Psyko.
• Spider-Man:
  • Puma serves in many ways as a Punch-Clock Villain, only killing people he's hired to murder as a paid assassin. He originally crosses paths with Spidey after a mob boss hires him to murder the wall-crawler, but later on comes to Spider-Man's aid on several occasions. He only kills people he's paid to, and otherwise functions as a perfectly legitimate businessman in his day job, his major concerns being his own personal welfare and the needs of his people.
  • Mr. Negative is a ruthless crime lord who runs drugs, weapons, prostitutes, illegal immigrants, protection... His alter ego, Martin Li, is a saintly billionaire who has dedicated his life to charitable pursuits. He feels this is necessary for the sake of balance - if a man who does great evil doesn't also do great good, his spirit will never know peace.
  • Regent in The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows. The reason he has taken the powers of every other hero in their slice of the Marvel multiverse is because he believes this is the only way to protect their Earth from destruction should the events of Secret Wars (2015) spill into their reality. When he tells this to our heroes, who are completely unaware of said multiverse war, they dismiss him as being completely insane.
• In The Spectacular Spider-Man, Ramon Vasquez, ironically the Professor of ethics at Empire State University, impersonated the White Tiger and stole the Abraham Erskine manuscripts to sell on the black market... to fund the night school classes that ESU was planning on shutting down as a cost-cutting measure.
• The Ultimates: Most of the Liberators are utter bastards, but the Colonel, at least, seems to be a genuinely good guy who just happens to be fighting for the wrong side. Indeed, his death scene is probably the most respectful send-off anyone's ever gotten in the entire series.
• X-Men:
  • Magneto is a Holocaust survivor who has taken "Never Again" to its extreme conclusion. A Well-Intentioned Extremist who has frequently shown kindness and mercy towards his rivals, most of his victims tend to deserve their punishment, such as the angry mob responsible for the death of his family. He has done more than one Heel–Face Turn, and has a deep respect for arch-rival Charles Xavier.
    • Actually it's in-canon that Magneto had his truly villainous moments (he once tried to nuke New York For the Evulz) but they're attributed to madness from his tragic life events (Depending on the Writer; sometimes he is written as just an extremely high-functioning Sociopath who cares more about mutants as an abstract ideal than he does any actual flesh-and-blood mutant). After being artificially de-aged into a baby (and then later aged back to an adult) he was cured of it. And then relapsed (and was cured again, and relapsed again, because Status Quo Is God in comic books).
  • Presenting an interesting contrast to Magneto is his sometimes-Dragon, Exodus. Their goals (defending mutantkind and/or mutant supremacy) are virtually identical, so too are their methods, but while Magneto is a Mastermind type of leader who assembles and maneuvers his team with cold pragmatism, Exodus tends to be the Headstrong type of leader who is always at the forefront of every battle he leads a team into. Both characters have Charismatic leadership as a subtype, so rarely do either of them lack followers.
  • Magik has been corrupted by evil, but she usually fought against it.
  • Claudine Renko, AKA Ms. Sinister. Her actions are motivated purely by self-preservation: She was one of the many hapless victims of Mr. Sinister's experiments. In her case, she was infected with a virus that in the aftermath of his death during X-Men: Messiah Complex has been slowly turning her into him. She's terrified of what it will mean for her if Sinister's consciousness is able to fully supplant hers, and is seeking a new body to transfer her own consciousness into to escape what is likely to be certain death. It only gets worse after an encounter with Daken goes very badly for her, as he injures her in a manner that leaves her severely weakened. She picks X-23 to steal her body because of her powerful Healing Factor. She's never actively malicious about it, she's just desperate to survive.

Films

Films

• General Ross in the 2003 Hulk movie, as opposed to his The Incredible Hulk (2008) version. Considering the long history of Hulk comics neither is exactly inaccurate to the comics. He's portrayed as a concerned general who deeply loves his daughter and is just trying to stop the hulk menace, but goes out of his way to pursue and distrust Banner because of who his father is.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Loki, the antagonist from Thor, is continuously doing the wrong things for the right reasons. He's actually just a screwed-up "Well Done, Son" Guy trying to win his father's approval through pretty much the worst means possible.
  • Black Panther ends with T'Challa essentially admitting Killmonger was 80% in the right the whole time. It's only the 20% that's about conquering and killing that makes Killmonger a villain.
  • Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War perform multiple genocides across multiple planets because he genuinely believes that if the planets are left unchecked, then they could suffer from an Overpopulation Crisis and leave the planet into a lifeless shell just like his own. He holds no ill will towards his enemies and fully respects their resolve regardless if they are against him or not. It's only his own hubris and hurt pride that prevents him from seeing a solution besides mass murder.
  • Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp goes to increasingly brutal lengths as the film progresses, but her only goal is to relieve herself of the constant agony she's suffering from as a result of her phasing powers and to prevent her imminent death.
  • Xu Wenwu from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is driven primarily by a desire to reunite with his late wife and his children once again; far from what you would expect from the leader of arguably the most dangerous and influential criminal organization on Marvel Earth. The actions he takes throughout the movie are not necessarily "good" (hence the whole villain thing) but they are always understandable and come from a genuinely human desire.
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2. Altruistic guy, working for "the good of mankind", accidentally kills his wife and turns himself into a monster with no inhibitions, and fixates on his dream, still believing that he is trying to help humanity, when he is actually constructing the means to destroy half of New York City. He's manipulated by his own technology to boot. Regains his senses at the end and pulls a Redemption Equals Death to atone for his crimes.
  • In Spider-Man 3, the Sandman is a textbook Anti-Villain, pursuing noble ends (saving his daughter's life) through criminal means.
• X-Men Film Series
  • Magneto has an unquestionably sympathetic backstory and very good reason to believe that humans are out to eradicate the mutant race. However, he is a dangerous individual with few limits on his devotion and what must be done to ensure the survival of his kind. Even his best and oldest friend isn't safe from his extreme methods and beliefs.
  Warren Worthington II: It's not like he's forcing mutants to take the cure.
  • Likewise, Dr. Kavita Rao is just doing her job.
  • Magneto and Mystique become this at the end of X-Men: First Class.
  • Bolivar Trask in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Unlike other characters obsessed in exterminating the mutants, he does so not out of hatred, but a desire to see humanity united against a common threat, and actually admires mutants for helping him accomplish that goal. Pity he has no empathy...

Western Animation

Western Animation

• In Iron Man: Armored Adventures, Gene Khan is this initially and throughout most of the first season. Whether or not he's still an Anti-Villain after the events of the season one finale is a serious case of contention among fandom. On the one hand, there's some foreshadowing that he may not be too far gone to save, and he doesn't seem happy with how things have turned out. On the other hand, he has (by the standards of Nickolodeon) crossed the Moral Event Horizon for many, given he almost killed Tony, kidnapped Tony's dad, and threw this into Tony's face mercilessly.
  • There is also Arthur Parks, aka The Living Lazer, who has a heavy Freudian Excuse and is eventually persuaded to turn good by Iron Man, right before his death.
  • Madame Masque, aka Whitney Stane, is another example, especially in her second-season return.
• Some of the antagonists from The Spectacular Spider-Man fall somewhere on the Sliding Scale of Anti-Villains. Just look at the character sheet. For instance, Tombstone may be the head of a criminal empire, but even outside of his Villain with Good Publicity persona he's far from a monster. He has no problem with Spider-Man saving lives and stopping psychotic villains (he does, however, have problems with Spidey interfering with the lucrative "ordinary" crimes carried out by his underlings).
  • Black Cat fills precisely the same role she originally had in the comics. Unlike her comic book counterpart, she never made the jump to Anti-Hero since the show was cancelled before this could transpire.
  • Sandman was definitely an anti-villain, as explored in Season 2. In his own words: "I was just in it for the bucks. I never meant to hurt anybody."

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