Is it possible to have an "ultimate" antagonist of a Superhero Trilogy/Series?
Like EVERY villain of this trilogy/series is linked to this ultimate antagonist. Nearly EVERYTHING was setup to build the final showdown between the hero and this villain? It would require a lot of good writing and good oversight to make, but you know it's going to be very amazing if it could be done right.
Right now, The Amazing Spider Man was the only one trying to do it, every bad guy/bad thing was related to the Osborncorp. too bad the 2nd one didn't meet the expectation.
Thanos probably got the best build up, still Avengers 2 got little to do with him. Most of the MCU's bad things got little to do with him.
Iron Man could have followed this path if the Mandarin plot wasn't twisted. Killian actually got little to do with the real Ten Rings, which was involved in the previous 2 movies. Captain America trilogy got Hydra as the villain of its first 2 movies but got little link between each other. The third is Civil War, MCU Zemo wasn't Hydra member either.
FOX got many "awesome big bad" but couldn't do them well. X-3 was horrible and Apocalypse also suffered from lack of previous setup, such a big villain deserves more than 1 post credit scene before his own movie. Let's hope they could do better to Dark Phoenix.
Nolan's Batman got LoS as the villain of BB and TDKR but I won't call the links and build up good enough. Talia wasn't handled well.
DCEU's Superman could have been done that way if there was MoS2 and 3 instead of BVS, like that:
Krypton's Destruction was due to its super computer Brainiac's deception.
Brainiac serves as the 2nd movie's antagonist.
Brainiac left out a plan to create/awake the cursed creature Doomsday as the villain of the 3rd one, also the perfect chance to introduce Superman's Death.
Right now they are trying to setup Darkseid, but I won't call JL a very good setup, all we got was Steppenwolf calling Darkseid's name.
Last edited by Slowpoke on Dec 3rd, 2017 at 07:35 PM
Original Raimi Spider-Man trilogy is the closest that any filmmaker has come with Harry Osborn going from friend/rival for father's affections to antagonist's accomplice to outright enemy-turned-ally and friend again in his dying moments. Best plot thread in the trilogy by far, but it got overshadowed by the studio-driven Venom inclusion.
its certainly possible; the best they've done with that is probably Magneto in the X Men OT but even then he was around the whole time he didn't pull strings from behind the scenes or anything. The only way Hollywood knows how to do this is in annoying retroactive storytelling; example of this is Lethal Weapon 2 when the South Africans are retroactively made the killer of Riggs' wife... or the exact same thing happening in Spider Man 3 actually lol
best case of an ultimate villain actually would be Palpatine; mentioned in the first, hologram in the second, full debut in the third with Vader doing all the heavy lifting for the entire trilogy villain wise
Generally yeah, I'd agree. You don't fight the big bad in the first one. You talk about their existence, sure, but the final showdown should be in the third movie. If you treat each movie as being the equivalent of an act in a story, it works very well imo.
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Palpatine in the Star Wars Prequels
Sauron in Lord of the Rings
Kronos in Percy Jackson, if we're counting books
^ indeed it seems much more common for book and TV series, like Fire Lord Ozai or each major DBZ arc.
I think Thanos qualifies - he doesn't have to be responsible for literally 100% of all bad guys in the universe.
DC was on that path with Darkseid but not sure if that's still going
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It's Thanos for now. But once he gets beaten they'll need to top him with... whatever the devil is more powerful than Thanos. Super Thanos? Nega Thanos?
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Ozai sucked though, and he wasn't that much of a threath. Sure, we have a few scenes building him up, but outside of the SC he never seemed to be as threathening as Thanos in the MCU, or Freeza.
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Dec 3rd, 2017 07:31 PM
