I love everything superhero, and despite the massive amount of superhero content that’s come out over the past several years, I still haven’t reached my limit. Whether TV show, movie, or direct to video animated film, I’ll watch everything from Marvel or DC. Because that’s not the philosophy of the general audience, those who make these superhero movies and shows know they have to switch up the format lest fatigue set in. One of the more recent trends is, rather than have the expected battle between a superhero and a super villain, to lose the superhero angle entirely and make the super villain the main character of the story. A solid idea, but it has been done so often and executed so poorly that maybe it’s time to drop it.
Now, there’s a difference between a villain movie and an anti-hero movie. Some hero movies themselves dance between hero and anti-hero, so it’s pretty easy to tell an anti-hero movie from a villain-driven movie. Catwoman, which probably shouldn’t be used as an example of anything, may have been the first anti-hero movie. She is often a Batman antagonist, and, while Catwoman loves stealing, the 2004 movie didn’t have her do anything particularly villainous. Anti-hero movies can get away with having a less-than-noble protagonist, but they end up saving the day regardless of their motives.
Anti-hero movies only seem like they are villain protagonists because the lead characters originally opposed a hero in the comics before getting their own spotlight. The likes of Venom and Black Adam may have fought Spider-Man and Captain Marvel/Shazam in the comics, but they weren’t outright villains in their movies. Venom managed to carry three movies by making Eddie Brock a pretty stand-up guy who had to keep the Venom symbiote in check. He was more like Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk when needed rather than the vengeful, dark version of Spider-Man who only wanted to make Peter Parker suffer. Topher Grace’s Venom from Spider-Man 3 may have been a more faithful version of the character, but there was no way Sony would make that version of Venom the central character in a movie. Black Adam had the perfect lead-in to being a villain 
movie. 2019’s Shazam established that there was a previous champion who was corrupted by his power, and when Black Adam came out in 2022, it seemed as though he would be fighting the heroic Justice Society of America. However, the movie’s twist made him a sympathetic, misunderstood character whose actions were mostly heroic. To add insult to injury, we never got to see Venom fight Spider-Man (despite that being teased in the post-credit sequence to Venom: Let There Be Carnage) or Black Adam fight Shazam (or Superman, which was teased in the post-credit sequence to Black Adam).
We are continually given “villain” protagonists who aren’t actually bad guys. When the likes of Deadpool (who was originally an X-Men villain) and Loki (after he has gone through an arc in the Thor and Avengers movies) take the lead in a story, they aren’t trying to destroy or take over the world. We see the Suicide Squad get apprehended by Batman and the Flash, but when they are on their own, they fight enemies who are much worse than they are. Harley Quinn appeared in two Suicide Squad movies and Birds of Prey, but we love her and root for her. These anti-heroes are just less heroic than the standard protagonist. Where are the nasty, despicable villains actively committing heinous crimes in their movies?
2019 gave us a movie with one of the most evil and chaotic villains of all time, the Joker. An origin movie for one of Batman’s greatest villain, Joker is Arthur Fleck’s descent into villainy as he kills, kills again, and then plunges Gotham City into chaos and inspires anarchy. It got a lot of accolades, and it had all the elements of a great movie, but it was far removed from the superhero genre. Plus, Joker didn’t even fight Batman.
Sadly, even movies where the protagonist is pure villain, the opposing super hero is nowhere to be seen. Max’s Penguin mini-series is an example of a good show that lacks a certain element. Penguin wasn’t heroic or saving the city from a bigger evil, he was simply fighting to rise in the criminal underworld. This version of the Penguin even met Batman in 2022’s The Batman, but the show felt no need to have a heroic vigilante. The Penguin felt a little unsatisfying because of it. Sony is the biggest offender here, as they trot out movies starring Morbius or Kraven without any intention of having them fight Spider-Man. This ignores the biggest draw of having a villain as the main character – putting the audience in the villain’s POV and working to make them root against the hero for the sake of the villain they have grown attached to.
Joker: Folie à Deux really drove home the point of why this approach is so frustrating. We 
already had our villain origin movie. Surely the sequel would be about the villain finally fighting his archenemy. What we got instead was an absolute mess of a movie that blended romance, music, and an internally conflicted villain. That was supposed to be more compelling than a main character who has embraced villainy?
Batman: The Brave and the Bold did manage to deliver a great Joker-focused story in the episode “Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!” In a reversal of the show’s usual format, we follow the Joker as he teams up with another villain and has to stop Batman from gathering equipment to assemble a super weapon. Why movies that star villains don’t attempt something like this is beyond me. There is, actually, have a great villain-POV movie that doesn’t get talked about as a movie with a villain protagonist. Avengers: Infinity War was all about Thanos. He drove the plot with his grand plan, there’s an emotional core with his relationship with Gamora, and he may have had more screen time than any individual hero. Plus, he triumphed in the end. Of course, this was just setting the stage for the next movie to focus more on the Avengers, but that’s just the MCU continuing the story of its universe.
It’s been said that a hero is only as good as his villain. A great hero and a great villain can share the spotlight and make an amazing story. But when the villain has so much of the spotlight that there’s no room for the hero, the story is thrown out of balance. If a hero is defined by how he counteracts the villain, where does that leave a villain without a hero to fight? He either becomes heroic by fighting an even worse villain or he becomes dull and flat. If X-Men Origins: Magneto had been made and not included any of the X-Men, it wouldn’t be able to give Magneto the depth he got in X-Men: First Class. Magneto’s fallout with Charles Xavier and his ultimate turn to oppose the X-Men was an essential part of his character.
The thing that really gets me is how many of these movies and shows have come out in rapid succession. Joker: Folie à Deux was in theaters while Max was airing The Penguin. Venom: The Last Dance left theaters just as Kraven was released. Forget super hero fatigue, this is creating super villain fatigue. With both Joker: Folie à Deux (surprisingly) and Kraven (unsurprisingly) under performing, this should be a signal to course correct the trajectory of bringing comic book super villains to movies. We don’t need Sony giving us a Scorpion origin movie that builds towards a Sinister Six that never fight Spider-Man or Warner Bros. deciding to make a movie about Sinestro’s early days in the Green Lantern Corp before meeting Hal Jordan. The next direction for superheroes in movies and TV shouldn’t be about villains isolated in their own story. Maybe it’s time to re-examine what made these villains so popular in the first place and go from there.
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